Who promote drugs and arms trade?

Unfortunately, a large part of the world now knows beyond all doubt that this statement -- that more international integration will necessarily bring about better material conditions ­- is simply not true. The era of globalisation has seen many more people on earth living in absolute poverty, significant increases in income and asset inequality both within and between countries, impoverishment of entire regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Eastern Europe, agrarian crises throughout the developing world, as well as many other such results. And it is also quite clear that such results are not accidental, that they stem from the greater power of large international capital vis-à-vis all other social groups, which has been the dominant and defining feature of the recent phase of globalisation. Indeed, it could be argued that some of the increase in resentment, even in sheer desperation, that has been such fertile ground for the breeding of extremist politics, has come from the massive increases in inequality and the denial of basic economic rights to large sections of people across the world. But quite apart from this indirect process of causation, there is another sense in which international terrorism and international trade are not in opposition, but actually fundamentally linked and reliant upon each other. This is in terms of some types of world trade which are huge in size but rarely get talked about either by the World Trade Organisation or by the most ardent advocates of globalisation -­ the world trade in arms and in drugs.

This trade has become the source of the vast incomes which generate the funds used by terrorist networks across the world, even as they also form an important source of demand for small arms production in particular. The close nexus between such nefarious and shady trading activities and the activities of international terrorists, as well as the close involvement of quasi-governmental organisations like the American Central Intelligence Agency, has been brought out very clearly in a study by the Canadian academic Michel Chossudovsky. Thus, as Chossudovsky shows, the history of the drug trade in Central Asia is intimately related to the Central Intelligence Agency's covert operations.

Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war, opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. The Central Intelligence Agency not only encouraged the local leaders to coerce farmers into growing opium but also set up around eleven heroin production units in the area. Within two years of the onslaught of the American Intelligence Agency's operation in Afghanistan, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world's top heroin producer, supplying 60 per cent of US demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979 to 1.2 million by 1985 ­- a much steeper rise than in any other nation. CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories.

During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the US Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests. United States officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies 'because US narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there.' In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted that the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. The completely cynical attitude of the CIA is exemplified by Cogan's blatant and shameless statements. "Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn't really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade. I don't think that we need to apologise for this. Every situation has its fallout.... There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan."

The end of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan did not mean a disruption of this production and trade, which has grown exponentially even after this. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a new surge in opium production has unfolded. (According to UN estimates, the production of opium in Afghanistan in 1998-99 -- coinciding with the build up of armed insurgencies in the former Soviet republics -- reached a record high of 4600 metric ton). Powerful business syndicates in the former Soviet Union allied with organised crime are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. So the Central Asian region is not only strategic for its extensive oil reserves, it also produces three quarters of the world's opium representing multibillion dollar revenues to business syndicates, financial institutions, intelligence agencies and organised crime. The annual proceeds of the Golden Crescent drug trade represents approximately one third of the world annual turnover of narcotics, estimated by the UN as $500 billion. So, it is hard to sympathise with the US as the CIA probably remains involved with the drugs and arms trade.

Sirajul Islam is a social sciences researcher and consultant.