The CIA, Opium Trade, and Pakistan — Part 2
The media no longer caters to a passive audience, feeding them information. People choose what they want to consume as per what they want to see, hear and learn. A trove of knowledge is often inside the articles which don’t go viral, the books we don’t read, and documentaries that are never made. One such subject is the rise of opioids in Pakistan and America’s active involvement in the drug trade. Pakistan and her people have long suffered from its effects in terms of social well-being and collective health, the black market and racketeering, which comes as a part of the package of illicit trade, as well as the consequences of the reputation it has brought to the country. “Occult Operations: Bloom of the Black Flower” will dissect several sources and is intended to be a comprehensive series of works on the issue.
The last blog discussed an MOU between Agency Director William Casey and Attorney General William French Smith in 1982, “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” by William Blum, and an overview of regions where the Agency has been involved in the drug trade.
This piece will discuss the two eras of American involvement in Afghanistan: the 1980’s to the early ’90s, during the era of the Mujahideen fighting the Soviets, and after the invasion in 2001, when the same Mujahideen saw their identity as ‘holy rebels’ deconstructed and reconstructed and branded as something far more sinister: ‘terrorists’.
9/11 and the Kean’s Commission
In his book, “Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil’’, Mike Ruppert talks about the Kean’s Commission Mandate. While various public statements parroted by commissioners said their job was not to find faults, they were legally bound to make a “complete accounting” of the attack.
They were liable to examine and report facts, causes, and circumstances related to “intelligence and law enforcement agencies; diplomacy; immigration, nonimmigrant visas, and border control; the flow of assets to terrorist organizations; commercial aviation; the role of congressional oversight and resource allocation; and any other areas of the public and private sectors determined relevant by the Commission for its inquiry” and to identify, review, and evaluate lessons learnt as well as future preparedness for such attacks.
It is important to note that despite this being put down in the Public Law sections 107–306, signed by then-President Bush on November 27, 2002, not a single American, in the US government or otherwise, was held accountable. (Ruppert and Hecht, 2012) Lest we forget, the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan paid the price for American incompetence.
Moving onto covert and overt interference in Afghanistan by the USA, the CIA’s flirting with the drug trade and its implications for Pakistan. The country has often been branded as a drug producer, partly due to being part of the Golden Crescent and partly because it has too many enemies, most of them too powerful, and mudslinging Pakistan suited their strategic interests.
Pakistan has been vulnerable and victim to the consequences of cultivation, production, trafficking, and abuse for a long time now. A background to opium cultivation and opiate production till the late 1970s, followed by a timeline vis-à-vis the situation in neighbouring Afghanistan, is perhaps the shortest and simplest way to explain the consequences of the drug trade for Pakistan.
A Timeline of Events:
● 1947, the year of creation: the new state was unable to produce enough opium to feed its drug addicts; thus, it was imported from India. (Bulletin on Narcotics — 1954 Issue 3–002, 1954)
● 1956: Import from India was stopped, and under strict control, licenses were issued, and a few areas were allowed to cultivate opium to meet local demand legally. Apart from legal cultivation, a good deal was being produced in what is now erstwhile FATA. (Bulletin on Narcotics — 1954 Issue 3–002, 1954)
● 1979: Iranian Revolution took place; Khomeini declared opium use un-Islamic. In Pakistan, Zia came into power the same year and made the same declaration as a part of his Islamisation policies and the Hudood ordinances. Soviet troops were in Afghanistan by the end of the year. (Porter, 2019)
● 1980–1994, the war against the Soviets: With no alternatives available, both Iran and Pakistan turned towards illicit consumption. Turkey had legalized its opium markets back in 1972, so Iran began to acquire opiates from Afghanistan, despite it proving extremely violent. Pakistan’s share of production in FATA soon began to find its way to refinement labs set up by the Americans on the Pak-Afghan border. Other US policies resulted in a severe downfall, and there was negligible illicit opium production in Pakistan. Afghanistan was the new home for the black flower. Opium meant money, and money meant power: the trade robustly rose in Afghanistan and, together with CIA money, saw the end of the Soviets at the hands of the Mujahideen in 1994. (Global Illicit Drug Trends 2001: Afghanistan, 2001)
● 1995–2001, Taliban rule in Afghanistan: In 1994, 3400 tonnes of opium were produced. Ravaged by a decade and a half of civil war, increasing instability, competition in cultivation from Turkey, Iran and Pakistan long time over, a “more viable alternative” than other crops. In 1999, despite sanctions and isolation of the Afghan Taliban for engaging in severe human rights violations and terrorism, the farmgate price for the harvest was over 250 million USD. It was estimated Afghanistan was cultivating and producing 79% of the world’s illicit opium by 2000. This fell to 70% by 2001, primarily due to severe drought. (Global Illicit Drug Trends 2001: Afghanistan, 2001)
● 2001 and onwards, after the US invasion: it is no open secret that the US military is actively engaging in human rights violations and war crimes in Afghanistan as a worst-case scenario (Costa, 2018) and, at best, ignoring them (U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies, 2015) . Bacha Bazi is only one example.
By 2007, Afghanistan was producing 93% of illicit opium worldwide. The Afghan government is involved in the trade, sometimes joining hands with the US forces to win the economic prize. In 2009, in a report about Afghanistan’s narco-war, to the Committee of Foreign Relations in the US Senate, the US admitted its part, albeit unapologetically, as “unintended consequences of the invasion.” The US has also made many empty promises to the locals, trying to wean them off poppy, but nothing practical, which isn’t a “carrot and stick” imposed approach, has materialized on the ground whatsoever. (Clark, 2011)
Besides this, Afghan Heroin has a long-time relationship with both the CIA, as well as MI6. It is money from opium which lead to the creation of Al-Qaeda, then the Taliban. (Marshall, 2008), and later, the TTP. Whilst Wall Street, big banks in Europe, and off-budget missions all benefited from the drug trade, Pakistan was punished for prioritising its safety and its people by refusing turning on the Afghan Taliban as Washington had wished. A decade of darkness followed, with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, Blackwater, and several other splinter extremist groups unleashing a wave of terror on the streets of Pakistan, killing 70,000 Pakistanis.
