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AFGHANISTAN, COLOMBIA, VIETNAM:
Part One: Overview
Since World War Two, the United States has had in effect two
conflicting styles of conducting foreign policy, one for other developed
states, and a quite different style for regions of little economic
interest apart from their mineral resources -- above all oil and natural
gas.
As a general rule, the US has worked through the established
governments of developed states. But in Third World areas
and regions with oil or other minerals, the US has done whatever
it thought necessary to secure access when it wished to do so.
As Michael Tanzer observed some years ago, a number of CIA-engineered
coups in the 1950s and 1960s, starting with Iran in 1953, can
be related to the intentions of those countries to nationalize their
oil companies.
The US has also
embarked on at least three major military campaigns -- in
Vietnam, Colombia, and now Afghanistan, where oil has been one of
the factors in the US commitment, and oil lobbies among the
groups urging engagement. Other campaigns which seemed unrelated
to this concern -- notably Kosovo -- have also been interpreted by
strategic realists as important to America's oil "needs."
Whether by coincidence or not, these three major campaigns (as well
as others) have all aligned the US on the same side as powerful
local drug traffickers. Partly this has been from realpolitik --
in recognition of the local power realities represented by the drug
traffic. Partly it has been from the need to escape domestic
political restraints: the traffickers have supplied additional
financial resources needed because of US budgetary limitations,
and they have also provided assets not bound (as the US is)
by the rules of war. And partly (I believe) it has been from a
concern to manage the drug traffic itself, and ensure that it
will never fall under the control of another hostile power.
These facts, however coincidental in origin, have led to
enduring intelligence networks involving both oil and drugs,
or more specifically both petrodollars and narcodollars.
These networks, particularly in the Middle East, have become
so important that they affect, not just the conduct of US
foreign policy, but the health and behavior of the US government,
US banks and corporations, and indeed the whole of US society.
It has become customary for US intelligence agencies (or what I
call cryptocracies) to draw on the assets of the illicit drug
economy (or what I call the cryptonomy) in pursuit of various
goals, from negotiation to corruption. This has been a major
factor in the failure of our government to address the problem
of drugs and the cryptonomy reasonably, and the concomitant
growth of the cryptonomy to a point where the US economy has
become dependent on it. (For another example of this, click
here.)
We see proof of this in the appalling US government handling of
BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a bank
controlled by the petrodollars of Sheikh Zayed al-Nahayan the Enir
of Abu Dhabi, and a bank which became a major global channel for
the laundering of narcodollars and other illicit funds.
As reported in The Outlaw Bank,
Customs chief William von Raab...announced that BCCI was
the most important drug-money bank ever hit. But instead of being
lauded by his superiors...he was told to dampen his public
enthusiasm. When he persisted, he was cut out of the
investigation. When he complained, he was asked to resign.
And then the Justice Department let BCCI off the hook,
collecting a limited guilty plea and a $14-million fine that
scuttled any further significant investigation. And then
a senior Justice Department official wrote letters to
banking resulators...suggesting they allow BCCI, which had
just pleaded guilty to drug-money laundering, to continue
operating. (p. 350)
A Senate Subcommittee chaired by Senator John Kerry investigated
"The BCCI Affair." But while the resulting Hearings are an official
Subcommittee record, the final
Report, while a Committee Print, is
listed only as a report by two members, "Senator John Kerry and
[ranking Republican] Senator Hank Brown."
A note by Senator Brown in the Report throws light on this anomaly:
It is important to note that no other committee in the
United States Senate conducted a thorough and in-depth
investigation of BCCI....John Kerry was willing to spearhead
this difficult investigation. Because many important
members of his own party were involved in this scandal, it was
a distasteful subject for other committee and subcommittee
chairmen to investigate. They did not. John Kerry did. (pp. 20-21)
But there were probably institutional as well as personal
reasons for the evaporation of the BCCI scandal.
No administration with an eye to the United States
balance-of-trade problems has ever wnted to cut off the flow
of capital flight into America, and tough banking disclosure
laws could dry up the multibillion-dollar river overnight.
That unspoken imperative is so strong that some inside
players, such as former National Security Council
economist Roger Robinson, dismiss the idea that there needed
to be a conspiracy to handicap an investigation or
prosecution of BCCI. "[Treasury Secretary James] Baker
didn't pursue BCCI because he thought a prosecution of
the bank would damage the United States' reputation as
a safe haven for flight capital and overseas investments,"
Robinson said. (The Outlaw Bank, 357)
This digression from petrodollars and narcodollars into
global finance is of direct relevance to the way in which
the Bush administration will conduct, or fail to conduct, its
campaign against terrorism. Already the ban on certain banks
financing terrorism has drawn attention to the fact that
these banks (like BCCI) have availed themselves of safe havens
(like the Grand Cayman Islands) which international
conventions are seeking to curb or banish, and focused
attention on the failure of the US to ratify these
conventions.
More specifically the deep politics of the Al-Qaeda network,
and of bin Laden's personal family, involves the same
pattern of Afghan-Pakistan-United Arab Emirates drug-trafficking,
money-laundering, and intelligence activity, as conferred
on BCCI an importance in US covert politics so great that
it was never effectively prosecuted for its crimes.
It is certain that the major US oil companies will oppose the
exposure of this corrupt intelligence milieu. It involves
personnel who are veterans not just of Pakistani intelligence,
but more centrally of Saudi intelligence. And the Saudi intelligence
service is at the very heart, not just of the CIA-mujaheddin-
Afghanistan scandal, but of the corrupt arrangements protecting
the on-going presence of US oil companies in the Arabian
peninsula.
These remarks are not offered out of defeatism. They are made to
reinforce the important and surely
obvious truth that terrorism can never be
defeated by merely defending the status quo. What is needed is
a major readjustment of the relationship between the United
States and its corporations on the one hand, and the exploited
peoples of the Third World.
THE
DEEP POLITICS OF DRUGS AND OIL