[Firestarter]

Peter Dale Scott - Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States

Here’s a (first) book by Peter Dale Scott in which he argues that the US uses drugs profits to fund oil wars.
Peter Dale Scott does mention that the British, the French, and the Dutch-used drugs as a cheap way to pay for overseas expansion. But he intentionally “forgets” to mention that these countries are still major players in the international drug trade. I think Dale Scott does this intentionally to hide the crimes against humanity by the British Empire.


WAR FOR OIL
The short-term effect of oil investments from the USA is to increase corruption and dictatorship. From Iran in 1953, to Indonesia in 1965 and Ghana in 1966; the CIA overthrew governments that threatened to nationalise their oil industry.
In the half century since the Korean War the USA waged 4 major wars in the Third World: Vietnam (1961-1975), the Persian Gulf (1990-1991), Colombia (1991-present), and Afghanistan (2001-2002) – written shortly before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. These wars were in or near oil-producing areas. All 4 relied on major drug trafficking proxies. The USA trains, arms, and finances drug-trafficking allies to secure oil resources abroad, which caused a huge increase in global drug trafficking since WW II.

So-called US aid programs usually spend 90% of the budget on military. According to US Ambassador Robert White:

If you put over 90 cents of your foreign policy dollar into the Pentagon and the CIA, then your policy is going to emphasize a military approach, a secretive, under the [table] approach, to the problem.

AIR AMERICA, BBCI
An important role in the drug trade was played by the quasi-autonomous Civil Air Transport (later named Air America). Most Air America planes carried drugs, and were jointly owned and operated by Kuomintang (KMT) Chinese and the CIA. In Air America’s wake a number of outsourced, nominally private corporations were founded, such as DynCorp.
Paul Helliwell, the OSS-veteran and eventual CIA officer, was involved with Meyer Lansky’s bank in Miami, Civil Air Transport (CAT), and a succession of banks with CIA and mob ties: Castle Bank of the Bahamas, World Finance Corporation, Nugan Hand Bank (Australia), and Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). These banks were used to launder money for CIA and mob. George Olmsted’s (from Washington) Financial General Bank was also involved and eventually taken over by BCCI.
CIA Directors George H.W. Bush and William Casey were linked to BCCI, at least since 1976. Also the Bank of England participated in a cover-up of BCCI’s criminality.


BURMA/LAOS - KMT
Starting in 1949-1950 the CIA shipped arms and supplies to the KMT drug network in Burma. In February 1951, CAT planes delivered arms and took KMT’s opium for the return flight. Thanks to KMT warlords and CAT, opium production in Burma increased fivefold in less than a decade - from 80 to 400 tons a year.
This evolved into the larger program of support for the opium-growing Hmong tribesmen in northeast Laos. The US government made sure that drug-trafficking (mainly opium) and triads remained under KMT control.

In July-August 1959 they arranged a phony Laotian crisis of to have an official White House sanction for a continuous Air America airlift to Laos; amongst others to Hmong (Meo) camps in northeast Laos. Most of the opium and heroin ended up in traditional KMT networks through Hong Kong to the USA.
Opium production soared over 2 decades of CIA-KMT meddling in Burma and Laos, and then plummeted in 1975 after the USA withdrew from the region. According to the US Bureau of Narcotics in 1970 the annual opium production was between 1,250 and 1,400 tons, more than half of it coming from the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos, and Thailand.


PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
The CIA with Saudi intelligence started collaborating with Islamists like Bin Laden at the beginning of the 1970s, and backed the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies. The Golden Crescent along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, went from 400 tons of heroin in 1971 to 1,200 tons in 1978. Before 1979 almost no heroin from this area reached the USA, but it supplied 60% of US heroin through the 1980s.

In April and May 1979 the USA armed mujahedin guerrillas in Afghanistan, amongst whom Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - a known drug trafficker with heroin refineries. During the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Bin Laden was the financier and logistics expert for the Saudi-financed Makhtab al-Khidamat, an organisation that recruited volunteers from all over the world. Bin Laden made commission on the transactions, which were laundered by the Russian Mafia.
In the 1980s Global International Airways (of Farhad Azima) delivered arms to Afghanistan, taking narcotics back. Also Global International Airways (Kansas City), which was reportedly founded with money from BBCI, was involved in the arms for drugs pipeline.
By the mid-1980s processing and exporting heroin had created a black economy in Pakistan of about $8 billion - half the size of the official economy - and Pakistan’s military administration was evolving into a full-blown narco-government.

In 1999 the United Nations estimated the yearly opium production of Afghanistan at 4,600 tons; 70% of the world’s crop (7,000 tons). The heroin was trafficked by the mujahedin that had been supported by the CIA.
In July 2000 Mullah Mohammad Omar leader of the Taliban imposed a ban on opium: resulting in some 70% of the world’s opium production being wiped out virtually at a stroke. The CIA switched their alliance to another drug proxy the Northern Alliance, who trebled their opium output in 2000 in northeast Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance helped in the war “against” Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.


COLOMBIA
After Occidental Oil discovered the Caiio Limon oilfield in 1983, by 1984 he USA were present in Colombia. A US security firm working for Occidental Petroleum participated in a Colombian army military operation that killed 18 civilians.
Before that already in 1977 Jet Avia had landed in Colombia with the Texan drug trafficker Jimmy Chagra; the plane was owned by Danny Ray Lasater. Lasater had ties with organised crime and made contributions to the campaigns of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown, Jr.. Lasater was eventually convicted for cocaine distribution in Colombia.

The coca production in Colombia went from 3.8 to 12.3 thousand hectares between 1991 and 1999.
In 1993, while working for the Cali cartel, Carlos Castaiio collaborated with the CIA and the Colombian police to bring down the drug baron Pablo Escobar. Castaiio and brother were leaders of the Los Pepes death squad that killed members of Escobar’s organisation. Castaiio admitted in a television interview that 70% of the income for his group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), came from drugs.
In the 1990s Clinton’s drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, blamed “narco-guerrillas” for the flood of cocaine that was in fact controlled by the Colombian government and right-wing paramilitaries.
One of the principal suppliers to the Mexican cartels is the Henao-Montoya organization with which Carlos Castaiio is affiliated.

In 2001 Colombian government sources estimated that 40% of Colombian cocaine exports were controlled by right-wing paramilitary warlords and allies. Meanwhile the amount controlled by the FARC, was estimated by the Colombian government at 2.5%. FARC was the target of the US “war on drugs”.
In Colombia the CIA used another airline - Southern Air Transport. In November 1998, a Colombian air force plane landed at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport with a hidden cargo of 1600 pounds of cocaine.


Peter Dale Scott “Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Columbia, and Indochina” (2003) – 16 GB: https://ourrebellion.files.wordpress.com...-china.pdf