‘Daisy Cutters and Poppy Wearers.’ Some people may be wondering what this means.

The Daisy Cutter is the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the American armoury.

Even larger bombs are currently being developed. The Daisy Cutter has an explosion similar to a small nuclear or atomic bomb. They say that when one was dropped in Iraq, the explosion lit up the entire front. Many Iraqi soldiers defected after seeing that bomb.

Several of these were dropped in Afghanistan, especially in the battles of Tora Bora.

Tony Blair is an example of a poppy-wearer. The poppy represents international peace. I got the idea for the title of this article from a cartoon I saw in one of the national newspapers. It was at the time when daisy-cutters were being dropped in Afghanistan and it was international peace day. The cartoon depicted a picture of Tony Blair wearing a poppy and an explosion behind him. The caption simply read: ‘Daisy-cutter…Poppy-wearer’.

We are entering an age where the visual media is gaining increasing influence on human societies, especially the 24-hour news channels, which have now become the most popular of all channels. A lot has been written about the shaping of public opinion.¹

I would like to mention some of the things that characterize the visual news media.

First, thought and emotion control. By relying upon the global news channels for information, the public tacitly allow themselves to be influenced in their thoughts and opinions about global events, on the spurious assumption that such information is unbiased and ‘independent’. A more ominous recent development, possibly, was illustrated by the case of Princess Diana’s death. The virtually unending media coverage generated the huge public outpouring of grief, so uncharacteristic of the British people. Individuals who would not normally have paid the story much of a second thought were influenced by the unceasing media coverage, repeatedly telling them how devastated they (the British public) were, that they found themselves believing it and even feeling it.

News channels have short memories. This was partly my reason for writing this article. The material we are currently seeing on the news channels about Afghanistan, the Taliban and the war — it is as if everything that led up to that point has been forgotten. The comments being made about the Taliban seem as if they come from a vacuum, as if everything that has led up to this point has been erased from the public mind.

When most people think about the Taliban and opium, they have the impression that the Taliban are heavily involved in the opium trade. That is in fact the message that is coming through from the media at the current time, sometimes through hints, and sometimes more explicitly. Whereas, in reality, as we shall see, the Taliban were responsible for stopping the opium production in Afghanistan and reducing it to zero.

The Pentagon now spends more than $550m on what it calls ‘public affairs’, not including personnel costs. So huge amounts of money are being put by the American military into what is referred to as ‘perception management.’ It involves manipulating and using the media to convey a certain message. I will present a couple of examples of this.

It is clear that the media is not a neutral institution. For example, Tony Blair met Rupert Murdoch three times in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. Rupert Murdoch owns large sections of the western news media, including Fox News, Sky, the Times newspaper, the Sun, News of the World, at least one of the large American newspapers and much of the Australian news media.

Although ‘Muslim’ channels such as the Emirates’ Al-Jazeera, Pakistan’s Geo News, and others, may superficially give the impression of being pro-Muslim, this is certainly not the case. In fact, there is little difference between such channels and mainstream UK or US news channels. These Arab or Pakistani news channels represent the secular, westernised tier of those societies. Despite the differing national allegiances, they ultimately share common values with their ex-colonial masters, i.e., democracy, secularism and often a belief in a capitalist economy. However, it should be remembered that this West-imitating class is a minority in Muslim countries.²

An example of how the news media has been responsible for manipulating public opinion occurred prior to the war against Iraq, when Iraq had invaded Kuwait. Prior to the American and British led attack, there was a widely reported story of Iraqi soldiers killing Kuwaiti babies. At a congressional human rights caucus, a young woman called Nayirah relayed a shocking story of what she had allegedly witnessed. The press latched on to the story, and the initial account of fifteen babies was soon exaggerated in sectors of the press up to 312. Several members of congress said that this story had influenced their vote to approve the military action against Iraq. President Bush frequently mentioned it in the lead up to the war. In the Senate, six senators specifically cited the story in their speeches supporting the resolution to give Bush authorization to use American forces in Kuwait.³

Shortly after the war ended, it became clear that this story was fabricated. ABC News and Amnesty International amongst others reported that there was no evidence that this had occurred. Finally, the New York Times made the shocking revelation that Nayirah was in fact the 15-year-old daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in America.

Similarly, before Iraq was invaded following the September 11th attacks, most Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind 9/11 or that he was directly linked to Al Qaeda, despite the fact that no such link existed. In fact, Salafi jihadist groups such as Al Qaeda (supposing we assume that such an organisation substantially exists outside of its media construct) are ideologically vehemently opposed to secular leaders like Hussein, considering them to be apostates, worse than ‘disbelievers.’⁴

Some polls found that 7 in 10 Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in September 11th attacks. This public attitude was engineered by the state department. President Bush, Dick Cheney and co were hinting at links between the two in public speeches. The journal Perspectives on Politics published a study in which they looked at this issue. The authors mention: “Our analysis of Bush’s speeches reveals that the administration consistently connected Iraq with 9/11…” They go on to mention how the media colluded with the Bush et al.: “New York Times coverage of the president’s speeches featured almost no debate over the framing of the Iraq conflict as part of the war on terror. This assertion had tremendous influence on public attitudes, as indicated by polling data from several sources.”⁵

This eventually led to Iraq being invaded.

History of the Global Opium Industry

Now, going into the main subject of the article, I am going present you with two historical narratives and they interlink. One of them is the history of the global opium/heroin trade. The other is the story of the Taliban. Part of the intention of this presentation is just to remind people of historical facts. I will not indulge in conspiracy theory or anything of that sort; I simply wish to mention historical realities and allow people to judge the facts for themselves. The information about the Taliban is drawn from sources that are in not in any way pro-Taliban. The two main books to which I refer are The Taliban by Ahmad Rashid, which many western leaders were reading (it was said to be Tony Blair’s bedside reading leading up to the war), and Reaping the Whirlwind by a journalist called Michael Griffin. Neither author is a fan of the Taliban

I present the reader with historical facts which are often obscured or omitted from our dominant sources of news. People have a right to know the truth, and the British people have a right to know why their sons and daughters are fighting and being killed in a faraway land called Afghanistan. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “The best jihad is the word of truth in front of a tyrant ruler.”

The narcotics industry is amongst the largest international businesses in the world. The U.N estimates approximately $400 billion a year is involved.⁶ Kofi Anan, the ex-secretary general of the United Nations, claimed that the illegal narcotics industry is greater than the global oil and gas industry and twice as large as the overall automobile industry.

This gives us an idea of the scale we are dealing with. We know that the oil and gas or global energy industry is one of the largest industries in the world. Oil is so central to the global economy that it is referred to as an ‘oil-based economy’.

It is clear that this is a huge, highly organised and integrated international industry. There must be very powerful players where such vast amounts of money are involved. This is not about a few Pakistanis smuggling Afghan heroin and selling it in Bradford. That is just the very lowest point of the chain.⁷ There are far bigger players involved, and they are literally making billions.

The 18th and 19th centuries were the height of the British Empire. In the 20th century, America emerges as the major world power and proceeds to sideline Britain, France and the old colonial powers.

Let us examine the ‘Opium Wars’, also called the ‘Anglo-Chinese Wars.’

The East India Company was owned by British aristocracy and major British traders. It was a shareholder company and the names of all of the owners can be easily looked up. The East India Company is described as the mother of modern corporations and, interestingly, it had its own army.

The Mughal Empire was in decline when, in 1757, the East India Company conquered Bengal. This was a major opium growing region. The East India Company pursued a monopoly on the production and export of opium.⁸ It was only later, towards the end of the 19th century, that heroin was first synthesized from opium. Prior to that, it was the opium that was smoked.

In 1773, 75 tonnes were exported to China. The East India Company was selling the opium to China in exchange for Chinese commodities such as silk and tea.

This was against Chinese law. The Chinese had outlawed opium in their land because of the detrimental effects on their people. However Britain continued. By the 1830’s, England had become the major drug trafficking organisation in the world, through the East India Company. Many opium addicts were coming about in China. The British government gave the East India Company a monopoly on trade with China.

Heroin Destroys Lives

Opium is a devastating addiction. When people become addicted to opium or heroin, they will give all of their wealth to feed their addiction. When they run out of money they will start stealing, from their own family, from their neighbours. Many women will go into prostitution to pay for their habit. It’s a very, very addictive drug.

As a side note, many people of my generation did not get into hard drugs like heroin because of the public awareness campaigns that took place in the 1980’s when we were going through school. Many of my generation will remember the ‘Just Say No’ campaign that began in America and crossed over to the UK in the 1980s. The fact that we still remember it shows, firstly, how powerful the visual media is in our lives, and, secondly, how easily it can be used as a force for good if the will is there. It makes you wonder why such campaigns are not seen any longer and why steps are not taken to prevent the glamorisation of drug use in the media.

From a purely business point of view, this is the best commodity you can imagine. You sell this to someone and they will come back for more.

Many heroin addicts soon start injecting the drug so that it goes straight into the bloodstream. This often causes infections and abscesses.

When they keep injecting into the same veins, they clot up so they have to keep finding new ones. Many end up injecting into their groin or even the base of the tongue.

The Opium Trade in the Nineteenth Century

Moving now into the 19th century, the opium trade was increasing. By the 1820’s it had gone up to 900 tonnes of opium annually from India to China. Once again the Imperial Chinese government made the opium imports illegal, but Great Britain continued. By 1837, 2500 tonnes were being exported. This was more than all other British exports to China combined.

In effect, the opium trade was fuelling the East India company, and — considering that India was the richest and most productive region of the empire — was a major driver for the empire itself.

The First Opium War came about because the Chinese were resisting the import of opium into their country. Great Britain sent warships to face the Chinese. It has been described as “perhaps the most sordid, base and vicious event in European history.” The Chinese were defeated and were forced to sign a treaty in 1842. They were forced to pay 6 million dollars for the opium that the Chinese police had destroyed. Hong Kong was handed over to Britain, and access to Chinese ports was agreed.

Over the next 30 years the opium trade more than doubled.

France was Britain’s main colonial rival.

In 1856, because of the devastating effect on the Chinese people, the Chinese once again made attempts to resist. The Second Opium War broke out and Britain was again victorious. This time Great Britain demanded complete legalisation of opium and the free propagation of Christianity in China, to which the Chinese had no choice but to submit.

In 1858, the East India Company was dissolved and the British government itself took on the governance of India. Incidentally, John Stewart Mill, one of the fathers of modern capitalism, made a ‘valiant defence’ of the East India Company.

Following the second opium war, China gave up trying to stop the influx of opium and, to minimise the economic impact of the British trade, decided to grow opium itself,. By the end of the 19th century, 90 million out of 300 million Chinese were addicted to opium. Almost a third of the population were addicts.

The Opium Trade in the Twentieth Century

Let us move on to the 20th century which has been triumphantly described as “the American Century”. It seems strange for anyone to want to claim the 20th century, as it was, no doubt, the most bloody, horrific century known to recorded history, which witnessed two world wars and the slaughter of millions. One of the signs of the End Times according to the Prophet (may blessings and peace be upon him) is widespread bloodshed.

As Shaykh Hamza Yusuf⁹ has mentioned, the 20th century, especially the first half of it, can be seen in the light of the power struggle between the new American power and colonial rivals Britain and France, with the US emerging victorious. Many of the events of the 20th century can be looked at in that light.

Looking at America, let us examine actions rather than words.

As Noam Chomsky points out, “Britain can appeal to an imperial tradition of refreshing candor, unlike the United States which has preferred to don the garb of saintliness as it proceeds to crush anyone in its path.” In other words, the British were openly racist and imperial in their outlook. With the United States, we find a different approach. They always claim to be doing ‘good’ while, in fact, crushing anyone in their path to power and dominance.

If we concentrate on rhetoric and the public stances of politicians, we will simply be lost in circles of half-truths, avoidance, and illogicity. If we examine actions, we may arrive at a clearer understanding of reality.

Coming into the 20th century, China eventually managed to stop Britain exporting opium to it. Significantly, it only achieved this with the assistance of the USA. China had tried in vain for 150 years and fought two wars to stop Britain bringing opium into China, but it had failed.

In 1911, US president Theodore Roosevelt intervened to break up the British opium trade. This was, no doubt, a significant blow for Britain’s imperial economy. Of course, the American stance was that they were doing it for a good cause.

Through the forum of the Shanghai International Opium Conference, the US pressed for legislation aimed at suppressing the sale of opium to China. Britain and France had to agree.

By 1917 China had stopped producing and importing opium. In the 1950s, all opium production in China ceased with the communist regime. Before the Second World War, it was producing most of the world’s opium.

Opium production shifted away from China to neighbouring countries which became known as the golden triangle: Thailand, Laos, Burma, all bordering China on the south-west side. In the 1970s, 67 % of the world’s opium was coming from this area. In 1972, one third of US soldiers coming back from Vietnam were addicted to opium.

Wherever the United States intervenes, politically or militarily, in different opium producing regions, opium production invariably increases. The US, of course, will blame one factor or another for this, and often claims to be struggling valiantly to fight the drug problem. Once again, witness ‘the garb of saintliness’ that Chomsky describes.

For example, in the 1970s, Nixon launched his ‘war on drugs.’ He successfully shut down the heroin supply chain through Turkey and France (the so-called ‘French connection’), but “inadvertently” ended up creating a new market for the South-East Asian heroin. The long term consequence of this drug war was in fact increased global opium production and rising heroin consumption.¹⁰

In a well-referenced article by Peter Dale Scott, professor at the University of California, Berkley, under the sub-title, ‘Expanded World Drug Production as a Product of US Interventions,’ he shows that every time America becomes politically or militarily involved in any drug producing country, drug production multiplies.¹¹ Here are some examples he gives for opium production:

Burma: 40 tonnes in 1939 – 600 tonnes in 1970
Thailand: 7 tonnes in 1939 – 200 tonnes in 1968
Laos: Less than 15 tonnes in 1939 – 50 tonnes in 1973

In Columbia, US troops have been intervening since the late 1980s in another so-called ‘war on drugs,’ but in fact the coca production (which is what cocaine is produced from) has tripled between 1991 and 1999. Cultivation of the opium poppy has increased by five times in the region.

Once again, either you can look at realities on the ground or you can listen to the rhetoric. There are many reasons why they have been unable to curtail drug production, for example, “We were unable to control the situation here,” or “the insurgents are causing trouble so we are unable to control the drug trade,” etc.

However, with a repeated pattern, excuses start becoming a little lame, to use a colloquial expression. This is a huge cake, and people want part of the cake. The CIA has been widely implicated in the international drugs trade.¹² ,¹³ ,¹⁴

Afghanistan became important as it began producing a lot of opium. After the defeat of the communists in 1989, Afghanistan descended into chaos with multiple warlords, each commanding his own territory and establishing the rule of brute force.

The opium trade flourished. By the 1990s, half of the world’s heroin and 90% of European heroin was coming from Afghanistan. In 1996, the Taliban took power in Kabul. Initially the Taliban allowed the opium production to continue. Although opium is illegal in Shariah law, they justified their position by saying that stopping the opium trade would have a devastating impact on Afghanistan’s impoverished economy, and, secondly, that Afghan opium was being exported to non-Muslim lands, so it was not the Taliban’s concern.

Insight into the players involved in the international drug trade

In 1986, Major Zahooruddin Afridi of the Pakistan Army was caught driving to Karachi from Peshawar with 220 kilograms of high grade heroin. This was the largest seizure in Pakistani history. Two months later, Air Force officer, Flight Lieutenant Khalilur Rahman was caught with 220 kilograms of heroin on the same route. He calmly confessed that this was his fifth mission. The total value of just these two seizures was $600 million, equivalent to the entire US aid to Pakistan that year.¹⁵

This brings home the vast sums of money involved. If this is the value of just two seizures, it is perhaps not surprising, bearing in mind human nature, that top government officials and army personnel are involved. Both men were put in jail in Karachi but soon mysteriously disappeared.

Ahmed Rashid mentions that “western anti-narcotics agencies in Islamabad kept track of drug lords, who became Members of the National Assembly… Drug lords funded candidates to high office in both Bhutto’s PPP and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League.”¹⁵ This is what money can do.

At the end of 2000, Mullah Omar, no doubt under pressure from other ulema, reversed the Taliban position and issued the fatwa to ban the opium poppy, despite the economic repercussions on his country.

The United Nations confirmed that by spring, which is the time of year for the opium harvest, opium production had gone down to almost zero.

Half of the world’s heroin had been stopped by that one act of Mullah Omar. Martin Jelsma, in the International Journal on Drug Policy, states, “The Taliban opium ban in 2000/2001 had, there is no doubt, the most profound impact on opium/heroin supply in modern history.”¹⁶

You can imagine that some very powerful people were not too happy about this.

Soon after this, the September 11 attacks took place in New York, leading, within months, to the invasion of Afghanistan. America and Britain brought back all of the old drug lords, the so called Northern Alliance. Opium production went straight back up to what it had been before the ban by the Taliban.

It is by no means clear who engineered the September 11 attacks. Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, but it was invaded as a direct result. September 11 led to America gaining direct control of Iraq, with its huge oil reserves, and Afghanistan, with its huge opium crop. American forces were extremely efficient in immediately seizing and securing the Iraqi oil fields, but are not organised enough to this day to provide basic amenities for the Iraqi people, or stop the opium/heroin production in Afghanistan.

An important point about the poppy growth in Afghanistan is that it is relatively simple for the US to eradicate it. All of it is well mapped out by satellite imagery. By satellite, you can read what is written on a cigarette packet so it is no problem identifying the massive opium fields. Sophisticated computer programs can map out exactly where the opium is growing.¹⁷ The US forces could destroy the crops using aerial spraying techniques. They do not even have to go on the ground, they can simply fly over, spray and destroy. This is not denied by the US and its allies, but other reasons are given to justify why opium poppies are not destroyed.

A recent development is that the media has started to portray the Taliban as the cause of the current explosion in heroin and opium production.

In 2002, following the American-led invasion, the United Nations drug agency issued an urgent warning that the allied forces need to act quickly to destroy the poppy crops before the end of spring. Otherwise the heroin that the Taliban had stopped would flood back. However, the Bush Administration-CIA decided not to destroy the poppy crop in Afghanistan, saying, “We decided not to destroy Afghanistan’s opium over fears that such an act may destabilise Pakistan.”¹⁸

Just $200 given to each Afghan poppy farmer would compensate for their opium crop. For just $20 million in total, America could get the farmers to stop growing opium by simply paying them off.

A significant point to note in this regard is the ease and rapidity with which the Taliban were able to eradicate opium production In Afghanistan, despite having none of the sophisticated technology or resources available to western agencies. The results of the Taliban opium ban shocked the world anti-narcotics agencies, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which have been operating for decades on a budget of billions to fight against the global illegal drugs trade. The only sensible conclusion we can draw from this is that there are powerful forces working to prevent easy and effective strategies from being implemented by anti-narcotics agencies. In view of the effectiveness of the Taliban opium ban, claims by anti-narcotics agencies that they have been unable to find effective means of fighting the ‘war on drugs’ despite the immense resources thrown at them by the US and other governments are implausible. Rashid mentions that several members of the US Drugs Enforcement Administration in Pakistan in the 1980s resigned from their posts or requested to be relocated as the CIA refused to allow them to do their job.¹⁹

In 2009, opium production has continued to escalate dramatically. Recent figures from the UN show that 90% of the world’s heroin now comes from Afghanistan.

History of the Taliban

It was 1989 that the Soviet troops finally left Afghanistan. America and Pakistan had been helping the so-called Mujahidin fight against the communists. The puppet communist government left behind by the Russians was overthrown by 1992.

Following that, Afghanistan descended into an anarchic state, and it was in 1994 that the Taliban emerged. Ahmad Rashid says, “Afghanistan was in a state of virtual disintegration just before the Taliban emerged… The country was divided into warlord fiefdoms… The warlords seized homes and farms and abused the population at will.”¹⁹ They were kidnapping boys and girls for sexual pleasure and robbing merchants in the markets.

Traditional the ulema mention that an hour of anarchy is worse than 40 years of a tyrant. You may have a tyrant ruler but he maintains law and order. People can go about their normal life. But when you have anarchy, a complete breakdown of authority, the poor and the weak in society are the ones who suffer most.

Ahmad Rashid is an Afghan himself. He met several of the original Taliban, friends of Mullah Omar. They told him that during the time after the communists were defeated, some of the mujahidin, like Mullah Omar, went back to their madrasas (schools) to continue studying and teaching. All of the anti-communist fighters were referred to as mujahidin but some were doing it for the sake of God, some evidently were not.

Mullah Omar himself had a school where he was teaching students in the south of Afghanistan. His companions mention that they used to sit and discuss what they could do about the state of the country. They agonised over the abuses taking place and the suffering of the people.

In the spring of 1994, the initial event that took place is quite widely reported and probably true. Two teenage girls were abducted by one of the commanders, taken to a military camp, their hair shaved, and they were repeatedly raped. Some of their family came to Mullah Omar and asked for his help. Mullah Omar took thirty students with sixteen rifles between them. They freed the girls and hung the commander from the barrel of a tank. Mullah Omar said later, “We were fighting against Muslims who had gone wrong. How could we remain quiet when we could see crimes being committed against women and the poor.”

Word got around of this incident. People started coming to Mullah Omar and asking for his help. A few months later, two commanders were fighting over a young boy that both wanted to rape. Several civilians were killed in that fight. Omar and the students freed him. This led, as Rashid describes it, to Mullah Omar emerging as a ‘Robin Hood figure,’ helping the poor against the warlords and druglords. From this beginning, the Taliban (or ‘Students’) eventually took control of Kandahar and then the south of Afghanistan. Within two years, they had marched into the capital, Kabul.

Mullah Omar Declared ‘Commander of the Believers’

In Kandahar, there is a museum which contains a burdah (a cloak) which is attributed to the Prophet himself, and is considered the most holy shrine in Afghanistan. The cloak is rarely taken out of the museum. For Mullah Omar, it was brought it out for the first time in 60 years. Draped in the blessed cloak, the ‘students’ pledged allegiance to him and declared him ‘Ameer al Mu’mineen’ (Commander of the Believers).

Strict Interpretation of Islam

The Taliban were criticised for was their strict interpretation of Islam. This aspect is routinely used as a justification for invading the country. Journalist, Michael Griffin mentions the following acts of the Taliban when they took Kabul:

They made an announcement on the radio ordering: “All those sisters working in government offices are hereby informed to stay at home until further notice”. They were probably concerned about unislamic free-mixing in government departments. This paralysed the government, of which 25% staff were women.

They made the full body covering (Niqaab) obligatory for women. Men had to wear shalwar kameez apparently, not western clothing, grow long beards and forced to go to the mosque five times a day. They prohibited toothpaste, insisting on the natural tooth-cleansing root, miswak. All of the following were forbidden: TV, kite flying, pigeons, dancing, music, singing, chess, marbles, cigarettes, and using paper as a wrapper in case it was printed with extracts of the Quran.

I don’t know what really happened. How many times have you seen Taliban ambassadors or representatives on television, explaining their point of view? You have to give people a chance to speak; this is a fundamental aspect of justice. One of the most effective techniques of media control is simply not to give the ‘enemy’ a voice.

One of the rare exceptions was when Taliban Envoy, Saeed Rahmatullah Hishami, was interviewed on the American radio station, Talk of the Nation, prior to the September 11 attacks.

He protested at the biased reporting and demonisation of the Taliban by western media: “If I had all my knowledge of Taliban from the media here, I would hate the Taliban as well.”

He was asked why the Taliban stopped girls going to school. He repeatedly said, “The Taliban have never said that girls should not go to school.” In fact, he stated that the Taliban had appealed to the international community to help Afghanistan provide facilities for girls to obtain a segregated education. The United Nations had responded by building several girls’ colleges there which had been running successfully under the Taliban. He also stated that contrary to the media depiction of the Taliban as misogynous zealots who did not allow women to leave their houses, the Taliban had respect for women and had improved the situation for Afghan women, making it safe for them to walk the streets. He said that women were working in several government ministries under Taliban rule.

He also claimed that the Taliban had offered the US to try Bin Laden in Afghanistan if the US provided evidence that he was involved in attacks on civilians in Tanzania and Kenya. Anyone convicted of killing civilians under Taliban rule would get capital punishment. The US rejected this offer. The Taliban made a further offer agreeing to an international monitoring committee to be present in Afghanistan to watch Bin Laden’s activities for the rest of his life, to ensure that he was not politically active. This was also rejected by the US.

Saeed Hishami emphasised that the Taliban had done what no one else had done for Afghanistan: bring law and order, disarm the people, establish peace and security, make it safe for women to walk the streets, and stop opium production, but, he lamented, “the world has only sent us cruise missiles, sanctions, isolation and criticism.”

From the limited information I have, I suspect the Taliban did have a strict interpretation of Islam. But one thing you can see from the list of prohibitions is that it is according to the traditional Hanafi school of law. If you read the later books of Hanafi jurisprudence, you will find that the Taliban rulings pretty much follow them to the letter. Was there wisdom in enforcing such a strict set of rules suddenly upon the people? That is debatable, but really the whole discussion about the Taliban’s interpretation of shariah obscures and deviates attention from the real issues at hand

Muslims are becoming a persecuted minority in the UK, sometimes living in an atmosphere of fear if they wish to speak the truth. One of the things we appreciate in this country is freedom of speech. There is an increasing tendency to see things in the ‘you’re either with us or with the terrorists’ fashion of George W Bush.

I do not support terrorism or attacks on innocent civilians in this country or any other, but does this mean I have to support an unjust foreign policy of the UK government? Do Muslims not have a right to express dissent without being labelled a ‘fifth column’ or ‘traitors in our midst’?

America’s War Against the Taliban

When the Taliban came into power, perhaps they had a strict interpretation of Islam, but they brought law and order to the country, and it was a widely popular movement, because the poor and the oppressed, who were suffering from the anarchy, drug lords, and warlords, welcomed them. The poor and weak were the ones who benefited because the Taliban brought justice and security. They brought strict punishments, but for people who wanted to be law abiding citizens, go out and work, earn their daily living and feel safe on the streets, they were heroes and saviours. They are aggressively demonised in the global media. It is difficult to see the reality through the propaganda, and they are certainly not a media-savvy group.²⁰

In 1996, the Taliban came into power in Kabul. In the beginning they were welcomed by the Pakistan and US administrations. People do not know this but there were Taliban ambassadors in America trying to work out a deal for a gas pipeline through Afghanistan. An American oil company and an Argentinean one were competing for this contract. So the US was dealing with the Taliban. At that time the Taliban were allowing the opium production to continue.

Pakistan was particularly pleased because the Taliban had made the roads safe, and Pakistani trade could transit through Afghanistan to Turkmenistan and other central Asian destinations. A few feminist voices objected to alleged abuse of women’s rights, but Pakistan recognised the Taliban government, as did Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

But in early 2001, they stopped the opium.

After September 11 2001, the USA delivered the following ultimatum to the Taliban: The Taliban should hand over all the leaders of al Qaeda, release all imprisoned foreign nationals, close immediately every terrorist training camp, and give the United States access to terrorist training camps for inspection.

The Taliban responded that if the US gave them evidence that Bin Laden was guilty, they would hand him over. They said that they had no evidence in their possession linking him to the September 11 attacks. The response was not unreasonable: give us evidence and we will hand him over.

On 4th October, it is believed that the Taliban offered to turn Bin Laden over to Pakistan to have a trial in an international tribunal according to Islamic Shariah. Pakistan refused. On 7th October, the military threat was building up, and the Taliban offered again to detain Bin Laden and try him under Islamic Law, if the United States made a formal request and presented evidence. This was also immediately rejected by the US.

When the American-led forces attacked Afghanistan, Pakistan entered into full cooperation with the American forces, allowing them to use her land and airspace. Faced with the full might of Washington and her allies, Pervez Musharraf committed one of the most treacherous acts in Islam’s history. Fellow Muslim neighbours and brothers whom Pakistan had supported were ignominiously forsaken to gain American favour.

If Pakistan had simply remained neutral, it would have saved some honour. Even Russia refused its airspace to be used by America until only a few weeks ago, when Barack Obama finally persuaded Putin and colleagues to allow it.

I was in Syria when Iraq was invaded. I attended Friday prayer at the mosque of Shaykh Said Ramadan al-Buti. In the sermon, he said, “Not one leader of the Arab countries has stood up. Not one voice has been heard from any Arab leader against the invasion of Iraq.” Baghdad has been bombed and Iraq has been invaded and not a voice heard from her Arab neighbours. Shaykh Buti said that it would have been better for us to die, for all of us to have been killed [referring to the Arab people], then to suffer such a humiliation and disgrace.

Whereas Musharraf capitulated, Mullah Omar remained steadfast. The Taliban were clearly desperate not to enter a conflict with America and her allies. They made offer after offer to the United States to try and resolve the issue, but they were not willing to hand over a man against whom they were given no evidence.

The Voice of America radio station conducted an interview with Mullah Omar through satellite phone just before the commencement of the war. The US National Security Council raised objections and it was never broadcast in America. However it was published in full in the UK in the Guardian newspaper — not front page news though. Most people probably missed it. This is a transcript of the interview:

VoA: Why don’t you expel Osama Bin Laden?

Mullah Omar: This is not an issue of Osama Bin Laden, it is an issue of Islam. Islam’s prestige is at stake. So is Afghanistan’s tradition.

VoA: Do you know the US has announced a war on terrorism?

Mullah Omar: I am considering two promises. One is the promise of God, the other is that of Bush. The Promise of God is that ‘My land is vast.’ If you start a journey on God’s Path, you can reside anywhere on this Earth and will be protected. The promise of Bush is that there is no place on Earth where you can hide and I cannot find you. We will see which one of these two promises is fulfilled.

VoA: But aren’t you afraid for the people, yourself, the Taliban, your country?

Mullah Omar: Almighty God is helping the believers and the Muslims. God Says He will never be satisfied with the infidels. In terms of worldly affairs America is very strong. Even if it was twice as strong, or twice that, it could not be strong enough to defeat us. We are confident that no one can harm us if God is with us.

VoA: You are telling me you are not concerned but Afghans all over the world are concerned.

Mullah Omar: We are also concerned. Great issues lie ahead but we depend on God’s Mercy. Consider our point of view. If we give Osama away today, Muslims who are now pleading to give him up would then be reviling us for giving him up. Everyone is afraid of America and wants to please it, but Americans will not be able to prevent such acts like the one that has just occurred because America has taken Islam hostage. If you look at Islamic countries the people are in despair, they are complaining that Islam is gone but people remain firm in their Islamic beliefs. In their pain and frustration some of them commit suicide acts. They feel they have nothing to lose.

VoA: What do you mean by saying America has taken the Islamic world hostage?

Mullah Omar: America controls the governments of the Islamic countries. The people ask to follow Islam but the governments do not listen because they are in the grip of the United States. If someone follows the path of Islam, the government arrests him, tortures him or kills him. This is the doing of America. If it stops supporting those governments and lets the people deal with them then such things won’t happen. America has created the evil that is attacking it. The evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama dies and others die. The US should step back and review its policy. It should stop trying to impose its empire on the rest of the world, especially on Islamic countries.

VoA: So you won’t give Osama Bin Laden up?

Mullah Omar: No. We cannot do that. If we did it means we are not Muslims, that Islam is finished. If we were afraid of attack, we could have surrendered him the last time we were threatened and attacked. So America can hit us again and this time we don’t even have a friend.

VoA: If you fight America with all your might, can the Taliban do that? Won’t America beat you and won’t your people suffer even more?

Mullah Omar: I am very confident that it won’t turn out this way. Please note this. There is nothing more we can do except depend on Almighty God. If a person does then he is assured that the Almighty will help him, have mercy on him, and he will succeed.²¹

Afghanistan Post-Invasion

By 2006, a few years after the invasion, the Washington Post reported that opium production in Afghanistan, now providing more than 90% of the world’s heroin, broke all previous records.²²

The United Nations office of drugs and crime in 2006 reported that the harvest in Afghanistan was going to be a world record, and up to 92% of the world’s heroin was now originating in Afghanistan.

The Daily Mail on 21 July 2007 carried an article by Craig Murray, British ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, entitled: “Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time”. He asks why British troops are being killed in Afghanistan. He says, “The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure…”

“They were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnny Walker” (alluding to the fact that they are strict Muslims). “They stamped out the opium trade and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords, whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.”

Murray says that since the invasion, Afghanistan has progressed from simple opium production to actually manufacturing heroin. Now, “opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.”
He goes on to say in the article: “The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government. This is the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect”.

Murray is vehemently anti-Taliban but he is willing to speak the truth, and his concern is that British soldiers are dying in an unjust war.²³ This is very relevant because recently there has been a new upsurge in fighting and the propaganda machine has been working in overdrive to provide fresh justifications for continued British involvement in Afghanistan.

Hamid Karzai is reported to have acted as a consultant for US oil company, UNOCAL, and is an ex-CIA operative. Following the invasion, he was made president of Afghanistan. George Bush was not a very subtle player.

Karzai’s brother has been linked to the heroin trade. The New York Times on October 4 2008 reported that an enormous cache of heroin was found under some concrete blocks. Karzai’s brother phoned the commander who had seized the heroin and instructed him to release the vehicle and the drugs. Two years later a similar incident took place. Once again his brother was involved.²⁴

In fact the article goes on to state that it is widely known that Karzai’s brother is heavily involved in the international heroin trade. It mentions that the White House ‘favoured a hands off approach’ toward Karzai’s brother. (This means they will not get involved). The White House justified its position by alluding to “the political delicacy of the matter”.

Current Situation in Afghanistan

As the British death toll escalates, the propaganda machine has gone into overdrive to keep the British public on board. According to the media, the Taliban are responsible for all of Afghanistan’s problems including the opium/heroin production. The Taliban are the enemies of the Afghan people and it has fallen to the valiant efforts of the allied forces to save them from them. If you look carefully, however, the facts do surface from time to time. On December 2 2006, the Washington Post admitted that the Taliban were not to blame for the record levels of opium: “…most experts believe it is largely an organized criminal enterprise. According to a major report on the Afghan drug industry jointly released last week by the World Bank and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, key narcotics traffickers “work closely with sponsors in top government and political positions.”,,,”²⁵

Barack Obama came into power with a lot of enthusiasm, even from sections of the Muslim world. The first major step he took, after visiting London to tackle the economic crisis, was to gather European leaders together in Paris to initiate a new offensive against the Taliban. As a direct result, two million people so far have been made homeless in the northwest frontier region.²⁶

Let’s keep an eye on what he does, not what he says.

1. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman have done some of the pioneering work on the subversive role of mass media in western societies. For example, see the classic work: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. See also: Chomsky, Media Control, The spectacular achievements of propaganda [Seven Stories Press]
2. NASR, Islam and the Plight of Modern Man, [ITS], p. 207.
3. Douglas Harbrecht, “Another Clouded Clinton Appointee,” Business Week, 8 Nov 1993.
4. Bernard Haykel: “Radical Salafism,” Hindu Times, 1 Dec 2001.
5. Amy Gershkoff and Shana Kusher (2005). Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric. Perspectives on Politics, 3 , p. 525-537.
6. Calvani, S., “Eastern Horizons,” UN International Drug Control Programme, #1, March 3, 2000.
7. Kopp, Political Economy of illegal drugs, p. 23, “…we know almost nothing of the functioning of the segments of the chain that enable the drugs to move from the wholesalers to the final resellers…”
8. Many books have been written on the British Government-East India Company involvement in the opium trade, for example: Trocki, Carl A., Opium, empire and the global political economy [Routledge]
9. Director, Zaytuna Institute, California, and one of the leading traditionalist Islamic scholars in the West.
10. Detailed statistics on global drug production and use can be found in the annual ‘World Drugs Report’ of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
11. Scott, P., “Afghanistan: Heroin-ravaged State”, Global Research, 8 May 2009.
12. Rashid, A. Taliban: Islam, oil and the new great game in central Asia, [Pub: I B Tauris], p. 121: “The heroin pipeline in the 1980s could not have operated without the knowledge, if not the connivance, of officials at the highest level of the army, the government and the CIA.”
13. McCoy, A., The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade [Lawrence Hill Books]. McCoy discusses in detail how U.S. drug policies and actions in the Third World has created “America’s heroin plague.” McCoy notes that every attempt at interdiction has only resulted in the expansion of both the production and consumption of drugs.
14. Haq, I., ‘Pak-Afghan drug trade in historical perspective,’ Asian Survey, Vol. 36, No. 10 (Oct. 1996), p. 945-963: “During…the Cold War…CIA intervention provided the political protection and logistics linkage that joined Afghanistan’s poppy fields, through Pakistan’s land mass to heroin markets in Europe and America,” p. 945.
15. Rashid, p. 120-121.
16. Jelsma, M., ‘Learning lessons from the Taliban opium ban,‘ International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol. 16, Issue 2, March 2005, p. 98-103.
17. Deyoung, K., “Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record,” Washington Post, 2 Dec 2006.
18. Smith, C., “Bush Will Not Stop Afghan Opium Trade,” Newsmax, 28 March 2002.
19. Rashid, p. 121.
20. Chris Sands, “Afghans back Taliban, says abducted senator,” The National, 2 Oct 2008.
21. ”Mullah Omar — in his own words,” The Guardian, 26 September 2001.
22. Deyoung, K., “Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record”, Washington Post, 2 Dec 2006.
23. Murray, ‘Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time,è Daily Mail, 21 July 2007.
24. Risen, J., “Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade,” New York Times, Oct 4 2008.
25. Deyoung, K., “Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record,” Washington Post, 2 Dec 2006.
26. Walsh, D., “Swat valley could be worst refugee crisis since Rwanda, UN warns,” The Guardian, 19 May 2009, p. 16.

Such is the market for heroin, a product of simple manufacture from the opium of the poppy plant, 70% of which is grown in the ideal conditions of Afghanistan. Heroin is a narcotic, a substance that is a personal and individual consumer good — it is consumed in very small amounts by individual end users based on the unique value each attaches to it. For a very substantial part of the human world, heroin has enough value to create a lively and fluid global market with a value added chain that stretches from a strung out junkie in Portland Oregon — the end user in more ways than one — to the father of 15 scraping out an existence under biblical conditions a half a globe, and many worlds away.

That value chain, the capitalism that allows it, and the inherent contradiction between free markets and liberal democracy, are at the root of the quagmire that is Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is the political creation of an era long past, with a climate and land suitable for almost nothing. Human beings have eked out enough of an existence to sustain a “civilization” there stretching back to the earliest days of recorded time. Sparsely populated and spread thin across the barren landscape, a pragmatic people got on by reaching an accommodation with reality. They still do.

The industrial era was a boon(doggle?) for humanity, but particularly cruel to the unassuming subsistence societies of Afghanistan. Competing western states — flush with infant nationalisms and burgeoning global interests — closed in and around the scattered tribal extended families of the Pashtu, Tajic, Uzbek, and a multitude of others. English aristocrats crayoned out borders to fit their scattered global interests, and Afghanistan the nation state was born, ephemeral as it was, existing only in the minds of those who wanted — or needed — to see it.

One of those British interests was the opening of the small Afghan opium trade to international markets. Properly irrigated, the plains of southern Afghanistan made for the perfect strategic location for Britain’s huge opium business with the Far East, specifically China. The British found that it was possible to block Russian expansion, provide a land buffer to India, and use the otherwise useless real estate of Afghanistan for mercantilist design. It was thinking like that which sustained one of the world’s truly great empires.

Thus was born in Afghanistan the opium business, a gift of free markets and capitalism. Still operating from fields established along British engineered irrigation systems, the opium trade has grown with international changes in global markets and geopolitics. Suffering from the loss of the Eastern markets at the close of the British era, and then arriving again at the opening of American markets in the American era, Afghanistan has clung doggedly to a pragmatic crop throughout. Opium alone can provide enough surplus for an Afghani farmer — bereft of capital — to feed and clothe himself and his family in near prehistoric conditions. Ideology, rhetoric, and politics never fed a single child, a deep set cultural understanding of the practical Afghani.

A full two thirds of the entire economy of modern Afghanistan is based on the opium business, every tribal family depending entirely on its markets in some way. Only once since its inception has the British installed opium system collapsed. In the decade preceding the rein of the Taliban, both opium market prices and Afghani hectares under production remained stable under the controlled market philosophy of the Soviets, who put the markets to work for the collective under a sweeping series of agrarian reforms. However, on the ascension of The Taliban regime, religious dogma collapsed the opium trade in Afghanistan by a full 97% by 2001, wiping out the Afghan economy in a single stroke. Dogma turned out to be a poor source of calories, and subsequently, the Taliban regime collapsed like a house of cards.

With the introduction of the world’s greatest capitalists to Afghanistan, opium production not only returned, but thrived. Under the Americans, the combination of access to the massive US heroin market, a vicious “War on Drugs” that kept prices high, and international finance structures to handle the money, Afghani production soared from the anaemic Taliban era where only 8 thousand hectares were under production, to a prodigious 193 thousand hectares in 2007. Clearly a triumph for free markets and capitalism, as the best the Soviets could manage was 91 thousand hectares in 1999.

Left to its own devices, Afghanistan is a very stable place. It has a simple, agrarian market economy which functions seamlessly with its diffuse, decentralised tribal hierarchy. It is a system so simple it confounds the minds of western thinkers, where they attempt to think about it at all. More often than not they don’t, and the simple existence of the Afghani is shackled with the problems of the complex western world. The humble Afghani can lay legitimate claim to the bitter epithet, “nasty, brutish, and short”.

The nut of the thing is this; there is no Afghani “state”, and what social cohesion that does exist, exists because of the agrarian nature of the Afghan economy and its most rational economic resource, opium. Afghanistan has two thirds of its national productive capacity invested in a sole commodity, and it is precisely because Afghanistan has this singular productive capacity, that markets exist to fill that capacity. Smack addled high school kids in Toledo (Spain or Ohio) keep the economy of Afghanistan afloat, and allow the meanest of existence for some 70 million of the planets most wretched people. A symbiotic convenience of human agony.

Onto this landscape walked a series of successive geopolitical interests — Empires, Communism, the Soviet Union, the Cold War, Fundamental Islam, democracy, and chaos. Not one of which is indigenous to the local populations, and not one of which understood the primitive simplicity of the local economies, or even cared to.

In Afghanistan, a farmer raises poppy plants over any other for three principle reasons. First, there is a ready and liquid market for the product. Second, opium is not capital intensive, and what capital is necessary is provided by each farmer’s purchaser. Finally, opium is community intensive, and well suited to the social structure of the local tribal systems. Growing Poppy plants and harvesting their opium is a delicate, touchy feely process that is very labour intensive, not unlike rice production in many ways. Large Afghani clans — where schooling reduces the labour necessary to increase the family surplus — are ideally suited for the maximum production of opium.

The clan/farmers raise their crops and sell them to the regional “Strong Man” — sometimes warlord, sometimes politician, most times… both. The Strong Man guarantees the purchase of the farmer’s entire marketable crop, provides seed capital and security, and demands in return loyalty and a price that will sustain the farmer and the system. Given their visceral connection to an entire regional population, these “drug lords” are de facto law and order in their regions. The “State”, for its part has a different, western, democratic liberal set of laws. Under this set, drugs are illegal. This effectively nullifies the respect for these laws in the local Afghan communities. However, it also leaves the local strong men in monopoly position, and awards to that monopoly the entire contract for opium in his region.

Not coincidentally, the local Strong Man is rich, relative to his suppliers. That is because it is his job to shoulder the risk of getting that product out to market as efficiently as possible. Without air, rail, or sea available, prodigious quantities of heavy opium must be moved across hundreds of miles of the earth’s most formidable, natural landscape. Once the cargo reaches the border at either Pakistan or Iran, the opium must transit a series of modern, strong state systems that both provide the demand and prosecute the supply at the same time. The penalty for drug trafficking in or through Iran is either death, or profit.

Afghani farmers earned about 1.2 billion dollars in 2002, a whopping 17% of the nations GDP, ostensibly the amount drug agents paid for harvested crop. Sadly, there are a lot of opium farmers on small family plots, and despite the size of the aggregate crop, it still means subsistence to the farmer. The drug lords are not in resources, however; they are up on the next floor in distribution. There, a much smaller group collect a further 1.3 billion dollars, the lions share going to the strongest and the fittest.

The local Strong Man then, counts as a cost of doing business the employment of large, personal armies armed to the teeth with the latest in lethal weaponry. Each member of these armies is drawn from the landless and otherwise surplus population, and is entirely dependent on the Strong Man, for whom each would gladly die, as they often do. Each understands his place in the chain that holds the opium business together, each a member of a community that depends on their selfless instinct. Without the beneficent local drug lord/strong man, whole populations of tightly knit families will suffer and die.

In modern history, the Soviets tried to supplant this system with their own understanding of an efficient central state. The drug lords were pissed, and their farmers starving. A genuine rural, agricultural revolt began. Radical Islam took up the cause, as did regional interests in Pakistan, India, China, and Iran, as well as the interest of the United States of America. The Soviets wilted and left, the Americans not long after. This left Afghanistan an open battle ground between powerful drug lords, a shattered state, and a kaleidoscope of international proxies backed by regional interests for control of the national apparatus, such as it was. Among this group was the predominantly Pakistani based Pashtu Taliban, the eventual winners. They attempted to break the back of their indigenous rivals by destroying the opium business on which they depended. This meant even more agony for the now long suffering locals who loved Allah, but one supposes, loved food more.

Of course, the young Taliban regime had international relations issues as well, fundamental missteps which brought about their eventual downfall. The Afghani drug lords, who were beaten and sidelined when their international support went home, were only too happy to now get paid for doing it all over again. With virtually no popular support, the Taliban were strangers in a strange land, their collapse so swift and complete they were able to slip away in the night to their sole sponsor Pakistan, unbowed and undefeated.

The Afghani farmer, the local economy, and the greater part of the population were back in business.

State apparatus was never anything more than a heavily armed aristocracy in Afghanistan. A gilded tribe that traded access to the nations pathetic and few urban areas in exchange for bribes. With traditional pomp and circumstance, the old order was reinstalled, this time with the full backing and support of the western world. In exchange, the western world demanded liberal democracy, law, and order. As queer a set of ideas as that sounded to the humble subsistence farmer of Afghanistan, anything was alright with him as long as he could sell his crop and feed his children. Which of course he could not, according to the new state laws that made drugs illegal, and every farmer a criminal.

Neither the Soviets nor the Taliban were completely at ease with the raw capitalist system of the opium business, and were for the most part incorruptible. The Americans were a breath of fresh air. State democracy provided ample opportunities to “advance” individual interest, and American capitalism celebrated the accumulation of wealth. Drug lords and tribal chiefs were born to work a flakey system like democracy the world over, and in Afghanistan they soon learned to maximize their opportunities by bringing in record amounts of opium, and having themselves invited into government. Farm gate prices stabilized, and as the Americans turned their attention to Iraq, opium production settled in at over twice the rate of the Soviet era. Good Times.

Western interests, and American interests in particular, demand an Afghani state that is malleable and responsive to their needs. This requires at least the tacit support of the rural population, which is pretty much everybody in Afghanistan. That support was always tenuous, as it always is for foreign occupiers, and it is in the interest of the local opium system to keep it that way. Control of the sad nation’s economy rests with the drug lords, regardless of any number of elections or federal departments. It is the nature of markets that they constantly strive to reduce externalities, and in the opium markets, that means open warfare where needs be.

Struggles continue between the American backed Northern Alliance of deadly Warlords, the corrupt apparatus of state that quickly shrank to the daylight hours of urban areas, the competing Warlords of the Taliban friendly Pashtu, American led Western forces, Pakistani supported groups of various stripe, and indigenous groups of local Afghani with little better to do than fight.

The failure of the west to control the economy of Afghanistan ensured the impossibility of advancing their political, moral, and cultural agendas. A gap the size of the Khyber Pass opened up between the economics and the politics, and into this gap flooded the competing geopolitical interests of the region. Specifically, a new generation of more practical Taliban, a reconstituted umbrella of loosely confederated interests, now much more willing to accept the economics of the region in exchange for control of the state.

The Taliban and their supporters all realize the impossibility of the American position, completely at odds as it is with the economy. Free market democracy would have to embrace the drug business and suborn politics to it. Ham handed western attempts at buying off the population with schools, roads, and Coca-Cola only ignores the issue. American attempts at sustaining liberal democracy against the grain of an essential and illegal economic system is futile, electoral corruption the only possible result, permanent damage to the worlds third great social system in as many tries the effect. Communism, Fundamentalism, and Democracy all failed the acid test of unfettered capitalism and free markets.

You hear it over and over again in every similar situation — the common person simply wants security for him and his family (in this part of the world, it is always “him”). That is a universal given. But when the Afghani pleads for security, it is not just from death from the sky, but more so for the security of his market economy and the stability of his food source — opium. The only way to provide this security is to embrace the opium business and protect it, something tribal Warlords can do with a compliant state government of any persuasion — a circle western ideologues have absolutely no chance of squaring.

We in the west are embarking on a tortured debate on the future of our interests in the Afghanistan debacle. This involves the consideration of an exponential multitude of geopolitical interests, military chest thumping, and inane ideological babbling. Virtually all of it pointless unless the economic interests of a subsistence economy (where opium is the reserve currency and store of value) are satisfied. No viable solution to anybodies problems are possible unless the liberal democracies of the west can come to grips with the forces of free markets in Afghanistan they allegedly represent.

More than anywhere else in the world, Afghanistan represents the collision of democracy, liberalism, free markets… and ideological hypocrisy. Heroin is destroying millions of satisfied customers, the supply chain enriching a rope line of banks, small businessmen, entrepreneurs, and farmers. The resource point is a single place on earth where the stability of a deadly crop alone dictates the fortunes of empires past, present, and future. Destroy the crop and suffer generations of endless war, suffering, and potential nuclear events. Embrace the crop, and bankrupt one hundred years of moral sermonizing in the teeth of a culture itching to destroy another pillar of western imperialism.

More soldiers… ?

As the largest recipient of US military aid in the hemisphere, Colombia has long been the US’ most important ally in Latin America. Simultaneously, Colombia has also become the hemisphere’s worst human rights violator, with Colombia’s numerous paramilitary organizations recently taking center stage, as they’ve gradually become directly responsible for more human rights atrocities than the formal military and police. In the name of fighting “narco-terrorism,” poor people and dissidents are massacred, assassinated, tortured, and disappeared, among other atrocities—done to eliminate particular individuals and to “set an example” by intimidating others in the community. 97 percent of human rights abuses remain unpunished.

In recent years, a variety of human rights organizations, as well as mainstream academics and journalists have found it impossible to ignore the astronomical human rights violations. However, even though these groups have accurately reported on the actual atrocities, Jasmin Hristov argues that in their reports, the atrocities are largely de-contextualized from the powerful forces in Colombia and the US that directly benefit from this repression. According to Hristov, this mainstream presentation serves to mask the fact that US and Colombian elites directly support (via funding, training, supervising, and providing legal immunity for) state repression carried out by the police and military, as well as illegal paramilitary groups that are unofficially sanctioned by the government. Whether it is murdering labor organizers or displacing an indigenous community because a US corporation wants to drill for oil on their land, Hristov passionately asserts that death squad violence is purposefully directed towards sectors of society that stand in the way of the ruling class’ efforts to maintain economic dominance and acquire more resources to make even more profit.

In her book, Hristov does make a convincing argument that Colombia’s notorious death squads are inherently linked to maintenance of the country’s extreme economic inequality. Particularly since the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s that have increased poverty, Colombia’s poor continue to resist their oppression in many different ways. In response, state repression on a variety of levels is needed to terrorize unarmed social movements and other community groups and activists.

Throughout Blood & Capital, Hristov seeks to expose the rational motivations behind state violence for capitalism’s economic elites in the US and Colombia. In meticulous detail, Hristov shows how the super-rich benefit from state repression and how the violators of human rights have essentially become immune from any consequences for their actions. If death squads are truly to be abolished in Colombia, we must look honestly at how and why they exist today. Hristov’s new book is a powerful tool for exposing who truly calls the shots.

Neoliberalism or Neopoverty?

Hristov asserts that “it is not a mere coincidence that during the era of accelerated neoliberal restructuring, the deterioration in the living conditions of the working majority has been accompanied by an increase in the capabilities and activities of military, police, and paramilitary groups, as well as the portrayal of social movements as forces that must be monitored, silenced, and eventually dismantled.” The scandalous epidemic of poverty in Colombia is key to understanding Colombian politics, and why the upper classes so fear political organizing among the poor, who could mount a formidable opposition to the status quo if allowed to organize unrestrained by state repression.

When neoliberal policies were adopted by the Colombian government in the 1990s, it dramatically increased poverty, and made an already terrible situation worse. Hristov writes that the “essential components of neoliberalism are trade liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and austerity. Trade liberalization entails the removal of any trade barriers, such as tariffs and quotas. Privatization requires the sale of public enterprises and assets to private owners. Through the removal of government restrictions and interventions on capital, deregulation allows market forces to act as a self-regulating mechanism… Austerity requires the drastic reduction or elimination of expenditures for social programs and services.”

She argues that the “main cause that led to the official adoption of neoliberal policies by the developing countries in Latin America and elsewhere was the pressure to service their external debts in the late 1970s. In order to receive loans from the World Bank (WB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), nations had to agree to a program of structural adjustment that included drastically reducing public spending in health, education, and welfare,” and much more.

Because Colombia had less debt than other Latin American countries, “major neoliberal restructuring did not begin until 1990, under President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo (1990-94), when the country began to receive massive amounts of US military aid…In addition to the significant social damage wrought by these policies, by the mid-1990s Colombia had to almost double its borrowing from the IMF because of the economic crisis brought on by the market liberalization,” writes Hristov.

These drastic reforms have intensified since current President Alvaro Uribe came to power in 2002. After the IMF loaned $2.1 billion in 2003 on the condition that the reforms be accelerated, Uribe “privatized one of the country’s largest banks (BANCAFE), restructured the pension program, and reduced the number of public-sector workers in order to cut budget deficits, as required by the international lending institution. Uribe also closed down some of the country’s biggest public hospitals, eliminating over four thousand medical jobs, and denationalized companies in the telecommunications, oil, and mining sectors,” reports Hristov.

These are a few of the statistics compiled by Hristov, who writes that “in a country of 45 million, around 11 million people are unable to afford even one nutritious meal a day. According to statistics from 2005, 65 percent of Colombians are unable to regularly satisfy basic subsistence needs. In rural areas, the poverty rate is as high as 85 percent… In 2000 it was estimated that half a million children suffer from malnutrition and close to 2.5 million children between the ages of six and seventeen are forced to work… Furthermore, there has been a notable decline in school attendance, literacy, and life expectancy as well as access to child care and education over the past couple of years.”

Blood, Capital, and the State Coercive Apparatus

Throughout Blood & Capital, Hristov details many horrifying ways in which the rich are empowered by violence from what she identifies as the “state’s coercive apparatus” (SCA). She argues that “two intertwining motifs run throughout Colombia’s history: (1) social relations marked by inequality, exploitation, and exclusion and (2) violence employed by those with economic and political power over the working majority and the poor in order to acquire control over resources, forcibly recruit labor, and suppress or eliminate dissent.”

Dating back to the European conquest of the Americas, Hristov asserts that violence has been central to the creation of modern-day Colombia’s government and economy. She writes that “starting in the late 1500s, the conquerors began clearing the indigenous population from territories with desirable characteristics—mineral deposits, fertile soil, access to water, transportation routes, and so on. The separation of the indigenous from their means of subsistence allowed the formation of a local colonial elite who transformed what used to be the native inhabitants communal lands into large estates or haciendas. The creation of landless peasants facilitated the supply of labor for the Spaniards’ ventures, such as mining and agriculture.”

State violence supporting the economic elite continued, but became much worse in the 1960s under the direction of the US military. Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa, President of the Colombian Permanent Committee for Human Rights reports that in the 1960s, “during the Kennedy administration,” the US “took great pains to transform our regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades, accepting the new strategy of the death squads.” This “ushered in what is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine… not defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game… the right to combat the internal enemy… this could mean anyone, including human rights activists such as myself.”

As Edward Herman, co-author of The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism explained in a previous interview with Upside Down World, US support for repressive governments in Colombia and throughout Latin America was, and still is, part of a general policy towards third world populations. Focusing largely on US support for the Latin American “National Security States,” Herman and co-author Noam Chomsky argue that U.S. corporations purposefully support (and in many instances create) fascist terror states in order to create a favorable investment climate. In exchange for a cut of the action, local military police-states brutally repress their population when it attempts to assert basic human rights.

In the 1960s, the US and Colombian governments launched Plan Lazo, designed to target the “internal enemy.” Hristov writes that “the military aid that was part of Plan Lazo (and all subsequent programs, including those in place today, such as the Patriot Plan) were given on the condition that Colombian forces would use terror and violence, since these formed a legitimate part of the overall anticommunist offensive. In 1966 the field manual US Army Counterinsurgency Forces specified that while antiguerrilla should not employ mass terror, selective terror against civilians was acceptable and was justified as a necessary response to the alleged terrorism committed by rebel forces.”

Hristov asserts that while the US handled the “financial and ideological aspects” of building and strengthening the SCA, locally the Colombian elites also played a key role. “It implemented many of the policies suggested by the US counterinsurgency manual in order to discipline the civilian population through measures such as press censorship, the suspension of civil rights (to permit arrest on mere suspicion), and the forced relocation of entire villages. President Guillermo Leon Valencia (1962-66) boosted the anticommunist campaign by declaring a state of siege whereby judicial and political powers were transferred to the military while the latter was freed from accountability to civilian authorities for its conduct.”

With US financing and supervision, the Colombian armed forces have since become one of the most renowned human rights violators in the world. This despicable conduct eventually created significant local and international opposition, and under this pressure the SCA has been forced to adjust. In response, the responsibility for repression has shifted more towards paramilitaries, whose activities are officially independent of the government. In this situation, when paramilitaries target the “internal enemy,” the same goal is accomplished as if the government itself did it, yet the government cannot be officially linked to the violence.

The Paramilitarization of Colombia

The size and strength of paramilitary death squads in Colombia has steadily increased since they were first established in the 1960s. According to Hristov, the paramilitaries are now responsible for about 80 percent of human rights violations in Colombia, compared to 16 percent by the rebel guerrillas. The paramilitaries’ evolution, Hristov argues, is the result of “perhaps the most creative and intelligent effort by an elite-dominated state to counteract revolutionary processes… The Colombian parastatal system represents neither a traditional centralized authoritarian regime, as those that existed in Argentina, Chile, and Brazil, nor merely a collection of autonomous armed bands dispersed over rural areas, each ruling locally, as in Mexico. What we see in Colombia is a mutated SCA that has assumed a nonstate appearance.”

The function of the paramilitaries in Colombia was explained well by Captain Gilberto Cardenas, former captain of the national police and former director of the Judicial Police Investigative and Intelligence Unit in the Uraba region. In 2002, testifying against the commander of the Seventeenth Brigade of the Colombian armed forces, Cardenas told representatives of the United Nations and Colombian authorities, “The paramilitaries were created by the Colombian government itself to do the dirty work, in other words, in order to kill all individuals who, according to the state and the police, are guerrillas. But in order to do that, the [the government] had to create illegal groups so that no one would suspect the government of Colombia and its military forces…members of the army and the police even patrol side by side with the paramilitaries.”

The paramilitary system first began in the mid-1960s when the Colombian government passed legislation that authorized citizens to carry arms and assist the military in repression. Hristov argues that “paramilitary forces entered the scene to perform two main functions.” The first was to participate in combat at a local level, as described by the 1966 US Army Counterinsurgency Forces field manual, which stated: “paramilitary units can support the national army in the conduct of counterinsurgency operations when the latter are being conducted in their own province or political subdivision.” Second, Hristov writes that paramilitaries “were intended to monitor and gather intelligence on the rebels, their civilian supporters, and social organizations by establishing networks throughout the country.”

While these early paramilitaries did play some role in state repression, it would not be until the 1980s that they really began to increase in size and influence. Hristov writes that “the 1980s were the golden age of paramilitary development, as many new groups formed, expanded, and rapidly acquired financial and military strength… This second wave of creation enacted by large-scale landowners, cattle ranchers, mining entrepreneurs (particularly those in the emerald business) and narco-lords took place in a particular context, characterized by five main features: a shift in the state’s (unofficial) policy toward the partial privatization of coercion; the state’s fusion with the elite; a legal framework that had set the ground for the design, training, equipping, and administration by the state military of armed bodies outside its institution; a prevailing anticommunist ideology; and militarized patches of the country that served as models to emulate.”

This second wave was given another boost in 1994 with the creation of the Community Rural Surveillance Associations (CONVIVIR) by current President Alvaro Uribe Velez, who was the governor of the department of Antioquia at that time. Hristov writes that Uribe made CONVIVIR into “a replica of the original paramilitary bodies designed in the 1960s. As it had thirty years ago, now the civilian counterpart of the SCA was to take on a central role in the Dirty War under a legal mantle. By the time CONVIVIR was outlawed, in 1999, most of the numerous paramilitary self defense bodies had united, attaining an organizational and military capacity unsurpassed by paramilitary forces in any other Latin American country.”

In August, 1998, just before the legislation supporting CONVIVIR was abolished, hundreds of members publicly announced that they would be joining the AUC paramilitary network, which became the most prominent paramilitary network in Colombia. The AUC had been created in 1997, mostly under the leadership of Carlos Castano and his paramilitary group, the ACCU, which became the largest group in the AUC federation. Others that operated in this loose confederation of paramilitary groups included Bloque Cacique Nutibara, the Bloque Central Bolivar, and the Bloque de Magdalena Medio.

Following official “peace negotiations” between the AUC and the Colombian government which began in 2002 with an official AUC ceasefire agreement, the AUC officially disbanded in February 2006, as part of an overall public disarmament of many paramilitaries throughout Colombia. However Hristov argues that “there are many factors challenging the legitimacy of the peace process. First, during the entire period of the cease-fire announced by the AUC, its groups regularly engaged in military actions against civilians, thereby committing human rights violations (and such activities continue to take place). Second, often those who claimed to be demobilizing were not the real paramilitary combatants but hired criminals, or drug dealers who had bought the AUC franchise. Third, large quantities of arms that should have been turned over were not. Fourth, fighters who are officially considered demobilized are in reality already active militarily in new organizations, where their skills of terrorizing the civilian population for economic gains are necessary and valued.”

Since 2006, there have been several government initiatives that give the formal appearance of the Colombian government working to combat paramilitaries. Hristov explains that “early in 2007 the Supreme Court began investigating numerous connections between paramilitaries and important state actors, such as senators, representatives, deputies, councilors, and mayors. As time went by, the public learned of more and more cases in which the legal (state officials with their political authority and legitimacy) and the illegal (paramilitary groups with their economic and military power) had entered into alliances to advance their mutual interests. Through mid-2008, 38 percent of members of Congress have been implicated in this parapolitica scandal.”

While Hristov recognizes some importance in these recent investigations, she feels that their real impact has been extremely limited. She argues that “despite all the cases that have been exposed, parapolitica is not likely to be eradicated from the Colombian political system. On the contrary, the flood of revelations about politicians’ connections to the paramilitary actually allows serious crimes, such as complicity in massacres, to get buried under waves of minor offenses, and eventually the entire issue becomes just another corruption scandal.”

In their 2009 report on Colombia, Human Rights Watch concluded that there are many “threats to accountability for paramilitaries’ accomplices,” reporting that “the Uribe administration has repeatedly taken actions that could sabotage the investigations. Administration officials have issued public personal attacks on the Supreme Court and its members, in some cases making accusations that have turned out to be baseless, in what increasingly looks like a campaign to discredit the court. In mid-2008 the administration proposed a series of constitutional amendments that would have removed what are known as the ‘parapolitics’ investigations from the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction, but it withdrew the proposal in November. The administration also blocked what is known as the ‘empty chair’ bill, which would have reformed the Congress to sanction parties that had backed politicians linked to paramilitaries.”

Hristov concludes that the centrality of paramilitaries to Colombian politics will not be disappearing anytime soon, mostly because repression has been necessary to enforce the country’s stark social/political/economic injustice. Hristov argues that the paramilitaries have become an essential tool of repression, and because Colombia’s poor majority will continue to resist this outrageous poverty, the paramilitaries’ repression will continue. Seen in this context, the recent demobilization process is only a tactical restructuring of paramilitaries and the SCA, similar to their restructurings in the 1980s and 1990s. Hristov sees this restructuring as an “adaptation response” to “assure its future survival” in the face of “the reality of resistance and opposition by numerous sectors of society against further dispossession,” with the state’s ultimate goal being “the institutionalization of paramilitarism and the legalization of capital accumulation through violence.”

War on Narco-terrorists?

Since the official end of the Cold War in 1989, US rhetorical justification for allying itself with and providing military aid to the Colombian government has shifted from fighting “communism” to fighting “narco-terrorism.” Hristov argues that official rhetoric may have changed but it’s still easy to expose this fraudulent war on narco-terrorism as actually being a war against poor people. Concerning the so-called war on terrorism, how can the hemisphere’s worst human rights violator fight terrorism? Then, similar to the absurd notion of a terrorist fighting terrorism, how can a government heavily complicit in the drug trade claim that it is fighting a war on drugs?

The Colombian government’s multi-faceted complicity in drug trafficking extends all the way to current President Uribe, who was listed by the Pentagon itself, as one of the most wanted international drug traffickers. A declassified National Security Archives report dated September 23, 1991, explicitly accused Uribe of being a collaborator of the Medellin cartel and a personal friend of Pablo Escobar. This report states further that Uribe was one of the “more important Colombian narco-terrorists contracted by the Colombian narcotics cartels for security, transportation, distribution, collection, and enforcement of narcotics operations in both the US and Colombia. These individuals are also contracted as ‘HIT MEN’ to assassinate individuals targeted by the ‘extraditables,’ or individual ‘narcotic leaders,’ and to perform terrorist acts against Colombian officials, other government officials, law enforcement agencies, and groups of other political persuasions.”

It’s not just the Colombian government! Hristov argues that the US government’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) “has in reality been converted largely to an instrument of drug traffickers and paramilitaries.” To support this assertion, she cites a 2004 memorandum issued by a lawyer at the US Department of Justice named Thomas M. Kent, which accused the DEA of extreme misconduct. Kent states that strong evidence of misconduct is routinely ignored by the control agencies of the Department of Justice. Hristov summarizes key points made in Kent’s memorandum, including “to supplement their $7,000 monthly salary, some DEA agents have managed to negotiate with Colombian drug dealers… DEA personnel have been implicated in the killing of informants… Members of the AUC [paramilitaries] have been assisted by DEA agents in money laundering… DEA agents have participated in the extortion of drug traffickers awaiting extradition.”

On another note, Hristov makes the important point that drug trafficking and the rise of paramilitaries have both fed each other in two key ways. “First, the groups involved in trafficking needed to protect their laboratories, illegal cultivation, and clandestine airstrips in rural areas stimulated the emergence of local armed groups outside the state. Second, many drug dealers had begun to invest their capital in millions of hectares of the best agricultural land in the country… and they needed armed forces to protect their lands.” Hristov adds further that “the preexisting concentration of land ownership in the hands of the elite and the displacement of impoverished peasants was aggravated dramatically by this trend.”

To further expose this fraudulent “war on drugs,” it should be noted that the US government has a long history of complicity in drug trafficking, particularly in Latin America. While author William Blum has written the definitive short article on the topic, Alfred McCoy has written the most comprehensive book, titled The Politics of Heroin, documenting the CIA’s relationships with drug traffickers around the world, including in France, Italy, China, Laos, Afghanistan, Haiti, and throughout Latin America. In 1989, a Senatorial Committee chaired by Senator John Kerry documented that during the 1980s, while working with the anti-Sandinista “Contras,” the CIA and other branches of the US government were complicit in trafficking cocaine into the US from Latin America. The Kerry Committee concluded a three year investigation by stating in their report that “there was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region… US officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua… In each case, one or another agency of the US government had information regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter.”

The Kerry Committee’s report and the story behind it has been analyzed well by authors Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall in their book Cocaine Politics. In 1996, investigative journalist Gary Webb wrote a series of articles for the San Jose Mercury News (later expanded and made into a book in 1999) which directly tied Contra cocaine traffickers Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses (both protected by the US government) to Los Angeles drug kingpin “Freeway” Rick Ross, who played a key role in starting the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 1980s. The mainstream media launched a smear campaign attacking Webb’s story that eventually caused even the Mercury News to denounce Webb. However, several prominent journalists came to Webb’s defense and challenged the mainstream media’s smear campaign, including Norman Solomon, Robert Parry, and Counterpunch co-editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.

Unmasking The Unholy Alliance

The relationship between the US and Colombian elite is truly an unholy alliance. With US President Barack Obama praising the Colombian government and attempting to build several new military bases in Colombia, it is more important than ever to expose the truth about who supports death squads and why. Hopefully Blood & Capital will receive the attention that it deserves, and Hristov’s meticulous research can be used to truly disarm the state coercive apparatus in Colombia.

It’s a short but pithy book, aimed at the hypocrisy of the modern U.S. stance on (some) drugs as much as at the stuffy classicists who maintained, in the face of reams of textual evidence, according to Hillman, that “[the Romans] just wouldn’t do such a thing.” I’m not a classicist, but Hillman doesn’t have to work very hard to convince me that Rome’s pleasure-seekers didn’t just drink lots and lots of wine in those saturnalian romps of theirs.

The Chemical Muse is a brief overview of the evidence that the ancient Greeks and Romans were both aware and tolerant of the use of psychoactive substances: opiates, cannabis and other plant-based drugs, while they simultaneously warned of the dangers of “poisoning” (what we would refer to as overdose) and prescribed precautionary remedies for it. In fact, according to Hillman, the only aspect of drug use that was criminal in these societies was the intentional poisoning of another person with a drug.

Hillman is mostly interested in presenting his case from a civil libertarian standpoint; since our own imperfect understanding of civil liberties is largely derived from Classical society via the Enlightenment, he wonders how we can have descended to a position so much less enlightened in this regard than our primitive forebears in the ancient world.

But in his defense of Greek and Roman recreational drug use, Hillman barely touches on what is to me, the heart of the matter: drugs may have stimulated the very visions and insights that gave early poets and philosophers levels of understanding that Western civilization has built on ever since, while systematically purging the parts of those understandings that didn’t gibe with any practice not useful to refining social control and/or increasing the production of profit. Hillman does make note of the pre-Socratics, chief among them Pythagoras and Empedocles, for whom mysticism and rigorous investigation of the natural world were no contradiction. He says: “the roots of Western philosophy reach deep into the fertile soil of the human imagination, where shamanism, divination, and narcotic experiences have held sway for thousands of years.” While this idea alone could easily be the subject of a book, Hillman is more interested in documenting classical references to drug use than to linking it to the production of important concepts and archetypes, from mathematics to theology.

The Greeks themselves were not exempt from the process of ideological exclusion, which probably reached a point of no return when Plato threw poets out of his ideal republic and animism out of nature. Yet, as long as the pharmakon was not actively banned, the visions it produced were tolerated too, although from the misogynistic Greeks with their cautionary tales of murderous Medea or the Bacchae begins its long descent to complete anathema, the tool of witchcraft that would undermine the later Christian social order. Ending up, of course, in the gynocide that European Christianity required for its triumph, which washed right up on the shores of Plymouth and swept over the colonists at Salem.

Much as Hillman would like us to see the current war on drugs as a modern aberration, it’s still a very old story. Perhaps as old as the rise of monotheism: tellingly, there is no society where monotheism dominates in which psychoactive drug use is officially tolerated (and psychoactive is the key here) unless that society has since become much more thoroughly secular than our own. And that’s why drug use is not really a just a matter of civil liberties per se, of the “individual freedom” that libertarians maintain is the true legacy of Western civilization. The issue isn’t whether or not you have a personal right to alter your mood—after all we have caffeine, and we have alcohol and nicotine which are far more strongly addictive and dangerous to health than cannabis, but we don’t have cannabis. Why? Because cannabis can alter your perception of reality, not just your mood.

Reports of psychoactive drug experiences tend to support the idea that the user can become aware of multiple levels of reality all present simultaneously that are far more complex and yet more harmonious and unified than normal experience permits her to perceive. All sorts of understandings are possible, based on the particular mind and the particular drug, but this type of awareness is a through-line. Why would monotheism particularly be afraid of this? Because the experience tends to reinforce the idea that while there is undoubtedly a transcendent realm of existence, it doesn’t recognize those equally hallucinatory desert-engendered patriarchs Yahweh or Allah as its exclusive landlords. So, to coin a phrase: how’re ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm, after they’ve seen Par-ee?

Yes, you will say, but Almighty God or no, whatever consumer capitalism wants consumer capitalism usually gets in our good ol’ U.S. of A. So why did we abolish Prohibition only to let the drug war run on and on with no sign of ever ending? What’s the difference, when pleasure can be turned so readily into cash?

There’s no doubt that American culture is schizoid as regards pleasure: for a consumer capitalist society, pleasure is the big money, the holy grail of profit, but for a never-truly secularized monotheistic society, dominated by a particularly sensation-hating brand of monotheism at that, pleasure is always deeply suspect, a terrorist in our midst. Still, I would maintain that insight, not pleasure, is the real target, or at least the real casualty, of the American war on the particular drugs it has chosen as the enemy. Sensual pleasure may be a danger to organized religion, but insight is dangerous to both religion and profit.

And let’s remember that Prohibition, once in place, was not repealed until after American capitalism crashed its car and was stumbling around, reeling, in the wreckage. A broke government couldn’t help save it, and Prohibition, just as in our day, was denying the government millions in revenue from taxation while forcing it to spend more millions on enforcement. God would have to rethink his position on this one.

Up to now, it’s clear our drug war has been extremely convenient for the powers that be. It’s conveniently mostly harmed only the poor in our society and in producing countries. It’s conveniently resulted in their mass incarceration in the U.S., keeping them from troublesome agitation for greater social equality. Consumer capitalism has found plenty of stuff to sell that’s just as lucrative or more than the cut it would get from marijuana dispensaries or cocaine fun pills (including all sorts of mood enhancing but not mind-altering pharmaceuticals, for the millions whose pleasure deficit has hit a clinically definable level). There’s no correlation of forces strong enough yet to push our strangely picky God to the side on this one, even though we’re getting closer all time: governments bankrupted by drug war enforcement and incarceration costs are less and less able to provide the infrastructural bootstrap that business unendingly needs to be pulled up by, or the social stability it needs to generate profit. Or even, at a certain point, enough skilled employees to manage its enterprises, since schools tend to die where prisons grow. But drug policy change, like actual job creation, will probably only come as an absolute last resort, so profoundly distasteful is it to those who have benefited most from its absence.

At the same time, while the social benefits are almost undeniable at this point, it’s naïve to expect that some kind of renaissance of insight-based living would sweep over this land if psychoactive drugs were legalized. Holland would be full of transcendentalist philosophers if that were true. I’m not saying there would be a linear consequence of greater intellectual maturity in the populace the more drug use was accepted. There’s nothing linear about psychoactive drug use; that’s of course another aspect that makes it an anathema to social policymakers. Hillman shows that Classical writers were well aware of the risks posed by psychoactive stuff; they warned against the power it had to distort personality and breed contempt for traditional lines of authority, particularly, as I’ve noted, in that hidebound patriarchy from which our own descends, in the hands of women.

Contempt for authority would be a fine consequence, in my view. But while a temporary subversion of authority may have been a laudable consequence, the anything-goes surge of psychoactive drug use in the ‘60s also left a lot of individual casualties strung out (so to speak) along the way. The salient word is individual. As long as the whole subject is confined to individual choice, we’re on the wrong track, just as with, say, health care, or organic food. If legalization is only about an individual’s “right” to an expanded menu of pleasures, well, ancient Rome already provides a fairly negative example of what that would look like.

At the same time, much as today’s spiritual questers, Burning Man trippers, ayahuasca tourists, and so forth may be hoping to trigger some new transformative wave of enlightenment that will wash over us all simultaneously as we align with the galactic center in 2012 (or whatever)—messianic, culturally-decontextualized attempts to jump-start our continued evolution, whether with drugs or machines, conveniently attempting to skip over the mess of social inequality, endemic violence and environmental collapse we’ve so far created could just as easily be elements of some junked up dystopia, an even more schizoid reality in which most people’s experience would still be the phenomenon of living inside somebody else’s nightmare. Huston Smith, a renowned scholar of religion who participated in Timothy Leary’s Harvard experiments with LSD, has written compellingly of the potential of psychoactive drugs to provide transcendental insights, even calling them entheogens, god-producing substances. But he also felt that the U.S. psychedelic movement was not mature enough to create a truly functional social alternative out of the possibilities of psychoactive substances. Without discipline and a sense of overriding obligation to some sort of collectively defined, sustainable way of life, its insights were not transferable.

So maybe we’re not worthy of anything better than what we’ve got, yet. Where psychoactive drugs seem to have been employed most usefully and with the fewest negative side effects is in small, low-tech societies where there is a high level of mutual trust built up over generations of co-habitation, aided by highly disciplined guides whose mission is to support the community, strengthening its web of relationships and showing how those relationships extend to the natural world. As a society we’re currently about as far from that as it’s possible to be. After all, we can’t even use tobacco correctly; it was a salubrious ceremonial substance for untold generations until we got hold of it, and turned it into a mass killer. But it’s conceivable that changing material conditions generated by the glaring contradictions in our current system will encourage at least some of us to move in a more communitarian direction simply in order to survive. And psychoactive drugs could be useful in catalyzing that process—why not? They’ve already been so for thousands of years.

Other reasons for ending the drug war a.s.a.p. are still compelling enough, and even absent an effective social reform movement, the economic forces no one really controls anymore may finally do it in. I hope that regardless of how it happens, our Manichean war will someday be seen simply as another of those quintessentially reactionary futilities that were once endemic to materially powerful institutions and societies: like attempts to stop the sun from rising by holding your hands in front of your eyes. Because without somehow disseminating expanded consciousness (along with the material basics for a decent life) more widely through our species, it’s difficult to see how we’ll avoid getting trapped in our own 4-D labyrinth, whose walls of unintended consequences just seem to get higher faster all the time now. The only way to neutralize the imprisoning power of a labyrinth is to be able to see it from above.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, the first indigenous leader of any South American country, has been for many years, and remains, head of the federation of coca growers. The Bush administration accused Morales of failing to stem the tide of cocaine production and distribution. In turn, Morales accused the U.S. of meddling in Bolivian affairs and plotting with his political enemies to overthrow his government.

Both countries expelled each other’s ambassadors. The U.S. ended its preferential trade terms with Bolivia, citing the country’s lack of drug enforcement cooperation. In retaliation, Bolivia threw out U.S. government employees of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Peace Corps. Morales and some U.S. officials have expressed a cautious optimism that relations between the two countries may improve in the Obama era. But the Bolivian president has accused the United States of complicity in the Honduras military coup. Emotions remain raw and official relations, tense.

The California group – named the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) – has been doing radical, politically incorrect street theater for twenty-five years. Made up of recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, ex-convicts and formerly homeless men and women, the group voted to name itself with the same initials of the police force with whom many of them had sparred.

LAPD founder and director, John Malpede, wrote the play, Agents & Assets, based on a 1998 hearing transcript of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee. The Committee examined allegations of CIA complicity in the crack cocaine epidemic that ravaged minority communities in California cities. As journalist Gary Webb detailed in an explosive 1996 newspaper series, “Dark Alliance,” the CIA enabled huge shipments of cocaine to enter the United States to raise money for the anti-government forces in Nicaragua, known as the Contras.

The U.S. Congress had denied funding to the Contras. But President Reagan called them freedom fighters and compared them to America’s founding fathers. So Oliver North and the CIA found a way to get money for Contra military actions, though it meant creating a huge new class of crack addicts among America’s ethnic urban poor.

As Malpede told a Bolivian audience after one performance: “We work in the poorest part of Los Angeles, where people come when they have no place else to go and end up living in the streets. LAPD lives and works in an area affected by drugs. It was the anger of Los Angeles citizens – that the CIA might have been involved in smuggling crack cocaine into the country – that sparked these legislative hearings. These hearings are also a metaphor for all things the U.S. government does all around the world that they shouldn’t, instead of taking care of their own people.”

Malpede edited the hearing transcript for length and clarity, but did not change a word of it. Each performance is unique, since the “second act” is a discussion among local expert panelists, the actors and the audience about how the issues raised in the play are relevant to the “here and now” of each production.

Agents & Assets began its long run of performances during the uncertain post-presidential election period of 2000, touring many cities throughout the United States. With different drug reform laws up for votes in various states, the play showed its political potency. Agents & Assets also proved relevant in Europe – in England and Holland and Belgium – which suffer their own intransigent problems with drugs and drug laws. For its South American premiere, the play, titled Agentes y Activos in its Spanish language version, toured a country where much cocaine originates.

As the play shows, in 1998 CIA Inspector General Frederick Hitz denied and obfuscated the CIA connection to Contra drug smuggling. Just this month, under pressure from the ACLU, the Agency released a highly redacted CIA Inspector General’s report about CIA torture techniques. Some of the same players were involved in both episodes. Porter Goss, chairman of the dramatized hearing, played down the allegations of CIA malfeasance in the 1980s. Later, as CIA Director under George W. Bush, Goss lobbied for keeping the torture report secret to avoid damaging America’s reputation and CIA morale. The Agency’s history of immoral, illegal acts and its failure to accomplish anything except slime the U.S. reputation is the best argument for its dissolution.

Agents & Assets reveals the hypocrisy of lawmakers who decry illegal drugs, even as they refuse to sanction the CIA for enabling millions of Americans to become cocaine addicts, in order to pay for an illegal war. LAPD actors and others who play the twelve committee members and the CIA inspector general called to testify, are men and women who have been personally affected by illegal drugs and the “war” against them. Some have suffered addiction or incarceration. By speaking the words of lawmakers who permit systemic abuse, the actors bear witness against them.

Bolivian media and government officials expressed interest in a project combining the efforts of Americans and Bolivians. After rehearsals and performances in Cochabamba, the show played Oruro, La Paz, El Alto, Sucre and Santa Cruz. Questions and comments in every city reflected the intense emotions the issues of the play raise about the drug war, notions of justice and international relations.

As Bolivian historian, activist and ex-government official Rafael Puente reminded audiences, though events in the play might seem remote, the same sorts of things were happening here in Bolivia at the same time. In 1980 the CIA enabled the violent narco golpe de estado (drug coup) of General Luis Garcia Meza. As Puente noted, former DEA agent Michael Levine wrote about these events in his book, The Big White Lie.

Ex-Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie emerged from his Bolivian hiding place to oversee the arbitrary arrests, torture and disappearances of the narco dictatorship’s political opponents. Cocaine exports reportedly totaled US$850 million in the 1980-81 period of the García Meza regime, twice the value of official government exports. Puente described the huge CIA cocaine processing plant at Huanchaka, in eastern Bolivia, where the drugs were produced to help finance this repressive regime.

The United States has always maintained a duplicitous drug policy. Officially the United States expresses moral outrage about the manufacture and importation of illicit substances. For thirty years the “war on drugs” has consumed enormous human and financial resources. But the CIA has an even longer history of dealing drugs to finance covert wars around the world the U.S. prefers not to acknowledge publicly. (see The Politics of Heroin by frequent Agents and Assets panelist Alfred McCoy). Most Americans seem unaware of this dark history. But, as one Bolivian audience member put it, “everybody knows the CIA is the biggest drug trafficker in the world.”

Former cocaine addict and current LAPD actor Kevin Michael Key told a Santa Cruz audience, “It’s in the interest of the governments to continue narco-traffic as a means of controlling the people. Criminalization is the American way. Though rehabilitation exists, many drug users are simply locked up in jail. The demand for rehabilitation has to come from the people.”

In answer to a Bolivian man’s question about whether or not Obama will change things, John Malpede opined that, “Changing drug policy is not a high priority for Obama. Changes in drug policy have come from communities or states in defiance of federal law, to reduce penalties and put treatment in place of jail time.” Malpede’s tag line for the show, that “the war of drugs imposes a military solution to a social and public health issue,” was widely printed in the Bolivian press.

Bolivians have their own defective drug war in place, thanks to Law 1008, passed in 1988 under intense pressure from the United States. Anyone accused of drug violations under what one former law school dean calls this “inhumane” law loses basic human rights, such as the presumption of innocence, the safeguards against self-incrimination, the right to a defense, to an impartial judge, to due process or to a speedy trial. Law 1008 expands the definition of ‘trafficking’ to mean ‘to produce, possess, keep, store, transport, deliver, administer or give as a gift.’ Judges routinely hand out harsh sentences, since an accusation is tantamount to a judgment of guilt, and they fear public outrage for giving lesser punishments.

The law rewards denuncias or snitches. These snitches often turn in people for the reward money with whom they have grudges unrelated to drugs. Police routinely resort to torture to extricate confessions from the accused. Such forced confessions are all that is needed for proof of guilt in Bolivian judicial proceedings. In their book, The Weight of Law 1008 (1996), the Andean Information Network compiled heartbreaking narratives of poor, illiterate Bolivians hounded into prison because they could not pay the bribes that were demanded by officials to make their cases disappear. Several of these drug war victims report being tortured under the direction of gringo DEA agents.

On the post-show panel at one of the Oruro performances, two drug officials parried questions from the audience about Bolivia’s war on drugs. Alex Alfaro, Departmental Director of the Special Police Force to Fight Drug Trafficking, said drug production was rising in Oruro. In the year he has worked there, his forces have found seventeen cocaine labs. So far in 2009 the police have confiscated more than a ton of cocaine, as much as in all of 2008.

Alfaro said a kilo of marijuana costs one hundred dollars (U.S.) and a kilo of cocaine, $1200. He handed out anti-drug pamphlets, warning of the dire organic consequences of using marijuana, cocaine, tobacco, alcohol and inhalants. But members of the audience, unaccustomed to access to these usually invisible officials, began to ask penetrating questions.

What did Alfaro, and the public prosecutor appearing with him, Franz Villegas, think of Law 1008? Villegas fudged his opinion, merely describing it as a drug law. Kevin Michael Key asked if the men thought the CIA really was involved in drug trafficking in the 1980s as the play alleged? They did not know. Was it a good or bad for Bolivia that the Morales government had expelled the DEA? Alfaro said it was a national government decision, not his. He said he had worked with the DEA and “they supported us. Now the national government helps us fight drugs…”

A Bolivian woman said: “You are preoccupied with drug consumption and apprehension. Is there any attention being paid to the health aspects of this problem?” The two officials made no attempt to respond. Someone else asked: “Is drug enforcement a form of social control?” The public prosecutor answered that “Drug enforcement involves citizen participation. It’s everyone’s fight. Denuncias are an important part of the system.”

Someone else asked: “What about innocent people caught up and arrested under Law 1008? Like a taxi driver whose passenger might have drugs without the driver’s knowledge?” Most of the personal stories in The Weight of Law 1008 center on and decry false accusations. Villegas said: “We don’t accuse people just to accuse them. I don’t know of a single case where a taxi driver has been unfairly jailed…”

And so it went that night in Oruro, as the drug officials evaded questions and shaded their responses in ways that precisely mirrored the dynamics of Agentes y Activos, in which the CIA Inspector General danced around issues, answered questions he had not been asked or flat out lied about the CIA’s links to the Contra cocaine scandal. The show was not only relevant but was being replayed immediately afterward in an updated, Bolivian mode right out where everyone (except the officials themselves) could see it.

Agentes y Activos played theaters and schools, public plazas and even a prison, helping to show that the real struggle is not between Bolivia, where coca grows, and the United States, where much cocaine is consumed. Rather, the greater problem lies within each country, between each government and its own people.

By declaring war on drugs, the United States and Bolivia have both declared war on their own populations, but only against the small-time users and dealers, not the powerful few who profit most from the ongoing, proliferating traffic in illicit drugs. If all the world’s a stage, then it’s time for a new global act. This “war on drugs” thing isn’t playing well anywhere, in any language.

One logical and ethical solution to the prodigious resources devoted to the “drug war” is the recognition of each person’s sovereignty over his own body. Consumption of drugs and whatever else is the decision of adult individuals in reasonable command of their mental faculties. Society (as it is presently constituted, the state) should monopolize drug sales. The state will save money fighting illegal drug sales and assure that unadulterated, untainted drugs are sold. The drugs can be sold with necessary information and warnings (ideally factually accurate information — neither disinformation nor propaganda) about the drugs, so that the individual is fully informed of the potentialities from drug consumption.

Others, however, choose to live by different principles or rules. In most societies, the ruling class arrogates the right to decide what is best for others and enforce this decision. This is the case in the US for drug use – even for the comparatively harmless marijuana plant.

Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert approached the right to use marijuana from a different tangent. They argue, in the book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?, that because it is far safer than alcohol, marijuana for personal use should be legalized.

      Marijuana Is Safer
      So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?
      By Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert
      Paperback: 192 pages
      Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing (2009)
      ISBN-10: 1603581448
      ISBN-13: 978-1603581448

Study after study shows that alcohol is linked with violence: acts of aggression, assaults, rapes, and murders. Alcohol is toxic; marijuana is not toxic. In fact, marijuana is therapeutic for certain disorders – perhaps even having anti-cancer properties (as the writers note, the US government holds the anti-cancer patent). Alcohol may have some benefits for blood-thinning properties in moderated daily doses, but it is not a prescribed treatment. The writers, therefore, question why marijuana use, which does not promote violence, is so harshly punished and alcohol use is not.

Fox et al. cite the 1997 World Health Organization final report that held: “On existing patterns of use, cannabis [the psychoactive component in marijuana] poses a much less serious public health problem than is currently posed by alcohol and tobacco in Western societies.”

Therefore, to treat drugs fairly (and alcohol is a drug) based upon “facts” established through unbiased and sound scientific studies, either alcohol must be prohibited or marijuana legalized. Marijuana Is Safer does not advocate a return to alcohol prohibition.

Alcohol consumption is largely accepted in society; marijuana use though widespread is usually done discreetly lest one risk being arrested.

The penalties that marijuana users face are many and severe. Fox et al. write, “Believe it or not, virtually no other criminal offenses – including violent crimes like rape or murder – trigger the same plethora of sanctions.”

Indeed, when US president Richard Nixon launched the official government war on drugs, “public enemy number one” was marijuana.

The Outcome of Marijuana Prohibition

The authors hold that the harsh legal enforcement of marijuana has artificially lowered marijuana use and led to increased alcohol consumption.

They identify at least one cause of marijuana prohibition as being racially motivated, an example being crazy Mexicans. This is a part of the onslaught of disinformation that surrounds the use of marijuana.

For this reason, the book includes a chapter tackling the myths and facts surrounding marijuana use, such as it leads to “harder” drug use, that marijuana is highly addictive, that it causes many traffic accidents (the writers do not recommend driving after toking), that it causes brain damage, etc.

There is probably a likelier cause for the maintenance of the prohibition against marijuana that the authors touched on: the alcohol industry has a hand in maintaining marijuana prohibition – protecting its profit margins from competition. Marijuana — “weed” — would be tough competition for alcohol.

Why Legalize Marijuana?

Society would benefit not just in increased safety but also economically. As one example, the book notes that “annual alcohol-related health care costs were forty-five times greater than marijuana-related health care costs!”

The authors contend that “modern marijuana prohibition is a ‘cure’ that is much worse than the disease”

“Why should we add another vice?”The authors argue, “The fact that alcohol causes so many problems in society is not a reason to keep pot illegal; rather it is the reason we must make it legal.” Marijuana is not adding a vice, but rather providing a “less harmful recreational alternative.”

The authors attempt to steer an honest assessment of marijuana compared to alcohol. While Marijuana Is Safer debunks many of the myths existing about marijuana use, it does not insist that driving under the influence of marijuana is safe; it does not insist that marijuana has no addictive properties. It cautions against young people “who lack the maturity” from using mind-altering drugs. It seems here that Fox et al. in, perhaps, a bid to appear impartial, strayed from evidential analysis.

Marijuana Is Safer does not posit foreknowledge of what changes will come about with the legalization of marijuana other than society will, assuredly, be safer. It seems this assurity is premised on people switching from alcohol to safer marijuana and neophyte recreational drug users choosing marijuana over alcohol.

Evidence does exist to support the premise that knowledge of the risks of drug taking does influence taking of the drug. There is a huge advertising industry based on the notion that how information is packaged and presented influences people. Nowadays, cigarette packages clearly indicate that smoking may cause lung cancer and other terrible diseases. Despite this some people continue to smoke. Yet, the numbers of smokers have declined and this is attributed to the increased knowledge of the dangers of smoking. The Canadian Cancer Society stated in 2002: “It’s clear that the advertisements work [to discourage smoking].” The CBC reported that the province of Nova Scotia had a youth (15-19 years) smoking rate of 31 percent in 2000 – when the warning ads on cigarette packages were introduced – and in 2007 the youth smoking rate had dropped to 12 percent.

The reasoned logic of Marijuana is Safer is something all members of society should take time to question and consider. Who stands to benefit from the present policy against marijuana use? What are the benefits and costs to society from the present policy? Marijuana is Safer compellingly reveals the irrationality behind the selective drug prohibition policy, a policy which puts people in comparative danger.

Is justice right side up?

Has world justice been frozen in an upside-down position?

The shoe-thrower of Iraq, the man who hurled his shoes at Bush, was condemned to three years in prison. Doesn’t he deserve, instead, a medal?

Who is the terrorist? The hurler of shoes or their recipient? Is not the real terrorist the serial killer who, lying, fabricated the Iraq war, massacred a multitude, and legalized and ordered torture?

Who are the guilty ones—the people of Atenco, in Mexico, the indigenous Mapuches of Chile, the Kekchies of Guatemala, the landless peasants of Brazil—all being accused of the crime of terrorism for defending their right to their own land? If the earth is sacred, even if the law does not say so, aren’t its defenders sacred too?

According to Foreign Policy Magazine, Somalia is the most dangerous place in the world. But who are the pirates? The starving people who attack ships or the speculators of Wall Street who spent years attacking the world and who are now rewarded with many millions of dollars for their pains?

Why does the world reward its ransackers?

Why is justice a one-eyed blind woman? Wal-Mart, the most powerful corporation on earth, bans trade unions. McDonald’s, too. Why do these corporations violate, with criminal impunity, international law? Is it because in this contemporary world of ours, work is valued as lower than trash and workers’ rights are valued even less?

Who are the righteous and who are the villains? If international justice really exists, why are the powerful never judged? The masterminds of the worst butcheries are never sent to prison. Is it because it is these butchers themselves who hold the prison keys?

What makes the five nations with veto power in the United Nations inviolable? Is it of a divine origin that veto power of theirs? Can you trust those who profit from war to guard the peace? Is it fair that world peace is in the hands of the very five nations who are also the world’s main producers of weapons? Without implying any disrespect to the drug runners, couldn’t we refer to this arrangement as yet another example of organized crime?

Those who clamor, everywhere, for the death penalty are strangely silent about the owners of the world. Even worse, these clamorers forever complain about knife-wielding murderers yet say nothing about missile-wielding arch-murderers.

And one asks oneself: Given that these self-righteous world owners are so enamored of killing, why pray don’t they try to aim their murderous proclivities at social injustice? Is it a just world when, every minute, three million dollars are wasted on the military while at the same time fifteen children perish from hunger or curable disease? Against whom is the so-called international community armed to the teeth? Against poverty or against the poor?

Why don’t the champions of capital punishment direct their ire at the values of the consumer society, values which pose a daily threat to public safety? Or doesn’t, perhaps, the constant bombardment of advertising constitute an invitation to crime? Doesn’t that bombardment numb millions and millions of unemployed or poorly paid youth, endlessly teaching them the lie that “to be = to have,” that life derives its meaning from ownership of such things as cars or brand shoes? Own, own, they keep saying, implying that he who has nothing is, himself, nothing.

Why isn’t the death penalty applied to death itself? The world is organized in the service of death. Isn’t it true that the military industrial complex manufactures death and devours the greater part of our resources as well as a good part of our energies? Yet the owners of the world only condemn violence when it is exercised by others. To extraterrestrials, if they existed, such monopoly of violence would appear inexplicable. It likewise appears insupportable to earth dwellers who, against all the available evidence, hope for survival: we humans are the only animals who specialize in mutual extermination, and who have developed a technology of destruction that is annihilating, coincidentally, our planet and all its inhabitants.

This technology sustains itself on fear. It is the fear of enemies that justifies the squandering of resources by the military and police. And speaking about implementing the death penalty, why don’t we pass a death sentence on fear itself? Would it not behoove us to end this universal dictatorship of the professional scaremongers? The sowers of panic condemn us to loneliness, keeping solidarity outside our reach: falsely teaching us that we live in a dog-eat-dog world, that he who can must crush his fellows, that danger is lurking behind every neighbor. Watch out, they keep saying, be careful, this neighbor will steal from you, that other one will rape you, that baby carriage hides a Muslim bomb, and that woman who is watching you—that innocent-looking neighbor of yours—will surely infect you with swine flu.

In this upside-down world, they are making us afraid of even the most elementary acts of justice and common sense. When President Evo Morales started to re-build Bolivia, so that his country with its indigenous majority will no longer feel shame facing a mirror, his actions provoked panic. Morales’ challenge was indeed catastrophic from the traditional standpoint of the racist order, whose beneficiaries felt that theirs was the only possible option for Bolivia. It was Evo, they felt, who ushered in chaos and violence, and this alleged crime justified efforts to blow up national unity and to break Bolivia into pieces. And when President Correa of Ecuador refused to pay the illegitimate debts of his country, the news caused terror in the financial world and Ecuador was threatened with dire punishment, for daring to set such a bad example. If the military dictatorships and roguish politicians have always been pampered by international banks, have we not already conditioned ourselves to accept it as our inevitable fate that the people must pay for the club that hits them and for the greed the plunders them?

But, have common sense and justice always been divorced from each other?

Were not common sense and justice meant to walk hand in hand, intimately linked?

Isn’t common sense, and also justice, in accord with the feminist slogan which states that if we, men, had to go through pregnancy, abortion would have been free. Why not legalize the right to have an abortion? Is it because abortion will then cease being the sole privilege of the women who can afford it and of the physicians who can charge for it?

The same thing is observed with another scandalous case of denial of justice and common sense: why aren’t drugs legal? Is this not, like abortion, a public health issue? And in the very same country that counts among its population more drug addicts than any other country in the world, what moral authority does it have to condemn its drug suppliers? And why don’t the mass media, in their dedication to the war against the scourge of drugs, ever divulge that it is Afghanistan which single-handedly satisfies just about all the heroin consumed in the world? Who rules Afghanistan? Is it not militarily occupied by a messianic country which conferred upon itself the mission of saving us all?

Why aren’t drugs legalized once and for all? Is it because they provide the best pretext for military invasions, in addition to providing the juiciest profits to the large banks who, in the darkness of night, serve as money-laundering centers?

Nowadays the world is sad because fewer vehicles are sold. One of the consequences of the global crisis is a decline of the otherwise prosperous car industry. Had we some shred of common sense, a mere fragment of a sense of justice, would we not celebrate this good news? Could anyone deny that a decline in the number of automobiles is good for nature, seeing that she will end up with a bit less poison in her veins? Could anyone deny the value of this decline in car numbers to pedestrians, seeing that fewer of them will die?

Here’s how Lewis Carroll’s Queen explained to Alice how justice is dispensed in a looking glass world:

“There’s the King’s Messenger. He’s in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn’t begin until next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.”

In El Salvador, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero found that justice, like a snake, only bites barefoot people. He died of gunshot wounds for proclaiming that in his country the dispossessed were condemned beforehand, having committed the crime of being born.

Couldn’t the outcome of the recent elections in El Salvador be viewed, in some ways, as homage to Archbishop Romero and to the thousands who, like him, died fighting for right-side-up justice in this reign of injustice?

At times the narratives of History end badly, but she, History itself, never ends. When she says goodbye, she only says: I’ll be back.

While drug policy reformers were advocating for a public health professional as drug czar, President Obama went with a police chief. He made a potentially ground-breaking pick as the former police chief of Seattle has been good on needle exchange, medical marijuana, treatment and health services for addicts and he ushered in a new law to make marijuana the lowest prosecution priority in Seattle. He is a pragmatist who could shift the United States away from continuing to make the same mistakes over and over when it comes to drug policy.

The drug war is the issue I’ve worked most on over the last thirty years and one I follow very closely as president of Common Sense for Drug Policy. Drugs are an issue that seem unsolvable in the U.S. because every administration does the same thing — emphasizes enforcement at the expense of effectiveness. It is not surprising that doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result over and over makes a problem look unsolvable.

In fact, there are lots of changes that can be made — even within the confines of drug prohibition — that can improve the situation. When I served on Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke’s Working Group on Drug Policy in the late 1980s he asked us to come up with policies — within the framework of keeping drugs illegal (since he could not change that as a mayor) — that would improve how drugs were handled in Baltimore. There was a lot Schmoke did that made a positive difference, e.g. needle exchange, drug courts, treatment on request and social services for addicts.

Obama’s police chief drug czar comes from a city that has been at the forefront of reform. It was one of the early cities to emphasize public health approaches to addiction by making treatment more available and supporting needle exchange, methadone vans and harm reduction programs. It has developed a strong public health infrastructure with programs treat addicts as humans rather than as criminals. And, these programs make a tremendous positive difference for the person using drugs as well as the community he or she lives in. They reduce the spread of HIV and reduce crime.

Seattle reform activist Dominic Holden writes about how Kerlikowske has handled needle exchange and harm reduction in Seattle:

‘There has been long-standing support in the community as a whole and from SPD for our continued operation of the needle exchange,’ says James Apa, a spokesman for Seattle King County Public Health, which runs one of first and the nation’s largest needle-exchange programs. Seattle IV drug users have some of the lowest HIV-infection rates in the country, he says. But acceptance of the controversial program hasn’t been that long standing.

’What we would find is that police would hang around the exchange site and watch who came and went,’ says Kris Nyrop, former director of Street Outreach Services, a pioneering needle exchange group that operated a table in downtown Seattle in the late 1980s. ‘Their presence itself would be somewhat intimidating … people would see four police officers halfway down the block and they would turn around and go home,’ he says. ‘Harassment like that happened routinely up until the mid ’90s.’

But under Kerlikowske, ‘It has been a laissez-faire thing and the police basically leave needle exchanges alone,’ says Nyrop.

Needle exchange is a public health program to prevent the spread of HIV that research has shown reduces transmission without increasing drug use. It is part of what Europeans call “harm reduction,” i.e. reducing the harm caused by drugs to the individual and community. It is something that has been opposed by the U.S. drug enforcement bureaucracy. In addition, Kerlikowske replaced enforcement with public services and alternatives to arrest. One program his department implemented was the Get Off The Streets (GOTS) program. A police officer set up a table as an “arrest-free area” for people who had outstanding warrants. They could come to the table and get health and human services rather than be arrested. City Council Member Nick Lacata says that Kerlikowske could have stopped the program from getting funding by the city, “but he allowed it to go forward.” Licata says that while Kerlikowske is not going to end the drug war but “he recognizes that it has not been a success and I think he is open to other strategies.”

During Chief Kerlikowske’s tenure as police chief Seattle voted in favor of Initiative 75 in 2003 which made marijuana the lowest law enforcement priority. The public sent a message with their vote that they did not want limited law enforcement resources spent on marijuana offenses.

Chief Kerlikowske did not support I75 but when this law passed his administration implemented the law. The Seattle Police told a City Council Marijuana Policy Review Panel that “officers [had] been verbally advised during their roll calls that investigation and arrest of adults for possession of cannabis intended for personal use is to be their lowest priority.” The result, the city reduced marijuana possession arrests by more than half in six years and redirected law enforcement resources to real crime. Seattle’s crime rate is now at a historical 40-year low.

Kerlikowske worked closely with the organizers of the Seattle Hempfest – the largest marijuana reform gathering in the nation. More than 200,000 people attend the annual event. The Seattle Police essentially allowed the organizers to police themselves. They kept a very low key presence at the event and did not seek out marijuana consumers at the festival for arrest.

One common denominator of previous drug czar’s is they all made marijuana the top priority of their attention. The current drug czar, John Walters, wrote U.S. attorneys “[N]o drug matches the threat posed by marijuana” reflecting the views of Democrats and Republicans. Indeed, looking at the history of drug czar’s — really a rogue’s gallery including right wing social conservatives like Bill Bennett (who hid his gambling addiction while punishing other addicts) and extreme militarist Barry McCaffery (accused of war crimes in the first Gulf War) — Kerlikowske could be the superstar of drug czars. If he personally holds views consistent with his experience in Seattle the U.S. may actually begin to solve the seemingly unsolvable drug issue. It would be a welcome change to have a pragmatist rather than an ideologue in charge of drug policy.

Kerlikowske, a 36 year police veteran, is a tough police chief who is widely respected and widely criticized. When appointed by Obama he was serving as president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, an organization composed of 56 largest law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and has been a chief in three previous cities in New York and Florida. He has been extremely aggressive with environmental and anti-corporate trade demonstrators some say violating their free speech rights. He has also used the forfeiture power of police aggressively and has been proud of para-military units in his police force. And, his force – like too many in the United States – has been criticized for abuse of African Americans.

The marijuana issue and drug war more generally have gotten a lot of attention lately, particularly the battlefronts of Mexico and Afghanistan. There is debate in the media about legalization and decriminalization, especially of marijuana. So, Kerlikowske takes the helm at a time of potential change to more sensible policies. We’ll see whether pragmatism, ideology or the long-term habit of “drug war” politics wins out.

Senator Jim Webb of Virginia looks at these numbers and in a speech on the Senate floor wondered out loud: “Either we have the most evil people on Earth living in the United States, or we are doing something dramatically wrong.” He has introduced a bill, which already has 19 co-sponsors including Republicans and Democrats (including the top three Republicans on the Judiciary Committee), that will answer that question. It sets up a national commission, the National Criminal Justice Commission, which will look at ways to reduce the prison population including rethinking drug policy. The chairman will be appointed by President Barack Obama who reportedly has called Webb twice to commend this effort.

When Webb ran for the U.S. senate he raised the need for criminal justice reform during the campaign. Many told him it was a third rail of politics that would make his already improbable election impossible. But, Webb surprised the country and turned red state Virginia blue. At a meeting this week in Washington, DC attended by 70 advocates for criminal justice and drug policy reform his staff told us that this issue is a “passion for Senator Webb” that is of “deep importance” and that he has been concerned about “for decades.” Webb’s goal, they told us, was to see this bill “enacted this year.”

Webb sees the hypocrisy of U.S. drug laws. He notes that more than half of Americans aged 12 and over have used an illegal drug and wonders “In talking of legality and illegality, what does that do to the fiber of our society?” He goes on to note that “I saw more drug use at Georgetown Law School than anywhere else I’ve been. A lot of those people went on to be judges.”

Indeed, the last three U.S. presidents have a history of drug use – Clinton admitted putting a marijuana joint to his lips, but to the nation’s snickering claimed he did not inhale; Bush reportedly was a cocaine user during his alcohol abuse days but refused to discuss it; and now Barack Obama has acknowledged his past use of marijuana and cocaine. Three presidents who join most of America in having used an illegal drug but who all escaped the clutches of the drug war. Would America have wanted each imprisoned? Their lives ruined?

And, Senator Webb is well aware of the racially disproportionate impact of the drug laws. This March 26th, in a Senate speech when he introduced his bill he emphasized: “African-Americans are about 12% of our population; contrary to a lot of thought and rhetoric, their drug use rate in terms of frequent drug use rate is about the same as all elements in our society about 14%. But they end up being 37% of those arrested on drug charges, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison.” What does that do to the African American family? What does it do to employment, income and wealth creation? Is it possible to become a post-racial society without facing the issue of racial unfairness in the justice system?

Webb’s commission would not tinker at the edges of the drug war, a quagmire America has been trapped in since President Nixon declared it, he is seeking fundamental paradigm shifting change, not incremental change. As Webb says “America’s criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace” and “we are locking up too many people who do not belong in jail.”

And, Webb is not shy about discussing what happens in America’s prisons. Webb said in his Senate speech: “We have a situation in this country with respect to prison violence and sexual victimization that is off the charts and we must get our arms around this problem. We also have many people in our prisons who are among what are called the criminally ill, many suffering from hepatitis and HIV who are not getting the sorts of treatment they deserve.” Indeed, 60,500 prison inmates reported sexual assaults and that are estimated to under-reported by approximately ten fold.

He talks about “warehousing” the mentally ill, 350,000 people incarcerated with mental illness with no professional treatment, and notes there are four times as many mentally ill people in prison than in mental hospitals. The Marion Correctional Treatment Center reports the cost of housing each mentally ill inmate at $77,561.

Many Americans might remember that some of the soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal had worked in the U.S. prison system before joining the military. At the meeting with Webb staffers some families of prisoners described how they are charged $20 for a $15 telephone call with their loved one because the prison makes a commission on the calls. Another woman from Louisiana described how her son was sexually assaulted in prison by a guard and then put in solitary confinement until he agreed to withdraw the charges. Every day in America prisoners are being abused and with 2.4 million behind bars there are millions of family members hearing the stories and telling their friends. The American prison scandal is more widely understood than politicians and prison guards realize.

For too long Americans have thought nothing can be done about ending the drug war – even though most see its obvious failure. We are trained to believe that things can’t change. But this has always been the case: Slavery can’t end, women can’t vote, child labor is essential, the forty hour work week is unrealistic, gays can’t marry, Jim Crow will always be the law, alcohol prohibition can’t end. History is proof that even the most seemingly unchangeable can in fact change radically. The drug war’s failure is hard to dispute with a straight face it is so evident, and finally there seems to be a senator who takes drugs seriously.

But, Senator Webb has a long way to go and he will not get there without a lot of people speaking up and demanding change. Senator Webb needs individuals and organizations to write his office and express support. He needs people to write their elected officials and tell them to support Webb’s commission. We need to bring in mainstream American organizations like churches, temples and mosques, civic clubs, fraternities and sororities, business clubs … the fact is all of us are adversely affected by the expensive horror of mass incarceration. Indeed, the basic American ideal of being the “land of the free” is undermined by over-incarceration in America’s abusive prisons.

Now is the time. The economic collapse is forcing city, state and federal governments to look at their expenditures. The prison budget deserves special focus. States spend $44 billion annually on prisons. In almost all states after education and health care, prisons are the biggest budget line item. Forty states have cut vital services during this economic collapse.

If the U.S. put in place a sensible prison policy – where those who we fear are the only ones locked up, not the addicted, the drug users, the mentally ill or non-violent – the prison population would be closer to 500,000 people rather than 2.4 million. Immediately states would see a significant fiscal savings at a time when they are desperate for reducing expenditures. Across the country reforms are being seen at the state level, a boost from a national commission could create the momentum needed for the paradigm shift that is needed.

Senator Webb may have a president in the White House who will take reform of prison and drug policy seriously. During the presidential campaign President Obama told Rolling Stone:

Anybody who sees the devastating impact of the drug trade in the inner cities, or the methamphetamine trade in rural communities, knows that this is a huge problem. I believe in shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public-health approach. I can say this as an ex-smoker: We’ve made enormous progress in making smoking socially unacceptable. You think about auto safety and the huge success we’ve had in getting people to fasten their seat belts.

The point is that if we’re putting more money into education, into treatment, into prevention and reducing the demand side, then the ways that we operate on the criminal side can shift. I would start with nonviolent, first-time drug offenders. The notion that we are imposing felonies on them or sending them to prison, where they are getting advanced degrees in criminality, instead of thinking about ways like drug courts that can get them back on track in their lives — it’s expensive, it’s counterproductive, and it doesn’t make sense.

Obama was right – it just doesn’t make sense. Now is the time for all who see these realities to get educated, organized and active.

For more information: Drug War Facts

And, to take action.

According to the UN website, ministers and top anti-drug officials from the CND Member States will be meeting to discuss issues ranging from preventing drug abuse to adopting a plan of action to “counter the world drug problem.” But for former coca farmer Morales and other coca leaf activists, the problem lies with the UN’s decisions — particularly the one that put the coca leaf on the UN’s list of the most strongly controlled illicit substances.

For years, activists have been trying to to remove coca from the top UN list of illegal substances and change the international perception of coca as being synonymous with cocaine. President Morales himself sent an official letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon exactly one year ago, announcing he would try to take the coca leaf off the UN’s list.

But the list of controlled substances can only be changed by the 53 governments of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, “taking into account the recommendation made by the World Health Organization, based on a scientific review of a substance,” says Beate Hammond, Drug Control Officer of the Secretariat of the International Narcotics Control Board.

Hammond claims that in 1993, the WHO Expert Committee confirmed that the coca leaf belongs in the top list because “cocaine is readily extractable from the leaf.” She adds, “We are not aware of any facts that have come to light to justify a reversal of the scheduling status of coca leaf.”

But some are saying the reason those facts have not come to light has little to do with facts, and a lot to do with faulty studies — and a bit of blackmailing.

Yanking the Problem by the UN’s Roots

The roots of this thorny issue go back to 1961, when governments signed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs to establish a single apparatus for international drug control. Another goal of the 1961 Convention was to “phase out the traditional consumption of drugs” like coca throughout the next 25 years, says a source from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“Everyone who signed and ratified it is bound by it,” affirms the UNODC source. According to Article 3 of that convention, controlled substances are not only those substances that can be abused, but also the substances that can be converted into a drug, explains Hammond.

While Hammond says the original 1961 Convention included the coca leaf on the list based on “the views on this matter expressed by the World Health Organization,” Sdenka Silva, co-founder of the Coca Museum in La Paz, says the original WHO study that is the basis was merely “based on observations.”

The most recent WHO study was legitimate, but it was ignored, says Dr. Jorge Hurtado, director of the Bolivian branch of the International Coca Research Institute. He says that in the 90s, studies by the WHO denied the addictive nature of the leaf and reaffirmed the coca leaf’s healthy attributes, including the leaf’s ability to allow the absorption of oxygen into the brain.

But this time the UN didn’t care about what the WHO had to say, because the US didn’t like it. Minutes from the 48th World Health Assembly in May 1995 cite the US government’s disapproval of the WHO study’s most recent findings about the coca leaf. The report cites US government representative Mr. Boyer warning that “if WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programs should be curtailed.” He then “asked for an assurance that WHO would dissociate itself from the conclusions of the study.”

Mario Argandoña, a Bolivian psychiatrist from the WHO Programme on Substance Abuse, participated in the study and wrote a report describing the study’s positive findings about the coca leaf. He says a few days after the 48th World Health Assembly meeting, the US embassy representative for the WHO, Dr. Ken Bernard, visited him in his Geneva office “to tell me that his government was investigating to see whether the WHO study had received financial support from Bolivian drug traffickers.” Dr. Bernard added that US scientists had proof that the traditional use of the coca leaf had led to brain atrophy in 14,000 Indigenous Andeans. “My answer was that the funding for the study came from Italy and the USA,” recalls Argandoña. “Regarding the scientific study about brain atrophy, I told him that the ethical thing to do would be to publish such a study.” Their meeting ended there.

Even Better Than the Real Thing

Dr. Jorge Hurtado tries to dispel ideas that coca is bad for the brain and any other part of the body. He affirms that as early as the 70s, research from Harvard University showed that the Bolivian coca leaf contains more vitamin A than any fruit and has more calcium than milk.

But most Bolivians know this just from experience. Bolivian miners survive hunger and sleep deprivation for long hours in the depth of the mines by chewing on coca leaves.

Coca is not only sacred for miners — but for Bolivians of all ages and walks of life. From the age of 11, Canedo amassed coca leaves into a protruding ball in one cheek to suck their juices out — an activity called ‘acullicar.’ Both his parents’ families are ‘acullicadoras.’ When Canedo visits his piece of land in the tropical Yungas region, he cultivates coca along with his family and neighbors. Back in La Paz, he often buys a bag of coca leaves at the market to share with his family. He chews on coca leaves at local bars and pubs and especially when he’s up late studying for exams or volunteering at the annual Coca and Sovereignty Fair, where everything from coca creams to coca pancakes is sold.

“Coca is part of us, it’s part of our identity, of our ideas, of our history,” says Jeannette Rojas, director of Comunidad Sagrada Coca, a local women’s music collective that seeks to honour Bolivia’s Indigenous heritage. “That’s why we call ourselves Sacred Coca Community,” she says.

“Coca is a symbol that has resisted and persisted for centuries. It’s the only thing that we’ve managed to preserve from European and Spanish destruction.”

Coca is present “in all the celebrations you can imagine: baptisms, marriages, village festivals, fertility, thanksgiving rituals” and important meetings, adds Silva.

Bolivians aren’t the only ones who know this. “Bolivia has produced coca leaf for traditional uses for centuries,” affirms a March 2007 International Narcotic Strategy Report released by US Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

“Bolivians actually chew on the coca leaf for medicinal purposes,” acknowledges US Drug Enforcement Administration spokesperson Michael Sanders. He recalls arriving at the El Alto airport, at more than 12,000 feet above the ground. “Because of altitude, a lot of people, including us, would get altitude sickness. They found one of the things that would curb the nausea and the altitude sickness was coca tea,” he says. “It wouldn’t get you high or anything like that, it would just assist with the symptoms of altitude sickness.”

Dr. Hurtado adds that the leaf contains two molecules that prevent addiction. And not only can the leaf prevent addiction, it can cure it, he says. Since 1984, he says he has been treating cocaine addiction with the coca leaf.

Cutting Supply Isn’t Enough

Whether curative or nutritional, what’s crystal clear is that coca leaves are not synonymous with cocaine. “Coca does not contain cocaine in its natural state,” explains Dr. Hurtado. Cocaine can only be derived from it through a specific chemical extraction process, he says, and a lengthy process is needed to transform the green leaves into the white powder.

Dionisio Nuñez, a Bolivian deputy and co-founder of the Coca and Sovereignty campaign thinks the cocaine problem in Bolivia is the direct consequence of cocaine consumption in the US and its inability to eradicate that problem domestically.

Even the DEA spokesperson agrees. “Do you like chocolate?” Sanders asked. “What if you said I’m not going to eat chocolate anymore? If everyone in the country said okay, I’m not going to eat chocolate, then there would be no such thing as Swiss chocolate because nobody would be buying it,” said Sanders.

“It’s the same thing with illegal drugs. Until the demand is gone, you’re always going to have that supply.”

Dr. Hurtado also blames the US for protecting the monopoly of multinational companies to access coca, referring to a special deal that the soft drink company had with the DEA to export coca. Article 27 of the 1961 UN convention clearly provides a loophole for Coca Cola to take advantage of, says Dr. Hurtado, adding that the UN protects the Coca Cola monopoly because “the UN is controlled by the US.”

Yet Hammond laughs about the idea of Coca Cola being allowed preferential treatment by the UN. “The 1961 Convention may permit the use and export of coca leaves for the preparation of a flavouring agent, which does not contain any (cocaine) alkaloids,” explained Hammond. “It is only under these limited conditions that these leaves may be exported,” but the alkaloids do not have to be removed prior to export.

Meanwhile, the Bolivian government struggles to find legal markets to export the coca leaf — to ensure less coca goes to drug trafficking and more goes to eating, soothing, washing and curing. If travelers like Morales want to bring coca teas, creams or candies as souvenirs to promote their local economy and heritage when they go on trips abroad, the coca leaf will need to be taken off the UN’s list by the CND.

Bolivian President Evo Morales will make his speech during the opening session of the CND March 11th. It starts at 10am at the Vienna International Centre and is open to the media.

The New York Times reported February 4 that supplies “intended for NATO forces in Afghanistan were suspended Tuesday after Taliban militants blew up a highway bridge in the Khyber Pass region, a lawless northwestern tribal area straddling the border with Afghanistan.”

The 30-yard-long iron bridge, located 15 miles northwest of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) provincial capital, Peshawar, a thriving metropolis of several million people, was a major supply route ferrying some 80 percent of NATO supplies into Afghanistan.

Tuesday’s attacks were followed-up Wednesday when insurgents torched 10 supply trucks returning from Afghanistan, the Los Angeles Times reported. Supplies destined for NATO forces in Afghanistan–primarily food and fuel–are trucked through Pakistan by local contractors. Many are now refusing to drive the circuitous route through the Khyber Pass because of the dangerous conditions.

As Asia Times reported January 29, Peshawar “is the commercial, economic, political and cultural capital of the Pashtuns in Pakistan.” Increasingly, it is morphing into a major power center for jihadists–on both sides of the border.

Peshawar and its surrounds are also now the epicenter for the Taliban and other militants in their struggle not only in Afghanistan and Pakistan but also in their bid to establish a base from which to wage an “end-of-time battle” that would stretch all the way to the Arab heartlands of Damascus and Palestine. (Syed Saleem Shahzad, “On the Militant Trail, Part 1: A battle before a battle,” Asia Times Online, January 29, 2009)

With kidnappings–whether by militants or criminal gangs–and beheadings on the rise, the city is cloaked in fear. Residents believe “a major showdown” between the state and the jihadists “is imminent.”

Daily Times reported February 4 that the “Talibanization” of Orakzai Agency near Peshawar has accelerated to such an extent that local people have fled the area to “escape Taliban-style rule.” Daily Times avers,

Orakzai, which borders Kurram in the west and Hangu district in the east, provides a means to the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to expand its influence to Peshawar through Khyber Agency. The organisation has already made its presence in the region known by attacking truck terminals for Afghanistan-bound supplies for NATO and US forces. Despite government attempts to block their infiltration, the Taliban recently celebrated their “complete control” over the region by inviting a group of journalists to the area in a show of power. (Abdul Saboor Khan, “Orakzai becomes a new have for Taliban,” Daily Times, February 4, 2009)

Pakistani officials told the New York Times “it was not immediately clear how soon the trucks carrying crucial supplies for NATO forces would be able to travel through the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, in a further setback for U.S. regional plans, The Guardian reported February 3, that the Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic, was threatening to close the U.S. airbase of Manas “a key staging post for coalition forces fighting in nearby Afghanistan.”

Both US and Nato commanders have expressed dismay at the possible closure.

It comes at a time when Nato is desperately trying to expand its supply routes to Afghanistan via the northern countries of central Asia following a series of devastating attacks on truck convoys from Pakistan. (Luke Harding, “Closure of US base in Kyrgyzstan could alter Afghanistan strategy,” The Guardian, February 3, 2009)

In an echo of the 19th century “Great Game” for the control of Central Asia by Czarist Russia and Imperial Britain, Russia has been pressuring Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s authoritarian regime to expel the Americans, viewed as a destabilizing power in the region.

The expulsion of U.S. forces from the Manas airbase would be a blow to U.S. efforts to control vital routes of licit and illicit cargo–including the booming heroin trade–and would follow a similar expulsion from Uzbekistan in 2006 following a deal between Moscow and the Uzbek kleptocracy run by President Islam Karimov.

The Kyrgyz Parliament is expected to vote next week on a measure to expel the Americans from Manas. The “loss of the base would present a significant problem for the Obama administration,” the New York Times reported February 5. The Times averred, “About 15,000 personnel and 500 tons of cargo pass through Manas each month. The base is also the home of large tanker aircraft that are used for in-air refueling of fighter planes on combat missions over Afghanistan.”

But behind the posturing over money and loans to the impoverished Central Asian nation, the Russian government is expecting a quid pro quo from the Obama administration if the U.S. is allowed to continue to use Manas as a launching pad into Afghanistan. In a move designed to pressure the U.S., the Russians are playing hardball, seeking concessions from the administration to scrap planned “missile defense” facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, viewed by Moscow as a first strike weapon.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. imperialism and their NATO partners have encircled Russia with a string of bases in Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus in tandem with the eastward expansion of NATO. Additionally, the CIA, Britain’s MI6 as well as Pakistan’s ISI have fueled the on-again, off-again “Islamist” insurgency in Chechnya; a move designed to hasten the disintegration of the Russian Federation into docile statelets aligned with the United States–a familiar playbook used in the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia.

With the Obama administration banking on a favorable outcome in Afghanistan as the United States ramps-up military operations, doubling American forces to some 60,000 troops within twelve months, the prospects for resupplying those troops without Russian cooperation are grim.

The Washington Post reported February 4 that “newly installed officials describe a situation on the ground that is far more precarious than they had anticipated.” On Monday, The Independent averred that the situation on the ground in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan is particularly unnerving for NATO operations.

During Operation Kapcha Salaam or “Cobra Salute,” a joint British and Afghan army offensive that included heavy armor and warplanes, soldiers were under near continuous attack by insurgents firing rockets, heavy mortars and detonating sophisticated roadside bombs. According to The Independent, insurgent ranks were filled with Pakistani and Chechen militants. The fighting has taken a heavy toll on Afghan citizens. The Independent revealed,

Outside Koshtay, Haji Mohammed Amin came up to complain that “Talibans and bandits” were preying on residents. “They come at night and ask us to feed them, sometimes they ask for money; they are not Afghans, they are Pakistanis. We have had 30 years of war and it still continues. Where is our government? Why don’t they help us? We hardly have enough to eat.” Another, Ahmed Jan, complained: “This is our land, we need this land to live. And you and the Taliban are using it to fight your wars. We want to be left in peace. You are here but then you will go away and the Taliban will come back.” (Kim Sengupta, “Under fire in the Afghan badlands,” The Independent, February 2, 2009)

If the U.S. administration has its way, there won’t be peace any time soon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Bush holdover, told Congress last week that the war would be a “long slog” with an uncertain outcome. But if history is a predictor of future events, it may not be a pretty finale for imperialism–or the people of South Asia.

While top Obama administration officials and Pentagon bureaucrats are relying on the government of President Asif Ali Zadari to stabilize the situation on Pakistan’s side of the border, reports indicate that the ISI continue to fund and advise various proxy armies.

The Los Angeles Times revealed February 3, that Afghan security officials had broken up a suicide bombing cell in the capital, Kabul, and that the 17 men arrested were believed “to be affiliated with a Pakistan-based militant group known as the Haqqani network and that the cell’s ringleader was a Pakistani national.”

Although relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have “warmed considerably” since Zadari took over the reins from the despised Musharraf regime according to the L.A. Times, the ISI’s policy of seeking “strategic depth” over geopolitical rival India by controlling a compliant Afghan client state has not changed, despite billions of dollars in U.S. military and “counterterrorism” assistance showered on the Army and ISI.

The spy agency’s long-standing ties to the Haqqani network, led by veteran Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, were spotlighted last year when U.S. intelligence backed up Afghan authorities’ assertion that the ISI had aided the group in its bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul in July. That attack killed nearly 60 people. (M. Karim Faiez and Laura King, “Suicide Bombing Ring Is Brought Down in Afghanistan, Officials Say,” Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2009)

With a two month deadline tied to an April 3 NATO summit, the Pentagon is scrambling to come come up with a comprehensive strategy. It won’t be an easy sell for America’s NATO partners, outraged by orders from NATO’s commander, U.S. General John Craddock, to kill opium dealers.

Protected Drug Trade and American Hypocrisy

In a bid to import the Iraqi “surge strategy” into Afghanistan, the United States is fielding armed militias to fight the Taliban, the Associated Press reported.

Afghanistan’s interior minister announced the program had begun with the U.S. “paying for all aspects” including “buying Kalashnikov automatic rifles for members of the Afghan Public Protection Force,” modeled after the American-sponsored Awakening Councils in Iraq. A sceptical Afghan official told the Associated Press, “only criminals would join because most citizens wouldn’t want to face the Taliban in combat.”

But perhaps this is precisely the intent of the program; to wrest control of the lucrative heroin trade from unreliable elements beholden to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, who allegedly derive $100 million a year from the global drug trade. What better means to disrupt the “Islamist” insurgency than to grant U.S.-allied criminals and warlords a piece of the action.

In this context, Craddock’s orders are all the more ironic when one considers that the forces currently battering NATO in Afghanistan grew rich during the 1980s when Washington turned a blind-eye to drug networks they themselves encouraged as a means to wound their Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union.

According to scholar Alfred W. McCoy, “During the 1980s CIA covert operations in Afghanistan transformed southern Asia from a self-contained opium zone into a major supplier of heroin for the world market.” As a cats’ paw for imperialism, the ISI doled out funds, weapons and expertise to far-right militants such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Coming to prominence as a thug who attacked communist students and infamously threw acid into the faces of unveiled women at Kabul University during the 1970s, Hekmatyar was a major narcotrafficker–and darling of the CIA and their ISI partners in crime. McCoy writes,

As the ISI’s mujaheddin clients used their new CIA munitions to capture prime agricultural areas in Afghanistan during the early 1980s, the guerrillas urged their peasant supporters to grow poppies, thereby doubling the country’s opium harvest to 575 tons between 1982 and 1983. Once these mujaheddin elements brought the opium across the border, they sold it to Pakistani heroin refiners who operated under the protection of General Fazle Huq, governor of the North-West Frontier province. By 1988, there were an estimated 100 to 200 heroin refineries in the province’s Khyber district alone. Trucks from the Pakistan army’s National Logistics Cell (NLC) arriving with CIA arms from Karachi often returned loaded with heroin–protected by ISI papers from police search. (The Politics of Heroin, CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991, pp. 453-454)

The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel revealed January 28 that “top NATO commander John Craddock wants the alliance to kill opium dealers, without proof of connection to the insurgency. NATO commanders, however, do not want to follow the order.”

In a classified document leaked to Der Spiegel, Craddock issued a “guidance” providing NATO troops with the authority “to attack directly drug producers and facilities throughout Afghanistan.” In other words, the United States wants to widen the free-fire zone that already exists, one directly responsible for thousands of civilian casualties. Der Spiegel reports,

According to the document, deadly force is to be used even in those cases where there is no proof that suspects are actively engaged in the armed resistance against the Afghanistan government or against Western troops. It is “no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective,” Craddock writes. (Susanne Koelbl, “NATO High Commander Issues Illegitimate Order to Kill,” Spiegel Online, January 28, 2009)

German NATO General Egon Ramms and other European commanders are refusing to “deviate from the current rules of engagement for attacks,” a move that has outraged Craddock. Considered a loyal Bushist who “fears that he could be replaced by the new US president,” Craddock is threatening to remove any commander who doesn’t toe the new party line and “follow his instructions to go after the drug mafia.”

But here as elsewhere, things aren’t always what they seem. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that General Craddock, under pressure from the Obama administration’s new anti-Karzai policy, particularly now that Washington is eyeing newer, more compliant “provincial allies” in the Afghan Public Protection Force will target some narcotraffickers–those in Karzai’s orbit–while handing their new “best friends forever,” Afghan warlords and Pakistani “businessmen,” the lucrative opium concession.

As Peter Dale Scott documented in Drugs, Oil and War, “conscious decisions were definitely made, time after time, to ally the United States with local drug proxies.” In Central and South Asia such “drug proxies” and the financial institutions which served powerful political, intelligence and military interests such as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) and that institution’s shadowy “Black Network,” helped transform the Afghan mujaheddin into al-Qaeda.

While espousing an overt Islamist discourse, al-Qaeda and their various affiliates continued to serve Western intelligence agencies as disposable assets used in various destabilization operations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia during the 1990s and today. While “the routes shifted with the politics of the times,” Scott writes, “the CIA denominator remained constant.”

Absurd? Consider this. When the U.S. Army’s Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (known as Delta Force) “brought down” Pablo Escobar’s Medellín Cartel in the early 1990s, they relied on other narcotrafficking cartels, notably the larger and more profitable Cali Cartel run by the Orejuela brothers, Gilberto Rodríguez and Miguel Rodríguez, to get the job done.

We now know with last year’s release of declassified CIA and U.S. Embassy documents by the National Security Archive that this was indeed the case. More importantly, the documents provided confirmation that CIA “anti-narcotics interdiction efforts” did not target the drug trade per se, but only those criminal gangs who ran afoul of wider U.S. geostrategic interests in resource rich Colombia.

In other words, U.S. policy in the area amounted to a protected drug traffic for allies engaged in anti-left counterinsurgency operations. While U.S. Special Operations Command and the CIA were targeting Escobar’s Medellín cartel, they were directly collaborating with a death squad that later morphed into the Colombian Army-allied paramilitary group, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). Founded by major international narcotrafficker Carlos Castaño, the AUC were close political allies of the Orejuela brothers and the man who would later become Colombia’s president, Alvaro Uribe.

The parallels between these two resource rich regions couldn’t be more striking. Pakistani investigative journalist Ahmed Rashid described a similar pattern when the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan began in 2001.

The Pentagon had a list of twenty-five or more drug labs and warehouses in Afghanistan but refused to bomb them because some belonged to the CIA’s new NA [Northern Alliance] allies. The United States told its British allies that the war on terrorism had nothing to do with counter-narcotics. Instead, drug lords were fêted by the CIA and asked if they had any information about Osama bin Laden. Thus, the United States sent the first and clearest message to the drug lords: that they would not be targeted. (Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, New York: Viking, 2008, pp. 320-321)

Under America’s ever so tolerant counterterrorist regional strategy, Afghanistan produced a staggering 8,700 metric tons of opium and now accounts for 92% of global opium production, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) in their 2008 World Drug Report.

Meanwhile, as the Obama administration and the Pentagon prepare a major military escalation in the region and the Taliban expand their writ, “efforts to stem cultivation of opium poppies and the narcotics trade that lines Taliban and government pockets,” the Washington Post reports, “have made little discernible progress.”

Rather, such “efforts” on the part of NATO allies and Islamist adversaries alike presage a strategic battle for control over the multibillion dollar heroin market. Whoever “wins,” the people of South Asia will certainly suffer the consequences.

The editor of CovenantNews.com wrote:

The White House policies published on its new website confirms that Barack H. Obama intends to use his office to promote and maintain the sexual deviant criminal behavior of homosexuality (with malice aforethought).

… Civil officials who approve of homosexuality, make the civil government a vile cesspool from which the abominations vomit out across the land. By displaying such a contempt for the administration of Justice by promoting this criminal behavior, “such civil officials are not only the source of the defilement, they are the criminals, and a hostile enemy authorizing the destruction of the society in which we live.

In an American Family Association Action Alert, the Rev. Wildmon stated that “This is only the beginning of Obama’s plans to reshape society. His view is that unborn babies aren’t worth protecting and that homosexuals deserve special rights.”

Wildmon urges his followers to “Take Action!” and “Send an e-mail to President Obama. It will go directly to the White House.”

Big ups to Obama. Covenant News and the Rev. Wildmon? Not so much!

Civil Rights

The teenagers and college students who left their homes to march in the streets of Birmingham and Montgomery; the mothers who walked instead of taking the bus after a long day of doing somebody else’s laundry and cleaning somebody else’s kitchen — they didn’t brave fire hoses and Billy clubs so that their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren would still wonder at the beginning of the 21st century whether their vote would be counted; whether their civil rights would be protected by their government; whether justice would be equal and opportunity would be theirs…. We have more work to do.

– Barack Obama, Speech at Howard University, September 28, 2007

President Barack Obama has spent much of his career fighting to strengthen civil rights as a civil rights attorney, community organizer, Illinois State Senator, U.S. Senator, and now as President. Whether promoting economic opportunity, working to improve our nation’s education and health system, or protecting the right to vote, President Obama has been a powerful advocate for our civil rights.

Combat Employment Discrimination: President Obama and Vice President Biden will work to overturn the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that curtails racial minorities’ and women’s ability to challenge pay discrimination. They will also pass the Fair Pay Act, to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work, and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression.

Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: President Obama and Vice President Biden will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice’s Criminal Section.

End Deceptive Voting Practices: President Obama will sign into law his legislation that establishes harsh penalties for those who have engaged in voter fraud and provides voters who have been misinformed with accurate and full information so they can vote.

End Racial Profiling: President Obama and Vice President Biden will ban racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies and provide federal incentives to state and local police departments to prohibit the practice.

Reduce Crime Recidivism by Providing Ex-Offender Support: President Obama and Vice President Biden will provide job training, substance abuse and mental health counseling to ex-offenders, so that they are successfully re-integrated into society. Obama and Biden will also create a prison-to-work incentive program to improve ex-offender employment and job retention rates.

Eliminate Sentencing Disparities: President Obama and Vice President Biden believe the disparity between sentencing crack and powder-based cocaine is wrong and should be completely eliminated.

Expand Use of Drug Courts: President Obama and Vice President Biden will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior.

Support for the LGBT Community

While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It’s about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.

– Barack Obama, June 1, 2007

Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest category of hate crime reported and made up more than 15 percent of such crimes. President Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, President Obama passed tough legislation that made hate crimes and conspiracy to commit them against the law.

Fight Workplace Discrimination: President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. While an increasing number of employers have extended benefits to their employees’ domestic partners, discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace occurs with no federal legal remedy. The President also sponsored legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.

Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: President Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006 which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried couples.

Repeal Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell: President Obama agrees with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili and other military experts that we need to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The key test for military service should be patriotism, a sense of duty, and a willingness to serve. Discrimination should be prohibited. The U.S. government has spent millions of dollars replacing troops kicked out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Additionally, more than 300 language experts have been fired under this policy, including more than 50 who are fluent in Arabic. The President will work with military leaders to repeal the current policy and ensure it helps accomplish our national defense goals.

Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.

Promote AIDS Prevention: In the first year of his presidency, President Obama will develop and begin to implement a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy that includes all federal agencies. The strategy will be designed to reduce HIV infections, increase access to care and reduce HIV-related health disparities. The President will support common sense approaches including age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception, combating infection within our prison population through education and contraception, and distributing contraceptives through our public health system. The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. President Obama has also been willing to confront the stigma — too often tied to homophobia — that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.

Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS: In the United States, the percentage of women diagnosed with AIDS has quadrupled over the last 20 years. Today, women account for more than one quarter of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. President Obama introduced the Microbicide Development Act, which will accelerate the development of products that empower women in the battle against AIDS. Microbicides are a class of products currently under development that women apply topically to prevent transmission of HIV and other infections.

“Dios Mio Gracias”: DMG´s Spectacular Rise and Fall

The resulting protests by the enraged victims induced the Government into finally confronting this troubling elephant in the room, the notorious multi-million dollar phantasmagoria known as DMG. It was named after its mercurial founder and owner, 28-year old David Murcia Guzman. Unlike DRFE and many of the country’s estimated 200 pyramid systems, DMG for three years consistently had been fulfilling its promises of rapid enrichment of its clients, and in fact, benefited hundreds of thousands of “investors.” DMG distributed prepaid credit cards to investors, with which they could buy various electronic-domestic products and other devices from selected retailers. In a remarkable twist on traditional brand name loyalty strategies, DMG then offered a return of 150-300% on the original investment within six months. In DMG’s commercial heartland in the province of Putamayo, up to 85% of its adult residents invested their savings in DMG, lifting its devoted subscribers out of poverty and allowing many to move away from coca cultivation. Some observers warned of the dangers of the resultant culture of idleness, easy money, and a recessive lifestyle but the overwhelming feeling within this neglected sector of the population was one of huge relief. Now able to pay for their education, healthcare, and home improvements, the people came to express the company’s initials as “Dios Mio Gracias” (My God Thank You).

The DMG Way

Within a short space of time, DMG expanded from Colombia’s south to its active metropolitan economic heartlands in Bogota, Cali and Medellin, while simultaneously rising from being an exclusive attraction to the poor, to becoming an increasingly attractive, if problematic, alternative for the country’s middle and upper classes. Despite persistent doubts over its legality, not to mention its financial sustainability, the country’s political establishment and society at large appeared almost amorously hypnotized by Guzman’s ostensibly miraculous ability to do the impossible: multiply people’s often modest savings to levels beyond their wildest dreams. The final collapse of DRFE, in addition to the pressure from Colombia’s orthodox financial sector (who had been nervously watching the increasing amounts of money being withdrawn from bank accounts in favor of investment in DMG), prompted the Government to seize DMG’s offices, while at the same time issuing arrest warrants for its managers. Guzman was dramatically captured in Panama on 18th November and extradited to Bogota within a matter of hours. Meanwhile, the Government promised to repay some of the citizens’ investments in exchange for turning in the necessary documents and handing back the prepaid credit cards. It opened up the Camping football stadium in order to expedite the return of the tainted funds to investors. Of course, the actual amount of funds found sitting in DMG’s immediate accounts amounted to far less than the amount owed to investors, meaning that, to date, it is far from clear how many people will get their full deposits back, if at all.

What Is Being Revealed?

These episodes, reminiscent of the magical realism highlighted by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, open up serious questions concerning all levels of Colombia’s society. In many ways, DMG can be seen as maintaining a Colombian tradition of extra-legal “ghost economies,” operating in an atmosphere of legal impunity, and apparently defying conventional laws of economics in order to offer unimaginable benefits to otherwise neglected sectors of society. The extent to which significant amounts of the population have kept relying on ghost economies as the primary means of their economic advancement belies a reality far detached from the Government’s conventional discourse on economic growth and political stability along with a populace apparently immune to the often outlandish “populist” promises handed out by neighboring Venezuela and Ecuador. The majority of investors in DMG were poor Colombians who would not otherwise have benefited from the country’s high growth rates in recent years, making Guzman’s invitations to join “the DMG family” extremely attractive. In contrast to the venom now being directed against DRFE, average DMG investors at first mobilized in various cities to defend the company from what they saw as discrimination against the “poor people´s bank” by the Government. Protesters in Putamayo virtually paralyzed the province, targeting banks and government institutions, and even talked about separating from the Colombian state in order to allow DMG to keep operating.

Underneath questions over why it was so easy for DMG to build up such a committed support base lies doubts over the nature of the Government’s response to the phenomenon. While the authorities now openly accuse DMG of having links to drug trafficking and money laundering operations, this does not explain why the operation was allowed to carry out its activities in the open for over three years. One potential answer to this might rest in the company’s usefulness in satisfying sectors of the population which otherwise would not have benefited from the high economic growth registered during President Alvaro Uribe’s tenure: good for statistics, good for Uribe’s political standing. In fact, the sheer quantity of people who benefited from DMG and other pyramid schemes raise questions about the Government’s claims to have reduced poverty with its free market policies. Alternatively, the Government’s inaction in light of these massive acts of fraud might be ascribed to basic cowardice — a clearly justified fear that any intervention would, and ultimately did, lead to concerted opposition to the Government. However, given Uribe’s highly pro-active style of Government (he is self-gratifyingly known for the refrain “iron fist, big heart”), and his willingness to aggressively confront “delinquents” such as the country’s guerrilla groups and drug traffickers, his failure to take any significant action against DMG for so long appears bizarre, if not downright strange.

Capturing the State

Perhaps the real answer behind Guzman’s ability to mesmerize the authorities in Bogota into over three years of inaction lies in the emerging revelations about his influence in the very elite circles which now condemn him. DMG went far beyond simply operating in the poorer sectors of society, as could be seen by the well dressed businessmen queuing outside the Camping stadium in desperate hope of recovering some of their funds. Various pillars of the establishment had invested money, or maintained healthy relations with the enterprise, from high profile politicians and businessmen, down to the celebrated soldiers who rescued Ingrid Betancourt and even the President’s children. By employing high profile lawyers and journalists, as well as financing regional politicians, DMG had managed to penetrate the inner circles of the modernizing, progressive, efficient Colombia so often portrayed by Uribe. It is now known, moreover, that Guzman ordered the formation of a “lobby” in Congress to guarantee the legal protection of DMG. This was all part of his strategy of co-opting power from the centre in order to allow his enterprise to keep functioning in impunity. Such events draw comparisons with the ability of Colombia’s drug traffickers to wield significant influence over Bogota’s major political actors since the 1980s.

Stupid People, Greedy Banks, or Something More Obvious?

Meanwhile, the debate as to the roots of the crisis has largely divided into two categories of critiques, both of which are somewhat lacking in explanatory power. For those on the right, wing, moralistic explanations are used to blame the DMG phenomenon on a culture of “lazy, ignorant” people, who prefer to take a risk than engage in hard work. The other explanation, more common among leftists, is to blame the problem on the restrictive nature of Colombian banks. The first theory is essentially unrealistic and contributes little to the debate. How many people in the world, particularly those living in poverty, would resist the opportunity to multiply their savings? What right do middle and upper class people, many of whom inherited their economic and educational status, have to lecture the poor on “easy” money? And while most people could sense that there must have been something illegal or immoral about DMG, it actually did operate legally in venues such as shopping malls, as well as in paying taxes; therefore, it was logical to conclude that it was no more “immoral” than any other aspect of the very thoroughly corrupted society found in Colombia. As for the financial system, it is indeed true that Colombian banks are generally restrictive in terms of the availability of credit, particularly when it comes to poorer sectors of society, but to conclude that the DMG catastrophe never could have occurred if the banking system had been more “progressive,” is illogical. A bank’s function is not to only multiply savings, and no bank in the world could possibly have competed with what DMG was doing. Moreover, in cases where individuals did get access to bank loans, they often invested those loans straight into DMG (the same was also true of many recipients of social services like Familias en Accion).

There are only two really clear policy implications to draw from the entire DMG affair. The first is that, as has been seen in the United States, deregulation of the formal financial sector invites recklessness, and simultaneously causes an accelerated deregulation of the informal and illegal sectors. Ironically, the deregulation of the financial system demanded by the banks worked against their own interest by weakening the regulating body that likely could have stopped DMG years earlier. The other, more profound implication, is that DMG provides the strongest proof yet of the catastrophic failure of Plan Colombia to weaken the grip of sordid illegal actors in the margins of Colombia’s economy and society. This thesis is nothing new: It has been known for years that eradication of coca in one area only causes a “balloon effect” of greater cultivation in other areas. Despite billions of dollars of investment, the quantity and quality of cocaine arriving at North American and European airports has not diminished, suggesting that its production and availability remains stable. Given that it is now widely accepted that DMG worked primarily by laundering profits from drug trafficking, we can infer its spectacular rise as good reason to believe that Colombia will never be free from the economic and social distortions of the drug trade until there is a radical rethinking of cocaine prohibition.

Colombia´s Uncertain Future

Regardless of such implications, the fallout from DMG and the pulverized pyramids left many Colombians waking up on New Year’s Day with a headache far worse than that typically associated with excess aguardiente on New Year’s Eve . DMG’s rise and fall revealed a face to Colombia’s society that had been proclaimed by Government officials to be a thing of the past, and its demise leaves behind a hard core of citizens determined to vote against a President they previously had adored. Along with other recent scandals such as the authoritarian treatment of indigenous protests, revelations about military commanders ordering the assassination of civilians in order to inflate statistics of killed “enemy combatants” the reconstitution of supposedly disbanded paramilitaries as “aguilas negras,” and an increasingly uncertain macro-economic outlook, the fallout from the DMG crisis, is enough to leave the country facing an increasingly uncertain future, with excuses and braggadocio some of the few weapons the government has at hand.

A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Noorzai September 22, for his involvement in an international narcotics trafficking conspiracy that sold tens of millions of dollars of heroin on world markets. The drug lord now faces life in prison and will be sentenced on January 7.

But things aren’t always what they seem.

Noorzai, described by federal investigators and journalists as “the richest man in Afghanistan,” enjoyed close and cosy relations with the Taliban’s top leader Mullah Omar, al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence agency (ISI).

Indeed, Noorzai had become one of the capo tutti capos of Afghanistan’s flourishing heroin rackets and profited handsomely from the protection of his Taliban “friends,” his ISI mentors and allegedly the CIA.

The Washington Post reported December 27, that Noorzai’s New York arrest was aided by a private security outfit, Rosetta Research and Consulting, a firm founded in 2003 by two “businessmen” which the Post refuses to name “because of the sensitive nature of their undercover work.”

“Mike A.,” a former Army Special Forces captain, “Patrick J.,” a former Treasury Department financial-crimes analyst and a group on investors connected to the law firm Motley Rice were principals in the sting that netted Noorzai. Rosetta’s mission according to the Post “was to assist in a mammoth legal case filed on behalf of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by tracking the flow of terrorist-connected money.”

In April 2005, Noorzai was lured to the United States from his Dubai estate “at the instigation of the Drug Enforcement Agency.” After a lavish 11 day holiday at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Manhattan where he enjoyed room service “and considered himself a guest of the U.S. government,” the drug kingpin was arrested.

But here’s the kicker: even as law enforcement sought his arrest as a world-class drug trafficker, Noorzai “was considered an asset by the intelligence side of the government.” And why wouldn’t they?

As I revealed in “Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers,” (Antifascist Calling, December 19, 2008) citing the Pentagon’s Army Special Operations Forces FM 3-05.130 published by Wikileaks, unconventional warfare is conducted “by, with or through surrogates” and that their preferred assets are irregular forces:

Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or other internal security force. They are usually nonstate-sponsored and unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. These forces may include, but are not limited to, specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political “undesirables.” (Unconventional Warfare, p. 1-3)

It is hardly a stretch that a drug kingpin like Haji Bashir Noorzai, with documented links to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the CIA and U.S. Special Forces would be viewed as one such “surrogate.”

Spooks, Drugs and Thugs

When the Taliban was routed by the U.S. during the initial phase of its 2001 invasion, Noorzai was entrusted with some $20 million of the Taliban’s cash for “safekeeping,” according to the History Commons.

But Noorzai turned himself in to U.S. military forces where he spent several days in custody at Kandahar airport. Though questioned by U.S. officials, Noorzai was released and quietly disappeared into Pakistan after an associate was killed by U.S. forces. In a 2002 CBS News account, Noorzai reportedly said, “I spent my days and nights comfortably. There was special room for me. I was like a guest, not a prisoner.”

Eventually, Noorzai resurfaced in Peshawar. Armed with a Pakistani passport allegedly furnished by the ISI, the kingpin operated drug-processing laboratories that turned raw opium into finished “product,” heroin bound for European and U.S. markets.

In 2004, USA Today reported that “according to House International Relations Committee testimony this year, Noorzai smuggles 4,400 lbs. of heroin out of the Kandahar region to al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan every eight weeks.”

No surprise here. After all as journalist James Risen wrote in State of War, “Once the Taliban had been routed, top CIA officials had little interest in the drug problem.” Or if one took a more nuanced approach one would argue Noorzai’s operation amounted to a protected drug racket. The question is: whose racket was being protected? As Pakistani investigative journalist Ahmed Rashid documented,

The Pentagon had a list of twenty-five or more drug labs and warehouses in Afghanistan but refused to bomb them because some belonged to the CIA’s new NA [Northern Alliance] allies. The United States told its British allies that the war on terrorism had nothing to do with counter-narcotics. Instead, drug lords were fêted by the CIA and asked if they had any information about Osama bin Laden. Thus, the United States sent the first and clearest message to the drug lords: that they would not be targeted. (Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, New York: Viking, 2008, pp. 320-321)

This was serious business. With the rapid expansion of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan after the American invasion, the price of heroin plummeted on world markets leading the syndicates that control the illicit trade to stockpile opium in an effort to bolster sagging prices.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) 2008 World Drug Report, the global increase in opium production “was almost entirely due to the 17% expansion of cultivation in Afghanistan.” In 2007, Afghanistan produced some 8,700 metric tons of opium that accounted for a staggering 92% of global opium production.

But in a twist that readers of Antifascist Calling are well aware, convicted narco Noorzai apparently enjoyed a cosy and productive relationship with both al-Qaeda and the CIA. According to the Post,

In an affidavit in his criminal case, he traced a history of cooperating with U.S. officials, including the CIA, dating to 1990. In early 2002, following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Noorzai said he turned over to the U.S. military 15 truckloads of Taliban weapons, including “four hundred anti-aircraft missiles of Russian, American and British manufacture.”

From the perspective of the CIA and Defense Department, Noorzai could be a useful intelligence asset. But law enforcement officials continued to consider him a notorious criminal whose drug proceeds supported militants battling U.S. forces. Rosetta’s interest seemed purely commercial: to pump him for information that could be reported back to its clients, the Rosetta documents indicate. (Richard Leiby, “Tangled U.S. Objectives Bring Down U.S. Spy Firm,” The Washington Post, December 27, 2008, A01)

But lest we fall into an obvious trap and think that the Afghan drugs trade is solely a creature of the ISI, al-Qaeda or the Taliban, similar charges of corruption have been leveled against Hamid Karzai’s government. Indeed, in 2006 Guardian reported that senior political figures in Kabul, including the president’s brother, Walid, and deputy interior minister for counternarcotics General Muhammad Daud, are heavily involved in the illicit trade.

One official told the Guardian, “He [Daud] moves competent officials from their jobs, locks cases up and generally ensures that nobody he is associated with will get arrested for drugs crime.” The Interior Ministry according to published sources didn’t just fail to take down the warlords, “it became a major protector of drug traffickers.”

Additional reports identified the governor of Helmand province, Sher Mohammed Akhunzada, a close friend and ally of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, as personally profiting from the illicit trade. Indeed, British counternarcotics officials told Rashid that Akhunzada “was accused of favoring his cronies with prime real estate parcels and commanded hundreds of well-paid gunmen, while the police force was undermanned and unpaid and mullahs, aid workers, teachers, and women activists who opposed poppy cultivation were being gunned down.”

Helmand province, under the nominal control of the Karzai government and American and NATO allies was the conduit for opium sales flowing towards the drug labs in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan from other provinces, particularly those from the far northern provinces of Mazar and Badakhshan, run by U.S.-backed warlords favored by Special Forces’ “unconventional warfare” theorists.

It wouldn’t be the first time nor the last, that the United States cultivated narcotraffickers as intelligence assets, including those connected to America’s reputed arch-enemy, Osama bin Laden. As Peter Dale Scott wrote on the convergence of international organized crime structures and the capitalist deep state,

Mafias and empires have certain elements in common. Both can be seen as the systematic violent imposition of governance in areas of undergovernance. Both use atrocities to achieve their ends; but both tend to be tolerated to the extent that the result of their controlled violence is a diminution of uncontrolled violence. (I would tentatively suggest an important difference between mafias and empires: that, with the passage of time, mafias tend to become more and more part of the civil society whose rules they once broke, while empires tend to become more and more irreconcilably at odds with the societies they once controlled.) (”Deep Events and the CIA’s Global Drug Connection,” Global Research, September 6, 2008)

Why then, given the decades-long collaboration amongst intelligence agencies and drug trafficking syndicates, do U.S. corporate media still find it “ironic” that current American efforts to stamp out Taliban-controlled drug networks in fact, simply hand control of the traffic over to narcos more amenable to American geopolitical goals?

One Big Happy Family

While the United States insists that international drug flows are financing terrorism, which indeed they are, U.S. agencies including the CIA and Army Special Forces continue to rely on trafficking networks as a reliable source for irregular fighters and as intelligence assets.

According to the Guardian, the relationships amongst Afghan government forces, opium smugglers and their Taliban “adversaries” are quite complex, but when it gets down to brass tacks, amazingly simple: money talks. Hameedullah, an opium smuggler and government employee told the Guardian,

He went on to explain how the economy of the poppy trade took in the Taliban and the government. “The Taliban benefit from the poppy because the farmers pay them taxes. And when the government destroys the fields, the people support the Taliban,” he said. “The government also benefits from the poppy–we pay officials so they won’t destroy our land. Two years ago we paid them so they only destroyed two jeribs (1 acre) of my land.” …

“The Taliban say we are doing the jihad and you are making money so you should support us. Smugglers give a lot: three Land Cruisers in Sangin a few weeks ago.”

The relationship between the Taliban, police and poppy trade is quite simple, he added: “If we don’t plant opium then smugglers don’t make money. If we [the smugglers] don’t make money the Taliban and police don’t make money. The Taliban and the officials have a very strong relationship–if they don’t then how can we do so much trade and travel to so many districts?” (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, “Life in Helmand, where rich rewards are reaped by poppy farmers, police and the Taliban,” Guardian, 22 December 2008)

Its a relationship that has a proven track record: drug lords make money, intelligence agencies cultivate assets and perhaps, siphon illicit funds for off-budget operations, international banking cartels earn billions from laundered drug proceeds and corrupt comprador elites secure a comfortable existence.

Such richly-rewarded “arrangements” continued long after the Soviet military withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989. Indeed, international narcotrafficking and related terrorist networks with links to the the CIA, the ISI, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States launched subsequent “jihads” against their geopolitical rivals in the Balkans and the ex-Soviet Union, where thousands of former Afghan veterans filled the ranks of the Bosnian, Kosovan and Chechen “mujahideen.”

According to economist Loretta Napoleoni, by the 1990s Pakistan hoped to create “a trans-Asian axis, under Pakistani hegemony, stretching from the eastern border with China, inclusive of Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics, to the oil-producing regions of the Caspian Sea.”

That the government of Benazir Bhutto did so with U.S. blessings as a means to destabilize Russia is evident with the subsequent assault in Chechnya by CIA-trained Afghan-Arab veterans aided and abetted by ISI and Saudi Arabia. The plan, according to Napoleoni, was “to divert Russian attention” by encouraging an “Islamist insurgency in Chechnya, forcing the Russians to fight in the Caucasus.”

Thusly, Shamil Basayev, a Chechen field commander, received extensive ISI training “at the Amir Muawia camp in the Khost province in Afghanistan,” under the operational control of ISI and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Afghan-Arab veterans were sent to Chechnya to train future fighters. “Among them was the Jordanian-born Khattab, whom Basayev had met and befriended in Pakistan. Khattab was a hero of the anti-Soviet Jihad; he was also close to Osama bin Laden and his funding network. In 1995, Khattab was invited to Grozny to head the training of Mujahedin fighters.”

Indeed, Osama bin Laden is reported to have contributed some $25 million to the Chechen “jihad.” But as Napoleoni documents, the operation relied heavily on already-existent drugs and arms trafficking networks.

In 1995, Khattab’s move to Grozny was arranged by the International Islamic Relief Organisation, a Saudi-based charity funded by mosques and wealthy donors in the Gulf. The same year, Basayev, and later Khattab, linked up with criminal organisations in Russia as well as with Albanian organised crime and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). These alliance proved fruitful in generating profits from the drug trade and contraband, especially that of arms. Chechnya soon became an important hub for various rackets, including kidnapping and the trade in counterfeit dollars. Basayev also benefited financially from money laundering activities in Chechnya. (Loretta Napoleoni, Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, London: Pluto Press, 2003, pp. 92-93)

Similar destabilization campaigns utilizing the same Pakistani-Saudi terrorist networks and international drug trafficking syndicates broke out in Ingushetia, Dagestan and North Ossetia. The United States and their NATO partners encouraged what Napoleoni terms “the expansionism of Muslim countries such as Pakistan and religious colonisation by Saudi Arabia” across the region.

These networks, with a wink and a nod from Washington, are fully operational today.

Mumbai Attack: Same Drugs, Same Thugs

Indeed, international drug trafficking syndicates connected to Pakistan’s ISI and the CIA are reported to have been operational assets during the November Laskhar-e-Toiba (LET) assaults in Mumbai. As I reported in mid-December, Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company enjoys protected status afforded by the ISI and his extensive smuggling networks along the Indian coast were used to infiltrate LET thugs into Mumbai.

Despite these linkages, investigative journalist Jeffrey R. Hammond reported December 19, that Ibrahim associate “Mohammed Ali continues smuggling operations out of Mumbai for Ibrahim’s crime syndicate, D-Company, completely unmolested by Indian investigators and law enforcement.”

As the crisis deepens and Pakistan shifts troops towards the Indian border, a December 4 piece in The Times of India wonders why the Maharashtra government “has not taken any action against the D-Company here.”

One senior official asked, “What’s the point of asking Islamabad to hand over Dawood when we’re not doing anything to destroy his empire in Mumbai and other places in India?”

Similar questions must also be put to senior U.S. intelligence and counterterrorist officials as to why Afghan drugs kingpin Haji Bashir Noorzai was viewed as “a useful intelligence asset” up to the time of his arrest and conviction in New York federal court?

An unmentionable fact in Noorzai’s indictment, one that was raised however by defense attorney Ivan Fisher during the drug lord’s trial, was Noorzai’s work as a U.S. intelligence asset even as he grew rich off of Afghanistan’s heroin trade, through “efforts to reach working agreements with the Americans in Afghanistan since the 1990s,” Fisher told the International Herald Tribune. James Risen reports,

Noorzai was in Quetta when the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks occurred, and he returned soon after to Afghanistan, according to his lawyer. In November 2001, he met with men he described as American military officials at Spinboldak, near the Afghan-Pakistani border, Fisher, his lawyer, said. Small teams of U.S. Special Forces and intelligence officers were then operating in Afghanistan, seeking the support of local tribal leaders against the Taliban.

Noorzai was taken to Kandahar, where he was detained and questioned for six days by the Americans about Taliban officials and operations, according to his lawyer. He agreed to work with them and was released. In January 2002, he handed over 15 truckloads of weapons, including about 400 anti-aircraft missiles, that had been hidden by the Taliban inside his tribe’s territory, Fisher said. (”Afghan’s arrest shines light on dark side of U.S. terror fight,” International Herald Tribune, February 2, 2007)

But when State Department official Robert Charles suggested placing Noorzai on President Bush’s list of foreign narcotics kingpins, at the time no Afghan heroin traffickers were on the list which Charles thought was “a glaring omission.”

He suggested three names, including Noorzai’s, but said his recommendation was met with an awkward silence during an interagency meeting. He said there was resistance to placing any Afghans on the list because countering the drug trade there was not an administration priority. Charles persisted, and in June 2004, Noorzai became the first Afghan on the list. (Risen, op. cit.)

“Awkward silence” indeed! Even as tensions today continue to rise between India and Pakistan, the virtual disappearance of Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company from the Mumbai frame is all the more astonishing given the narcoterrorists’ documented record of violence in furtherance of the geopolitical goals of his ISI masters.

But even though civilian rule has returned in Islamabad, retired Pakistani Army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg, a veteran of the Afghan campaign and a key figure responsible for toppling Benazir Bhutto’s government in 1990 cautioned the Wall Street Journal, “The ISI can make or break any regime in Pakistan. Don’t fight the ISI.”

9/11’s Drug Connection

These links are not new and were revealed long before the 9/11 attacks. Indeed, a former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Julie Sirrs, traveled undercover to Afghanistan in 1998 after al-Qaeda’s East African embassy attacks and learned that the Taliban regime, then a darling of the Clinton administration and the multinational oil giant Unocal, was being courted by Washington as a force for “regional stability.” Sirrs reveals that the regime “was being kept in power significantly by bin Laden’s money and the narcotics trade.”

In 2004, Gail Sheehy reported in the New York Observer that for her trouble, Sirrs had her security clearances revoked and was subsequently hounded out of the DIA.

Unocal, a California-based company, had been courting the Taliban to build a massive pipeline system across Afghanistan that would connect the vast oil and natural-gas reserves of Turkmenistan to ports in Pakistan. The American energy giant partnered with a Saudi company, Delta Oil Co. Ltd., and promised the Taliban that it could expect up to $100 million in transit fees from the proposed $4.5 billion project. …

Ms. Sirrs said she believed that her information was discounted because it was damaging to the Taliban.

“The State Department didn’t want to have anything to do with Afghan resistance, or even, politically, to reveal that there was any viable option to the Taliban,” she said. (Gail Sheehy, “Ex-Spook Sirrs: Early Osama Call Got Her Ejected,” The New York Observer, March 14, 2004)

And what of the 9/11 attacks themselves, the presumed “trigger” for the Global War on Terror?

In the introduction to Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié’s book Forbidden Truth, investigative journalist Wayne Madsen wrote: “Yet the links [to 9/11] do not merely end with the greater bin Laden family–they involved the House of Saud, the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence agency, other wealthy Saudi bankers and merchants, Islamic charities and madrassas, U.S. oil tycoons, and U.S. defense contractors like The Carlyle Group.”

An unholy alliance that has persisted since the end of World War II. Added to the mix are the invisible yet omnipresent tentacles of the international narcotics trade that cuts across global money flows and paves the way for U.S. “special operations.”

As investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker revealed in Welcome to Terrorland and subsequent reporting,

Just three weeks after Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi arrived on July 3, 2000 to attend the flight school at Huffman Aviation in Venice, FL., the owner of the flight school, Wallace J. Hilliard, had his Learjet surrounded by DEA agents with submachine guns on the runway of Orlando Executive Airport.

Agents found 43 pounds of heroin, arrested everyone onboard, and confiscated the plane. …

Moreover, the drug connection was uncovered independently in two different places: by our investigation in Venice, FL., and by FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in Washington D.C.

“The 9/11 terror plot intersected with the activities of a drug trafficking network of international scope, in ways that form a ‘crystal clear’ picture of what was going on,” said Edmonds. (”The 9/11 Heroin Connection,” MadCowMorningNews, September 7, 2006)

Indeed, according to German investigative reporter Jürgen Roth’s account in Netzwerke des Terrors, in 1995 the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) investigated Atta for drug crimes and falsifying phone cards while a student at the Hamburg Technical University. While 9/11’s lead hijacker wasn’t charged, a record of the investigation will prevent him from obtaining a security job with Lufthansa Airlines in early 2001 according to Newsday, the History Commons revealed.

As FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds wrote on the connections amongst drug traffickers, terrorists and key U.S. allies such as Turkey, a major transportation hub for the flow of heroin into Europe, Edmonds wondered, “who are the real lords of Afghanistan’s poppy fields?”

For Al Qaeda’s network Turkey is a haven for its sources of funding. Turkish networks, along with Russians’, are the main players in these fields; they purchase the opium from Afghanistan and transport it through several Turkic speaking Central Asian states into Turkey, where the raw opium is processed into popular byproducts; then the network transports the final product into Western European and American markets via their partner networks in Albania. The networks’ banking arrangements in Turkey, Cyprus and Dubai are used to launder and recycle the proceeds, and various Turkish companies in Turkey and Central Asia are used to make this possible and seem legitimate. The Al Qaeda network also uses Turkey to obtain and transfer arms to its Central Asian bases, including Chechnya. (”The Hijacking of a Nation,” National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, November 29, 2006)

This too, follows a demonstrable pattern. Since the 1960s, the Turkish state has utilized far-right and Islamist surrogates to wage a dirty war against the left. Openly fascist political formations such as the National Action Party (MHP), the organization’s terrorist wing, the Grey Wolves and various Islamist “green gangs” such as the Army-controlled Turkish Hizbullah, have all been implicated in state terrorism and the international narcotics trade.

But the connections amongst narcotraffickers and terrorist financiers, though extensive, have all but been ignored by U.S. corporate media as it hyped the “failure of imagination” fairy tale spun by Washington insiders.

While the 9/11 Commission cited “intelligence failures” to “connect the dots” prior to the attacks, it is the contention of this writer that ongoing intelligence operations utilizing Afghan-Arab veterans and international narcotics syndicates, including al-Qaeda–in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and South Asia–lie at the heart of 9/11’s cover-up.

In other words these cosy and highly profitable relationships built-up over decades, rather than unproven claims of an “inside job,” allegations which all-too-frequently disappear Western intelligence agencies and their Islamist partners, were central to the 9/11 plot and subsequent U.S.-led “war on terror,” a war of terror waged globally for resource extraction and geopolitical advantage over capitalist rivals.

One shudders to consider what the incoming Obama administration is contemplating when it recommends a “surge” of U.S. troops into Afghanistan. But if history is any judge, we can be certain that the illicit relationships amongst drug cartels and intelligence agencies will continue far into the future.

While drug lord Haji Bashir Noorzai awaits sentencing in Manhattan, someone else has already taken his place. After all, some things never change…

When Lashkar-e-Taiba (”Army of the Pure”–LET) militants slaughtered nearly 200 people in Mumbai during the November 26 siege in India’s financial capital, one name stood out among a list of 20 fugitives the Indian government has demanded Pakistan extradite as a key suspect responsible for providing funds and logistical support to the Kashmir-based terrorist outfit.

Enter Dawood Ibrahim, the enigmatic Mafia don of Mumbai’s D-Company whose far-flung organized crime empire stretches from Dubai through Pakistan to India and beyond. If anyone knows where the proverbial “bodies are buried,” that man may very well be Ibrahim. Wanted by Interpol and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Ibrahim commutes between palatial homes in Dubai and Karachi where he enjoys the protection afforded by “friends in high places.”

According to a report in Asia Times Online, “Ibrahim is…suspected of orchestrating the November 26 Mumbai terrorist strikes through a businessman in Saudi Arabia said to be his frontman.” The Indian-born drug kingpin has been identified by journalists and investigators as a long-time asset of both the CIA and Pakistan’s notorious Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

Asia Times Online investigative journalist Raja Murthy was told by Lahore-based journalist Amir Mir that “Dawood’s underworld connects and business ventures are extensive. And he sublets his name in Pakistan, Thailand, South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, to franchises in the fields of drug trafficking and gambling dens.”

Karachi-based reporter Ghulam Hasnain described to Murthy why Ibrahim was amongst ISI’s most valued assets: “Dawood is Pakistan’s number one espionage operative. His men in Mumbai help him get whatever information he needs for Pakistan. Rumor has it that sometimes his men in Karachi accompany Pakistani intelligence agents to the airports to scan arriving passengers and identify RAW [Indian Research and Analysis Wing] agents.”

And what does this “number one espionage operative” get in return? According to Hasnain, “His home is a palatial house spread over 6,000 square yards, boasting a pool, tennis courts, snooker room and a private, hi-tech gym. He wears designer clothes, drives top-of-the-line Mercedes and luxurious four-wheel drives, sports a half-a-million rupee Patek Phillipe wristwatch, and showers money on starlets and prostitutes.”

Pakistan’s shadowy military intelligence bureau, with organizational and operational linkages to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, the CIA and Britain’s MI6 has long been suspected of funding planetary-wide terrorist operations and nuclear smuggling in part, through “black money” derived from the drugs trade and other rackets. Despite this sordid history, the ISI and their organized crime-linked assets have long been viewed by Washington as allies in America’s so-called “war on terror.”

While American “counterterrorism officials” are now calling for the heads of Ibrahim, his associate Tiger Memon and former ISI Director, retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, described by the usual unnamed sources as–what else!–”rogue elements,” the United States and their NATO partners have made liberal use of these jokers in a score of destabilization ops that span continents.

Indeed, after the Afghanistan operation during the 1980s, the CIA and ISI worked together in a score of global hot spots. From Bosnia to Chechnya and beyond, wherever the dirty work needed doing, a wide pool of disposable intelligence assets under cover of “Islamic fundamentalism” were ready, willing an able to fill the breech.

It should be noted that characters such as Dawood Ibrahim and others of his ilk have as much in common with Islam as former New York crime boss, the late, though unlamented, John Gotti did with Christianity.

Destabilization and Covert Ops in South Asia

Before his execution at the hands of the Taliban, Najibullah, Afghanistan’s last socialist president told an American reporter:

We have a common task–Afghanistan, the USA and the civilised world–to launch a joint struggle against fundamentalism. If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many years. Afghanistan will turn into a centre of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a centre for terrorism. (Michael Griffin, Reaping the Whirlwind: Afghanistan, Al Qa’ida and the Holy War, London: Pluto Press, 2003, p. 4)

Little did the former president know, this was precisely the fate chosen for his country by the ISI and their American partners in crime over at Langley.

Though now on the outs with Washington, Hamid Gul was a staunch U.S. ally during the 1980s anti-Soviet jihad when the CIA made liberal use of billions of taxpayer dollars to fund the so-called mujahedin or “holy warriors” in a successful bid to bring down Kabul’s socialist government.

During the war, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence assets linked to organized crime gangs and various smuggling rackets quickly learned the value of Afghanistan’s number one cash crop, poppy. By the time the first phase of the war ended in 1989 with the withdrawal of Soviet combat troops, heroin production had morphed into a multibillion dollar industry along Asia’s Golden Crescent, one that provided a limitless source of black funds–and hardened combat veterans–to enterprising intelligence agencies.

Occupying a prominent place in the spider’s web, the D-Company certainly fit the bill. India’s 1990s economic “reforms” bit hard into Ibrahim’s former “cash crop”–gold smuggling. As the globalized market, rather than bureaucratic Indian regulations gobbled-up D-Company profits, Ibrahim’s gang turned to another profitable source of income: the global drugs trade. As investigative journalist Misha Glenny points out, Ibrahim,

took the obvious plunge and started trafficking in drugs, chiefly in heroin bound for the European market and mandrax for South Africa. And in Dawood’s part of the world, if you want to guarantee the success of a narcotics business, there is only one organization you need to cozy up to–the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Pakistan’s secret service. (McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, p. 135)

Ibrahim followed in the footsteps of a long line of CIA-ISI “best friends forever.” As Alfred W. McCoy documented in his landmark study, The Politics of Heroin, another darling of dodgy intelligence agencies, the pathological killer Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who made his mark in the 1970s by throwing acid into the faces of Afghan university women, became the chief beneficiary of CIA largesse. McCoy writes,

…over the next decade, [the CIA] gave more than half its covert aid to Hekmatyar’s guerrillas. It was, as the U.S. Congress would find a decade later, a dismal decision. Unlike the later resistance leaders who commanded strong popular followings inside Afghanistan, Hekmatyar led a guerrilla force that was a creature of the Pakistan military. After the CIA built his Hezbi-i Islami into the largest guerrilla force, Hekmatyar would prove himself brutal and corrupt. Not only did he command the largest guerrilla army, but Hekmatyar would use it–with the full support of ISI and the tacit tolerance of the CIA–to become Afghanistan’s leading drug lord. (The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1991, pp. 449-450)

It would be a travesty however, to claim that Pakistan alone was responsible for launching Ibrahim along the path of international terrorism. India’s own neofascist movement, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers Organization–RSS), aligned with the Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are intent on constructing a “pure” Hindu state purged of “alien” Muslims. As Indian socialist analysts point out,

It is no coincidence that the flourishing of fascism has accompanied the establishment of the neoliberal regime at the centre. The India to which neoliberalism has given birth, with one-fifth engaged in consumer excess as never before and four-fifths in deep misery, can only with difficulty persist alongside the maintenance of civil rights, democracy and periodic elections. If the fundamental social question, imperialist capitalism vs. socialism, were ever to be put at the centre of things, the continued existence of the landlord-big business regime that has ruled since independence would be in danger, and a truly explosive situation result. (”The Christian Pogrom in Orissa and the Growing Threat of Hindutva Fascism,” Analytical Monthly Review, February 22, 2008)

This was tragically driven-home with a vengeance in the early 1990s. Indeed, the rise of Indian fascism coincides precisely with the rise of neoliberal globalization. As “market reforms” plunged tens of millions into abject poverty, the ruling elite cast about for scapegoats and, like European Jews in prewar Germany, the Muslim community became targets of religious intolerance and communalist fanaticism.

In 1992, during a 150,000 strong demonstration organized by Indian fascists, rampaging gangs destroyed the Babri Mosque in the city of Ayodhya. In the rioting that followed in a score of cities some 2,000 largely Muslim Indian citizens were murdered by Hindu supremacist mobs. Ibrahim, though nominally a Muslim, was greatly angered by the Mumbai pogrom and vowed revenge. It wasn’t long in coming.

On March 12, 1993, a series of explosions wracked Mumbai in coordinated attacks believed to have been organized by the D-Company working in tandem with ISI who, like their nominal enemies in New Delhi, had their own communalist agenda. The largest blast occurred at the Mumbai Stock Exchange when a half-ton of military grade RDX was detonated in the underground parking garage and killed more than 50 people. By the time the smoke cleared, nearly 300 people lay dead and hundreds more wounded.

According to a 2002 report in India Abroad, Ibrahim organized the blasts “under pressure from the Inter-Services Intelligence of Pakistan.”

The ISI, which controlled the shipping routes from the Gulf to India’s west coast, demanded that the mafia transport weapons and explosives into India in return for the use of Pakistani waters, the sources said quoting official information.

The Mumbai underworld’s financial interests were under pressure as gold prices had crashed and the smuggling routes between the Gulf nations and the western coast of India had come under ISI control. (”ISI pressured Dawood to carry out Mumbai blasts,” India Abroad, December 22, 2002)

It wouldn’t be the first time nor the last that the dapper Mafia don would do ISI’s bidding.

ISI: the Enforcement Arm of Pakistan’s “Military Inc.”

Hamid Gul’s history as a beneficiary of state largesse in the form of plum contracts and other dodgy schemes that benefitted his family goes back decades. Nor is his hostility to civilian rule. As Pakistani scholar and investigative journalist Ayesha Siddiqa writes, Gul’s maneuvering against Benazir Bhutto’s first government, led to her ouster in 1990 through a “soft coup” engineered by the general and other top army officials.

Benazir Bhutto…replaced the head of the ISI, Lt. General Hameed Gul, with a general of her choice, Major-General Shamsul Rehman Kallu. This did not make her popular with the army, and hence the organization retaliated. Reportedly, the higher echelons of the army, who were extremely unhappy with her attempts to curb their power by interfering in internal matters, used the ISI to remove her from power. The army chief, General Aslam Beg, and the head of the ISI, Lt. General Asad Durrani, obtained a slush fund of approximately Rs 60 million (US$1.03 million) from a private bank, and used to execute the plan for Bhutto’s removal. The money was given to the ISI to destabilize the civilian government. (Military, Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy, Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, 2007, p. 91)

And what “private bank” pray tell, did the coup plotters reach out to in order to remove Bhutto from power? Why none other than Agha Hasan Abedi’s Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of course! BCCI, a corrupt financial institution that stole billions from their depositors was a long time “friend” of both ISI and CIA in their dirty dealings–from drug money laundering to arms trafficking–that spanned continents, from the covert war in Afghanistan to the Iran-Contra affair.

Days after the 2007 Karachi bombings that greeted her return to Pakistan, and just two months before her assassination in Rawalpindi, Benazir Bhutto accused Gul and Intelligence Bureau (IB) Chief Ijaz Shah, among others, as the masterminds behind the savage attacks that left more than 140 people dead and 450 injured. After her assassination, although al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid claimed responsibility for her murder, reportedly on orders from al-Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bhutto’s followers believe the plans for her assassination came from senior ISI officials formerly in the retinue of America’s “friend,” the dictator General Zia ul-Haq.

Since his 1989 “retirement” from ISI, Gul has been an outspoken proponent of utilizing proxies such as LET as witting or unwitting assets in Pakistan’s conflict with India over Kashmir–and as a supporter of the Taliban and another “former” group of U.S. intelligence assets, al-Qaeda. According to The Washington Post,

Gul, 71, has acknowledged that he once was a member of a group of retired ISI officers, Pakistani scientists and others that was suspected by the United States of giving material support to the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Gul said the organization, Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, was formed by a group of Pakistani businessmen to aid war-ravaged industries in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Treasury Department declared Ummah Tameer-e-Nau a terrorist group after a search of the group’s offices in the Afghan capital, Kabul, unearthed documents referencing plans to kidnap a U.S. diplomat and outlining basic physics related to nuclear weapons. (Candace Rondeaux, “Former Pakistani Official Denies Links to Lashkar,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2008, A12)

But what Gul (and The Washington Post) will not, cannot, reveal is that Ummah Tameer-e-Nau was also intimately connected–as was Dawood Ibrahim’s D-Company–to the illicit nuclear smuggling ring of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan. Allegedly run to ground after overwhelming evidence surfaced linking Khan and Pakistan’s military government to the underground trade in nuclear technology and know-how, nuclear smuggling is the proverbial third rail of the Pakistani–and American–defense establishments.

Operating for decades with a wink and a nod from Washington and London, Khan was quietly released from house arrest in April according to a report by the McClatchy Washington Bureau. This despite the fact that international investigators found electronic blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon on computers belonging to Khan’s smuggling network. According to The New York Times,

the latest design found on Khan network computers in Switzerland, Bangkok and several other cities around the world is half the size and twice the power of the Chinese weapon, with far more modern electronics, the investigators say. The design is in electronic form, they said, making it easy to copy–and they have no idea how many copies of it are now in circulation. (David E. Sanger, “Nuclear Ring Reportedly Had Advanced Weapon Design,” The New York Times, June 15, 2008)

This closely tracks allegations made by whistleblower Sibel Edmonds earlier this year to The Sunday Times that a U.S. government official “warned a Turkish member of the [Khan] network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause celebre in the US.”

Gul however, has a different take on Washington’s newly-minted animus towards him and told the press on Monday, “I was quite a darling of theirs at the time. I don’t know what this is about. It looks like they have a habit of betraying their friends.”

While true as far it goes, Gul’s disingenuousness is a cynical façade meant to conceal ISI’s murderous policies. In an obvious appeal to dubious Western constituencies Gul declared, “I simply fail to understand what all the hullabaloo is about. It’s simply because I speak loudly about the fact that 9/11 was a bloody hoax,” he told the Post. “It was an inside job.”

Mumbai: “Round Up the Usual Suspects!”

Though there is convincing evidence linking the D-Company to the Mumbai attacks, each new “revelation” by Indian and American authorities tend to erase Ibrahim from the picture. This subtle though noticeable reframing of the equation follows a predictable and well-known pattern. Independent press outlets such as Asia Times Online however, apparently haven’t gotten the memo. According to investigative journalist Raja Murthy:

The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists set sail from Karachi to Mumbai in the ship MV Alpha, allegedly an Ibrahim-owned vessel. After being warned of Indian navy patrols along the Indian coast, the LET terrorists hijacked an Indian fishing trawler, Kuber, and murdered its crew except for the navigator, Amarsinh Solanki.

The terrorists slit Solanki’s throat five nautical miles off the Indian coast–the Indian Navy found his body aboard the abandoned trawler with his hands tied behind his back. Later, they linked up with an Ibrahim gang member in Mumbai who provided them motorized inflatable rubber dinghies in which they landed ashore after 9pm on November 26. Within 30 minutes, they struck pre-determined targets in South Mumbai starting with the Leopold Cafe in Colaba. (”India Wants its ‘Osama’ Back,” Asia Times Online, December 9, 2008)

These attacks however, didn’t come out of the blue. According to numerous reports, Mumbai police were given “solid information” from India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) that Mumbai was on a list of cities to be targeted by terrorists. India Abroad reports that

The first alert was sounded in February 2008 following the interrogation of a terrorist arrested in connection with the fidayeen (suicide) attack at the Central Reserve Police Force camp at Rampur, Uttar Pradesh. During the interrogation, the arrested terrorist had confessed that the Lashkar-e-Tayiba had planned on attacking Mumbai. He had specifically mentioned the Taj Mahal hotel during his interrogation.

Then came the various intercepts by both the IB and RAW, which both agencies claim had passed on to the Mumbai police. The first intercept of a satellite phone conversation was three months before the Mumbai attack. The conversation suggested that the next attack would be a hotel at Mumbai. The conversation also suggested that it would be better to take the sea route as it was safer. The final intercept was made on November 18, which was eight days before the attack. (Vicky Nanjappa, “Time & again, Mumbai cops had been warned: IB,” India Abroad, December 4, 2008)

This report was echoed by The New York Times, which claimed,

Two senior American officials said Tuesday that the United States had warned India in mid-October of possible terrorist attacks against “touristy areas frequented by Westerners” in Mumbai, but that the information was not specific. Nonetheless, the officials said, the warning echoed other general alerts this year by India’s intelligence agency, raising questions about the adequacy of India’s counterterrorism measures. (Eric Schmitt, Somini Sengupta and Jane Perlez, “U.S. and India See Link to Militants in Pakistan, The New York Times, December 3, 2008)

Despite these suspicions, Indian authorities insist that the terrorists had no “local support” in carrying out the attacks. According to a report in the Economic Times however, “the don is ensconced safely in his plush bungalow in Karachi. Sources in security agencies told TOI [Times of India] on Wednesday that it is business as usual for Dawood. … Mohammed Ali, who is the king of the docks and a key person of the Dawood gang, is continuing his operations with impunity. Even after the November 26 terror attacks his smuggling racket remains unchecked.”

And Express India reported November 29 that “Ajmal Amin, the only militant arrested during the operation, told interrogators that the dozen ultras who sailed from Karachi had come to Sasool dock from where they were taken first to Cuff Parade and later to Gateway of India in boats arranged by a front man of Dawood, who runs several custom clearing houses in Mumbai, the sources claimed.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported December 9, that the head of Russia’s federal anti-narcotics agency, Viktor Ivanov, said that Ibrahim had helped the gunmen. “The information that has been received indicates that the well-known drug trafficker Dawood Ibrahim provided his logistics network for the preparation and implementation of the attacks.”

But Ibrahim wasn’t always the bête noire of U.S. intelligence agencies. According to Yoichi Shimatsu, a former editor of The Japan Times, during the CIA’s Afghan campaign of the 1980s, Ibrahim “personally assisted” U.S. deep cover operations by diverting money from U.S.-owned gambling casinos operating in Kathmandu, Nepal. Shimatsu, commenting on India’s demand for Ibrahim’s extradition for his role in the Mumbai attacks wrote,

Washington and London both agreed with India’s legal claim and removed the longstanding “official protection” accorded for his past services to Western intelligence agencies. U.S. diplomats, however, could never allow Dawood’s return. He simply knows too much about America’s darker secrets in South Asia and the Gulf, disclosure of which could scuttle U.S.-India relations. Dawood was whisked away in late June to a safe house in Quetta, near the tribal area of Waziristan, and then he disappeared, probably back to the Middle East. (”Did a Criminal Mastermind Stage the Mumbai Nightmare?,” AlterNet, November 28, 2008)

But as time passes both India and the United States are downplaying Ibrahim’s role while elevating that of alleged LET commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, reportedly captured by Pakistani authorities during a raid on a training camp and now in custody. Allegations of an international whitewash of the affair are now being leveled by journalists. Jeffrey R. Hammond comments, “The recent promotion of Lakhvi to ‘mastermind’ of the attacks while Ibrahim’s name disappears from media reports would seem to lend credence to Shimatsu’s assertion.”

On Friday, according to a New York Times report, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of LET, was detained in Lahore on Thursday by “Pakistani authorities.”

Despite the appearance of Pakistani resolve, the detention of Mr. Saeed was orchestrated by the government in a way to minimize what many here expect to be an angry reaction from the public, and from a broad spectrum of Islamic militant groups sympathetic to Lashkar-e-Taiba. (Jane Perlez and Salman Masood, “Pakistan Detains Founder of Group Suspected in Mumbai Attacks,” The New York Times, December 11, 2008)

Saeed, briefly detained in 2002 after an earlier “crackdown” on militant outfits, became the leader of the Islamic charity, Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which is a recruiting arm for the LET.

Meanwhile, according to the Times, “There was still uncertainty on Thursday about whether Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Muhammad, another militant group, had been placed under house arrest, and whether the Lashkar commander suspected of running the Mumbai operation, Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, had been arrested.”

So much for arresting Mumbai’s alleged “masterminds.” Sounds more like Captain Renaud’s quip in Casablanca: “Round up the usual suspects!”

Indeed, a deal earlier this year to have Pakistan hand Ibrahim over to Indian authorities was scotched by the CIA. The Agency, fearful that too many dirty little secrets would come to light, including the criminal activities of high-level CIA personnel, nixed the proposal. According to this reading, the Mumbai attacks were a backlash for the proposed double-cross of Ibrahim and that any future arrangements along these lines would have serious consequences.

Why would India seek to downgrade Ibrahim’s role? Hammond comments,

But while Lakhvi, Muzammil, and Hafiz Saeed have continued to be named in connection with last month’s attacks in Mumbai, the name of Dawood Ibrahim seems to be either disappearing altogether or his originally designated role as the accused mastermind of the attacks being credited now instead to Lakhvi in media accounts.

Whether this is a deliberate effort to downplay Ibrahim’s role in the attacks so as not to have to force Pakistan to turn him over because of embarrassing revelations pertaining to the CIA’s involvement with known terrorists and drug traffickers that development could possibly produce isn’t certain. But what is certain is that the CIA has had a long history of involvement with such characters and that the US has a track record of attempting to keep information about the nature of such involvement in the dark or to cover it up once it reaches the light of public scrutiny. (Jeffrey R. Hammond, “Role of Alleged CIA Asset in Mumbai Attacks Being Downplayed,” Foreign Policy Journal, December 10, 2008)

And so it goes, on and on… Meanwhile, business as usual will continue and the bodies pile up. Which just goes to show, as investigative journalist Daniel Hopsicker has reminded us on more than one occasion: “Being connected means never having to say your sorry.”

“Afghanistan has produced so much opium in recent years,” the Times reported Thursday, “that the Taliban are cutting poppy cultivation and stockpiling raw opium in an effort to support prices and preserve a major source of financing for the insurgency, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations drug office, says.”

Mr. Costa’s remarks came last week as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) prepared to release its Afghan Opium Survey 2008 report, the executive summary of which has already been available for some time. The now released report shows that poppy cultivation was reduced in much of Afghanistan and is even more highly concentrated in the south, with Helmand province being by far the biggest producer.

The Times states that the Taliban “have for several years ‘systematically encouraged’ opium cultivation as a way to finance their insurgency, the study said.” It notes that the UNODC has estimated that “the insurgents made as much as $300 million from the opium trade” last year.

“But after three years of bumper crops, including this one,” the Times continues, “the Taliban have succeeded almost too well, producing opium in amounts far in excess of world demand.”

Despite production far exceeding global demand, prices for the drug have not fallen as much as might be expected based solely on the supply and demand principle of the market. One explanation that has been put forward is that opium is being stockpiled.

According to the Times’ summary of Mr. Costa’s remarks, “The fact that prices had not collapsed already, he said, was evidence that the Taliban, drug lords and even some farmers have stockpiled the opium, more and more of which is also being processed in Afghanistan. ‘Insurgents have been holding significant amounts of opium,’ Mr. Costa said.”

In addition, “This year, the Taliban are taking a ‘passive stance’ toward cultivation, apparently putting less pressure on Afghan farmers to plant opium poppy. ‘They have called a moratorium of sorts as a way of keeping the stocks stable and supporting the price,’ Mr. Costa said.”

The Times thus acknowledges the role of non-Taliban actors, the “drug lords and even some farmers”, but nevertheless downplays their role and characterizes the cultivation of poppies and production of opium as being predominantly controlled by the Taliban. But this is not an accurate representation of the facts on the ground, as the findings of the UNODC report itself makes clear.

While the Times suggests the amount of opium produced is under the direct influence of the Taliban, in fact the decision to cultivate or not is made by individual farmers.

While the Times suggests the Taliban have “systematically encouraged”, citing the UNODC study, those words in fact do not appear in the report. Nor does it make any similar claim.

As part of the survey, the UNODC asked farmers their reasons for growing or not growing the crop. Most farmers who have never chosen to cultivate poppies cited as their reasons that it was against Islam and otherwise illegal. Of those who did cultivate poppies this year, 92 percent cited poverty alleviation as the driving motivation. Importantly, of those who had grown in the past, but stopped, the government ban was cited as the predominate reason for doing so. The second most common answer was that the choice was based on decisions of the shura and elders.

The two main reasons given in the report for the reduction in the amount of land used for opium cultivation are “successful counter-narcotics efforts in the northern and eastern provinces of Afghanistan” and “unfavourable weather conditions that caused extreme drought and crop failures in some provinces”, mostly in northern Afghanistan, where the Taliban have little or no presence.

Still other factors were the reduction in farm-gate prices for opium, which, coupled with the drought in the north, led farmers to switch to alternative crops. One such alternative crop has increasingly become cannabis. “Farmers growing cannabis,” the UNODC report notes, “may earn the same net income per hectare as farmers who grow opium, or even more, because cultivating cannabis is less labour intensive than opium.”

Furthermore, poppies grown in the south have a higher opium yield than in the north, so another factor in the trend seen this year is simply the result of market conditions. With supply far exceeding demand, driving down farm-gate prices, coupled with drought and lucrative, lower-labor alternatives, it is only natural, whatever other factors are at work, that the cultivation has lessened in the north and east and increased in the south, where the crop produces a higher yield.

Instructively, while the amount of land used to cultivate opium decreased in 2008 by 19 percent, the estimated opium production was still only down 6 percent from last year due to the higher overall yield.

Contrary to what the New York Times suggests, the UNODC report gives no indication that the reason cultivation was cut back had anything whatsoever to do with any kind of direction or control over the crop by the Taliban.

The implications that the Taliban group itself grows the crop and is involved in trafficking are also misleading. According to the UNODC, the Taliban’s profits from the trade come principally from ushr, a 10 percent tax on all agricultural crops, and from offering protection for traffickers involved in moving the opium.

David Mansfield is an independent consultant who has advised governments and organizations such as the World Bank on policy and issues relating to the Afghan opium trade. Mr. Mansfield told Foreign Policy Journal, “Ushr is charged on all agricultural produce and traditionally goes to the mullah for his services to the community. There are reports that this is being absorbed by ‘the Taliban’ — which is not a monolith.” He added that another situation which occurs is half the tax going to the mullah and the other 5 percent to the Taliban.

Thomas Pietschmann, a research officer with the UNODC Statistics and Surveys Section who is credited in the 2008 report, told the Journal that an estimated $50-70 million is made by warlords and Taliban from the farmers. An additional $200-400 million is made from the traffickers. But, he explained, “We do not have any good idea of how this income is divided up between warlords and Taliban.”

Mr. Pietschmann also confirmed that, while they did profit from ushr and from offering security, “We also have not seen strong indications of much direct exporting of opiates by the Taliban.”

In commentary attached to the UNODC report, Mr. Costa asks, “Who collects this money? Local strong men. In other words, by year end, war-lords, drug-lords and insurgents will have extracted almost half a billion dollars of tax revenue from drug farming, production and trafficking.”

Notably, Mr. Costa does not answer his question with “the Taliban”, but includes a much broader range of participants who profit from the trade that includes, but is in no way limited to, the Taliban.

When Mr. Costa told reporters, “They have called a moratorium of sorts as a way of keeping the stocks stable and supporting the price”, the Times reported that “They” meant “the Taliban”. But it seems more probable the UNODC Executive Director intended his use of the pronoun to include other groups as well. In fact, the word “Taliban” does not appear in the report outside of Mr. Costa’s comments. The report refers instead more broadly to “anti-government elements” or AGEs.

The Times actually underreports the total estimated amount made by such elements as being $300 million, as opposed to nearly $500 million. But it attributes these profits to “the insurgents” — which it uses nearly synonymously with “the Taliban” — rather than differentiating between warlords, drug lords, and other insurgent groups besides the Taliban. As Mr. Pietschmann told the Journal, the UNODC did not estimate how much of that half million dollars is specifically going to the Taliban.

There are a number of other important facts to consider that the Times does not share with its readers. The total export value of opium and its derivatives (morphine and heroin) this year was estimated by the UNODC to be $3.4 billion. Therefore a logical corollary of the Times’ own account is that the majority of profits from the opium trade are going to non-insurgents.

It should be noted that this conclusion, too, may be inaccurate, as there are simply too many unknowns. But what is clear is that the Taliban, while profiting from the opium trade, do not control it.

The Times misleads on other counts, as well. The UNODC does suggest that opium is being stockpiled as one possible explanation for why costs haven’t dropped in direct correlation with the vast over-supply. Mr. Costa has said that “Lack of price response in the opium market can only be the result of stock build-ups, and all evidence points to the Taliban.” But Mr. Costa himself appears to be politicizing the report’s actual findings with this remark. The market price of opium against the estimated supply does suggest stocks are being withheld, and the Taliban does profit from the trade. But there appears to be only this circumstantial evidence that the Taliban is responsible for the theoretical stockpiling; and even if we assume that stockpiling is indeed taking place, there are also non-Taliban warlords and drug lords who may be responsible.

Mr. Pietschmann, in his comments to the Journal, presented the notion of stockpiling by Taliban as merely a possibility. While there aren’t strong indications of direct exporting by the Taliban, “They may, however, hold some of the stocks in Afghanistan and Pakistan and/or ‘protect’ those holding the stocks as well as ‘protect’ the laboratories and some of the convoys.”

Indeed, Mr. Costa’s own commentary in the UNODC report contains numerous caveats, such as “If the Taliban are holding major drug stockpiles…” (emphasis added), suggesting this is only a possibility, not a certainty.

This is a point Mr. Mansfield emphasized. With regard to the suggestion that opium is being stockpiled, he said, “This assumption is based on an estimate of global demand of 4,000 metric tons, but is that estimate accurate? Does it adequately reflect use in what are thought to be growing consumer markets such as China and India? It is of course also based on an assessment of Afghan yields, but how accurate are these? The US would seem to systematically estimate lower yields compared with UNODC, to the equivalent of around 2000 metric tons of opium this year. Is some of the ‘surplus’ which UNODC suggests is stockpiled actually a problem of estimates of supply and demand? How much?”

He confirmed that withholding of opium takes place and that he has come across “some wealthier farmers who keep opium and speculate on whether the price will increase” but nevertheless characterized the notion of massive stockpiling to the amounts of “thousands of tons”, as suggested by the UNODC, as being an “assumption”.

By overemphasizing the role of the Taliban, the Times serves to obfuscate the apparent role of local leaders and, more importantly, government and law enforcement officials in the drug trade.

Mr. Mansfield acknowledged, with regard to corruption within the Afghan government and police force, that “some raise the question as to who makes more money from the opium economy — AGE or corrupt government officials.”

Mr. Pietschmann also acknowledged that “Corruption is indeed a problem and there are indications that it may go to rather high levels.” He added, “It is, however, difficult to estimate to what extent the trade is controlled by major players within the government. We do not have any indications that the bulk is being controlled by some of these individuals. There seems to be more of a problem with parliament where drug lords have strong influence over individuals and/or are even personally involved.

“A UNODC study done in 2006 concluded that there may be 35 major criminal groups in Afghanistan, of which 15 are located in southern Afghanistan (Helmand/Kandahar) controlling much of the business. None of them had its criminal head in government. But they seem to influence politics, including who gets the job as police chief at the regional level.”

And while much of the U.S.-led effort to combat the trade in Afghanistan has involved eradication of poppy fields, most experts seem to concur, including in reports from both the UNODC and the World Bank, that at best eradication has had only very limited success and is at worst counterproductive because it targets the farmers, most of whom grow the crop only in an effort to alleviate poverty, rather than the big players who control the actual trade in the drug.

Mr. Pietschmann observed, “Our Executive Director has repeatedly made the point that there is a need to target corruption as well as the drug markets, drug convoys and the laboratories, and not the farmers.”

And yet U.S. policy on counter-narcotics in Afghanistan seems to focus largely, if not predominantly, upon eradication. This may actually help increase the profit margin of the major players, and may actually be used by warlords and drug lords with strong influence in the government either at the state or local level to target competitors in the trade.

A research policy paper for the World Bank by William A. Byrd, for instance, notes that eradication helps drive up the “risk premium”, thereby driving up farm-gate prices and helping to cause “greater extortion of ‘protection money’ from farmers by various authorities.”

The World Bank report also noted “where sharp reductions in cultivation were achieved, physical eradication accounted for only a very small proportion of the decrease in cultivated area.”

It also states that “most of the limited physical eradication of poppy crops that has occurred has been under the leadership of provincial Governors. There are serious concerns however that due to the close ties between many local officials and drug interests, Governor-led eradication is especially vulnerable to corruption in implementation.”

The paper adds that “such corruption tends to result in eradication disproportionately affecting the poor, who lack political connections or resources to pay bribes to avoid eradication.” Moreover, “eradication can exacerbate poverty” among poor farmers and their families, whom are mostly targeted.

Similarly, a UNODC Assessment of Organized Crime in Central Asia noted that “The leaders themselves usually belong to the leading clans and occupy positions of high status in a family. In addition, the leaders are usually well connected to the apparatus of government power, whether in the political leadership or local administration.”

The assessment also notes that while there is often cooperation amongst criminal groups or organizations, there is also a great deal of competition, and that “What is perhaps most interesting here is the degree to which state actors are often involved. This can be illustrated through examining government crackdowns on competing clans. It is highly probable that at least some of the crackdowns on organized crime by government and law-enforcement agencies are carefully targeted against rival clans, while criminal organizations that are linked to the dominant clan obtain ‘preferential impunity’ and are able to continue to accumulate wealth from their criminal activities.”

And there’s an even bigger picture to consider with regard to the Afghan opium trade. The UNODC report estimates farm-gate prices and the export value of the opium, and also notes that rates of seizure of the drug indicate that it is going to Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey. Some of this opium is “exported by sea or by air,” Mr. Pietschmann told the Journal. “Direct exports from Pakistan go to the UK. The UK estimates that 20-25% comes directly from Pakistan and 75% comes via the Balkan routes and the Netherlands into the UK.”

But, he said, from Afghanistan, “Most of these opiates then go to Iran,” which he confirmed “is a major transit country.” He added, “Most is then trafficked from Iran to Turkey.”

Once the opium has left Afghanistan its cost increases exponentially, which is where the real profits are made. For example a Development Research Group report for the World Bank by Peter Reuter noted that “the principal costs … are associated with distribution rather than production.” In 2000, “A pure kilogram of heroin produced in Afghanistan for less than $1,000, was exported from Turkey for $10,000, and by the time it reached consumers in Western Europe it was priced at $175,000.”

The World Bank report noted that “The cost of production, as opposed to distribution, is a trivial share of the final price.”

Mr. Pietschmann made a similar observation in response to inquiries. “We have not as yet done the global calculations for 2008,” he replied, “but it is quite clear that the overwhelming profits out of opiates produced in Afghanistan are made outside Afghanistan,” such as “in the transit countries to Europe and even more so, within Europe.”

The role of the Taliban in the opium trade is often greatly exaggerated by the U.S. corporate media. But even if one was to accept accounts like those the New York Times gives of the Taliban’s role, it nevertheless still remains self-evident that the Taliban’s cut is “trivial” if one considers the bigger picture.

That is not to say the profits gained by the Taliban and other insurgent groups are not significant. As Mr. Costa notes in the UNODC report, given an estimate of nearly $500 million going to insurgents, it is not surprising that “the insurgents’ war machine has proven so resilient”.

While acknowledging that “the Taliban will only receive a rather small fraction of the overall Afghan income from the opiate trade”, Mr. Pietschmann also emphasized, “But even the ‘little money’ of let’s say US$150-200 million is a lot for financing insurgency activities. Our information is that Taliban fighters earn several times more than people in the Afghan army.”

The question still remains of who is really responsible for the lion’s share of the highly profitable Afghan opium trade. Mr. Pietschmann suggested a role of Kurdish groups in trafficking the drug from Iran into Turkey.

In Turkey, some have suggested the existence of a shadow government, or what is termed the “deep state”, that really controls things behind the scenes. Even a former president and seven-time prime minister of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel, has said, “It is fundamental principle that there is one state. In our country there are two.” He added, “There is one deep state and one other state. The state that should be real is the spare one, the one that should be spare is the real one.”

Writing in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, John Gorvett, a free-lanced journalist based in Istanbul, said: “Defining the ‘deep state’ is not so easy, however. Some argue that it is a hangover from the Cold War, when Western powers sought to establish a network of armed groups that would stay behind in countries that might have fallen to the Soviet bloc. While these groups were then abolished in most countries when the Soviet Union collapsed, the theory is that in Turkey this never happened. Instead, the group continues to operate, an unofficial underground army tied to organized crime and a bevy of corrupt politicians, police and bureaucrats.”

In one case, a heroin trafficker on Interpol’s wanted list named Abdullah Catli died in a car accident in 1996 near the town of Susurluk and was found carrying a diplomatic passport signed by the Interior Minister of Turkey. Writing in Druglink Magazine in 2006, journalist and television producer Adrian Gatton commented, “The Susurluk Incident became Turkey’s Watergate, exposing the deep links between the Turkish state, terrorists and drug traffickers. It revealed what Turks call the Gizli Devlet, or Deep State — the politicians, military officers and intelligence officials who worked with drug bosses to move drugs from Afghanistan into Europe.”

That corruption extends to the United States, according to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. According to Ms. Edmonds, U.S. officials were involved in helping foreign intelligence agents acquire sensitive nuclear secrets. She also says she was approached by a mole within the FBI who attempted to recruit her. The woman who approached her was a member of the American Turkish Council, which was the target of an FBI investigation because it was suspected of being involved in, among other things, drug trafficking. When she went to her superiors with concerns over possible misconduct and espionage within the FBI, she was fired. The Department of Justice then gagged her under the “state secrets privilege”.

Ms. Edmonds later formed the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, which includes as a member Daniel Ellsberg, the former special assistant to the Secretary of Defense who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Ellsberg has said, with regard to Ms. Edmonds, “Al Qaeda, she’s been saying to congress, … is financed 95% by drug money — drug traffic to which the US government shows a blind eye, has been ignoring, because it very heavily involves allies and assets of ours — such as Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan — all the ‘Stans — in a drug traffic where the opium originates in Afghanistan, is processed in Turkey, and delivered to Europe where it furnishes 96% of Europe’s heroin”.

If such allegations are correct — and Ms. Edmonds is not alone in making them — then it might perhaps explain why the U.S. government is so keen on solely blaming the Taliban for the production of opium in Afghanistan and the lucrative drug trade.

And, as the reporting during the run-up to the Iraq war amply demonstrated, the U.S. mainstream media — not the least of which includes the New York Times — is only too willing to parrot government propaganda while failing to question the official line or critically examine key issues.

Couldn’t think anything but bad thoughts Sunday when I heard it in the other room: “Santa Claus is Coming To Town.” Clay-mation or stop-action-mation or however they made those cool Christmas specials featuring lights and snow and joyous elfin jesters back in the day.

This was the original, the story of how it all began, the story of the Revolution in Somberville and the War Against Toys.

Kris a subversive young man with extremely bright red hair, is raised in the woods by rebel elves called “Kringles.” Kringles are artisans, craftsmen, who reject the authoritarian regime of nearby City of Somberville. They and their leader, a woman known as “Tanta,” teach Kris readin’ writin’ rithmetic’ and how to make toys.

And get this: Kris makes friends with animals in the woods, develops this noble savage/Rousseau/Sioux medicine man thing with squirrels, birds, rabbits, reindeer and a little penguin who looks remarkably like the universal Linux logo (is this where Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman got the idea?) They teach him to run, jump, think and LAUGH like an animal. He grows up and sets out to distribute the Kringles’ toys because – because the Kringles want children to enjoy them.

So the Man in the Red Suit saunters into Somberville, a dark ghetto full of depressed, oppressed, repressed white people (well, not EXACTLY white: looks like a shtetl out of a Shalom Aleichem story, real Fiddler On The Roof stuff) run by this mean old Nazi, the Burgher Meister Meister Burgher, who prohibits toys or fun of any kind. It’s A War Against Toys.

But Kringle manages to corrupt the children and their pretty, young, extremely red-haired school marm, Jessica, by getting ‘em all high on fun. He melts the icy heart of the Winter Warlock with the gift of a toy Choo-choo train. He even gets the Burgher Meister off with a psychedelic yo-yo until one of the Meister’s henchmen reminds him he’s breaking his own law, so The Man In The Red Suit splits and –

– commercial break. Grim reality, so called.

This woman says to me, “You’ve got a yeast infection.”

I say, “No way.”

She says, “Yeah you do, and you use greasy, gooey topical creams.”

“Bullshit.”

“You’ve got a yeast infection and you cover it with cream to hide the shame of your stanky cooter. Admit it. It’s okay.”

“NO!”

But there’s a way outta this mess, she tells me. I don’t need to rub this wretched, thick cream on my itchy labia if I just swallow this little pill. Don’t smear. Swallow.

“Wait a minute, Lady, what’s in that little pill?”

But poof she’s gone, and some old fart with a face like a scrotum tells me he can cure my hemorrhoids with – guess what? – a little pill.

“Hold on there, old-timer. What’s in that little pill?”

But back to the story:

Something obviously subversive about a guy (in red, no less) sneaking into a town full of oppressed repressed and depressed workers who work morning to night every damn day till the weekend during which they work on looking busy, and the Burgher Meister says so.

“You are a radical unt a non-conformist!” the Meister barks, to Kringle mit heavy Deutsche gutturals.

Musta been written by lefty Jews, this Christmas special, what with the dark-haired ghetto folk lorded over by a fat German autocrat, and red-haired, red-suited Kringle, like the slap-happy fool we wish Schindler had been, distributing colorful, hand-crafted artifacts created solely for the health and enjoyment of children — for free! Kringle actually shouts out joyously, “I love my job!” ARREST THAT MAN!

And the authorities sure try, but Kringle’s got a whole support network, including Jessica, the school-marm; the now kindly but impotent Winter Warlock (no more magic powers — what’re they saying here about wickedness and power I’m confused); the children; the animals and the Kringle elves who make the toys and actually ENJOY their work and were only sad because no one else could enjoy the fruits of their labor until Kris became their fence, their middle man, their bag man (literally) to distribute PRODUCT.

Of course he ends up in the slammer — how can he not, with that nasty burgher king and his goons always on his case? But he busts out by feeding the reindeer these magic seeds that make them fly (can we get in any MORE drug culture versus authority references here? I don’t know whether to refer to a Oliver Stone’s NIXON or Euripides’ THE BACCHAE).

And there’s all SORTS of subversive goings on: rebel kids on the circuit leaving their doors open (and getting caught); kids hanging stockings for Kris to stuff with toys at night (and getting caught); Kris climbing down the chimneys cause the doors have all been locked (and getting caught).

And every time THE MAN tries to crack down, the network of rebel thrill-seekers grows until Kris – who grows a Che Guevara beard and changes his name to “Claus” after a wanted poster names the clean-shaven Kris Kringle PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE – is welcome among fellow travelers and creatures of the woods like Che himself among the peasants.

Santa and Jessica marry outdoors amid trees decked out with sparkling trinkets galore. They exchange vows and gifts among their friends – animal, vegetable and mineral – before god, but they don’t say which god, and it’s implied by the ceremony we’re dealing with Dionysus or the Green Man or some polytheistic party god/goddess, not pissed off Yahweh or his Hippy Son (nice guy, but so damn serious – all those issues with Dad, I guess)

Cut to yet ANOTHER commercial:

“You’re depressed,” a somber but not-too-blue lady (might scare consumers if she looks too bummed) tells me.

“Not anymore, man. Santa Claus is COOL!”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Millions of Americans are depressed.”

“That’s cause they work too much, play too little, and have to deal with a farbisseneh like you! Beat it.”

So she goes on to tell me how I can stop being depressed by asking my doctor to prescribe me a dandy little pill.

“But what, I ask you, what IS IN THAT FUCKING PILL?”

Poof she’s gone and a guy comes on singing about how he’s so happy (must have taken a fistful of those pills: he’s wearing a tie and in the middle of an office-suite labyrinth of corpse-gray cubicles) cause he bought this PDA (personal digital annoyance) palm pilot thingy to help him organize his work and be not twice but thrice as productive – DOING WHAT? WHAT ARE YOU MAKING? TOYS? AT LEAST THE FUCKING ELVES CAME THROUGH WITH PRODUCT! – and he bought it on Ebay right before the digital gavel closed the bid. He beat the competition so he could get a good deal on this pain-in-the-ass gadget he plans to use to help his employer beat the competition. Gadzooks! Get away from me you freak, get off my screen before I turn zap yer ass with the remote -

–but back to Christmas. Santa and his posse realize Somberville’s just too hot with the TEA (Toy Enforcement Authority), so they start this free commune in the North Pole where they make toys all year round and Santa revs up his sleigh on Christmas eve and distributes hand-crafted playthings among the good children of the world. He has this “naughty and nice” clause – it’s why they call him “Claus” – but its only a formality. As long as you don’t pout and whine all the time and instead use your energy creatively to buck authority, you’re cool with him. You may not get a super-electronic “KILL TERROR” computer game like you wanted, cause that’s not his thing – Santa and the elves are into craftsmanship, the personal touch, everything handmade – but you sure as shit won’t get a lump of coal.

Finally the narrator – who’s Fred Astair by the way, Hollywood’s own Nijinsky tippy tap tap tapping his holiday rendition of the Rites of Spring – tells us that though Santa’s not an outlaw anymore, and the Burgher Meister and his crowd died away and were replaced by a more liberal administration (we’ll see how long THAT lasts), there are some folks who still hate Santa Claus, and damned if they didn’t cut to:

A HARASSED SALESCLERK in a department store getting yelled at, poked and prodded by adult CONSUMERS who want SERVICE, like, IMMEDIATELY

and THEN to

A CIGAR-CHOMPING EXECUTIVE in his depressing office through the window of which we see a horrible sooty filthy goddamn factory with smokestacks burping toxic smoke into the pure pink lungs of Christmas. And this guy, who’s obviously stacked (no pun), but miserable, says, “Who can think of Christmas in a world like THIS?”

I mean, who wrote the script for this baby, Herbert Marcuse?

Man what a lesson, what a show! I remembered the first time I saw “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” (goddamn!) thirty years ago. I was working on this wood-burning set my parents got me for Hanukah – of course – and it seemed so apropos, the craft I was working on and the craft of the elves, and even now, remembering, I could smell the sweet smoke rising from the wood when once again-

cut to a commercial for yet another little pill to stop my farts from making noise or god knows what, and yet another adult dancing — like a puppet, not a pagan — through the isles of some department store, Stuff-Fer-YOU, or whatever, and the stuff was a bunch of doohickeys with which to thrill your kids, if you can afford kids, and the batteries are not included and there’s no guarantee they won’t be obsolete two days outta the box and say, you look DEPRESSED, anxious, stressed – what you need is this little ol’ pill that’s GUARANTEED to burn that Holiday fever right outta yer Yiddisher Kupf…

Oh Youth! Oh Santa — get me outta town!

On October 13, communities participating in the indigenous protest blocked a portion of the Pan American Highway that connects the cities of Popayán and Santander de Quilichao, in the department of Cauca, in an act of civil disobedience meant to force the government to meet with them to discuss some of their demands. Instead of talks, what resulted was serious confrontations between special police units and the assembled communities.

These unfolding developments come just days after two other Nasa Indians — Nicolás Valencia Lemus and Celestino Rivera — were assassinated by unidentified gunmen early Sunday morning, a few hours before the start of the mobilization. Eyewitnesses say the assassins of Lemus and Rivera were members of the Aguilas Negras, or Black Eagles, one of the newly-formed paramilitary groups that have emerged throughout Colombia in recent months. Their killings bring the total number of indigenous activists murdered in the last three weeks throughout Colombia to 11.

The 39-year-old Lemus, the brother of two well-known Nasa activists, was driving his car on the road from the town of El Palo to the indigenous reserve of Toribio, in the mountainous region of northern Cauca. His wife and son accompanied him. According to eyewitnesses, Lemus was ordered to stop and get out of his car by two hooded gunmen, who proceeded to drill him with bullets in front of his family. The assassins, before leaving the site of the attack, wrote “Aguilas Negras” on the window of Valencia Lemus’ vehicle. Meanwhile, the current governor of Cauca, Guillermo Alberto Gonzalez, denies there are any new paramilitary groups operating in the department. Despite his denials, it appears that a “dirty war” against the indigenous and popular movement in Colombia is well underway, and it is emanating from many different sources.

On October 11, the Council of Chiefs of the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC) received a call from the office of Cauca’s governor, informing them of intelligence reports that provide evidence that the Teófilo Forero column of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) intended to assassinate the well-known indigenous leader and member of the CRIC’s Council of Chiefs, Feliciano Valencia. On Friday, the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN) received a faxed letter from the FARC warning of a campaign of extermination against alleged government collaborators within the indigenous cabildos of Toribio and Jambaló.

It is no coincidence that while government officials repeatedly accuse the indigenous leadership of being manipulated by FARC guerrillas in their protests and mobilizations, the FARC is quick to return the favor, unilaterally targeting so-called sapos, or collaborators, from within the indigenous communities. For the indigenous communities, the results are tragically the same, despite years of declaring their autonomy from all armed actors in the conflict.

Indeed, since receiving a seven-page email threat from a group that described itself as Angry Peasants of Cauca (CEC) on August 11, five indigenous people in Nariño, three in Caldas, and now three in Cauca have been assassinated. The governor of the indigenous cabildo of Canoas, also in Cauca, was saved only by the courageous act of a member of his community, who refused to provide details of his whereabouts to armed gunmen who were looking for him two weeks ago. It should be pointed out that indigenous activists are not the only victims of this latest wave of political violence. Along with the above-mentioned murders, an Afro-Colombian leader in Tumaco, two non-indigenous peasant activists in Cauca, and Olga Luz Vergara, a woman’s rights leader from the organization Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres in Medellín, have also been assassinated in the last month.

Before the October 12 mobilization began, indigenous leaders both in Cauca and on the national level warned about the potential for a repressive backlash against the indigenous movement on the part of the state security forces, as well as other armed actors in their territory. That fact that President Uribe declared a “state of internal commotion” on the eve of the protests gave the indigenous leadership considerable reason to be alarmed, despite the president’s assurances that the extraordinary measure was invoked to address the growing crisis in the judicial system, crippled by a four-week strike of judicial workers throughout the country.

As stipulated in the 1991 Constitution, the “state of internal commotion,” allows the president to govern without the oversight of the legislature, giving the president unprecedented powers, particularly in the area of security and “public order.” In announcing his decision to invoke this measure, Uribe pointed to the 2,600 “delinquents” who have been released as a result of the 42-day judicial workers strike, saying that something needed to be done to reign them in and resolve the crisis facing the country’s legal system. The “state of internal commotion” and Uribe’s increasingly authoritative approach to domestic affairs, therefore, was once again justified in the name of security.

Now that the government and the judicial workers union, ASONAL, seemed to have reached a tentative deal on a new contract on Tuesday, the big question is whether or not the president will deactivate the measure, criticized by many constitutional scholars as unnecessary, if not altogether undemocratic. We will probably find our answer to this question in the way the government is confronting the indigenous mobilization in La Maria, Cauca, where helicopters and heavily-armed riot police of the so-called Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squad (ESMA) are surrounding the communities. In earlier, similar mobilizations organized by the indigenous movement, the government refused to negotiate with the leadership until they lifted their blockade of the Pan American highway. Even then, excessive use of force was applied against the communities in November 2005 and October 2006. To this day, the movement’s demands regarding the return of lands promised to the indigenous groups by previous governments — the essence of their earlier actions — have fallen on deaf ears.

In the face of the unfolding crisis, ACIN, along with regional and national indigenous organizations, have communicated directly to Santiago Cantón, the Secretary General of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of American States, calling on the commission to directly monitor the situation in Cauca. Making matters worse for ACIN, by early Tuesday afternoon, their website was shut down and made unavailable, further complicating its ability to communicate information about the mobilization and subsequent crackdown to the outside world.

The ongoing protests in Cauca are a continuation of the movement’s “Liberation of Mother Earth” campaign, initiated by the indigenous communities in 2005. This land recuperation and resistance effort was organized by the leadership in response to the government’s failure to fulfill its obligations to the victims of the December 16, 1991 massacre of 20 indigenous people from the Huellas community, including five women and four children, who were murdered as they met to discuss a struggle over land rights in the El Nilo estate.

The 1991 massacre had followed a pattern of harassment and threats against the Nasa community by gunmen loyal to local landowners who were disputing the community’s claim to ownership of the land. The Special Investigations Unit of the Office of the Attorney General, which handled the first stages of the investigation, uncovered evidence of the involvement of members of the National Police, both before and during the execution of the massacre.

As a result of these findings, the Colombian government agreed to return 15,600 hectares of land to the community that had been targeted by the assassins. As was widely reported at the time, in 1998, then-President Ernesto Samper publicly apologized for the role the state played in this atrocity and promised to compensate the victims. Yet Samper’s public apologies contrasted considerably with the attitude of President Alvaro Uribe, who stated publicly upon taking office four years later that there were simply no resources to provide any more lands to the indigenous communities affected by the massacre. The president’s stance marked the beginning of a very rocky relationship.

In his six years in office, Uribe has followed a strategy of outright defiance against the indigenous community’s demands, not only in Cauca, but also throughout the country. He has made it a practice to accuse ACIN, CRIC, and even indigenous members of the Colombian Congress, of being accessories to delinquency and criminality. This week’s mobilizations are part of the movement’s ongoing response to what they perceive to be the government’s intransigence towards indigenous people.

It is ironic that on this, the same day that government forces are directly confronting indigenous protesters who are demanding, among other things, compensation for the massacre of 20 Nasa people in Huellas in 1991, Colombia’s State Council ordered the government to pay $3-million in compensation to 82 family members of at least 40 indigenous Colombians that were massacred by paramilitary forces in Naya, Cauca in 2001.

According to the State Council in a ground-breaking ruling issued on Tuesday, just as the government was complicit in the 1991 attack, the Colombian state neglected to prevent the incursion of paramilitary groups that led to the murder of at least 40 people—some reports say the number was closer to 100—and the forced displacement of another 3,000 in Naya ten years later. At the time of the Naya massacre, the government of President Andres Pastrana had ignored repeated warnings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about a possible upcoming paramilitary incursion in the area.

In the infamous 2001 attack, 500 men of the Calima Bloc of the paramilitary organization Self –Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) murdered people with chainsaws in several villages in the Naya area of western Cauca. This is the same Calima Bloc whose founder, the jailed paramilitary commander Ever Veloza, alias H.H., now claims to be responsible for influencing the gubernatorial elections that brought Uribe-ally and anti-indigenous politician Juan Jose Chaux to power in Cauca in 2003. Chaux recently resigned as Uribe’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic when it was revealed that he had close ties to paramilitary groups in Cauca. As governor of Cauca, Chaux developed the well-deserved reputation of being one of the most racist, anti-indigenous politicians in the country, regularly employing derogatory language to describe the indigenous movement and its leaders. On August 11, 2008, that same language was contained in the previously mentioned email threat sent to ACIN and CRIC. The thousands of indigenous protesters in La Maria currently facing government forces understand very well that they should take such threats lightly.

Recognizing the uncanny ability of Uribe to get his message across to the Colombian people through its powerful public relations machine, organizers of the current popular mobilization have been putting out statements of their own for weeks about the nature of their protest. In essence, the indigenous movement, in alliance with other popular sectors, has a comprehensive program that it is promoting within the context of the current political crisis, maintaining an extremely critical view of the Uribe government, while stating unequivocally its independence from the guerrillas or any other armed group.

For weeks, members of ACIN’s communication team have been carrying out an education campaign throughout northern Cauca, speaking directly with locals about the current threats facing the indigenous movement in assemblies, workshops and town hall-style meetings, held all over the region everyday leading up to Sunday’s mobilization. In these so-called barridos, as well as in their many communiqués, the organization consistently says “no to free trade agreements like the ones negotiated behind closed doors with the United States, Canada, the European Union,” trade deals that look “to displace us of our rights, our culture, our knowledge and our territory.” Tied to this is their vehement opposition to the many constitutional counter-reforms and legislative measures that have been implemented under the current government that have chipped away at the territorial rights of the country’s 85 indigenous communities.

They are also demanding that the government comply with a series of agreements, accords and conventions that have been signed with the indigenous communities over the past 16 years, but that up to now have been systematically ignored, including the ones relating to the Nilo massacre. And they are calling for an end to the militarization of their territories, whether it is manifest in the widespread presence of state security forces in the area, FARC guerillas or paramilitary groups working under the auspices of powerful local interests. CRIC and ACIN and all the other indigenous organizations in the country are simply making sure history does not repeat itself on their territories and that the blood of their people is not spilled once again with complete impunity.

A private jet that crashed last year in eastern Mexico and was found to be carrying more than 3 tons of cocaine was also used by the Central Intelligence Agency for clandestine operations, the Mexican daily El Universal reported last week.

The newspaper cited documents from the United States and the European Parliament which “show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects.” It said the European Parliament was investigating the jet for its possible use in “extraordinary rendition” flights, whereby prisoners are covertly transferred by the U.S. To a third country.

In June, 2006, the British Department for Transport website published flight data on US aircraft into or out of the UK. According to the site, “This data had previously been released by Eurocontrol to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to assist with its enquiry into allegations of ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights operating in Europe.” The jet that crashed in Mexico, with registration number N987SA, is listed in the data report.

According to El Universal, FAA records show that the jet flew to Guantanamo on May 30, 2003. From June 23 to July 14, the jet flew from New York to Iceland, France, Italy, and Ireland. From July 16 to 20, it flew from the U.S. To Canada, the UK, Ireland, the UK, Canada, and back to the U.S. Again. From April 7 to 12, 2004, it went from New York to Canada, the UK, Canada, and again to the U.S. The jet then flew to Guantanamo again. On April 21, it flew from the U.S. To Canada, France, the UK, Canada, and back to the U.S. It left the U.S. For Guantanamo once more on January 21, 2005.

The jet crashed on September 24, 2007. According to an Aviation Safety Network description of the accident, the Gulfstream Aerospace G-1159 Gulfstream II jet with registration N987SA crashed near Tixkokob in the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. ASN describes it as an “Illegal Flight” and reports that “When being chased by Mexican military helicopters, the crew carried out a crash-landing. No bodies were found in the wreckage, but soldiers found 132 bags containing about 3.6 tons (3.3. Metric tons) of cocaine.”

An initial Reuters report on the crash noted that “Drug planes packed with South American cocaine — often with passenger seats ripped out to make space — frequently fly through Mexico and Central America en route for the United States. Some unload their cargo at clandestine airstrips south of the border where traffickers send it on by road or sea.”

El Universal, in its initial report on the crash in 2007, stated that the cocaine was in 132 bags and noted the registration number of the wrecked plane.

McClatchy Newspapers observed a few days after the crash that “news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. Detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington, D.C., and Guantanamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantanamo.”

In November of last year, reporters from the Tampa Tribune followed up on the international investigation that resulted after the Gulfstream II crash. An expert on the drug trade from the University of Miami told the reporters that cocaine is being moved by air through Florida more frequently, as an alternative to being brought into the U.S. In the southwest.

The Gulfstream II jet was one of two planes being used by the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, also known as the Pacific Cartel, to carry cocaine. The other jet, a DC-9, had been seized and was found to be carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine. Both aircraft were purchased by the cartel from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport.

The DC-9 with tail number N00SA, was seized on April 11, 2006 carrying an amount of cocaine valued at an estimated $82,500,000, according to Airport-Dat.com. Reportedly sold in March, the jet was scheduled to depart for Simon Bolivar International airport in Venezuela on April 5. FAA records show that at the time of the seizure, it was still registered to Royal Sons Inc., which operates out of St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. It was deregistered two days after the seizure and listed as exported to Venezuela.

At the time of the crash, the Gulfstream II was registered to Donna Blue Aircraft Inc., owned by Joao Luiz Malago and Eduardo Dias Guimaraes, who had reportedly purchased the jet in July and then sold it to two Florida men on September 16. Two days later, the jet left Fort Lauderdale for Cancun. Then, according to Mexican authorities, it flew to Columbia to pick up the cocaine and was en route to deliver the drugs when it came to the attention of the military and crashed in the resulting chase.

Some have speculated that Donna Blue Aircraft may have been a front company. The Florida Department of State Division of Corporations lists the “Date Filed” for the company as March 29, 2007. And from June 1, it was listed at an address in Coconut Creek, Florida. Then, on June 18, 2008, the company name was changed to North Atlantic Aircraft Services, Corp., listed at the same address, but with Malago as the sole owner.

Journalist Daniel Hopsicker visited the Coconut Creek location and found no sign that such a business existed there. Hopsicker wrote, “Moreover the brief description of Donna Blue on its Internet page, apparently designed to ‘flesh out the ghost a little,’ is such a clumsy half-hearted effort that it defeats the purpose of helping aid the construction of a plausible ‘legend,’ or cover, and ends up doing more harm than good… For example, the website features a quote from a satisfied Donna Blue Aircraft customer. Unfortunately his name is ‘John Doe.’ And the listed phone number is right out of the movies: 415.555-5555.”

The company’s website (now offline) stated only, “we are in this business over 20 years, attending South, North and Central america, with outstanding service, we are today most trusted company in this market. our customer loyality make us different” (sic). According to Whois, the site was created on August 20, 2007, a month after the Gulfstream II was reportedly bought by the company and less than a month before it crashed carrying the cocaine. Once uploaded, the site was apparently never updated and seems to have gone offline sometime after February 2008. According to the site description still available on Alexa, the company opened in 1995 despite the fact, as noted above, that the date the company was filed with the Florida Department of State was in March 2007.

Malago sold the jet to Clyde O’Connor. The name of Gregory D. Smith also appeared as a co-signer on the bill of sale.

A reporter from the Broward-Palm Beach New Times contacted Gregory D. Smith of Global Jet Solutions. When asked about the plane crash, Smith replied, “I’m not allowed to discuss that — I’m sorry,” and hung up. Contacted a second time, he said, “I’m not going to divulge anything.”

O’Connor had once written a letter to the editor in response to an article on the death of a police officer saying that “one less cop is not a bad thing.” He was convicted in 2001 for criminal air safety violations. In October 2007, he was detained by Canadian officials after they searched a Cessna 210 he had flown to Nova Scotia and found two Derringer pistols he had failed to report.

Reporters from McClatchy Newspapers attempted to reach O’Connor at one of his companies, Execstar Aviation in Fort Lauderdale, but the number had been disconnected. “Adding to the plane’s mystery”, their article noted, “are allegations that it made trips in 2003, 2004 and 2005 between the United States and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. detention center for suspected terrorists is located.”

Baruch Vega, a Columbian who has worked with the FBI, DEA, and CIA in law enforcement operations told Narco News that one of the main pilots used in operations for flights between Florida and South America was named Greg Smith. Vega said,

Well originally … I met Greg Smith … we needed a pilot, a very trustful pilot, someone we could trust to bring in the [Colombian] drug traffickers to surrender. Then the members of the FBI recommended to get in contact with this guy [Smith] because he was very close to them. Ever since we flew only with him. Everything was with him. … I never asked anything [about Smith's background]. But he [Smith] brought a couple of pilots because we always have two pilots in the plane. He occasionally brought pilots from the US Customs. I tell you one thing. We flew with Greg Smith easily 25 to 30 times. All [the] operations [were] between the end of 1997 to 2000.

He added that there were “DEA agents in the plane and of course drug traffickers who were coming to surrender with attorneys.” He also said the name of the company from which the aircraft were chartered was Aero Group Jets. A court document confirms one instance in which the CIA had worked with the DEA to bring a fugitive Colombian drug trafficker, one Mr. Cristancho, to Florida by means of an aircraft rented from Aero Group Jets.

According to Narco News, “A check of the public records available through Florida’s Department of State lists the registered agent/officer of that now inactive company as Gregory D. Smith.”

When contacted by Narco News, the Gregory Smith identified in the Broward-Palm Beach New Times story denied that he was the same Greg Smith as the one whose signature appeared as co-signer on the bill of sale of the Gulfstream II. He said his middle initial is “J’ and that he had been wrongly identified.

Narco News obtained a copy of a 2007 document with the signature of Gregory Smith from Global Jet Solutions and compared it with the signature Gregory D. Smith in a 1998 annual report from Aero Group Jets filed with the state of Florida. The signatures “appear to be different,” Narco News concluded. They do indeed appear to be different signatures, but the fact that the two samples are 9 years apart also must be taken into consideration, as a person’s signature may evolve over time.

In a follow up report, Narco News tracked down Malago, who denied that he operated a front company. “Some people told on internet,” he said, “that my company is a CIA cover office and that bring me a lot of problems. First this is not true and you can imagine if this people came to talk with me. I have family and dont want any more problems there” (sic).

Malago also agreed to share a copy of the bill of sale of the Gulfstream II jet with Narco News, which reported that “In comparing the two signatures, there are some differences, such as one is signed as Gregory D. while the other is signed simply as Greg, with no middle initial. However there are some striking similarities as well, including the fact that some of the letters appear to be penned in precisely the same way.”

Mike Levine, a former undercover DEA agent who has worked as an expert witness in court cases, told Narco News, “I did much of this handwriting comparison work, without using an expert, but my opinion was accepted before grand juries as having a significant amount of work experience in comparing handwritings (IRS, BATF, Customs and DEA). I would say the samples you sent me are definitely the same handwriting.”

Although inconclusive, there is thus compelling evidence that the Gregory Smith who cosigned with O’Connor for the purchase of the Gulfstream II from Malago was indeed the same Gregory Smith who was involved in piloting flights for CIA and DEA operations out of Florida.

The recent article from El Universal noted that the Gulfstream II jet had also been previously owned by AGI Holdings Corp., which sold it to S/A Holdings LLC, a company for which, the paper says, there is virtually no information.

The use of front companies by CIA to provide cover for its operations is well known and documented.

In December 2005, the Toronto Star ran a story on CIA “ghost flights”. It noted that a plane with registration N196D was registered with the FAA under Devon Holding and Leasing, Inc. — but that no such company existed.

There is no Devon Holding and Leasing Inc. at 129 W. Center St. in Lexington, N.C. There is no phone listing. The city offices have never heard of it; neither has the Chamber of Commerce. The law offices of James A. Gleason are at 129 W. Center St., but five days of inquiries there failed to yield an answer to this simple question: Does anyone in this office know of a company called Devon Holding and Leasing? It is almost certainly a CIA shell company, existing on paper only, and the turboprop was likely carrying a “ghost” prisoner to a country where torture is used during interrogations.

Devon Holding and Leasing was being investigated by the European Parliament for its possible role in the CIA’s rendition program, and was named by investigators as a CIA “shell company”.

In one documented case of extraordinary rendition, the Toronto Star story continues, the CIA flew Maher Arar, who is from Ottawa, from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to Syria, where he was tortured as a suspected terrorist. In another case, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr was abducted from the streets of Milan and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured. Saad iqbal Madni was similarly taken from Jakarta and flown to Cairo, where he was held for two years before being delivered to Guantanamo Bay. He claims he was tortured in Egypt.

On the use of front companies by the CIA:

“It’s careless tradecraft,” says John Pike, an expert on U.S. intelligence matters at GlobalSecurity.org. “They (the CIA) have allowed the tail-spotters into the game and they have not come to grips with the advent of the Internet, and not come to grips with the massive parallel processing which is underway with all those tail-spotters.” The planes are supposed to be registered with legitimate companies, so they just blend in and can’t be traced to the CIA, Pike says. “These are not real companies. They should be using good-looking companies which arouse no suspicion at all.”

The New York Times ran a story in 2005 stating that Aero Contractors Ltd. was a CIA front company. “When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and deliver him to interrogators in another country,” the Times report said, “an Aero Contractors plane often does the job. If agency experts need to fly overseas in a hurry after the capture of a prized prisoner, a plane will depart Johnston County and stop at Dulles Airport outside Washington to pick up the C.I.A. team on the way.”

The Times also stated that “The company was founded in 1979 by a legendary C.I.A. officer and chief pilot for Air America, the agency’s Vietnam-era air company” and that “Aero appears to be the direct descendant of Air America”.

The article in the Times declined to note, however, the CIA’s well-documented role in heroin trafficking through Air America in southeast Asia during the war in Vietnam.

Adding to the intrigue, in December, 2007, Narco News reported that according to DEA officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the crashed Gulfstream II jet “was part of an operation being carried out by a Department of Homeland Security agency” codenamed “Mayan Express”. The effort was “spearheaded by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the sources claim.” The report continues:

The operation also appears to be badly flawed, the sources say, because it is being carried out unilaterally, (Rambo-style), by ICE and without the knowledge of the Mexican government — at least it was up until the point of the coke-packed Gulfstream jet’s abrupt impact with the Earth.

“This is a case of ICE running amok,” one DEA source told Narco News. “If this [operation] was being run by the book, they would not be doing it unilaterally,” — without the participation of the DEA — “and without the knowledge of the Mexican government.”

The DEA confirmed to Narco News that it was handling the investigation into the crash. The pilots were apprehended after their initial escape from the crash site and apparently “spilled the beans on the ICE operation during their interrogation by Mexican authorities, DEA sources tell Narco News.”

“One proposition that all of the law enforcers who spoke with Narco News agreed on with respect to the Mayan Express is that even if DEA was precluded from participating in the effort, the CIA almost certainly was involved on some level.”

Narco News also noted that a report from a British government agency listed the Gulfstream II jet as one “European investigators were interested in obtaining more information about in relation to a probe into CIA rendition flights” and added that other sources also suggested that “Mayan Express” might have been a CIA operation using ICE for cover.

Narco News reported again in 2008 on yet another plane that was apparently involved in a drug trafficking operation. On November 26, 2004, a twin-prop Beechcraft King Air 200 landed and was abandoned on a makeshift runway in a cotton field in Nicaragua. Traces of cocaine were found in the plane. The cocaine had apparently been loaded onto a truck. Several days after the plane was abandoned, law enforcement officials arrested the occupants of a truck carrying 1,100 kilos of cocaine.

The abandoned aircraft’s tail number was N168D, registered to none other than Devon Holding and Leasing Inc., the same company used as a front by the CIA for its extraordinary renditions operations, as noted previously.

Then the story of that plane gets even more convoluted, as FAA records show that the plane registered under Devon Holding and Leasing Inc. with tail number N168D actually belongs to a different kind of plane, model CN-235-300. The Beech 200’s actual tail number is N391SA,registered with the FAA under Sky Way Aircraft Inc.

Sky Way Aircraft Inc. can also be linked to Royal Sons Inc., which, as noted above, was still the registered owner of the DC-9 that was seized carrying more than 5 tons of cocaine. The parent company of Sky Way Aircraft was Skyway Communications Holding Corp., which had originally arranged to purchase the DC-9 that was ultimately registered with Royal Sons Inc. The president of Royal Sons, Frederick J. Geffon, was also a shareholder in Skyway Communications. In addition, the two companies had at one time jointly filed for a loan to purchase another DC-9, tail number N120NE. The CEO of Skyway Communications, James Kent, had also served under contract with the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, and the Department of the Navy.

Like the DC-9, the Beech 200 was sold to a buyer in Venezuela in October 2004, about one month before it was abandoned in the cotton field and linked by authorities to cocaine trafficking.

The Beech 200 may have been a part of the Mayan Express operation. According to Narco News, “Mark Conrad, a former supervisory special agent with U.S. Customs, ICE’s predecessor agency, speculates that the Mayan Express operation is not controlled by ICE at all, but is, in fact, a CIA-run operation using ICE as a cover. He adds that the CIA has agents operating inside many federal law enforcement agencies utilizing what is known as an ‘official cover.’”

A former ICE agent also told Narco News he suspected the CIA was behind the drug plane operations.

There is no shortage of precedents for alleged CIA involvement in drug trafficking.

Aflred W. McCoy’s “The Politics of Heroin”, first published in 1972, documented CIA complicity in drug trafficking such as its involvement the opium and heroin trade in southeast Asia.

Journalist Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance” series is a well known investigation into allegations of the CIA’s involvement in the Los Angeles crack epidemic in the 1980s to help finance the Contras in the terrorist war to overthrow the elected government of Nicaragua.

Michael Ruppert, former narcotics officer with the Los Angeles Police Department, famouslyconfronted CIA director John Deutch at a televised conference with information on specific CIA operations, which he cited by name and said he had documentation on, and said the CIA had been dealing drugs in L.A. for a long time.

And there is evidence that the CIA flew drugs into Mena, Arkansas during Bill Clinton’s governorship, in its operations to finance the Contras.

In 1993, CBS 60 Minutes ran a show headlined “The CIA’s Cocaine”. The former head of the DEA, Judge Robert Bonner, told Mike Wallace, the show’s host, that the CIA had an unauthorized operation to bring drugs into the U.S. “If this has not been approved by DEA or an appropriate law-enforcement authority in the United States,” Bonner said, “then it’s illegal. It’s called drug trafficking.”

Bonner, asked to rationalize the operation, suggested that it might “lead to some valuable drug intelligence about the Colombian cartels.”

A DEA agent interviewed for the show said that she had been told by the CIA officer in charge of the CIA station in Caracas, Venezuela, that they had to keep the cartel happy by delivering their cocaine to their dealers in the U.S. “The CIA and the Guardia Nacional,” she explained, “wanted to let cocaine go on into the traffic without doing anything. They wanted to let it come up to the United States, no surveillance, no nothing.”

The CIA had gone to the DEA with its proposal, which was rejected. “They made this proposal,” said Bonner, “and we said, ‘No, no way. We will not permit this. It should not go forward.’ And then, apparently, it went forward anyway.”

Senator Dennis DeConcini of the Senate Intellience Committee also told Wallace, “It was an operation that I don’t think they should’ve been involved in…. I don’t doubt that the drugs got in here.” He called the operation “a mistake.”

Morley Safer closed the piece by saying, “And what happened to the tens of millions that were paid for the CIA’s cocaine? Well, General Guillen insists he didn’t get any of it. But Judge Bonner says one thing is certain, the Colombian cartel did. They got their money once the dope made it to our streets.”

Senator and 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry told NBC Dateline that the CIA was complicit in the flow of drugs into the U.S. His Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Narcotics, Terrorism, and International Operations found that “it is clear that individuals who provided support for the Contras were involved in drug trafficking” and that this activity did not go unnoticed by the government agencies.

Kerry also headed up a Senate investigation in to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) which documented the CIA’s involvement in the bank, which was a criminal front for money launderers, drug traffickers, arms dealers, and even nuclear proliferators.

The government went into damage control. In 1997, the Department of Justice issued a reportaddressing the allegations of CIA involvement in drug trafficking, and the CIA released its ownreport the following year.

The full story behind the crashed Gulfstream II jet and the other planes that were found to have been involved in drug trafficking is far from known. But the facts that have surfaced to date strongly indicate CIA involvement of one kind or another. The agency’s fingerprints, one might reasonably say, are all over this one.

And being isolated from the West carries heavy penalties. Sudan is feeling that right now: the International Criminal Court has decided to pursue charges against Omar Bashir, the sitting president of Sudan, for war crimes in Darfur. Alex de Waal’s books and blog are the best guides to that complex conflict, and on that blog the ICC’s decision was referred to as “a Disaster in the Making.” Putting aside the political nature of such a prosecution, given that no one is considering prosecuting Bush for what the US is doing in Iraq or Israel for what it’s doing to the Palestinians, there is also the effect of such a move on the possibilities for peace in Sudan. In that context, it is a very irresponsible move, a pre-emptive strike against a negotiated settlement. But it does have another effect: to show third world leaders what might be in store if they are too defiant. Or,in Pakistan’s case, if insufficiently committed to the war on terror.

Of course, the war on terror is not the only war going on in this region. In the background, ready to be re-emphasized at any minute, is the war on drugs. Like the war on terror, it is ill-defined, open-ended, both unwinnable and unloseable (drugs will never declare victory), and therefore a perpetually useful pretext: until it is widely seen for what it is. Below I will discuss supply, demand, and possible solutions.

Before delving the war on drugs, I would like to dispense with one little phrase. The idea of an “opium fueled insurgency” can be deceptive. It is true that the covert networks designed for smuggling arms and money to counterinsurgent forces — such as the CIA and ISI networks designed to supply the Afghan mujahadin when they fought against the USSR — are also easily converted to drug smuggling networks. It is also true that illicit drugs were understood and tolerated as a way for these forces to support themselves financially during the war against the USSR (on the connection between drugs and covert operations, the indispensable book is Alfred McCoy’s Politics of Heroin). But the current situation in Afghanistan is slightly different. Today, the Afghan economy is dependent on poppy, which, according to UN sociologist David Macdonald’s book Drugs in Afghanistan (Pluto Press 2007), supplies 60% of Afghanistan’s GDP and employs 10% of its people (pg.96). Everyone in the economy, from farmers to local warlords, from foreign intelligence agents to government officials, from the Taliban to probably NATO soldiers as well, are taking a piece. So it’s not just the insurgency that’s opium-fueled, it’s the entire economy.

What is the drugs situation? As with any commodity, we can look at supply and demand. Part of the supply side is the covert networks just discussed. Most opium moves from Afghanistan by the “Balkan route”: through Pakistan, Iran, the Gulf States, through to Turkey and Europe (Macdonald pg. 105), taking about 9 months to arrive from the Afghan farm to the European street. There are creative ways of smuggling employed, since high profits in the industry make it feasible to do things like stuff almond shells with heroin and smuggle them randomly interspersed with real almonds. But above all, the trade depends on the suborning of public officials. In Afghanistan, reports range from estimates that dozens to 60% of elected parliamentarians are linked to warlords and drug trafficking in some way (pg. 95). Similar percentages probably apply for police and of course the warlords who still control local areas. Then there are the officials in the countries along the route.

Another important piece in the supply puzzle has to do with the push-the-water-balloon nature of drug cultivation. Both Iran and Pakistan were major opium producers until 1979, when the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the dictatorship of Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan both outlawed production in their countries — production which simply shifted to Afghanistan. If production in Afghanistan could somehow be eliminated, it would no doubt shift somewhere else.

The final supply side consideration is the farmer. No Afghan farmer grows rich from growing poppy. On the contrary, sociologist David Mansfield conducts field studies for the UK government and other NGOs on why Afghans do or do not grow poppy. He found four differences between farmers who grow poppy and those who are able to make a living growing vegetables, fruit, wheat, and other cash crops. First, poppy growers have less land (or no land, working as sharecroppers). Second, poppy growers have more debt. Third, poppy growers live in areas where access to market is difficult, while successful non-poppy growing farmers live near provincial centers. Fourth, poppy growers generally live in regions where the writ of the state is weak or not fully extended.

In this context, eradication programs lead to financial ruin for already heavily indebted farmers.

In a May 2007 report to the UK government, Mansfield warns that “talk of spraying elicits the threat of violence and/or a declaration of intent to support Anti Government Elements. The perception that corruption is endemic amongst those conducting eradication (including their involvement in the drug trade) and reports of bribery and partiality during implementation further weakens the legitimacy of counter narcotics efforts.” He also notes reports that “in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar as well as Farah, there were increasing reports of Taliban and government officials finding ways to co-exist. Respondents suggested that in many areas both sides had made agreements not to engage in hostile action. These agreements left government officials undisturbed in the district centres whilst the Taliban were free to operate in the surrounding rural areas.” Evidently Pakistan is not the only place where separate peace agreements and local arrangements are being made.

Now we turn to the demand side. In the imaging of Afghanistan as a source of drugs that corrupt the streets and youth of the West, the many victims of addiction in the region are made invisible, as Macdonald shows. Addiction is complex, but it does go along with displacement and war. Many Afghan refugees became addicted to opium in Pakistan or Iran (both of which have major addiction problems of their own) and brought their addictions back when they returned. Without prospects for peace or opportunity, religious and legal restrictions are insufficient to stop people from turning to opium and heroin to dull their pain. A study by the RAND corporation years ago suggested that the cheapest way to fight a drug war was to spend dollars on treatment for addiction, which was far cheaper than trying to interdict shipments of drugs or eradicate crops.

Finally, to solutions. The most likely possibility is that the drug war will be allowed to continue, providing its many benefits to many people and meting out suffering to many others. Perhaps a truce will be called for a time? The governor of Helmand province suggested in 2006 that those in the drug business should be encouraged to invest their profits in Afghanistan (construction companies and industries) rather than taking the money out to tax havens (Macdonald pg. 97). Among those seeking victory in the war on drugs, some look to the Taliban’s ban on opium in 2000 as a total success. Macdonald points out several problems with this: first, it was accomplished through terror. Second, it was only a year-long, a year in which, some suggest, the Taliban used the ban to drive the price up so they could sell off existing stocks at high profit margins, after which they would have probably allowed cultivation to resume (had they not been deposed).

One suggestion by the Senlis Council (a European think tank) in 2005, is to license Afghanistan to produce opium legally. Today, licit opium is produced by Turkey, India, France, Australia, Hungary, Spain, and a few other countries (pg. 34). The idea was rejected by the Afghan government. The counter argument by the Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics, that they could not guarantee that opium wouldn’t be smuggled out for the illicit trade, seems to me to be unconvincing. How could a situation where some licit and some illicit opium was coming out of Afghanistan be worse than the current situation? Of course, this kind of licensing would have problems too: it would drastically lower the price available to the farmer, who would probably then require some form of price support (which could also be applied to other crops). Without such support, and so long as an illegal market existed and set a higher price, smuggling would continue.

David Mansfield and David Macdonald implicitly suggest some mix of alternative development for farmers, interdiction, and fighting the addiction. Within the current framework of prohibition, that may be the best that can be done. But accepting the current framework means accepting some absurdities. Macdonald reports that “Australian and German bio-engineers have also recently created another alternative to traditional opium poppy plants, mutated poppy plants that produce … thebaine and oripavine used in analgesic pharmaceutical drugs … but without producing morphine that can be processed into heroin.” (pg. 71)

Surely we ought to be able to change the rules to fit the plants than to change the plants to fit the rules.

In the 1970s, under the imperially-controlled regime of the Shah, Iran managed to distribute opium legally to registered addicts. In Macdonald’s words, this “suggested a humane drug regime that permitted older people who had used opium for many years the comfort afforded by regulated doses of opium for the aches and pains of old age and to avoid suffering withdrawals.” Those under 60 had to seek treatment — treatment based on a maintenance dose (for more arguments on ending prohibition, see Mike Gray’s 2000 book Drug Crazy). Most societies seem to combine both irrationality and hypocrisy in their drug policies. These serve those who profit from the drug war, the monies, the weapons, and the pretexts that it provides. They do not serve addicts, users, or farmers. An end to prohibition and an end to the drug war would take a powerful weapon away from the war on terror.

* Justin Podur is currently visiting Islamabad.