Pubdate: Tue, 25 Feb 2003
Source: Pride, The (CA Edu)
Copyright: 2003 The Pride
Contact:  http://www.csusm.edu/pride/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2848
Author: Jeff Brownlee
Note: editor prefers email LTEs

WILL THE WAR ON TERRORISM BRING ANOTHER BOON FOR DRUG TRAFFICKERS?

Since the end of WWII, one of the most consistent and generous benefactors 
of international drug traffickers has been the American Central 
Intelligence Agency (CIA).   Beginning with the defeat of the Nationalist 
Chinese by Mao Tse Tung's communists' in 1949, trade in opium and heroin 
played a major role in financing the CIA's efforts to fight the menace of 
communism.

Nationalist forces driven out of southern China into northern Burma in 1949 
sought to regroup and rearm for an invasion of the now communist controlled 
China.  These nationalist forces were trained, and their subsequent 
incursion into communist China was largely planned by the CIA.  Nationalist 
forces financed the operation almost entirely through the cultivation and 
sale of opium that was in turn refined into heroin for sale in the United 
States and other western nations.

Nationalist forces invaded China from their Burmese sanctuaries in 1952 and 
were defeated and repelled by the communists.  In 1961, military operations 
by the Burmese army and Chinese communists largely eliminated the 
Nationalists forces in northern Burma as a viable fighting force; however, 
the opium syndicate established by the nationalist mercenaries remains to 
this day.  Prior to 1949, northern Burma and Thailand produced very little 
opium.  Today, thanks in great part to the activities of the CIA, this area 
is the largest opium-producing region in the world.

In Burma the CIA was largely guilty of a sin of omission.  They simply 
turned a blind eye to the activities of their nationalist allies. Later, In 
Laos, the CIA participated in the narcotics trade in a more direct and 
deliberate fashion.  Like Burma, prior to the end of WWII, Laos produced 
little opium.  Beginning in the 1950s the CIA began to recruit Hmong 
tribesman, a Laotian ethnic sub-group, to fight against the communist 
Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese.  The Hmong had long grown opium for local 
drug traffickers and with the CIA's encouragement they began growing it in 
ever-larger quantities in order to subsidize an increasingly bloody war 
against the communists.

In this case, CIA aircraft actually transported raw opium from rural 
mountain areas in northern Laos to heroin labs in Laotian cities.  The 
resultant heroin found its way onto American streets and to American 
servicemen in Vietnam.  The CIA was not directly involved in moving the 
processed heroin, but they were well aware of where it was going. In fact, 
South Vietnamese vice-president Nguyen Cao Ky was personally involved in 
importing heroin from Laos to South Vietnam.

These are not the paranoid assertions of a disturbed conspiracy 
theorist.  Historian Alfred McCoy meticulously documented all of these 
facts in his book "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia."  A corporate 
lawyer at the publishing firm Harper & Row called upon McCoy to justify 
every sentence in his book.  The CIA actually obtained a copy and tried to 
have certain passages expurgated.

In the aftermath of 9/11/01 many have called for an easing of restrictions 
on the CIA's conduct in order increase the intelligence agencies' 
effectiveness in combating international terrorism.  These calls come in 
spite of the fact that the CIA in its unrestricted cold war incarnation 
played a major role in furthering international drug traffic while largely 
failing to stop communism in Southeast Asia. One is led to uneasy 
speculation as to what will be the nature of the next plague this 
"intelligence" agency will visit upon us during an unrestricted war on 
international terrorism.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens