Politics of opium: CIA is breaking bad

"I would love to join the CIA, but I've done illegal drugs in the past." A netizen named "Eager to Serve" left a question on the intelligence agency's official website in 2020, wondering whether there is "any path forward for me at the CIA". The agency then replied and emphasized that those applying to work there could still get a job if they admitted to such activity, as long as they hadn't consumed any illicit substances within the previous year. However, the CIA can answer this way, not because it is sufficiently tolerant of addicts but because this intelligence agency is itself a drug lord.

Near the end of World War II, to fight against the German and Italian fascists, the US Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, began to foster the Mafia in Sicily, Italy, and began to work closely with the Mafia on drugs. The CIA has been involved with drugs ever since and has started to expand its drug business worldwide.

Golden triangle
After the end of World War II, Desmond Fitzgerald, advisor to the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) Far East Division, and others conceived "Operation Paper". According to the Asia-Pacific Journal, this operation was planned to arm the remnant KMT Army in the Golden Triangle region of Burma to obtain information on the People's Republic of China.

Subsequently, with Truman's approval, the CIA reached an agreement in Burma with KMT General Li Mi that the US would supply them with weapons through the Civil Air Transport Company (CAT), which nominally operated in Taiwan, China. In return, the remnant KMT forces in Burma were required to partner with the rulers of the Kokang region to provide protection for the local opium business. A huge part of the profits from the opium business would be transferred to the Overseas Southeast Asia Supply Corporation, a CIA-run company in Thailand, to fund covert operations. Soon, a new style of triangular trade consisting of arms, money, and drugs was established.

As the Cold War continued, the drug trade in the Golden Triangle under US guidance spread to Laos and Cambodia. As documented by the International Herald Tribune, when the US military planes supplied Long Tieng Air Base in Laos, they would return with crates of opium paste and refined heroin. A large percentage of these would end up in the hands of American troops in Vietnam a few days later.

The Vietnam War gave a boost to the growth of drugs in the Golden Triangle. As the war progressed, the US Army morale was low, and many soldiers used drugs to numb themselves for the frequent, bloody combat. A carton of marijuana could be bought for $5 or exchanged for a few packs of cigarettes. Later, the U.S. troops switched from smoking marijuana to taking heroin, as was described by John Steinbeck IV in Washingtonian Magazine in 1968. The US Army chief in Vietnam turned a blind eye to the use of marijuana among their soldiers, and in 1973, with Nixon's withdrawal from the war, heroin sales in Vietnam dropped by more than a third.

Golden crescent
The United States has a long history of encouraging the spread of drugs in Afghanistan, part of the Golden Crescent region. American historian Alfred McCoy writes in his book that the CIA heavily funded local Afghan forces in order to fight the former Soviet Union, ignoring the fact that those troops "ran a chain of heroin labs".

In 2001, the year of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the whole country produced merely 185 tons of opium. In 2003, Afghanistan was producing two-thirds of the world's opium, with 80,000 hectares sown and poppies being cultivated in 28 out of 31 provinces and a population of 1.7 million people participating in poppy cultivation. In 2021, the year US troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the country became the world's largest opium producer, producing more than 80 percent of the world's supply, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

The New York Times also reported in 2010 that a drug lord named Hajji Juma Khan, who was arrested in 2008, was considered the largest and most dangerous drug lord in Afghanistan. But in fact, he had another identity—that of an informant for the CIA. Khan would not have become a major drug lord without the "support" of the CIA. For years, the US arrested Khan's "rivals" in Afghanistan and condoned Khan's crimes.

The CIA's use of opium politics is dirty in the extreme. It highlights how the US is manipulating third-world countries for its own interests with whatever is available. Like Pandora's Box, once opened, it cannot be closed and will only bring untold suffering.

The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Xinhua News Agency, Global Times, CGTN, China Daily etc. He can be reached at xinping604@gmail.com.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.

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