DRUGS AND DESTRUCTION

              Brig (Ret) Mohammad Yousaf

 “ TAKE ALL THOSE CONFISCATED DRUGS AND DO AS THE VIETCONG DID WITH THE US ARMY IN VIETNAM.SUPPLY THEM SECRETLY TO THE RUSSIAN SOLDIERS.” SUGGESTED COUNT ALEXANDRE DE MARENCHES, HEAD OF FRANCE’S SECRET FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE TO PRESIDENT REAGAN IN JANUARY1981.

 The international trade in illicit drugs, at the end of the twentieth century, has multiplied in volume and its devastating effects on the world’s population, even faster than the international arms trade. Global profits of multinational world drug business and its criminal management are numbered in hundreds of billion dollars each year. The evidence is overwhelming that CIA used drugs as an actual weapon and as a source of finance, and gave this dirty business a decisive impetus.

 Poppy farmers sow their fields from mid-October to late April. Harvesting of the opium resin or gum is done a few days after defoliation and normally lasts two weeks. The capsules are scratched in the afternoon and resin collected on the next morning to prevent the loss of milk. Each pod is incised two to six times, with an interval of two to three days before scrapping. Once the poppy sap is scrapped, it is carried to nearest refinery, where it is converted to morphine. Conversion is done by first dissolving the opium in drums of hot water. Lime fertilizer is added to the hot, steaming solution, which precipitates out the organic wastes and leaves the morphine suspended near the surface. After removing residual waste matter, the morphine is put into another drum; heated, stirred and mixed with concentrated ammonia. The morphine solidifies, and drop to the bottom of the drum and filtered out as chunky. Once dried, packaged, the morphine base has only ten percent of the original weight of the raw opium from which it was extracted. Such factories are common and are located close to the poppy growing areas.

 Transforming morphine base into heroine is more complicated. The process comprises five stages. In chemical terms, the principle is chemically to bind acetic acid to the morphine molecule. This generates a substance, which is converted into heroin powder. To carry this process a “precursor” chemical, acetic anhydride is necessary. In Asia, it is trafficked mainly from India.  Till late 1990, Hong Kong and Marseilles was the heroine refining capitals of the world.  

 Using drugs to weaken your enemy or to stimulate your own army to fight with zeal recurs throughout history. During the war between the Nationalist Chinese and the Japanese that raged before and during World War 2 both sides sold large quantities of raw opium to each other, for profit and to waken the adversary.

  The CIA has a long history with drugs. Some of their known connections, which got worldwide publicity, are: -

 The Southeast Asia connection. The CIA's biggest asset was recruiting Hmong tribesmen to fight against the nationalistic Pathet Lao, and Vientiane became the drug capital of Laos. Vang Pao eventually gained a monopoly in the Golden Triangle, where Burma, Thailand, and Laos intersect. In Laos Air America, a CIA-sponsored airline, flew opium out of the Vientiane area. In 1971 alone, 60 kilograms of Laotian opium, valued at $13.5 million, were seized from the suitcase of a Laotian member of the World Anticommunist League, which was headed by General John Singlaub. In addition,

During the Vietnam War, the amount of heroin, which was exported to the United States, became so immense that the operations could not remain clandestine. Consequently, in the 1960s, it became prudent for CIA operatives to stash heroin in caskets of dead Americans as well as in body bags, areas, which would be least, searched. When the bodies of American GIs were flown to military bases on the West coast, the heroin could be easily removed. In addition, boxes and crates, which were sent back to the states, carried heroin and coded labels alerted CIA operatives as to where to look.

 The contra cocaine train. Two months after Reagan's inauguration in 1981, the CIA launched its secret war in an attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government. Soon thereafter, the arms-drug caper began. The drug of choice in the 1960s and 1970s was heroin -- imported from Southeast Asia. Then in the 1980s, the primary addicting drug became cocaine, and its source was Latin America, the new hub of CIA activities.

 Ironically, "the war on drugs" became an important part of Reagan's domestic agenda. While the United States sent military aid southward to its surrogates fighting the Sandinista government, the rate of cocaine being transported northward into the states quickly escalated. The CIA was involved in a variety of ways -- by air, land, and sea -- in bringing cocaine into the United States.

 The Kerry subcommittee found that the CIA and contra arms-for-drugs operations included:

Involvement in narcotics trafficking by individuals who were associated with the contra movement.

Participation of narcotic traffickers in contra supplies operations through business relationships with contra organizations.

Provision of assistance to the contras by narcotics traffickers. This included cash, weapons, planes, cash, air supply service, and other materials.

Payments to drug traffickers by the State department from funds authorized by Congress for humanitarian assistance to the contras. In some cases this was after the drug traffickers had been indicted by the Justice Department, and in other cases while traffickers were under investigation.

  The Indo China war brought first French and than many Americans military and civilians into contact with hard and soft drugs for the first time in Vietnam War. Soldiers and civilians brought drugs and drug habits to their civilian families and societies. So it was primarily the returning Allied soldiers from Vietnam, who were the first to spread drugs in their respective societies. By 1979, the Marseilles Corsican syndicates were already operating new heroin laboratories to process the morphine base arriving through Turkey and Syria. The US drug mafia was distributing the heroin in cities such as Chicago, Boston and New York, through ‘pizza connection’ of Salvatore Sollena using chain of pizza parlors. In New York, Black syndicates in Harlem were the main importers from South Asia. They captured about half of the New York City market.

 Soon after his inauguration January 1981, Reagan saw Count Alexander de Marenches, head of France’s secret foreign intelligence service in the Oval office of the White House. De Marenches had a concrete suggestion for a Franco-American venture to revive the old alliance to counter the Soviet threat in Afghanistan. He called it Operation Moostique or Mosquito. You know, he told the President, “How much trouble a mosquito can cause a beer. If you can’t shoot the beer yourself, you should consider this method.” The Frenchman suggested,” Take all those confiscated drugs and do as the Vietcong did with US army in Vietnam.   Supply them secretly, they would be demoralized and their fighting ability would be gone.” De continued that he was in contact with a bunch of bright young journalists who could do all this at a cost of only one million dollars, a real bargain in subversive warfare. The president agreed, picked up the phone and told Casey. The two should meet and discuss Operation Mosquito.

 Two days later, the Frenchman met Casey who ‘loved’ the idea. Would, could France carry it out if the CIA put up the cash, asked Casey. “I will take care of that,” said de Marenches. “But I have one condition. I want to be sure that France and my name wont be mentioned in published articles.” Sorry, Casey retorted. Washington leaked like a sieve. According to his memoirs, the joint project was dropped: in other words, France withdrew, after having provided the idea.

 The Reagan Administration managed to get the upper hand over President Jimmy Carter’s aversion to enlisting drugs in the Cold War against the Kremlin in general and Central American Contras in particular. With Regan and Casey, a new era began. In January 1982, US Attorney General announced that FBI, instead of DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency), would henceforth control anti-drug operations inside the United States. This effectively ended hitherto secret operations between the two. Casey secretly engineered an exemption, sparing CIA from a legal requirement to report on drug smuggling. Attorney Smith granted an exemption on February 11, 1982 in a secret memorandum two months after President Reagan had authorized covert CIA support for the Nicaraguan anti-Communist Contra army. The exemption was to avoid legal responsibilities, if federal law continued to require it to report drug smuggling by the CIA. This resulted into a large scale Cocaine traffic from South America.

 Three years after the chief of French intelligence had proposed to President Reagan that drugs be used as a weapon, Casey, for the first time, raised this issue with President Zia who declined the idea considering its possible spread amongst the Afghan Mujahideen. But Casey was determined to make a try covertly. Reportedly, Ahmed Shah Masood was contacted through French journalists, and was provided funds, technical know how and helped in the establishment of heroin factories. Dozens of French and British journalists visited Masood on one pretext or other and in the process he was made a legendary hero. Some local tribal chiefs were also included in the drug war. Was there a concerted, US-conceived or supported plan to spread drug addiction into the soviet army, and from there, into Soviet and post Soviet Russian society, where it has acquired gigantic proportion at the end of 1990?

 In 1985, the Contra issue was surfaced. The US President displaying lack of moral courage denied his association with the plan. Commander North was made an escape goat and left high and dry to face the trial. For a while, all such covert operations were frozen if not abundant. The ‘modus operandi’ was changed.  Foreign intelligence agencies like French and Israeli were co-opted to do the dirty work for the CIA. In 1995, Bolivian police reported that two tons of Bolivian cocaine were transported across Russia by Israeli’s, without being seized.

  According to United Nation International Drug Control Program (UNDCP), the real boom to drug in Pakistan and Afghanistan was noticed from 1990, when the Soviet left Afghanistan. DEA and other investigators have found evidence of many heroin laboratories during the late 1990 in Bakhshan province of Afghanistan. UN and others estimate that in Pakistan and Afghanistan 500 tons of pure white heroin powder was processed in 1997. Its wholesale value in the US was about to $50 billion.

 Since Iran and Pakistan both have tightened border controls, the drug routes northward into Central Asia have been opened up. In Iran alone, from 1989 to 1998, 3000 drug smugglers were executed and hundreds of thousands of addicts jailed. Ironically, Americans still accused Pakistan and Iran, and other countries for poor enforcement and lack of cooperation in halting international drug trafficking. It is rather strange, why the Americans can’t seal their own borders with all the advanced and sophisticated surveillance devices available to them instead blaming others.

 The attitude of western media is also biased towards the poppy growing countries. They consider them as rogues and totally responsible for the spread of drugs in their respective countries. In doing so, they totally forget that the drug is the invention of the west. It is the west, which has only provided the technical know-how and helped in the establishment of heroin factories and training the manpower. It is the west, which is exploiting and making huge profits out of drugs. The drug money has found its way in the system of US administration and has corrupted the society as a whole. Today the drug lords have become so powerful and well connected with the political governments, that most counties feel helpless.

 Reportedly. All US presidents from Kennedy downwards, had some sort of direct or indirect connections with the known drug lords, who had been generously providing funds in their elections from their ‘black money’. In fact, from a county to the President election, the drugs syndicates provide the most needed funds. This has not only corrupted the politicians, but the entire administration. The ‘Black’ syndicate’ of New York spends more than a million dollar per week as bribes to various law enforcing agencies.

 The Zionist controlled media has been unleashed against Taliban who are being maligned on the basis of religion. What to talk of drugs, Islam forbids all sorts of hard drinks including beer. On the behest of US, the United Nations and many other countries are demanding a broad base government in Afghanistan, as a condition for its recognition. If Talibans are acceptable to the majority of Afghans, the other nations including United Nation has no right to force their type of Government or interfere in the internal affairs of the country. How would the Americans react if the French demand their system of government in United States or vice versa? 

With the courtesy of CIA, one of the most tragic scenes in Russia, as in the western world, has been drug use among children, especially young girls. Today, Moscow has become a central point of all drug activities emanating from northern Afghanistan, through central Asian states for onward dispatch to Europe and US. Following the foot steps of CIA, KGB is supplying heavy weapons, training and logistic support to the foes of the Taliban, grouped loosely in the Northern Alliance, struggling to hold the northernmost tier of Afghanistan’s mountain through the drug money. Since the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, a number of drug mafia groups have surfaced in Russia with the covert support of KGB, who is injecting the drugs massively into the veins of European and Americans for money as well as part of their revenge from the Western democracy.

The American concept that the keys to eradicating the narcotics plague from their street lay overseas has proved a total failure. There is a definite need to find out the root causes as to why people take drugs, which may vary from one society to the other. The keys to eradicate the drug culture, therefore, lay within the United States.

The basic principle of ‘demand and supply’ is equally applicable to the business of drugs. As long as there is a demand, the drugs will continue to find its way from one country or other with the covert support of the politicians and administration alike. With the development of synthetic drug by Nether land; called Ecstasy, perhaps the poppy fields will dry soon but the drug culture will continue to flourish as long as CIA, KGB, and other Intelligence agencies of the world are not harnessed.