Like other narco-generals in the Zia regime, Huq was also on close terms with Agha Hassan Abedi, the head of the BCCI. Abedi, Huq and Zia would dine together nearly every month, and conferred several times with Reagan’s CIA director William Casey. Huq had a BCCI account worth $3 million. After Zia was assassinated in 1988 by a bomb planted (probably by senior military officers) in his presidential plane, Huq lost some of his official protection, and he was soon arrested for ordering the murder of a Shi’ite cleric.
After Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was deposed, her replacement Ishaq Khan swiftly released Huq from prison. In 1991 Huq was shot to death, probably in revenge for the cleric’s death. The opium general was given a state funeral, where he was eulogized by Ishaq Khan as “a great soldier and competent administrator who played a commendable role in Pakistan’s national progress.”
Benazir Bhutto had swept to power in 1988 amid fierce vows to clean up Pakistan’s drug-sodden corruption, but it wasn’t long before her own regime became the focus of serious charges. In 1989 the US Drug Enforcement Agency came across information that Benazir’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, may have been financing large shipments of heroin from Pakistan to Great Britain and the United States. The DEA assigned one of its agents, a man named John Banks, to work undercover in Pakistan. Banks was a former British mercenary who had worked undercover for Scotland Yard in big international drug cases.
While in Pakistan, Banks claims he posed as a member of the Mafia and that he had met with Bhutto and her husband at their home in Sind. Banks further claims that he traveled with Zadari to Islamabad, where he secretly recorded five hours of conversation between Zadari, a Pakistani air force general and a Pakistani banker. The men discussed the logistics of transporting heroin to the US and to Britain: “We talked about how they were going to ship the drugs to America in a metal cutter,” Banks said in 1996. “They told me that the United Kingdom was another area where they had shipped heroin and hashish on a regular basis.” The British Customs Office had also been monitoring Zadari for dope running: “We received intelligence from about three or four sources, about his alleged involvement as a financier,” a retired British customs officer told the Financial Times. “This was all reported to British intelligence.” The customs official says his government failed to act on this report. Similarly, Banks asserts that the CIA halted the DEA’s investigation of Zardari. All this emerged when Bhutto’s government fell for the second time, in 1996, on charges of corruption lodged primarily against Zardari, who is now in prison for his role in the murder of his brother-in-law Murtaza. Zardari also stands accused of embezzling more than $1 billion in government funds.
In 1991 Nawz Sharif says that while he served as prime minister he was approached by two Pakistani generals – Aslam Beg, chief of staff for the army, and Asad Durrani, head of the ISI – with a plan to fund dozens of covert operations through the sale of heroin. “General Durrani told me, ‘We have a blueprint ready for your approval,’ Sharif explained to Washington Post reporter John Ward Anderson in 1994. “I was totally flabbergasted. Both Beg and Durrani insisted that Pakistan’s name would not be cited at any place because the whole operation would be carried out by trustworthy third parties. Durrani then went on to list a series of covert military operations in desperate need of money.” Sharif said that he rejected the plan, but believes it was put in place when Bhutto resumed power.
The impact of the Afghan war on Pakistan’s addiction rates was even more drastic than the surge in heroin addiction in the US and Europe. Before the CIA program began, there were fewer than 5,000 heroin addicts in Pakistan. By 1996, according to the United Nations, there were more than 1.6 million. The Pakistani representative to the UN Commission on Narcotics, Raoolf Ali Khan, said in 1993 that “there is no branch of government where drug corruption doesn’t pervade.” As an example he pointed to the fact that Pakistan spends only $1.8 million a year on anti-drug efforts, with an allotment of $1,000 to purchase gasoline for its seven trucks.
By 1994 the value of the heroin trade in Pakistan was twice the amount of the government’s budget. A Western diplomat told the Washington Post in that year that “when you get to the stage where narco-traffickers have more money than the government it’s going to take remarkable efforts and remarkable people to turn it around.” The magnitude of commitment required is illustrated by two episodes. In 1991 the largest drug bust in world history occurred on the road from Peshawar to Kharachi. Pakistani customs officers seized 3.5 tons of heroin and 44 tons of hashish. Several days later half the hashish and heroin had vanished along with the witnesses. The suspects, four men with ties to Pakistani intelligence, had “mysteriously escaped,” to use the words of a Pakistani customs officer. In 1993 Pakistani border guards seized 8 tons of hashish and 1.7 tons of heroin. When the case was turned over to the Pakistani narcotics control board, the entire staff went on vacation to avoid being involved in the investigation. No one was disciplined or otherwise inconvenienced and the narco-traffickers got off scot free. Even the CIA was eventually forced to admit in a 1994 report to Congress that heroin had become the “life blood of the Pakistani economy and political system.”
In February 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev pulled the Soviet troops out of Afghanistan, and asked the US to agree to an embargo on the provision of weapons to any of the Afghan mujahedin factions, who were preparing for another phase of internecine war for control of the country. President Bush refused, thus ensuring a period of continued misery and horror for most Afghans. The war had already turned half the population into refugees, and seen 3 million wounded and more than a million killed. The proclivities of the mujahedin at this point are illustrated by a couple of anecdotes. The Kabul correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review reported in 1989 the mujahedin’s treatment of Soviet prisoners: “One group was killed, skinned and hung up in a butcher’s shop. One captive found himself the center of attraction in a game of buzkashi, that rough-and-tumble form of Afghan polo in which a headless goat is usually the ball. The captive was used instead. Alive. He was literally torn to pieces.” The CIA also had evidence that its freedom fighters had doped up more than 200 Soviet soldiers with heroin and locked them in animal cages where, the Washington Post reported in 1990, they led “lives of indescribable horror.”
In September 1996 the Taliban, fundamentalists nurtured originally in Pakistan as creatures of both the ISI and the CIA, seized power in Kabul, whereupon Mullah Omar, their leader, announced that all laws inconsistent with the Muslim Sharia would be changed. Women would be forced to assume the chador and remain at home, with total segregation of the sexes and women kept out of hospitals, schools and public bathrooms. The CIA continued to support these medieval fanatics who, according to Emma Bonino, the European Union’s commissioner for humanitarian affairs, were committing “gender genocide.”
One law at odds with the Sharia that the Taliban had no apparent interest in changing was the prophet’s injunction against intoxicants. In fact, the Taliban urged its Afghan farmers to increase their production of opium. One of the Taliban leaders, the “drug czar” Abdul Rashid, noted, “If we try to stop this [opium farming] the people will be against us.” By the end 1996, according to the UN, Afghan opium production had reached 2,000 metric tons. There were an estimated 200,000 families in Afghanistan working in the opium trade. The Taliban were in control of the 96 percent of all Afghan land in opium cultivation and imposed a tax on opium production and a road toll on trucks carrying the crop.
In 1997 an Afghan opium farmer gave an ironic reply to Jimmy Carter’s brooding on whether to use nuclear weapons as part of a response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Amhud Gul told a reporter from the Washington Post, “We are cultivating this [that is, opium] and exporting this as an atom bomb.” CIA intervention had worked its magic once again. By 1994, Afghanistan, according to the UN drug control program had surpassed Burma as the world’s number one supplier of raw opium.
Sources
To date
, the war in Afghanistan has been the CIA’s most expensive covert action. But it has received a paltry degree of critical scrutiny. This is hardly shocking. From the beginning, Afghanistan was a bipartisan adventure. Nobody in the US press wrote much of anything about Afghanistan until the Soviet invasion. Then suddenly Afghanistan looked like it might become the Soviets’ Vietnam and everyone jumped on board. Today newspapers occasionally run a story about some repressive new decree or crackdown by the Taliban. But these stories hardly ever mention where the Taliban came from and how they got their guns. In the spring of 1998, the US press was filled with reports on the renegade nature of the government in Pakistan, which had recently conducted a round of underground nuclear tests in response to similar testing by the Pakistanis’ neighbor, India. Again few stories looked behind the official text to disclose the true nature of the US relationship with the Pakistani military and secret police.
Dan Rather certainly wasn’t the only media pawn of the CIA, but he took their Afghan project to prime time. Rather published an account of his ridiculous venture to the Hindu Kush in 1994. Though more than a decade had passed, Rather seems not to have read a thing about Afghanistan in the interim. After the massacres, the dope- and gun-running and the abuse of women, Rather still viewed his friends in the mujahedin as the ascetic and moral freedom fighters of old. Rather’s cheerleading is almost matched in the print media by New York Times reporter John Burns, author of an article strangely devoid of any sense of historical irony, in New York Times Magazine titled “Afghans: Now They Blame America.” There was some excellent reporting on Afghanistan and the real context of the war, notably by Tim Weiner and Lawrence Lifschultz. The reference to drug policy expert David Musto’s protest against Carter’s Afghan policy derives from Al McCoy, whose book has a brief, though information-packed, section on opium trafficking in the Golden Crescent. Bob Woodward’s Veil describes William Casey’s Afghan strategy. Martin Lee and Norman Solomon deconstruct the biased newspaper reporting during the early stages of the war in their book Unreliable Sources. We also turned frequently to Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin’s False Profits, the best account of the BCCI scandal.
Adams, James Ring, and Douglas Frantz. A Full Service Bank. Pocket Books, 1992.
Ali, Tariq. Can Pakistan Survive? Penguin, 1983.
Anderson, John Ward and Kamran Khan. “Heroin Plan by Top Pakistanis Alleged; Former Prime Minister Says Drug Deals Were to Pay for Covert Military Operations.” Washington Post, Sept. 12, 1994.
Associated Press. “Taliban Religious Police Jail Seven Singers.” Washington Post, Nov. 30, 1997.
——. “Evidence Found of Mass Killings in Afghanistan.” Washington Post, Dec. 14, 1997.
Bhutto, Benazir. Daughter of the East. Hamish Hamilton, 1988.
Blum, William. Killing Hope. Common Courage, 1995.
Boustany, Nora. “A Visit from the Men (Only) Who Now Rule Afghanistan.” Washington Post, Feb. 26, 1997.
Bradsher, Henry. Afghanistan and the Soviet Invasion. Duke Univ. Press, 1985.
Blister, Robert. “Afghanistan in Perspective.” Churchman, March 1980.
Burns, John. “Afghans: Now They Blame America.” New York Times Magazine, Feb. 4, 1990.
Carter, Jimmy. Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President. Bantam, 1982.
Cooper, Kenneth. “Afghanistan’s Neighbors Wary of Taliban Militia.” Washington Post, May 31, 1997.
——. “For Afghan Rivals, Warrior Traditions Complicate Unity.” Washington Post, June 4, 1997.
——. “Afghans Cultivate Islamic State, But Ignore Illicit Harvest.” Washington Post, May 11, 1997.
Evans, Kathy. “The Tribal Trail.” Newsline, Dec. 1989.
Galster, Steven. “Biography: Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin.” National Security Archives, 1990.
Hammond, Thomas. Red Flag over Afghanistan. Westview, 1984.
Hammer, Joshua. “Poppy Fight.” Newsweek, Sept. 18, 1989.
Harrison, Selig. “The Shah, Not the Kremlin, Touched Off the Afghan Coup.” Washington Post, May 13, 1979.
——. “Did Moscow Fear an Afghan Tito?” New York Times, Jan. 13, 1980.
Hirst, David, and Irene Bacon. Sadat. Faber and Faber, 1981.
Hussain, Zahid. “Narcopower: Pakistan’s Parallel Government.” Newsline, Dec. 1989.
Isikoff, Michael. “International Opium Crop Production up 8 Percent Last Year; Despite US Efforts Against Poppy Crop, Concern Grows About Expanding Heroin Market.” Washington Post, March 1, 1992.
Kamm, Henry. “Afghan Guerrillas Hijack Convoy of UN Aid for Rival Rebel Area.” New York Times, Dec. 1, 1988.
Khan, Afzal. “Afghanistan’s Holy War.” National Review, Feb. 1980.
LaGesse, David and George Rodriguez. “Drug War Often Finds CIA at Odds with DEA.” Dallas Morning News, Feb. 16, 1997.
Lee, Martin A., and Norman Solomon. Unreliable Sources: A Guide to Detecting Bias in the Media. Lyle Stuart, 1990.
Levins, Hoag. “The Kabul Connection.” Philadelphia Magazine. March 1980.
Lifschultz, Lawrence. “Dangerous Liaison: The CIA-ISI Connection.” Newsline, Nov. 1989.
McCoy, Alfred. The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. Lawrence Hill, 1991.
Morgan, Dan, and David Ottaway. “Women’s Fury Toward Taliban Stalls Pipeline; Afghan Plan Snagged in US Political Issues.” Washington Post, Jan. 11, 1998.
Naylor, R. T. Hot Money. Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Pear, Robert. “Thirty Afghan Rebels Slain by Rival Band.” New York Times, July 18, 1989.
Prados, John. The Presidents’ Secret Wars. Ivan R. Dee, 1996.
Rather, Dan and Mickey Hershkowitz. The Camera Never Blinks Twice. Morrow, 1994.
Roy, Oliver. Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989.
Reuters. “Afghans’ Executions Described by UN Official.” Washington Post, Dec. 17, 1997.
Rupert, James, and Steve Coll. “US Declines to Probe Afghan Drug Trade; Rebels, Pakistani Officers Implicated.” Washington Post, May 13, 1990.
Shawcross, William. “Where the Music has Died and the Women Walk Softly.” Washington Post, Nov. 23, 1997.
Thornton, Mary. “Sales of Opium Reportedly Fund Afghan Rebels.” Washington Post, Dec. 17, 1983.
Timmerman, Kenneth. The Death Lobby. Houghton Miflin, 1991.
Witkin, Gordon, and Jennifer Griffin. “The New Opium Wars.” US News and World Report. Oct. 10, 1994.
US Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Affairs. The BCCI Affair: Final Report. Government Printing Office, 1992.
US Department of State. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Government Printing Office, 1984.
——. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Government Printing Office, 1986.
——. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Government Printing Office, 1990.
——. International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. Government Printing Office, 1995.
US Office of the Comptroller General, General Accounting Office. Drug Control: US Support Efforts in Burma, Pakistan and Thailand. Government Printing Office. Feb. 1988.
Voraberger, William. “Afghan Rebels and Drugs.” Covert Action Information Bulletin. Summer 1987.
Weiner, Tim. Blank Check. Warner Books, 1990.
Woolridge, Mike. “Afghanistan’s Opium Harvest.” (Transcript) BBC News, May 9, 1998.
Yousai, Mohammed, and M. Adkin. The Beartrap: Afghanistan’s Untold Story. Cooper, 1992.
12
The CIA, Drugs and Central America
Oliver North, Drugs and the Great Senate Race
The longest story the Washington Post ever ran on allegations of drugs-for-arms shipments involving the Contras (aside from its attacks on Gary Webb) came in the final moments of Oliver North’s 1994 Senate bid in Virginia. The Post disliked North as much as, probably even more than, Webb, and since the best way to put the boot into Candidate North was to say that he had turned a blind eye to drug smug
gling by the Contras, the Post endorsed the story of Contra drug running, exactly the reverse of what it did when it was putting the boot into Gary Webb two years later. One can almost feel sorry for North amid these whimsical changes in direction on the part of the Post, were it not for the central lack of likeability in the cocky Colonel. But all the same, North was obeying not only the directives of his president to flout the will of Congress, but also the urgings of major papers like the Post, which wanted to see the Sandinistas “pressured,” harried, sabotaged and ultimately driven to the wall – with all due discretion.
For a large portion of the 1980s there was a pretense on the part of the establishment press that there were somehow legitimate means of bearing down on Nicaragua without instructing CIA-trained teams of killers to murder schoolteachers and rural organizers. But when it turned out that the effective means of pressure were illegal under national and international laws, the establishment press by and large simply turned a blind eye to what was going on.
This chapter mostly concerns itself with the CIA-supervised efforts of the Contras to raise money by running drugs into the United States. The story was there to be found, and some enterprising journalists duly dug it up and managed to get it out into the light of day. But there were scores of other stories of the US war on Nicaragua much easier to find but also ignored by most newspapers: the consistent flouting by the US government of the World Court rulings against it on the trade embargo – a particularly deadly weapon against Nicaragua; or the ludicrous campaign by the Reagan administration to suggest that the Sandinistas were set to invade Honduras.
The lesson of this history is one kindred to our observation in the first paragraph of the preface of this book. Just as one should reject the idea of a “rogue CIA,” perverting or betraying the intentions of an honorable government, so one should banish illusions of a “rogue press” fulfilling its watchdog role by barking furiously at the crimes of government. Loyal and obedient in its function, just as the CIA has been, the US corporate papers behave, in the main and with a few exceptions, like most well-fed and prosperous watchdogs, fast asleep in their kennels, eyes firmly closed.
Whiteout Page 34