The Reality Of The War On Drugs

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June 26 marks the International Day against drug abuse and illicit trafficking. According to the UNODC, nearly 200 million people are using illicit drugs such as cocaine, cannabis, hallucinogens, opiates and sedative hypnotics worldwide.

2024-06-26T17:08:28+05:00 Dr. Ikramul Haq Huzaima Bukhari

If politics makes strange bedfellows, politics and drugs produce even stranger ones. The partnership between drug trafficking and national politics has taken a truly bizarre turn in the fight against the presumed threat to the capitalist system, roughly since World War II. The history of control of drugs is seldom taught to masses because it could unveil the forces that actually helped the pharmaceutical industry to earn huge profits and helped spawn a whole generation of pill-takers hooked on drug related habits.

June 26 marks the International Day against drug abuse and illicit trafficking. According to the UNODC, nearly 200 million people are using illicit drugs such as cocaine, cannabis, hallucinogens, opiates and sedative hypnotics worldwide. In December 1987 the UN General Assembly decided to observe June 26 as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. The UN is determined to help create an international society free of drug abuse. Each year the United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) selects theme for the day and this year the theme is ‘The evidence is clear: invest in prevention.

Great Britain waged two wars in the mid-nineteenth century to force the entry of opium into China which had banned it. It may seem strange and shameful that a mighty nation should have picked on a weak one and sided with the smugglers of a forbidden drug, but that is what the politics of drug trade is all about. A larger issue was, of course, the opening up of China for commercial purposes, but the immediate cause of war was opium.

The United States government spends millions of dollars annually to halt the flow of illicit marijuana, heroin, cocaine etc. across its borders, and even to shut them off at the source in well-publicised campaigns. These operations involve seizures worth billions of dollars, arrests of traffickers, death of drug smugglers and law-enforcement officials and forceful crop eradication of the poor peasants in far away countries.

It was not out of character for a colonial power of those days to rely on drug proceeds as a major source of revenue for its Treasury, as the British colonial government did in India. Practically all colonial governments in the East did it, and the practice continued until the dissolution of the colonies in the mid-twentieth century. The effect of such fiscal policies on the production and consumption of the drug concerned should be fairly obvious.

The United States, early in this century took the lead in an attempt to stop the international traffic in opium, partly as a gesture to win over opium-plagued China for economic purposes. When heroin, an opium derivative made several times more potent by technology, was declared illegal in the US in 1914, it went underground and attained apotheosis as the most forbidden fruit. This opened the doors for elements of organized crime to get involved and start feeding the growing habit in the United States and Europe.

Then, after World War II the United States found itself having to defend an empire against rising challenges to its politico-economic system on its periphery. In turning back these challenges, the US more than once turned for help towards organized criminals and unpopular dictators who enriched them through illicit means, including drug trafficking. Pakistan is one such example.

The United States government spends millions of dollars annually to halt the flow of illicit marijuana, heroin, cocaine etc. across its borders, and even to shut them off at the source in well-publicised campaigns. These operations involve seizures worth billions of dollars, arrests of traffickers, death of drug smugglers and law-enforcement officials and forceful crop eradication of the poor peasants in far away countries. At the same time, various agencies are in political partnership for the spread of the same drugs. Either the right hand does not know what the left is doing, or it does not care.

The reality is otherwise. In fact, the US foreign policy has been supporting the workings of a thriving criminal economy in which the demarcation between organized capital and organized crime has become increasingly blurred.

Since the US led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the Golden Crescent opium trade has soared. According to the US media, this lucrative contraband was earlier protected by slain leader of Al Qaeda Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, not to mention, of course, the regional warlords, in defiance of the international community. The heroin business was said to be "filling the coffers of the Taliban". In the words of the US State Department,“opium is a source of literally billions of dollars to extremist and criminal groups... [C]utting down the opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global war on terrorism.”— Statement of Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles. Congressional Hearing of April 1, 2004.

The reality is otherwise. In fact, the US foreign policy has been supporting the workings of a thriving criminal economy in which the demarcation between organized capital and organized crime has become increasingly blurred. The heroin business has not been “filling the coffers of the Taliban" alone as claimed by US government and the international community.

Quite the opposite, the proceeds of this illegal trade has been the source of wealth formation, largely reaped by powerful business and criminal interests within Western countries. These interests are sustained by US foreign policy. Decision making in the US State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon is instrumental in supporting this highly profitable multibillion dollar trade, third in commodity value after oil and the arms trade. 

The heroin trade was part of the war agenda in Afghanistan, first to dismember USSR, then spread chaos and mayhem through Taliban and Al-Qaeda to justify military intervention and finally puppet regimes in Kabul and Iraq. The war ultimately achieved the restoration of a compliant narco-state, headed by a US-appointed-puppet, Hamid Karzai. The powerful financial interests behind drugs-for-arms deals have always been supported by the militarization of the world's major drug triangles (and transshipment routes), including the Golden Crescent and the Andean region of South America (under the so-called Andean Initiative).

Once the money has been laundered, it can be recycled into bona fide investments not only in real estate, hotels, etc, but also in other areas such as the services economy and manufacturing. Dirty and covert money is also funnelled into various financial instruments including the trade in derivatives, primary commodities, stocks, and government bonds. The recent Panama Papers amply confirm this dirty game.

Afghanistan produces over 70 percent of the global supply of heroin and heroin represents a sizeable fraction of the global narcotics market, estimated by the UN to be of the order of $400-500 billion.

In Flying High by Wayne Greenhaw, published in New York, it is alleged that an international drug syndicate paid the Samoza regime in Nicaragua $13.5 million over a ten-year period before the revolution. This was to facilitate unimpeded landing facilities to aircraft flying marijuana and cocaine from South America to the US. The Syndicate claimed that similar arrangement existed with the Honduran, Salvadoran and Costa Rican governments. Greenhaw also interviewed a former CIA agent who had worked in Central America. The agent confirmed the allegations and then added his own significant comments:

“Even the super-conservative guerillas in Nicaragua fighting against the Sandinista government have cut air strips in jungle area and they have allowed dope planes to land, refuel and take off. The CIA itself has helped in the construction of some of these strips with the knowledge that the planes from Colombia, bound for Texas, will be landing there.”

Drug money & offshore heavens

Afghanistan produces over 70 percent of the global supply of heroin and heroin represents a sizeable fraction of the global narcotics market, estimated by the UN to be of the order of $400-500 billion. The proceeds of the drug trade are deposited in the banking system. Drug money is laundered in the numerous offshore banking havens in Switzerland, Luxembourg, British Virgin Island, the British Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands and some 50 other locations around the globe.  It is here that the criminal syndicates involved in the drug trade and the representatives of the world's largest commercial banks interact. Dirty money is deposited in these offshore havens, which are controlled by the major Western commercial banks. The latter have a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining the drug trade—Michel Chossudovsky’s The Crimes of Business and the Business of Crimes, Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1996.

Afghanistan has been a classic case in point. In December 1979, the Soviets rolled their tanks into the opium provinces of the Pashtun and Baluch peoples. Suddenly, the tribes which had spent the last decade maneuvering their heavily armed drug caravans past the increasingly troublesome patrols of the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s agents, found themselves flung into limelight as the new anti-communist “crusaders”. At the same time the Afghan Mujahideen (holy freedom fighters) became the recipients of the same sort of high-powered CIA largesse and logistical support as provided to the Meo and Shan tribes in the hills of the Golden Triangle in the 1960s.

The drug scene in Pakistan, at its roots, is a business story. This is a story of the emergence of a ‘drug elite’ in the country. A recent covert study by CIA claims that the share of Pakistani drug cartels in the total world drug trade is no less than $30 billion a year.

Take the case of Pakistan where the accumulation of vast assets by the drug barons has enabled them to influence politics and cripple state institutions. Since 1980s, the drug barons in Pakistan have established themselves as patrons of politicians and government functionaries. The story of the ‘Norwegian Connection’ (see chapter under this title in Pakistan: From Hash to Heroin) is one of the clear indicators as to how during the Zia rule, the drug trade had flourished in the country and how the drug barons managed to influence the highest authority in the State.

The “financial assistance” provided by some drug barons in the 1988, 1990, 2001, 2008 and 2013 general elections, to some known politicians has been a continuation of the ‘drug legacy’ of the mid 1970s era. The drug scene in Pakistan, at its roots, is a business story. This is a story of the emergence of a ‘drug elite’ in the country. A recent covert study by CIA claims that the share of Pakistani drug cartels in the total world drug trade is no less than $30 billion a year. A trade started in the late 1970s has managed to achieve this unbelievable proportion in a decade is shocking, though not surprising. As court cases and press reports show during the last four decades, many sections of the upper classes of Pakistani society and the civil and military bureaucracy were identified with the drug elite in the country.

Those who went to wage a ‘holy war’ against communist USSR on the behest of CIA unfortunately brought home extremism, militancy, terrorism, heroin and gun culture. The late neo-colonialists were happy that they had destroyed USSR with the help of mujahedeen to rule the world as sole superpower, but the menace of terrorism they created through militant jihadi outfits is now haunting them.

Drug production and trafficking are big business. The product is lucrative, needs no advertisement and keeps the customers coming back for more. The individuals and cartels running this deadly trade in Pakistan and elsewhere are influential and ruthless. They have managed to fight back all efforts aimed at curtailing their activities. 

When processing laboratories were destroyed, the traffickers built new ones in more remote areas or designed mobile labs that could be quickly moved. They countered law enforcement efforts with corruption and violence, bribing or killing those whose activities threatened their profits. This is how this country was converted into a ‘Kingdom of Heroin’ during the dark era of General Ziaul Haq. Since then, numerous networks of the drug mafia are working from remote tribal areas to luxurious palatial houses in the country’s major cities.

Historical data shows that the history of so-called drug control is more of a cosmetic war as behind it is big business. During the last two centuries, the Golden Crescent has been the primary source of opiates supplying the world’s ever widening circle of addicts. The actual production sites within the long crescent have frequently shifted with the times and political tides. The “centre” of opium production has alternatively flared up along the Crescent—now in India, now in Pakistan, suddenly in Turkey, from Afghanistan to finally China.

Those who went to wage a ‘holy war’ against communist USSR on the behest of CIA unfortunately brought home extremism, militancy, terrorism, heroin and gun culture. The late neo-colonialists were happy that they had destroyed USSR with the help of mujahedeen to rule the world as sole superpower, but the menace of terrorism they created through militant jihadi outfits is now haunting them. The politics of drug trade and arms has made millions of people victims—slaves and helpless lot in an economic system that exploits them and makes them pay taxes from hard-earned earnings in the name of security and challenges from extremists. This is not a war against drugs; this is a war against the people and humanity.

Our civilization faces a great threat from forces that thrive on drugs for arms trade. Awareness at international level alone can bring light to overcome the darkness caused by these ruthless forces—drugs and arms traders who are merchants of death and destruction.

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