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Drug trafficking by the Pakistani Army
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IN A SURPRISE STATEMENT BEFORE THE House Sub-committee on Asia and the Pacific on March 20, former US ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, has described the involvement of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in opium trade over the last six years as “substantial”.
It was also the major source of funding for the Taliban, the Golden Crescent being home to more than half the worlds Heroin
Interestingly, the former US ambassador admitted that she never reported the information to Washington during her tenure as the US envoy to Pakistan. Her inability to report the matter during her tenure technically amounts to a dereliction of official responsibilities. Intriguingly, however, the sub-committee does not seem to have pressed this point. The “revelation”, therefore, raises more troubling questions than it answers, especially about the nature of US-Pakistan relations.

This is not the first time the ISI has been accused of trafficking in drugs. Stories about the agency’s drug connections have previously appeared in the foreign and, also, Pakistani press. But most stories have relied on allegations and speculations rather than any conclusive evidence. The question of why Ambassador Chamberlain might have decided to “come clean” on the issue at this point is important.

Is it an attempt to make a case to put pressure on Pakistan? Or did the ambassador not report the matter earlier because Washington was prepared to overlook narco-trafficking while extending covert support to the Taliban in pursuit of its then overriding strategic policy goals in Afghanistan: to contain Iran and exploit Central Asian oil reserves?

Opium cultivation and heroin production in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt and the adjoining areas of Afghanistan was an offshoot of the CIA-ISI led anti-Soviet resistance in Afghanistan. Heroin sales in the European and American markets, carried out through an elaborate network of drug czars, transport mafias and intelligence operatives helped the United States finance the decade-long “holy war” in Afghanistan.

When the war in Afghanistan ended in 1989, the money and arms pipeline from the United States to Afghan mujahideen dried off. Stories connecting the ISI to drug trafficking allege that the agency, pinched for funds, was looking for alternative sources to sponsor the proxies in Afghanistan. The most damaging statement actually came from now exiled premier Nawaz Sharif. Mr Sharif has revealed that three months after his election as prime minister in November 1990, the ISI unveiled before him a blue print for financing covert foreign operations through drug deals. Sharif was reportedly assured that trustworthy third parties would carry out the whole operation, providing Islamabad with plausible deniability. According to Sharif, he ordered the operation to be called off.

The temptation to blame it all on the ISI, or “rogue” elements within it, is likely to be high both within and outside Pakistan. But scapegoating the intelligence agency for what is essentially the army’s larger institutional responsibility would be misplaced. Contrary to its deliberately created, and now widespread, image as a rogue agency, the ISI was and remains an integral part of the military hierarchy, typically operating under the army chief’s command. Manned largely by career military officers, who are usually rotated in and out on a regular basis, it is merely an executing agency for the army’s external and internal intelligence goals.
An important point that is overlooked by many, and it kind of sheds new light on the involvement of the ISI in supporting Hek, the Taliban, the Kashmir Jihad and all the rest that is blamed on 'rogue' agents.
Posted by: Paul Moloney 2003-04-02
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=12315