The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 8 | Issue 28 | Number 3 | Article ID 3384 | Jul 12 2010

1

Kyrgyzstan the USand the Global Drug Problem DeepForcesand the Syndrome of Coups Drugs and Terror　　キリギスタン米国世界的麻薬問題mdashmdash深い勢力とクーデター麻薬テロ症候群

Peter Dale Scott

Kyrgyzstan the USand the GlobalDrug Problem Deep Forcesand theSyndrome of Coups Drugs andTerror

Peter Dale Scott

Will the current crisis in Kyrgyzstan lead togreater instability and perhaps an expansion ofthe current conflict in Central Asia There aregood reasons to be concerned Deep forces notadequately understood are at work there andthese forces have repeatedly led to majorwarfare in the past

The pattern of events unfolding in Kyrgyzstanis ominously reminiscent of how Americabecame involved in Laos in the 1960s and laterin Afghanistan in the 1980s American covertinvolvement in those countries soon led to civilwars producing numerous casualties andrefugees It will take strenuous leadership fromboth Obama in Washington and Medvedev inMoscow to prevent a third major conflict frombreaking out in Kyrgyzstan

I call the pattern I refer to ldquoa Laotiansyndromerdquo of coups drugs and terror since itwas first clearly illustrated by Americaninterventions in Laos in the late 1950s and1960s The syndrome involves a number ofindependent but interactive elements whoseinterconnection in the past has not generallybeen recognized What it reflects is not a singleagenda but a predictable symbiosis ofdivergent groups responding to the powerful

forces that the drug traffic creates

In this syndrome something like the followingpattern emerges

1) Covert US activity results inthe ous t ing o f a modera tegovernment and its replacementby a more corrupt and unpopularone unsupported by the culture ofthe country on which it is imposed

2) A successor regime to maintainits uncertain grip on powerintensifies its control over the localdrug traffic

3 ) T h i s c o n t r o l i n v o l v e scollaboration with local drugmafias leading to their expansion

4) The flow of drugs from thecountry (or through in the case ofKyrgyzstan) increases significantly

5) Eventually in the context ofweakened l eg i t imacy andstrengthened illegitimacy asuccessor government is ousted

6) What ensues is a violent civilwar

7 ) T h e f i n a l o u t c o m e i s agovernment not to Americarsquosliking

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

2

The pattern does not repeat itself identically InLaos CIA intrigue and money in 1959 producedan unpopular pro-American regime under right-wing general Phoumi Nosavan which lastedeighteen months1 Similar CIA intrigues inAfghanistan two decades later completelybackfired and produced instead an equallyunpopular anti-American regime under NurMohammed Taraki which lasted sixteenmonths2

But the root problem was the same the CIArsquosgratuitous destabilization of an inoffensivecountry encouraged local intrigues andparanoia and soon produced an unstable anddivisive government without a popular baseEventually a resulting weakened government(the next in Laos a little later in Afghanistan)favored both drug and terrorist activity in itsterritory as predictably as a pine forestweakened by drought will invite an infestationof beetles

The longer-term result was a country wherecivil politics had been replaced by civil war Inthe case of Laos and Afghanistan US covertactivity waged as part of the Cold Warproduced Soviet military and intelligenceresponses (It may in the case of Afghanistanhave been designed to produce suchresponses) Former Carter advisor ZbigniewBrzezinski who authorized the CIArsquos covertAfghan operations of 1978-79 later boasted toa French newspaper

The secret operation was anexcel lent idea I t drew theRussians into the Afghan trap andyou want me to regret it On theday that the Soviets officiallycrossed the border I wrote toPresident Carter saying inessence We now have theopportunity of giving to the USSRits Vietnam War hellip

When asked whether Islamic

fundamentalism represented aworld menace Brzezinski repliedNonsense3

The last decade of Kyrgyz history suggests thatUS and Russian covert operators havecontinued to tussle in the ldquogreat gamerdquo ofdominating the Central Asian heartland Andonce again while the leaders of both countriesseek to evolve common policies for Kyrgyzstanthere may be bureaucrats below them whoharbor more belligerent intentions

Central Asia

To the general public it would seem obviousthat none of these developments have been inthe interests of either America or the world YetAmerican agencies have still not learned fromthe obvious fiasco of their Laotian venturewhich resulted in a huge increase in opiumproduction before this peaceful Buddhistnation ceased (thanks to American efforts) tobe neutralist and instead became nominallyCommunist

Americarsquos destabilization of remote Laos aneutral and harmless nation was in accordancewith the ideological doctrine being peddled in abook by three policy hawks at the time AForward Strategy for America by RobertStrausz-Hupeacute William R Kintner and Stefan TPossony The book rejected coexistence as a

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

3

foreign policy and argued for ldquoa strategy ofactive pressures directed against thecommunist blocrdquo wherever it was seen to bevulnerable

The American sponsored ldquoTulip Revolutionrdquo inKyrgyzstan (March 2005) is a conspicuousproduct of the forward strategy doctrine Thisis no accident it came at a time when GeorgeW Bush repeatedly spoke of a ldquoforwardstrategy of freedomrdquo or a ldquoforward strategy forfreedomrdquo4 But by the 21st century the forwardstrategy in countries with drug economies hada track record which its advocates inWashington might well have reviewed beforeadvocating an intervention so close to bothRussia and China

In 1959 the CIA attempted to impose a right-wing government in Laos after a decade and ahalf of expanding drug trafficking and a futilebloody drug-financed war Laos became (atleast nominally) a communist nationUndeterred by the dismal outcome in Laos in1978-79 Zbigniew Brzezinski Robert Gatesand the CIA mobilized right-wing elementsagain in Afghanistan another nationcontiguous to the then Soviet Union5 Theimmediate result was the same as Laos thereplacement of a neutralist regime by a radicaland polarizing one (in this case communist)followed by another radical increase in drugtrafficking and another decade of bloody andunsuccessful war

What were the forward strategists hoping for inKyrgyzstan In April of this year the unpopularregimeinstalled by the 2005 Tulip Revolutionwas itself replaced Although it is too early topredict the outcome of these dislocationsthousands of lives have been lost in the ethnicviolence of June 2010 and drug traffickers areapparently profiting from the near anarchy toconsolidate their hold on southern KyrgyzstanThat is just what happened to Laos in 1959 itis what Jimmy Carterrsquos drug advisor DavidMusto warned would happen in Afghanistan in

19806 Did someone want it to happen again

All in all the coup-drug-terror syndrome inKyrgyzstan well illustrates the Marxist dictumthat history repeats itself first as tragedy(Afghanistan in 1978-80) and the second timeas farce

The Coup-Drug-Terror Syndrome inKyrgyzstan

After the break-up of the former Soviet Unionin 1991 Kyrgyzstan under the leadership ofAskar Akayev was relatively the mostmoderate and open government among the sixpost-Soviet ldquostansrdquo of Central Asia Aloneamong the successor strong men Akayev wasnot a long-time Communist Party apparatchikbut an intellectual who read Heine a physicistldquoa researcher in St Petersburg and an associateof legendary Russian physicist and dissidentAndrei Sakharovrdquo7

It is true that Akayevrsquos initial efforts to makeKyrgyzstan an open and pluralistic democracydid not last long an on-going economic crisismade his regime increasingly unpopular8

Meanwhile he soon came under pressure fromneighboring Uzbekistan Kazakstan and Chinato crack down on the dissidents who wereusing Kyrgyzstan as a base for mobilizingagainst their home countries9 Eventually thecountryrsquos economic problems led to popularprotests and their brutal suppression

But in international policy Akayev managed atfirst to maintain good relations with both theUS and Russia In December 2001 following911 he granted America a vital base at Manasfor support of its war effort in land-lockedAfghanistan Almost immediately the Pentagonawarded the Akayev family payoffs on fuelsupplies to Manas via two Gibraltar-basedcompanies (named Red Star and Mina) set upb y a r e t i r e d U S A r m y l i e u t e n a n tcolonel10 American dollars proceeded toaccelerate government corruption just as theyhad earlier in Laos and Afghanistan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

4

Then in October 2003 Akayev allowed Putin toreopen an old Soviet base in Kant as what wasdescribed as ldquoa deterrent to internationalterrorismrdquo in nearby Uzbekistan andTajikistan11 This move was not well received

Though [Kant was] less than aquarter of the size of ManasAkayevrsquos decision landed him onAmericarsquos ldquowatch l istrdquo andincreased aid flowed to the Kyrgyzopposition via American NGOs In2004 Washington in assisting thedemocratic process directed $12million an amount six times thelsquoformalrdquo rent for Manas intoKyrgyzs tan i n the f o rm o fscholarships and donations whilethe State Department even fundedTV station equipment in the restivesouthern provincial town of OshGeorge Soros through his variousfoundations also helped fund theopposition while Freedom Houseoperated a printing press inBishkek12

The So-Called Tulip Revolution of 2005

For the reasons cited above Akayevlostacceptance in Washington just like theneutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma in Laos inthe 1950s or Mohammed Daud in Afghanistanin the 1970s Akayev was overthrown in the so-called ldquoTulip Revolutionrdquo of March 2005 by farthe bloodiest and least democratic of all the so-called ldquocolor revolutionsrdquo that had alreadychanged governments in Serbia (2002)Georgia (2003) and the Ukraine (2004) Thoseregime changes had been essential lynonviolent In the Tulip Revolution howeverthe London Independent reported on March 262005 that ldquoAccording to hospital officials twopeople had been killed and 360 wounded in theviolence and 173 were still in hospitalrdquo13

In truth the so-called Tulip Revolution was norevolution in the true sense at all but a palacecoup replacing the northern Kyrgyz coteriebehind Akayev with a new southern coteriebehind his replacement KurmanbekBakiyevCraig Smith in the New York Timesacknowledged as much even before the coupwas over

A malaise is settling over thiscountry as the uprising a week agob e g i n s t o l o o k l e s s l i k e ademocratically inspired revolutionand more like a garden-varietycoup with a handful of seasonedpoliticians vying for the spoils ofthe ousted government

Lets not pretend that whathappened here was democraticsaid Edil Baisalov one of thecountrys best-known democracyadvocates speaking to clearlydisheartened students beneathhuge Soviet-era portraits of LeninMarx and Engels in the auditoriumof what has been the AmericanUniversity since 1997

Mr Baisalov bemoaned what hesaid Kyrgyzstan lost out on whenthe presidential palace wasstormed and President AskarAkayev fled the kind of catharticnational experience that hewitnessed in Ukraine as its OrangeRevolution unfolded That was aslow-building well-organized eventthat took two months to reach asuccessful conclusion

What Ukraine went through wasvery important to their democraticdevelopment he said We didnthave that great emot iona lexperience of civic education14

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

5

As a symptom that the deep politics ofKyrgyzstan were unchanged the US Manassupply contracts which earlier benefitedAkayevrsquos family were promptly taken over byBakiyevrsquos son Maksym

Nevertheless Ariel Cohen claimed in theWashington Times that ldquothe people ofKyrgyzstan have won their freedomrdquo and heattributed the changeover with good reason toPresident George W Bushs words spoken inhis Inaugural Address and State of the Unionspeechrdquo15

President Bush himself gave an imprimatur tothe changeover Visiting Georgia in May 2005he told Georgian President Saakashvili

Georgia will become the mainpartner of the United States inspreading democracy and freedomin the post-Soviet space This is ourproposal We will always be withyou in protecting freedom anddemocracyhellip You are makingmany important contributions tofreedomrsquos cause but your mostimportant contribution is yourexample Hopeful changes aretaking places from Baghdad toBeirut and Bishkek [Kyrgyzstan]16

And indeed it was true that as the right-wingJamestown Foundation in Washington revealedldquothree Georgian parliamentarians once activeengineers of Georgias Rose Revolution hadpaid an unofficial visit to Kyrgyzstan to supportthe attempted lsquoTulip Revolutionrsquo thererdquo17

But this was only one aspect of a US-coordinated effort According to Der Spiegel inApril 2005

As ear ly as February RozaOtunbayeva [one of Bakiyevrsquos co-

conspirators in 2005] pledgedallegiance to a small group ofpartners and sponsors of theKyrgyz revo lut ion to ourAmerican friends at FreedomHouse (who donated a printingpress in Bishkek to the opposition)and to George Soros a speculatorwho previously helped unseatE d w a r d S h e v a r d n a d z e sgovernment in Georgia Trying tohelp the democratic process theAmericans poured some $12million into Kyrgyzstan in the formof scholarships and donations18

The Post-Tulip Bakiyev Government ndash andDrugs

There seems little doubt that although theAkayev government had been corruptcorruption only increased under the new post-Tulip Bakiyev regime In the words of ColumbiaUniversity Professor Alexander Cooley theBakiyev family ran the country like a criminalsyndicaterdquo19

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

6

Bakiyev and Rumsfeld

More specifically the Bakiyevfamily accordingto Peter Leonard of Associated Press tookcomplete control of the drug traffic transitingthe country

Authorities and analysts have littledoubt that Bakiyev and hisrelatives are at the heart of thedrug trade

The whole Bakiyev family isinvolved in drug trafficking saidAlexander Knyazev a respectedindependent political analyst inBishkek the Kyrgyz capital

After Kurmanbek Bakiyev came topower all drug lords were killedand (his elder brother) ZhanybekBakiyev consolidated most of thedrug trafficking in his hands

Acting deputy prime minister andgeneral prosecutor Azimbek

Beknazarov also endorses the viewthat Bakiyev and his family haveinterests in the drug tradealthough no specific criminalprobes have yet been initiated intothose allegations20

In October 2009 Bakiyev abolished the KyrgyzDrug Control Agency leading the JamestownFoundation to speculate that Bakiyev wasldquocentralizing illegal control over the drugeconomy [and was] dis interested ininternational initiatives to control narcoticsrdquo Itadded that

Overall roughly five identifiablecriminal groups control drugtransit through KyrgyzstanAlthough they are known to thesecurity structures these groupshave ties to the government or attimes represent government andtherefore are free to carry outtheir activities with impunity21

In May 2010 former Kyrgyz Deputy SecurityCouncil Secretary Alik Orozov told a Bishkeknewspaper that the Drug Control Agency hadbeen closed by Janysh Bakiyev who wished totake full control over drug trafficking Thecharge was endorsed by the former deputyhead of the former Drug Control Agency VitaliyOrozaliyev who added that

problems started to emerge at thelevel of the US Department ofState All initiatives to extend thefinancing of the Drug ControlAgency were axed exactly thereAll previous US ambassadors wereregular guests of the Drug ControlAgency However with the arrivalof [US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan]Tatiana Gfoeller [in 2008] all

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

7

contacts were cut as if they werecut with a knife She demonstratedfull indifference to the agency shefully distanced herself from thisproject and she did not accept ourinvitations She even did not wantto give accommodation to our UScolleagues [in the DEA] - whowanted to set up something like abureau of their own in Bishkek - inthe territory of the US embassyWhat caused such a sharp turn inUS diplomacy to the problems offighting drug-related crimes inKyrgyzstan is only anyonesguess 2 2

The Counter-Coup of April 2010

Bakiyevrsquos drug involvement does not appear tohave aroused any protest in Washington But inFebruary of 2009 Kyrgyzstanrsquos parliamentvoted 78-1 to close the US air base at Manasand in the same month Bakiyev announced inMoscow that he would close Manas and acceptmore than $2 billion in emergency assistanceand investments from Russia However

the Kyrgyz government ended updouble-crossing Moscow byaccepting an initial $300 millionpayment before it renegotiated ahigher rent with the United Statesfor the renamed Manas TransitCenter As a result relationsbetween Moscow and Bishkekplummeted to an all-time lowwhile Bakiyevs governmentgleefully cashed in the new checksprovided by both Moscow andWashington23

But Bakiyevrsquos glee was short-lived His politicalopponents aware of and appalled by hismercenary manipulations united in April 2010

in a successful Russian-supported effort tooverthrow him According to the ChristianScience Monitor

M a n y b e l i e v e t h e c o u p i nKyrgyzstan was staged by theRussians who were quietlyunhappy with the previous leaderThe Kremlin considered MrBakiyev not loyal enough as heappeared reluctant to closeAmericarsquos Manas air base whichplays a critical role in resupplyingUS troops in nearby Afghanistan24

Russiarsquos displeasure with Bakiyev was alsospelled out by a writer for the PNAC-linkedJamestown Foundation

Medvedev was uncompromising inasserting Russian domination ofthe post-Soviet space He insistedthat the government of the KyrgyzPresident Kurmanbek Bakiyevwas overthrown in a bloodyrevolution last week that left over80 dead and some 1500 woundeddue to Bakiyevrsquos inconsistency inopposing the US military presencein Central Asia According toMedvedev Bakiyev first orderedthe US and its allies to leave theairbase Manas near the Kyrgyzcapital Bishkek Then he allowedthe Americans to continue to useManas to transfer personnel andsuppl ies into Afghanistanrenaming the airbase into ldquoatransit centerrdquo and increasingpayments for the lease NowMedvedev joked all may see theresults of ldquosuch a consistentpolicyrdquo (wwwkremlinru April 14)

T h e m e s s a g e s e n t t o t h e

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

2

The pattern does not repeat itself identically InLaos CIA intrigue and money in 1959 producedan unpopular pro-American regime under right-wing general Phoumi Nosavan which lastedeighteen months1 Similar CIA intrigues inAfghanistan two decades later completelybackfired and produced instead an equallyunpopular anti-American regime under NurMohammed Taraki which lasted sixteenmonths2

But the root problem was the same the CIArsquosgratuitous destabilization of an inoffensivecountry encouraged local intrigues andparanoia and soon produced an unstable anddivisive government without a popular baseEventually a resulting weakened government(the next in Laos a little later in Afghanistan)favored both drug and terrorist activity in itsterritory as predictably as a pine forestweakened by drought will invite an infestationof beetles

The longer-term result was a country wherecivil politics had been replaced by civil war Inthe case of Laos and Afghanistan US covertactivity waged as part of the Cold Warproduced Soviet military and intelligenceresponses (It may in the case of Afghanistanhave been designed to produce suchresponses) Former Carter advisor ZbigniewBrzezinski who authorized the CIArsquos covertAfghan operations of 1978-79 later boasted toa French newspaper

The secret operation was anexcel lent idea I t drew theRussians into the Afghan trap andyou want me to regret it On theday that the Soviets officiallycrossed the border I wrote toPresident Carter saying inessence We now have theopportunity of giving to the USSRits Vietnam War hellip

When asked whether Islamic

fundamentalism represented aworld menace Brzezinski repliedNonsense3

The last decade of Kyrgyz history suggests thatUS and Russian covert operators havecontinued to tussle in the ldquogreat gamerdquo ofdominating the Central Asian heartland Andonce again while the leaders of both countriesseek to evolve common policies for Kyrgyzstanthere may be bureaucrats below them whoharbor more belligerent intentions

Central Asia

To the general public it would seem obviousthat none of these developments have been inthe interests of either America or the world YetAmerican agencies have still not learned fromthe obvious fiasco of their Laotian venturewhich resulted in a huge increase in opiumproduction before this peaceful Buddhistnation ceased (thanks to American efforts) tobe neutralist and instead became nominallyCommunist

Americarsquos destabilization of remote Laos aneutral and harmless nation was in accordancewith the ideological doctrine being peddled in abook by three policy hawks at the time AForward Strategy for America by RobertStrausz-Hupeacute William R Kintner and Stefan TPossony The book rejected coexistence as a

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

3

foreign policy and argued for ldquoa strategy ofactive pressures directed against thecommunist blocrdquo wherever it was seen to bevulnerable

The American sponsored ldquoTulip Revolutionrdquo inKyrgyzstan (March 2005) is a conspicuousproduct of the forward strategy doctrine Thisis no accident it came at a time when GeorgeW Bush repeatedly spoke of a ldquoforwardstrategy of freedomrdquo or a ldquoforward strategy forfreedomrdquo4 But by the 21st century the forwardstrategy in countries with drug economies hada track record which its advocates inWashington might well have reviewed beforeadvocating an intervention so close to bothRussia and China

In 1959 the CIA attempted to impose a right-wing government in Laos after a decade and ahalf of expanding drug trafficking and a futilebloody drug-financed war Laos became (atleast nominally) a communist nationUndeterred by the dismal outcome in Laos in1978-79 Zbigniew Brzezinski Robert Gatesand the CIA mobilized right-wing elementsagain in Afghanistan another nationcontiguous to the then Soviet Union5 Theimmediate result was the same as Laos thereplacement of a neutralist regime by a radicaland polarizing one (in this case communist)followed by another radical increase in drugtrafficking and another decade of bloody andunsuccessful war

What were the forward strategists hoping for inKyrgyzstan In April of this year the unpopularregimeinstalled by the 2005 Tulip Revolutionwas itself replaced Although it is too early topredict the outcome of these dislocationsthousands of lives have been lost in the ethnicviolence of June 2010 and drug traffickers areapparently profiting from the near anarchy toconsolidate their hold on southern KyrgyzstanThat is just what happened to Laos in 1959 itis what Jimmy Carterrsquos drug advisor DavidMusto warned would happen in Afghanistan in

19806 Did someone want it to happen again

All in all the coup-drug-terror syndrome inKyrgyzstan well illustrates the Marxist dictumthat history repeats itself first as tragedy(Afghanistan in 1978-80) and the second timeas farce

The Coup-Drug-Terror Syndrome inKyrgyzstan

After the break-up of the former Soviet Unionin 1991 Kyrgyzstan under the leadership ofAskar Akayev was relatively the mostmoderate and open government among the sixpost-Soviet ldquostansrdquo of Central Asia Aloneamong the successor strong men Akayev wasnot a long-time Communist Party apparatchikbut an intellectual who read Heine a physicistldquoa researcher in St Petersburg and an associateof legendary Russian physicist and dissidentAndrei Sakharovrdquo7

It is true that Akayevrsquos initial efforts to makeKyrgyzstan an open and pluralistic democracydid not last long an on-going economic crisismade his regime increasingly unpopular8

Meanwhile he soon came under pressure fromneighboring Uzbekistan Kazakstan and Chinato crack down on the dissidents who wereusing Kyrgyzstan as a base for mobilizingagainst their home countries9 Eventually thecountryrsquos economic problems led to popularprotests and their brutal suppression

But in international policy Akayev managed atfirst to maintain good relations with both theUS and Russia In December 2001 following911 he granted America a vital base at Manasfor support of its war effort in land-lockedAfghanistan Almost immediately the Pentagonawarded the Akayev family payoffs on fuelsupplies to Manas via two Gibraltar-basedcompanies (named Red Star and Mina) set upb y a r e t i r e d U S A r m y l i e u t e n a n tcolonel10 American dollars proceeded toaccelerate government corruption just as theyhad earlier in Laos and Afghanistan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

4

Then in October 2003 Akayev allowed Putin toreopen an old Soviet base in Kant as what wasdescribed as ldquoa deterrent to internationalterrorismrdquo in nearby Uzbekistan andTajikistan11 This move was not well received

Though [Kant was] less than aquarter of the size of ManasAkayevrsquos decision landed him onAmericarsquos ldquowatch l istrdquo andincreased aid flowed to the Kyrgyzopposition via American NGOs In2004 Washington in assisting thedemocratic process directed $12million an amount six times thelsquoformalrdquo rent for Manas intoKyrgyzs tan i n the f o rm o fscholarships and donations whilethe State Department even fundedTV station equipment in the restivesouthern provincial town of OshGeorge Soros through his variousfoundations also helped fund theopposition while Freedom Houseoperated a printing press inBishkek12

The So-Called Tulip Revolution of 2005

For the reasons cited above Akayevlostacceptance in Washington just like theneutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma in Laos inthe 1950s or Mohammed Daud in Afghanistanin the 1970s Akayev was overthrown in the so-called ldquoTulip Revolutionrdquo of March 2005 by farthe bloodiest and least democratic of all the so-called ldquocolor revolutionsrdquo that had alreadychanged governments in Serbia (2002)Georgia (2003) and the Ukraine (2004) Thoseregime changes had been essential lynonviolent In the Tulip Revolution howeverthe London Independent reported on March 262005 that ldquoAccording to hospital officials twopeople had been killed and 360 wounded in theviolence and 173 were still in hospitalrdquo13

In truth the so-called Tulip Revolution was norevolution in the true sense at all but a palacecoup replacing the northern Kyrgyz coteriebehind Akayev with a new southern coteriebehind his replacement KurmanbekBakiyevCraig Smith in the New York Timesacknowledged as much even before the coupwas over

A malaise is settling over thiscountry as the uprising a week agob e g i n s t o l o o k l e s s l i k e ademocratically inspired revolutionand more like a garden-varietycoup with a handful of seasonedpoliticians vying for the spoils ofthe ousted government

Lets not pretend that whathappened here was democraticsaid Edil Baisalov one of thecountrys best-known democracyadvocates speaking to clearlydisheartened students beneathhuge Soviet-era portraits of LeninMarx and Engels in the auditoriumof what has been the AmericanUniversity since 1997

Mr Baisalov bemoaned what hesaid Kyrgyzstan lost out on whenthe presidential palace wasstormed and President AskarAkayev fled the kind of catharticnational experience that hewitnessed in Ukraine as its OrangeRevolution unfolded That was aslow-building well-organized eventthat took two months to reach asuccessful conclusion

What Ukraine went through wasvery important to their democraticdevelopment he said We didnthave that great emot iona lexperience of civic education14

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

5

As a symptom that the deep politics ofKyrgyzstan were unchanged the US Manassupply contracts which earlier benefitedAkayevrsquos family were promptly taken over byBakiyevrsquos son Maksym

Nevertheless Ariel Cohen claimed in theWashington Times that ldquothe people ofKyrgyzstan have won their freedomrdquo and heattributed the changeover with good reason toPresident George W Bushs words spoken inhis Inaugural Address and State of the Unionspeechrdquo15

President Bush himself gave an imprimatur tothe changeover Visiting Georgia in May 2005he told Georgian President Saakashvili

Georgia will become the mainpartner of the United States inspreading democracy and freedomin the post-Soviet space This is ourproposal We will always be withyou in protecting freedom anddemocracyhellip You are makingmany important contributions tofreedomrsquos cause but your mostimportant contribution is yourexample Hopeful changes aretaking places from Baghdad toBeirut and Bishkek [Kyrgyzstan]16

And indeed it was true that as the right-wingJamestown Foundation in Washington revealedldquothree Georgian parliamentarians once activeengineers of Georgias Rose Revolution hadpaid an unofficial visit to Kyrgyzstan to supportthe attempted lsquoTulip Revolutionrsquo thererdquo17

But this was only one aspect of a US-coordinated effort According to Der Spiegel inApril 2005

As ear ly as February RozaOtunbayeva [one of Bakiyevrsquos co-

conspirators in 2005] pledgedallegiance to a small group ofpartners and sponsors of theKyrgyz revo lut ion to ourAmerican friends at FreedomHouse (who donated a printingpress in Bishkek to the opposition)and to George Soros a speculatorwho previously helped unseatE d w a r d S h e v a r d n a d z e sgovernment in Georgia Trying tohelp the democratic process theAmericans poured some $12million into Kyrgyzstan in the formof scholarships and donations18

The Post-Tulip Bakiyev Government ndash andDrugs

There seems little doubt that although theAkayev government had been corruptcorruption only increased under the new post-Tulip Bakiyev regime In the words of ColumbiaUniversity Professor Alexander Cooley theBakiyev family ran the country like a criminalsyndicaterdquo19

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

6

Bakiyev and Rumsfeld

More specifically the Bakiyevfamily accordingto Peter Leonard of Associated Press tookcomplete control of the drug traffic transitingthe country

Authorities and analysts have littledoubt that Bakiyev and hisrelatives are at the heart of thedrug trade

The whole Bakiyev family isinvolved in drug trafficking saidAlexander Knyazev a respectedindependent political analyst inBishkek the Kyrgyz capital

After Kurmanbek Bakiyev came topower all drug lords were killedand (his elder brother) ZhanybekBakiyev consolidated most of thedrug trafficking in his hands

Acting deputy prime minister andgeneral prosecutor Azimbek

Beknazarov also endorses the viewthat Bakiyev and his family haveinterests in the drug tradealthough no specific criminalprobes have yet been initiated intothose allegations20

In October 2009 Bakiyev abolished the KyrgyzDrug Control Agency leading the JamestownFoundation to speculate that Bakiyev wasldquocentralizing illegal control over the drugeconomy [and was] dis interested ininternational initiatives to control narcoticsrdquo Itadded that

Overall roughly five identifiablecriminal groups control drugtransit through KyrgyzstanAlthough they are known to thesecurity structures these groupshave ties to the government or attimes represent government andtherefore are free to carry outtheir activities with impunity21

In May 2010 former Kyrgyz Deputy SecurityCouncil Secretary Alik Orozov told a Bishkeknewspaper that the Drug Control Agency hadbeen closed by Janysh Bakiyev who wished totake full control over drug trafficking Thecharge was endorsed by the former deputyhead of the former Drug Control Agency VitaliyOrozaliyev who added that

problems started to emerge at thelevel of the US Department ofState All initiatives to extend thefinancing of the Drug ControlAgency were axed exactly thereAll previous US ambassadors wereregular guests of the Drug ControlAgency However with the arrivalof [US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan]Tatiana Gfoeller [in 2008] all

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

7

contacts were cut as if they werecut with a knife She demonstratedfull indifference to the agency shefully distanced herself from thisproject and she did not accept ourinvitations She even did not wantto give accommodation to our UScolleagues [in the DEA] - whowanted to set up something like abureau of their own in Bishkek - inthe territory of the US embassyWhat caused such a sharp turn inUS diplomacy to the problems offighting drug-related crimes inKyrgyzstan is only anyonesguess 2 2

The Counter-Coup of April 2010

Bakiyevrsquos drug involvement does not appear tohave aroused any protest in Washington But inFebruary of 2009 Kyrgyzstanrsquos parliamentvoted 78-1 to close the US air base at Manasand in the same month Bakiyev announced inMoscow that he would close Manas and acceptmore than $2 billion in emergency assistanceand investments from Russia However

the Kyrgyz government ended updouble-crossing Moscow byaccepting an initial $300 millionpayment before it renegotiated ahigher rent with the United Statesfor the renamed Manas TransitCenter As a result relationsbetween Moscow and Bishkekplummeted to an all-time lowwhile Bakiyevs governmentgleefully cashed in the new checksprovided by both Moscow andWashington23

But Bakiyevrsquos glee was short-lived His politicalopponents aware of and appalled by hismercenary manipulations united in April 2010

in a successful Russian-supported effort tooverthrow him According to the ChristianScience Monitor

M a n y b e l i e v e t h e c o u p i nKyrgyzstan was staged by theRussians who were quietlyunhappy with the previous leaderThe Kremlin considered MrBakiyev not loyal enough as heappeared reluctant to closeAmericarsquos Manas air base whichplays a critical role in resupplyingUS troops in nearby Afghanistan24

Russiarsquos displeasure with Bakiyev was alsospelled out by a writer for the PNAC-linkedJamestown Foundation

Medvedev was uncompromising inasserting Russian domination ofthe post-Soviet space He insistedthat the government of the KyrgyzPresident Kurmanbek Bakiyevwas overthrown in a bloodyrevolution last week that left over80 dead and some 1500 woundeddue to Bakiyevrsquos inconsistency inopposing the US military presencein Central Asia According toMedvedev Bakiyev first orderedthe US and its allies to leave theairbase Manas near the Kyrgyzcapital Bishkek Then he allowedthe Americans to continue to useManas to transfer personnel andsuppl ies into Afghanistanrenaming the airbase into ldquoatransit centerrdquo and increasingpayments for the lease NowMedvedev joked all may see theresults of ldquosuch a consistentpolicyrdquo (wwwkremlinru April 14)

T h e m e s s a g e s e n t t o t h e

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

3

foreign policy and argued for ldquoa strategy ofactive pressures directed against thecommunist blocrdquo wherever it was seen to bevulnerable

The American sponsored ldquoTulip Revolutionrdquo inKyrgyzstan (March 2005) is a conspicuousproduct of the forward strategy doctrine Thisis no accident it came at a time when GeorgeW Bush repeatedly spoke of a ldquoforwardstrategy of freedomrdquo or a ldquoforward strategy forfreedomrdquo4 But by the 21st century the forwardstrategy in countries with drug economies hada track record which its advocates inWashington might well have reviewed beforeadvocating an intervention so close to bothRussia and China

In 1959 the CIA attempted to impose a right-wing government in Laos after a decade and ahalf of expanding drug trafficking and a futilebloody drug-financed war Laos became (atleast nominally) a communist nationUndeterred by the dismal outcome in Laos in1978-79 Zbigniew Brzezinski Robert Gatesand the CIA mobilized right-wing elementsagain in Afghanistan another nationcontiguous to the then Soviet Union5 Theimmediate result was the same as Laos thereplacement of a neutralist regime by a radicaland polarizing one (in this case communist)followed by another radical increase in drugtrafficking and another decade of bloody andunsuccessful war

What were the forward strategists hoping for inKyrgyzstan In April of this year the unpopularregimeinstalled by the 2005 Tulip Revolutionwas itself replaced Although it is too early topredict the outcome of these dislocationsthousands of lives have been lost in the ethnicviolence of June 2010 and drug traffickers areapparently profiting from the near anarchy toconsolidate their hold on southern KyrgyzstanThat is just what happened to Laos in 1959 itis what Jimmy Carterrsquos drug advisor DavidMusto warned would happen in Afghanistan in

19806 Did someone want it to happen again

All in all the coup-drug-terror syndrome inKyrgyzstan well illustrates the Marxist dictumthat history repeats itself first as tragedy(Afghanistan in 1978-80) and the second timeas farce

The Coup-Drug-Terror Syndrome inKyrgyzstan

After the break-up of the former Soviet Unionin 1991 Kyrgyzstan under the leadership ofAskar Akayev was relatively the mostmoderate and open government among the sixpost-Soviet ldquostansrdquo of Central Asia Aloneamong the successor strong men Akayev wasnot a long-time Communist Party apparatchikbut an intellectual who read Heine a physicistldquoa researcher in St Petersburg and an associateof legendary Russian physicist and dissidentAndrei Sakharovrdquo7

It is true that Akayevrsquos initial efforts to makeKyrgyzstan an open and pluralistic democracydid not last long an on-going economic crisismade his regime increasingly unpopular8

Meanwhile he soon came under pressure fromneighboring Uzbekistan Kazakstan and Chinato crack down on the dissidents who wereusing Kyrgyzstan as a base for mobilizingagainst their home countries9 Eventually thecountryrsquos economic problems led to popularprotests and their brutal suppression

But in international policy Akayev managed atfirst to maintain good relations with both theUS and Russia In December 2001 following911 he granted America a vital base at Manasfor support of its war effort in land-lockedAfghanistan Almost immediately the Pentagonawarded the Akayev family payoffs on fuelsupplies to Manas via two Gibraltar-basedcompanies (named Red Star and Mina) set upb y a r e t i r e d U S A r m y l i e u t e n a n tcolonel10 American dollars proceeded toaccelerate government corruption just as theyhad earlier in Laos and Afghanistan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

4

Then in October 2003 Akayev allowed Putin toreopen an old Soviet base in Kant as what wasdescribed as ldquoa deterrent to internationalterrorismrdquo in nearby Uzbekistan andTajikistan11 This move was not well received

Though [Kant was] less than aquarter of the size of ManasAkayevrsquos decision landed him onAmericarsquos ldquowatch l istrdquo andincreased aid flowed to the Kyrgyzopposition via American NGOs In2004 Washington in assisting thedemocratic process directed $12million an amount six times thelsquoformalrdquo rent for Manas intoKyrgyzs tan i n the f o rm o fscholarships and donations whilethe State Department even fundedTV station equipment in the restivesouthern provincial town of OshGeorge Soros through his variousfoundations also helped fund theopposition while Freedom Houseoperated a printing press inBishkek12

The So-Called Tulip Revolution of 2005

For the reasons cited above Akayevlostacceptance in Washington just like theneutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma in Laos inthe 1950s or Mohammed Daud in Afghanistanin the 1970s Akayev was overthrown in the so-called ldquoTulip Revolutionrdquo of March 2005 by farthe bloodiest and least democratic of all the so-called ldquocolor revolutionsrdquo that had alreadychanged governments in Serbia (2002)Georgia (2003) and the Ukraine (2004) Thoseregime changes had been essential lynonviolent In the Tulip Revolution howeverthe London Independent reported on March 262005 that ldquoAccording to hospital officials twopeople had been killed and 360 wounded in theviolence and 173 were still in hospitalrdquo13

In truth the so-called Tulip Revolution was norevolution in the true sense at all but a palacecoup replacing the northern Kyrgyz coteriebehind Akayev with a new southern coteriebehind his replacement KurmanbekBakiyevCraig Smith in the New York Timesacknowledged as much even before the coupwas over

A malaise is settling over thiscountry as the uprising a week agob e g i n s t o l o o k l e s s l i k e ademocratically inspired revolutionand more like a garden-varietycoup with a handful of seasonedpoliticians vying for the spoils ofthe ousted government

Lets not pretend that whathappened here was democraticsaid Edil Baisalov one of thecountrys best-known democracyadvocates speaking to clearlydisheartened students beneathhuge Soviet-era portraits of LeninMarx and Engels in the auditoriumof what has been the AmericanUniversity since 1997

Mr Baisalov bemoaned what hesaid Kyrgyzstan lost out on whenthe presidential palace wasstormed and President AskarAkayev fled the kind of catharticnational experience that hewitnessed in Ukraine as its OrangeRevolution unfolded That was aslow-building well-organized eventthat took two months to reach asuccessful conclusion

What Ukraine went through wasvery important to their democraticdevelopment he said We didnthave that great emot iona lexperience of civic education14

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

5

As a symptom that the deep politics ofKyrgyzstan were unchanged the US Manassupply contracts which earlier benefitedAkayevrsquos family were promptly taken over byBakiyevrsquos son Maksym

Nevertheless Ariel Cohen claimed in theWashington Times that ldquothe people ofKyrgyzstan have won their freedomrdquo and heattributed the changeover with good reason toPresident George W Bushs words spoken inhis Inaugural Address and State of the Unionspeechrdquo15

President Bush himself gave an imprimatur tothe changeover Visiting Georgia in May 2005he told Georgian President Saakashvili

Georgia will become the mainpartner of the United States inspreading democracy and freedomin the post-Soviet space This is ourproposal We will always be withyou in protecting freedom anddemocracyhellip You are makingmany important contributions tofreedomrsquos cause but your mostimportant contribution is yourexample Hopeful changes aretaking places from Baghdad toBeirut and Bishkek [Kyrgyzstan]16

And indeed it was true that as the right-wingJamestown Foundation in Washington revealedldquothree Georgian parliamentarians once activeengineers of Georgias Rose Revolution hadpaid an unofficial visit to Kyrgyzstan to supportthe attempted lsquoTulip Revolutionrsquo thererdquo17

But this was only one aspect of a US-coordinated effort According to Der Spiegel inApril 2005

As ear ly as February RozaOtunbayeva [one of Bakiyevrsquos co-

conspirators in 2005] pledgedallegiance to a small group ofpartners and sponsors of theKyrgyz revo lut ion to ourAmerican friends at FreedomHouse (who donated a printingpress in Bishkek to the opposition)and to George Soros a speculatorwho previously helped unseatE d w a r d S h e v a r d n a d z e sgovernment in Georgia Trying tohelp the democratic process theAmericans poured some $12million into Kyrgyzstan in the formof scholarships and donations18

The Post-Tulip Bakiyev Government ndash andDrugs

There seems little doubt that although theAkayev government had been corruptcorruption only increased under the new post-Tulip Bakiyev regime In the words of ColumbiaUniversity Professor Alexander Cooley theBakiyev family ran the country like a criminalsyndicaterdquo19

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

6

Bakiyev and Rumsfeld

More specifically the Bakiyevfamily accordingto Peter Leonard of Associated Press tookcomplete control of the drug traffic transitingthe country

Authorities and analysts have littledoubt that Bakiyev and hisrelatives are at the heart of thedrug trade

The whole Bakiyev family isinvolved in drug trafficking saidAlexander Knyazev a respectedindependent political analyst inBishkek the Kyrgyz capital

After Kurmanbek Bakiyev came topower all drug lords were killedand (his elder brother) ZhanybekBakiyev consolidated most of thedrug trafficking in his hands

Acting deputy prime minister andgeneral prosecutor Azimbek

Beknazarov also endorses the viewthat Bakiyev and his family haveinterests in the drug tradealthough no specific criminalprobes have yet been initiated intothose allegations20

In October 2009 Bakiyev abolished the KyrgyzDrug Control Agency leading the JamestownFoundation to speculate that Bakiyev wasldquocentralizing illegal control over the drugeconomy [and was] dis interested ininternational initiatives to control narcoticsrdquo Itadded that

Overall roughly five identifiablecriminal groups control drugtransit through KyrgyzstanAlthough they are known to thesecurity structures these groupshave ties to the government or attimes represent government andtherefore are free to carry outtheir activities with impunity21

In May 2010 former Kyrgyz Deputy SecurityCouncil Secretary Alik Orozov told a Bishkeknewspaper that the Drug Control Agency hadbeen closed by Janysh Bakiyev who wished totake full control over drug trafficking Thecharge was endorsed by the former deputyhead of the former Drug Control Agency VitaliyOrozaliyev who added that

problems started to emerge at thelevel of the US Department ofState All initiatives to extend thefinancing of the Drug ControlAgency were axed exactly thereAll previous US ambassadors wereregular guests of the Drug ControlAgency However with the arrivalof [US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan]Tatiana Gfoeller [in 2008] all

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

7

contacts were cut as if they werecut with a knife She demonstratedfull indifference to the agency shefully distanced herself from thisproject and she did not accept ourinvitations She even did not wantto give accommodation to our UScolleagues [in the DEA] - whowanted to set up something like abureau of their own in Bishkek - inthe territory of the US embassyWhat caused such a sharp turn inUS diplomacy to the problems offighting drug-related crimes inKyrgyzstan is only anyonesguess 2 2

The Counter-Coup of April 2010

Bakiyevrsquos drug involvement does not appear tohave aroused any protest in Washington But inFebruary of 2009 Kyrgyzstanrsquos parliamentvoted 78-1 to close the US air base at Manasand in the same month Bakiyev announced inMoscow that he would close Manas and acceptmore than $2 billion in emergency assistanceand investments from Russia However

the Kyrgyz government ended updouble-crossing Moscow byaccepting an initial $300 millionpayment before it renegotiated ahigher rent with the United Statesfor the renamed Manas TransitCenter As a result relationsbetween Moscow and Bishkekplummeted to an all-time lowwhile Bakiyevs governmentgleefully cashed in the new checksprovided by both Moscow andWashington23

But Bakiyevrsquos glee was short-lived His politicalopponents aware of and appalled by hismercenary manipulations united in April 2010

in a successful Russian-supported effort tooverthrow him According to the ChristianScience Monitor

M a n y b e l i e v e t h e c o u p i nKyrgyzstan was staged by theRussians who were quietlyunhappy with the previous leaderThe Kremlin considered MrBakiyev not loyal enough as heappeared reluctant to closeAmericarsquos Manas air base whichplays a critical role in resupplyingUS troops in nearby Afghanistan24

Russiarsquos displeasure with Bakiyev was alsospelled out by a writer for the PNAC-linkedJamestown Foundation

Medvedev was uncompromising inasserting Russian domination ofthe post-Soviet space He insistedthat the government of the KyrgyzPresident Kurmanbek Bakiyevwas overthrown in a bloodyrevolution last week that left over80 dead and some 1500 woundeddue to Bakiyevrsquos inconsistency inopposing the US military presencein Central Asia According toMedvedev Bakiyev first orderedthe US and its allies to leave theairbase Manas near the Kyrgyzcapital Bishkek Then he allowedthe Americans to continue to useManas to transfer personnel andsuppl ies into Afghanistanrenaming the airbase into ldquoatransit centerrdquo and increasingpayments for the lease NowMedvedev joked all may see theresults of ldquosuch a consistentpolicyrdquo (wwwkremlinru April 14)

T h e m e s s a g e s e n t t o t h e

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

4

Then in October 2003 Akayev allowed Putin toreopen an old Soviet base in Kant as what wasdescribed as ldquoa deterrent to internationalterrorismrdquo in nearby Uzbekistan andTajikistan11 This move was not well received

Though [Kant was] less than aquarter of the size of ManasAkayevrsquos decision landed him onAmericarsquos ldquowatch l istrdquo andincreased aid flowed to the Kyrgyzopposition via American NGOs In2004 Washington in assisting thedemocratic process directed $12million an amount six times thelsquoformalrdquo rent for Manas intoKyrgyzs tan i n the f o rm o fscholarships and donations whilethe State Department even fundedTV station equipment in the restivesouthern provincial town of OshGeorge Soros through his variousfoundations also helped fund theopposition while Freedom Houseoperated a printing press inBishkek12

The So-Called Tulip Revolution of 2005

For the reasons cited above Akayevlostacceptance in Washington just like theneutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma in Laos inthe 1950s or Mohammed Daud in Afghanistanin the 1970s Akayev was overthrown in the so-called ldquoTulip Revolutionrdquo of March 2005 by farthe bloodiest and least democratic of all the so-called ldquocolor revolutionsrdquo that had alreadychanged governments in Serbia (2002)Georgia (2003) and the Ukraine (2004) Thoseregime changes had been essential lynonviolent In the Tulip Revolution howeverthe London Independent reported on March 262005 that ldquoAccording to hospital officials twopeople had been killed and 360 wounded in theviolence and 173 were still in hospitalrdquo13

In truth the so-called Tulip Revolution was norevolution in the true sense at all but a palacecoup replacing the northern Kyrgyz coteriebehind Akayev with a new southern coteriebehind his replacement KurmanbekBakiyevCraig Smith in the New York Timesacknowledged as much even before the coupwas over

A malaise is settling over thiscountry as the uprising a week agob e g i n s t o l o o k l e s s l i k e ademocratically inspired revolutionand more like a garden-varietycoup with a handful of seasonedpoliticians vying for the spoils ofthe ousted government

Lets not pretend that whathappened here was democraticsaid Edil Baisalov one of thecountrys best-known democracyadvocates speaking to clearlydisheartened students beneathhuge Soviet-era portraits of LeninMarx and Engels in the auditoriumof what has been the AmericanUniversity since 1997

Mr Baisalov bemoaned what hesaid Kyrgyzstan lost out on whenthe presidential palace wasstormed and President AskarAkayev fled the kind of catharticnational experience that hewitnessed in Ukraine as its OrangeRevolution unfolded That was aslow-building well-organized eventthat took two months to reach asuccessful conclusion

What Ukraine went through wasvery important to their democraticdevelopment he said We didnthave that great emot iona lexperience of civic education14

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

5

As a symptom that the deep politics ofKyrgyzstan were unchanged the US Manassupply contracts which earlier benefitedAkayevrsquos family were promptly taken over byBakiyevrsquos son Maksym

Nevertheless Ariel Cohen claimed in theWashington Times that ldquothe people ofKyrgyzstan have won their freedomrdquo and heattributed the changeover with good reason toPresident George W Bushs words spoken inhis Inaugural Address and State of the Unionspeechrdquo15

President Bush himself gave an imprimatur tothe changeover Visiting Georgia in May 2005he told Georgian President Saakashvili

Georgia will become the mainpartner of the United States inspreading democracy and freedomin the post-Soviet space This is ourproposal We will always be withyou in protecting freedom anddemocracyhellip You are makingmany important contributions tofreedomrsquos cause but your mostimportant contribution is yourexample Hopeful changes aretaking places from Baghdad toBeirut and Bishkek [Kyrgyzstan]16

And indeed it was true that as the right-wingJamestown Foundation in Washington revealedldquothree Georgian parliamentarians once activeengineers of Georgias Rose Revolution hadpaid an unofficial visit to Kyrgyzstan to supportthe attempted lsquoTulip Revolutionrsquo thererdquo17

But this was only one aspect of a US-coordinated effort According to Der Spiegel inApril 2005

As ear ly as February RozaOtunbayeva [one of Bakiyevrsquos co-

conspirators in 2005] pledgedallegiance to a small group ofpartners and sponsors of theKyrgyz revo lut ion to ourAmerican friends at FreedomHouse (who donated a printingpress in Bishkek to the opposition)and to George Soros a speculatorwho previously helped unseatE d w a r d S h e v a r d n a d z e sgovernment in Georgia Trying tohelp the democratic process theAmericans poured some $12million into Kyrgyzstan in the formof scholarships and donations18

The Post-Tulip Bakiyev Government ndash andDrugs

There seems little doubt that although theAkayev government had been corruptcorruption only increased under the new post-Tulip Bakiyev regime In the words of ColumbiaUniversity Professor Alexander Cooley theBakiyev family ran the country like a criminalsyndicaterdquo19

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

6

Bakiyev and Rumsfeld

More specifically the Bakiyevfamily accordingto Peter Leonard of Associated Press tookcomplete control of the drug traffic transitingthe country

Authorities and analysts have littledoubt that Bakiyev and hisrelatives are at the heart of thedrug trade

The whole Bakiyev family isinvolved in drug trafficking saidAlexander Knyazev a respectedindependent political analyst inBishkek the Kyrgyz capital

After Kurmanbek Bakiyev came topower all drug lords were killedand (his elder brother) ZhanybekBakiyev consolidated most of thedrug trafficking in his hands

Acting deputy prime minister andgeneral prosecutor Azimbek

Beknazarov also endorses the viewthat Bakiyev and his family haveinterests in the drug tradealthough no specific criminalprobes have yet been initiated intothose allegations20

In October 2009 Bakiyev abolished the KyrgyzDrug Control Agency leading the JamestownFoundation to speculate that Bakiyev wasldquocentralizing illegal control over the drugeconomy [and was] dis interested ininternational initiatives to control narcoticsrdquo Itadded that

Overall roughly five identifiablecriminal groups control drugtransit through KyrgyzstanAlthough they are known to thesecurity structures these groupshave ties to the government or attimes represent government andtherefore are free to carry outtheir activities with impunity21

In May 2010 former Kyrgyz Deputy SecurityCouncil Secretary Alik Orozov told a Bishkeknewspaper that the Drug Control Agency hadbeen closed by Janysh Bakiyev who wished totake full control over drug trafficking Thecharge was endorsed by the former deputyhead of the former Drug Control Agency VitaliyOrozaliyev who added that

problems started to emerge at thelevel of the US Department ofState All initiatives to extend thefinancing of the Drug ControlAgency were axed exactly thereAll previous US ambassadors wereregular guests of the Drug ControlAgency However with the arrivalof [US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan]Tatiana Gfoeller [in 2008] all

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

7

contacts were cut as if they werecut with a knife She demonstratedfull indifference to the agency shefully distanced herself from thisproject and she did not accept ourinvitations She even did not wantto give accommodation to our UScolleagues [in the DEA] - whowanted to set up something like abureau of their own in Bishkek - inthe territory of the US embassyWhat caused such a sharp turn inUS diplomacy to the problems offighting drug-related crimes inKyrgyzstan is only anyonesguess 2 2

The Counter-Coup of April 2010

Bakiyevrsquos drug involvement does not appear tohave aroused any protest in Washington But inFebruary of 2009 Kyrgyzstanrsquos parliamentvoted 78-1 to close the US air base at Manasand in the same month Bakiyev announced inMoscow that he would close Manas and acceptmore than $2 billion in emergency assistanceand investments from Russia However

the Kyrgyz government ended updouble-crossing Moscow byaccepting an initial $300 millionpayment before it renegotiated ahigher rent with the United Statesfor the renamed Manas TransitCenter As a result relationsbetween Moscow and Bishkekplummeted to an all-time lowwhile Bakiyevs governmentgleefully cashed in the new checksprovided by both Moscow andWashington23

But Bakiyevrsquos glee was short-lived His politicalopponents aware of and appalled by hismercenary manipulations united in April 2010

in a successful Russian-supported effort tooverthrow him According to the ChristianScience Monitor

M a n y b e l i e v e t h e c o u p i nKyrgyzstan was staged by theRussians who were quietlyunhappy with the previous leaderThe Kremlin considered MrBakiyev not loyal enough as heappeared reluctant to closeAmericarsquos Manas air base whichplays a critical role in resupplyingUS troops in nearby Afghanistan24

Russiarsquos displeasure with Bakiyev was alsospelled out by a writer for the PNAC-linkedJamestown Foundation

Medvedev was uncompromising inasserting Russian domination ofthe post-Soviet space He insistedthat the government of the KyrgyzPresident Kurmanbek Bakiyevwas overthrown in a bloodyrevolution last week that left over80 dead and some 1500 woundeddue to Bakiyevrsquos inconsistency inopposing the US military presencein Central Asia According toMedvedev Bakiyev first orderedthe US and its allies to leave theairbase Manas near the Kyrgyzcapital Bishkek Then he allowedthe Americans to continue to useManas to transfer personnel andsuppl ies into Afghanistanrenaming the airbase into ldquoatransit centerrdquo and increasingpayments for the lease NowMedvedev joked all may see theresults of ldquosuch a consistentpolicyrdquo (wwwkremlinru April 14)

T h e m e s s a g e s e n t t o t h e

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

5

As a symptom that the deep politics ofKyrgyzstan were unchanged the US Manassupply contracts which earlier benefitedAkayevrsquos family were promptly taken over byBakiyevrsquos son Maksym

Nevertheless Ariel Cohen claimed in theWashington Times that ldquothe people ofKyrgyzstan have won their freedomrdquo and heattributed the changeover with good reason toPresident George W Bushs words spoken inhis Inaugural Address and State of the Unionspeechrdquo15

President Bush himself gave an imprimatur tothe changeover Visiting Georgia in May 2005he told Georgian President Saakashvili

Georgia will become the mainpartner of the United States inspreading democracy and freedomin the post-Soviet space This is ourproposal We will always be withyou in protecting freedom anddemocracyhellip You are makingmany important contributions tofreedomrsquos cause but your mostimportant contribution is yourexample Hopeful changes aretaking places from Baghdad toBeirut and Bishkek [Kyrgyzstan]16

And indeed it was true that as the right-wingJamestown Foundation in Washington revealedldquothree Georgian parliamentarians once activeengineers of Georgias Rose Revolution hadpaid an unofficial visit to Kyrgyzstan to supportthe attempted lsquoTulip Revolutionrsquo thererdquo17

But this was only one aspect of a US-coordinated effort According to Der Spiegel inApril 2005

As ear ly as February RozaOtunbayeva [one of Bakiyevrsquos co-

conspirators in 2005] pledgedallegiance to a small group ofpartners and sponsors of theKyrgyz revo lut ion to ourAmerican friends at FreedomHouse (who donated a printingpress in Bishkek to the opposition)and to George Soros a speculatorwho previously helped unseatE d w a r d S h e v a r d n a d z e sgovernment in Georgia Trying tohelp the democratic process theAmericans poured some $12million into Kyrgyzstan in the formof scholarships and donations18

The Post-Tulip Bakiyev Government ndash andDrugs

There seems little doubt that although theAkayev government had been corruptcorruption only increased under the new post-Tulip Bakiyev regime In the words of ColumbiaUniversity Professor Alexander Cooley theBakiyev family ran the country like a criminalsyndicaterdquo19

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

6

Bakiyev and Rumsfeld

More specifically the Bakiyevfamily accordingto Peter Leonard of Associated Press tookcomplete control of the drug traffic transitingthe country

Authorities and analysts have littledoubt that Bakiyev and hisrelatives are at the heart of thedrug trade

The whole Bakiyev family isinvolved in drug trafficking saidAlexander Knyazev a respectedindependent political analyst inBishkek the Kyrgyz capital

After Kurmanbek Bakiyev came topower all drug lords were killedand (his elder brother) ZhanybekBakiyev consolidated most of thedrug trafficking in his hands

Acting deputy prime minister andgeneral prosecutor Azimbek

Beknazarov also endorses the viewthat Bakiyev and his family haveinterests in the drug tradealthough no specific criminalprobes have yet been initiated intothose allegations20

In October 2009 Bakiyev abolished the KyrgyzDrug Control Agency leading the JamestownFoundation to speculate that Bakiyev wasldquocentralizing illegal control over the drugeconomy [and was] dis interested ininternational initiatives to control narcoticsrdquo Itadded that

Overall roughly five identifiablecriminal groups control drugtransit through KyrgyzstanAlthough they are known to thesecurity structures these groupshave ties to the government or attimes represent government andtherefore are free to carry outtheir activities with impunity21

In May 2010 former Kyrgyz Deputy SecurityCouncil Secretary Alik Orozov told a Bishkeknewspaper that the Drug Control Agency hadbeen closed by Janysh Bakiyev who wished totake full control over drug trafficking Thecharge was endorsed by the former deputyhead of the former Drug Control Agency VitaliyOrozaliyev who added that

problems started to emerge at thelevel of the US Department ofState All initiatives to extend thefinancing of the Drug ControlAgency were axed exactly thereAll previous US ambassadors wereregular guests of the Drug ControlAgency However with the arrivalof [US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan]Tatiana Gfoeller [in 2008] all

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

7

contacts were cut as if they werecut with a knife She demonstratedfull indifference to the agency shefully distanced herself from thisproject and she did not accept ourinvitations She even did not wantto give accommodation to our UScolleagues [in the DEA] - whowanted to set up something like abureau of their own in Bishkek - inthe territory of the US embassyWhat caused such a sharp turn inUS diplomacy to the problems offighting drug-related crimes inKyrgyzstan is only anyonesguess 2 2

The Counter-Coup of April 2010

Bakiyevrsquos drug involvement does not appear tohave aroused any protest in Washington But inFebruary of 2009 Kyrgyzstanrsquos parliamentvoted 78-1 to close the US air base at Manasand in the same month Bakiyev announced inMoscow that he would close Manas and acceptmore than $2 billion in emergency assistanceand investments from Russia However

the Kyrgyz government ended updouble-crossing Moscow byaccepting an initial $300 millionpayment before it renegotiated ahigher rent with the United Statesfor the renamed Manas TransitCenter As a result relationsbetween Moscow and Bishkekplummeted to an all-time lowwhile Bakiyevs governmentgleefully cashed in the new checksprovided by both Moscow andWashington23

But Bakiyevrsquos glee was short-lived His politicalopponents aware of and appalled by hismercenary manipulations united in April 2010

in a successful Russian-supported effort tooverthrow him According to the ChristianScience Monitor

M a n y b e l i e v e t h e c o u p i nKyrgyzstan was staged by theRussians who were quietlyunhappy with the previous leaderThe Kremlin considered MrBakiyev not loyal enough as heappeared reluctant to closeAmericarsquos Manas air base whichplays a critical role in resupplyingUS troops in nearby Afghanistan24

Russiarsquos displeasure with Bakiyev was alsospelled out by a writer for the PNAC-linkedJamestown Foundation

Medvedev was uncompromising inasserting Russian domination ofthe post-Soviet space He insistedthat the government of the KyrgyzPresident Kurmanbek Bakiyevwas overthrown in a bloodyrevolution last week that left over80 dead and some 1500 woundeddue to Bakiyevrsquos inconsistency inopposing the US military presencein Central Asia According toMedvedev Bakiyev first orderedthe US and its allies to leave theairbase Manas near the Kyrgyzcapital Bishkek Then he allowedthe Americans to continue to useManas to transfer personnel andsuppl ies into Afghanistanrenaming the airbase into ldquoatransit centerrdquo and increasingpayments for the lease NowMedvedev joked all may see theresults of ldquosuch a consistentpolicyrdquo (wwwkremlinru April 14)

T h e m e s s a g e s e n t t o t h e

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

6

Bakiyev and Rumsfeld

More specifically the Bakiyevfamily accordingto Peter Leonard of Associated Press tookcomplete control of the drug traffic transitingthe country

Authorities and analysts have littledoubt that Bakiyev and hisrelatives are at the heart of thedrug trade

The whole Bakiyev family isinvolved in drug trafficking saidAlexander Knyazev a respectedindependent political analyst inBishkek the Kyrgyz capital

After Kurmanbek Bakiyev came topower all drug lords were killedand (his elder brother) ZhanybekBakiyev consolidated most of thedrug trafficking in his hands

Acting deputy prime minister andgeneral prosecutor Azimbek

Beknazarov also endorses the viewthat Bakiyev and his family haveinterests in the drug tradealthough no specific criminalprobes have yet been initiated intothose allegations20

In October 2009 Bakiyev abolished the KyrgyzDrug Control Agency leading the JamestownFoundation to speculate that Bakiyev wasldquocentralizing illegal control over the drugeconomy [and was] dis interested ininternational initiatives to control narcoticsrdquo Itadded that

Overall roughly five identifiablecriminal groups control drugtransit through KyrgyzstanAlthough they are known to thesecurity structures these groupshave ties to the government or attimes represent government andtherefore are free to carry outtheir activities with impunity21

In May 2010 former Kyrgyz Deputy SecurityCouncil Secretary Alik Orozov told a Bishkeknewspaper that the Drug Control Agency hadbeen closed by Janysh Bakiyev who wished totake full control over drug trafficking Thecharge was endorsed by the former deputyhead of the former Drug Control Agency VitaliyOrozaliyev who added that

problems started to emerge at thelevel of the US Department ofState All initiatives to extend thefinancing of the Drug ControlAgency were axed exactly thereAll previous US ambassadors wereregular guests of the Drug ControlAgency However with the arrivalof [US ambassador to Kyrgyzstan]Tatiana Gfoeller [in 2008] all

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

7

contacts were cut as if they werecut with a knife She demonstratedfull indifference to the agency shefully distanced herself from thisproject and she did not accept ourinvitations She even did not wantto give accommodation to our UScolleagues [in the DEA] - whowanted to set up something like abureau of their own in Bishkek - inthe territory of the US embassyWhat caused such a sharp turn inUS diplomacy to the problems offighting drug-related crimes inKyrgyzstan is only anyonesguess 2 2

The Counter-Coup of April 2010

Bakiyevrsquos drug involvement does not appear tohave aroused any protest in Washington But inFebruary of 2009 Kyrgyzstanrsquos parliamentvoted 78-1 to close the US air base at Manasand in the same month Bakiyev announced inMoscow that he would close Manas and acceptmore than $2 billion in emergency assistanceand investments from Russia However

the Kyrgyz government ended updouble-crossing Moscow byaccepting an initial $300 millionpayment before it renegotiated ahigher rent with the United Statesfor the renamed Manas TransitCenter As a result relationsbetween Moscow and Bishkekplummeted to an all-time lowwhile Bakiyevs governmentgleefully cashed in the new checksprovided by both Moscow andWashington23

But Bakiyevrsquos glee was short-lived His politicalopponents aware of and appalled by hismercenary manipulations united in April 2010

in a successful Russian-supported effort tooverthrow him According to the ChristianScience Monitor

M a n y b e l i e v e t h e c o u p i nKyrgyzstan was staged by theRussians who were quietlyunhappy with the previous leaderThe Kremlin considered MrBakiyev not loyal enough as heappeared reluctant to closeAmericarsquos Manas air base whichplays a critical role in resupplyingUS troops in nearby Afghanistan24

Russiarsquos displeasure with Bakiyev was alsospelled out by a writer for the PNAC-linkedJamestown Foundation

Medvedev was uncompromising inasserting Russian domination ofthe post-Soviet space He insistedthat the government of the KyrgyzPresident Kurmanbek Bakiyevwas overthrown in a bloodyrevolution last week that left over80 dead and some 1500 woundeddue to Bakiyevrsquos inconsistency inopposing the US military presencein Central Asia According toMedvedev Bakiyev first orderedthe US and its allies to leave theairbase Manas near the Kyrgyzcapital Bishkek Then he allowedthe Americans to continue to useManas to transfer personnel andsuppl ies into Afghanistanrenaming the airbase into ldquoatransit centerrdquo and increasingpayments for the lease NowMedvedev joked all may see theresults of ldquosuch a consistentpolicyrdquo (wwwkremlinru April 14)

T h e m e s s a g e s e n t t o t h e

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

7

contacts were cut as if they werecut with a knife She demonstratedfull indifference to the agency shefully distanced herself from thisproject and she did not accept ourinvitations She even did not wantto give accommodation to our UScolleagues [in the DEA] - whowanted to set up something like abureau of their own in Bishkek - inthe territory of the US embassyWhat caused such a sharp turn inUS diplomacy to the problems offighting drug-related crimes inKyrgyzstan is only anyonesguess 2 2

The Counter-Coup of April 2010

Bakiyevrsquos drug involvement does not appear tohave aroused any protest in Washington But inFebruary of 2009 Kyrgyzstanrsquos parliamentvoted 78-1 to close the US air base at Manasand in the same month Bakiyev announced inMoscow that he would close Manas and acceptmore than $2 billion in emergency assistanceand investments from Russia However

the Kyrgyz government ended updouble-crossing Moscow byaccepting an initial $300 millionpayment before it renegotiated ahigher rent with the United Statesfor the renamed Manas TransitCenter As a result relationsbetween Moscow and Bishkekplummeted to an all-time lowwhile Bakiyevs governmentgleefully cashed in the new checksprovided by both Moscow andWashington23

But Bakiyevrsquos glee was short-lived His politicalopponents aware of and appalled by hismercenary manipulations united in April 2010

in a successful Russian-supported effort tooverthrow him According to the ChristianScience Monitor

M a n y b e l i e v e t h e c o u p i nKyrgyzstan was staged by theRussians who were quietlyunhappy with the previous leaderThe Kremlin considered MrBakiyev not loyal enough as heappeared reluctant to closeAmericarsquos Manas air base whichplays a critical role in resupplyingUS troops in nearby Afghanistan24

Russiarsquos displeasure with Bakiyev was alsospelled out by a writer for the PNAC-linkedJamestown Foundation

Medvedev was uncompromising inasserting Russian domination ofthe post-Soviet space He insistedthat the government of the KyrgyzPresident Kurmanbek Bakiyevwas overthrown in a bloodyrevolution last week that left over80 dead and some 1500 woundeddue to Bakiyevrsquos inconsistency inopposing the US military presencein Central Asia According toMedvedev Bakiyev first orderedthe US and its allies to leave theairbase Manas near the Kyrgyzcapital Bishkek Then he allowedthe Americans to continue to useManas to transfer personnel andsuppl ies into Afghanistanrenaming the airbase into ldquoatransit centerrdquo and increasingpayments for the lease NowMedvedev joked all may see theresults of ldquosuch a consistentpolicyrdquo (wwwkremlinru April 14)

T h e m e s s a g e s e n t t o t h e

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

8

Washington elite is obvious keepout o f Moscowrsquos sphere o finfluence Medvedev insisted theUS ldquomust not teach Russia how toliverdquo (RIA Novosti April 14)25

Deep Forces and the Kyrgyz crisisof June2010

It is too early to speak with confidence aboutwho was responsible for the major ethnicviolence of June 2010 with more bloodshedthan in the previous episode of 1990 Thereseems no reason however to doubt the findingof UN observers that the fighting was notspontaneous but ldquorsquoorchestrated targeted andwell-plannedrsquo mdash set off by organized groups ofgunmen in ski masksrdquo26

Since the June events the new Kyrgyz regimehas charged that they were fomented by theBakiyev family in conjunction with at least onedrug lord and representat ives of thejihadi Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU)

The head of Kyrgyzstanrsquos StateSecurity Service KeneshbekDuishebaev is claiming thatrelatives of former presidentKurmanbek Bakiyev conspired withIslamic militants to destabilizesouthern Kyrgyzstan

According to Duishebaev MaximBakiyev the son o f oustedpresident Bakiyev met withrepresentatives of the IslamicMovement of Uzbekistan (IMU) inDubai while the former presidentrsquosbrother Janysh brokered deals withAfghan Taliban and Tajik fightersldquoThe transfer of militants to thesouth of the republic was made onthe eve of the June events fromAfghanistanrsquos Badakhshanprovince via Tajikistanrsquos Khorog

a n d M u r g h a b d i s t r i c t s Cooperation in transferring [themilitants] was made by a formerTajik opposition commander anddrug baron whose contact wasJanysh Bakiyevrdquo Duishebaev said

Taliban Tajik IMU and IslamicJihad Union (IJU) fighters wereoffered $30 million in payment headdedhellip Duishebaev warned thatIslamic militants are seeking toexploit the unrest in southernKyrgyzstan ldquoRecently IMUleaders and warlords held ameeting in south WaziristanPakistan The participants of themeeting concluded the currentsituation in Osh and Jalal-abadprovinces are favorable forsparking destructive activitiesacross the all over the regionrdquo hesaid27

The Times (London) reported these chargesand added

The interim president RozaOtunbayeva said that manyinstigators have been detained andthey are giving evidence onBakiyevs involvement in theevents Kyrgyzstans deputysecurity chief Kubat Baibalovclaimed that a trained group ofmen from neighbouring Tajikistanhad fired indiscriminately atUzbeks and Kyrgyz last week froma car with darkened windows toprovoke conflict28

According to many sources the IMU is anetwork grouping ethnic Uzbeks fromKyrgyzstan Tajikistan and Uzbekistan andrelying heavily on narcotics to finance its anti-

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

9

government activities29

However the new governmentrsquos chargesagainst Bakiyev and the IMU may have beenself-serving It has become increasingly clearthat the victims of the massacre were ldquomostlyminority Uzbeks [who] say they were attackedby the Kyrgyz military and the police and theiraccounts have been backed up by independentobserversrdquo30 The Uzbek neighborhoods wereleft in ruins while ethnic Kyrgyz areas werelargely untouched31 It may emerge that theviolence grewout of a prior conflict in Mayinvolving local mafia leaders in the wake of theApril 2010 coup32 This led in late May to riotsthat former President Bakiyev was suspected oforganizing33

The situation calls for an impartial internationalinvestigation If the current conflict is notthoroughly resolved it is likely that bothIslamic extremists and local drug traffickerswill be drawn into it34

T h e K y r g y z C r i s i s a n dTransnationalTerror-Drug Mafias

One cannot lightly dismiss the Kyrgyzgovernment charge that the IMU had met inSouth Waziristan to plan violence in CentralAsia Even before the June riots there had beena disturbing report that the IMU (and its Turkicsplit-off the Islamic Jihad Union or IJU) hadestablished control over parts of SouthWaziristan and were planning and training forextended activities in Central Asia35 Ofparticular concern was the fol lowingparagraph

The News International recentlyreported that affluent settlers fromthe Uzbek and Tajik areas ofA f g h a n i s t a n h a d c o m e t oWaziristan and Tank and hadestablished mini-states The Uzbek-and Tajik-Afghans were growing inboth numbers and wealth posing a

threat to local tribesmen the storysaid36

This raises the crucial question of the source ofthis jihadi wealth Was it just from wealthyjihadi sympathizers in Saudi Arabia and theGulf states as has been alleged of theIMU37 Was it also a by-product of the herointraffic as others have surmised Were externalintelligence agencies exploiting the situationfor their own political agendas Or mostalarming of all was it from a milieu fusingjihadi activity the actions of intelligencenetworks and the alarming heroin traffic38

Whatever the answer it is obvious that thecurrent disturbances in Kyrgyzstan andcorresponding breakdown of weak centralauthority are a boon to extremism and drugtrafficking alike

The last possibility that there is a deep forcebehind drug intelligence and jihadi activitywould be consistent with the legacy of theCIArsquos earlier interventions in AfghanistanLaos and Burma and with Americarsquos overallresponsibility for the huge increases in globaldrug trafficking since World War II It isimportant to understand that the more thandoubling of Afghan opium drug productionsince the US invasion of 2001 merelyreplicates the massive drug increases inBurma Thailand and Laos between the late1940s and the 1970s These countries also onlybecame major sources of supply in theinternational drug traffic as a result of CIAassistance (after the French in the case ofLaos) to what would otherwise have been onlylocal traffickers

As early as 2001 Kyrgyzstanrsquos location hadmade it a focal point for transnationaltrafficking groups According to a US Libraryof Congress Report of 2002

Kyrgyzstan has become a primarycenter of a l l aspects of the

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

10

narcotics industry manufacturesale and drug traf f ickingKyrgyzstanrsquos location adjacent tomajor routes across the Tajikmountains from Afghanistancombines with ineffectual domesticsmuggling controls to attractf igures from what a Kyrgyznewspaper report characterized asldquoan international organizationuniting an unprecedentedly widecircle of members in the UnitedStates Romania Brazil RussiaBelarus and KazakhstanhellipTheseare no half-literate Tajik-Afghandrug runners but professionalswho have passed through aprobation period in the mafia clansof the world narcotics systemhelliprdquo39

Others notably Sibel Edmonds in the UnitedStates have alleged that there is a network ofdrug-financed and intelligence-related terroractivities stretching from Kyrgyzstan toAzerbaijan Chechnya and Turkey40

It is because of this possible convergence ofdisparate elements on the Kyrgyz intelligence-terror-drug scene that I have described thetopic of this paper as a syndrome not as asingle-minded scheme or stratagem Some ofthe possible components in this syndrome arebarely visible In his monumental book Descentinto Chaos Ahmed Rashid refers to theexistence of a ldquoGulf mafiardquo to which theTaliban by 1998 was selling drugs directly41 Asearch of Lexis-Nexis yields no results for ldquogulfmafiardquo and there is no other hit in GoogleBooks Yet there is abundant evidence for sucha mafia or mafias even if little is known aboutit or them42

Perhaps the most notorious example of such adrug mafia in the Persian Gulf is the D-Company of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar one of thetwo men (the other is Mexicorsquos Joaquin

Guzman) to be listed both on the Forbes MostWanted Fugitives list and also on the Forbeslist of billionaires Dawood Ibrahim merits aspecial section in a recent CongressionalResearch Service report on the nexus betweencriminal syndicates and terrorist groupsEntitled International Terrorism andTransnational Crime Security Threats USPolicy and Considerations for Congress thereport described Dawoodrsquos involvement with alQaeda the Lashkar-e-Taiba and PakistansInter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)43 Thisdetailed report did not mention the allegationby Yoichi Shimatsu former editor of the JapanTimes that Ibrahim had ldquoworked with the USto help finance the Afghan mujahideen duringthe 1980s and that because he knows toomuch about the Americarsquos lsquodarker secretsrsquo inthe region Pakistan could never turn him overto Indiarsquordquo44

The Congressional Research Service Reportcites Dawood Ibrahimrsquos D-Company as itsprime example of what it calls a fusion crime-terror organization (its next example is theFARC in Colombia) It is possible that theleading Mexican cartels should also beregarded as fusion networks since theirpractice of terroristic violence has become suchan integral part of the political process inMexico We can perhaps predict that suchfusion networks will continue to dominate boththe heroin and the cocaine traffics becauseterrorism and trafficking are so useful to eachother Terrorism creates the kind of anarchythat favors drug production and traffickingwhile drug trafficking provides the mostconvenient and local source of funds forterrorism Add the demonstrated interest of ISIand other intelligence agencies in bothactivities and you have the right environmentto foster what I have called the coup-drug-terror syndrome

In all there are many discrete components ofthe coup-drug-terror syndrome beginning withthe naiumlve American belief that imposing

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

11

American political values on distant countriesbenefits all concerned including the peace andsecurity of the globe The various elements donot have to collude together But pastexperience suggests what are the likelyoutcomes of ill-considered policies that mayhave been meant to achieve something quitedifferent

Moscow Washington and the KyrgyzCrisis

What is particularly alarming about thissyndrome is that both in Laos and inAfghanistan the outcome was a decade ofdevastating and incompletely settled war Atpresent there are no signs that Moscow andWashington are wi l l ing to f ight overKyrgyzstan Fortunately the new leader for themoment Roza Otunbayeva has good relationswith both capitals and they are promising hersupport

Yet there are signs that in both capitals there istension between the dominant policy andmilitant factions less willing to compromise InWashington for example Michael McFaulObamas senior director for Russian affairssaid of Bakiyevrsquos overthrow in April This isnot some sponsored-by-the-Russians couptheres just no evidence of that45 As previouslynoted there were many in Washington whodisagreed including the ideologically motivatedJamestown Foundation Fred Weir has sincedescribed the April events in the ChristianScience Monitor as ldquoa Moscow-backed coupdetat that was thinly disguised as a popularrevoltrdquo46

In Moscow too there are signs that some desirea more militant approach to the Kyrgyz crisisthan that advocated by President MedvedevWhen Roza Otunbayeva appealed to Medvedevfor Russian troops to help quell the spiralingethnic crisis in Osh Medvedev turned herdown ldquorsquoIt is an internal conflict and so farRussia doesnt see conditions for participatingin its resolutionrsquo Russian presidential press

secretary Natalia Timakova saidrdquo47 Medvedevrsquoscaution reflected his underlying concern aboutthe treacherous instability of Kyrgyzstan andhis concern not to involve in the conflict theethnic Russians in Kyrgyzstan (Russia diddispatch a paratrooper battalion to its base atTank in the north of the country where mostethnic Russians reside)48 As Medvedev warnedWashington in April ldquoKyrgyzstan riskedsplitting into North and South If that happensextremists might start flowing in turning thecountry into a second Afghanistanldquo49

The approach of Viktor Ivanov a senior advisorto Putin was more interventionist He told aRussian newspaper on June 20 of this year thatthe Osh area was a major region of Islamist-controlled drug trafficking and thus a Russianmi l i tary base should be establ ishedthere50 Nevertheless in Washington four dayslater Medvedev repeated to Obama that ldquoIthink that the Kyrgyz Republic must deal withthese problems itself Russia didnrsquot plan and isnot going to send contingent of peacekeepingforces though consultations on this issue wereheldrdquo51 Later Nikolay Bordyuzha Secretary-General of the Russian-dominated CollectiveSecurity Treaty Organization (CSTO) assertedthat there was no decision made on setting upa Russian military base in Kyrgyzstanparticularly near Oshrdquo52

Viktor Ivanov wears two hats he is both asenior member of Russias National AntiterrorCommittee and he also heads Russias FederalService for the Control of Narcotics For sometime he has been in the forefront of thoseRussian officials expressing frustration at theAmerican failure to l imit Afghan drugproduction53 He is far from alone in hisconcern about the virtual explosion of Afghandrugs reaching Russia since 2001 which manyRussian observers have labeled ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo

As early as February 2002 Russian DefenseMinister Sergei Ivanov raised the issue of

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

12

ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo with the Organization forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe tellingthem that whereas Russian border guardsseized only 2 kg of heroin in 1996 on theAfghan-Tajik border and about 800 kg in 2000in 2001 more than five metric tons of drugswere seized and half of the drugs wereheroin54

According to Sergei Blagov a reporter inMoscow for ISN Security Watch

Russian officials have estimatedthat the countrys drug addictionrates have increased several foldsince the US-led invasion and theoffensive against the Talibans in2002 which was followed by hikesin Afghan opium productionRussia is now the largest heroinconsumer in the world with anestimated 5 million addicts

Facing what it perceives aswestern willingness to allow opiump r o d u c t i o n t o f l o u r i s h i nAfghanistan Russias top officialshave described the situation asldquonarco-aggressionrdquo against Russiaand a new opium war They alsosuggest that the internationalalliance undertake aerial sprayingagainst Afghanistanrsquos poppy fields

The Russian press has been evenless diplomatic claiming that USand NATO forces were directlyinvolved in the drug trade Russianmedia outlets allege that the bulko f t h e d r u g s p r o d u c e d i nAfghanistanrsquos southern andwestern provinces are shippedabroad on US planes

Not surprisingly Russia regardswith resentment NATOrsquos liberalapproach toward the Afghan drug

industry and the al l iancersquosreluctance to cooperate in fightingthe drug trade Continued NATOinaction on the drug issue couldpotentially undermine Russiassecurity cooperation with the Weston cruc ia l matters such asstrategic arms reduction and non-proliferation55

Repeatedly Viktor Ivanov has appealed toAmerica to eradicate poppy f ie lds inAfghanistan as systematically as it has attackedcoca plantations in Colombia and for theinternational community to join Russia in thisappeal5 6 On June 9 2010 both he andPresident Medvedev addressed an InternationalForum on Afghan Drug Production (which Iattended) in an effort to muster thisinternational support57 I myself share theAmerican conclusion that spraying opium fieldswould be counterproductive because it wouldfatally weaken efforts to woo Afghan farmersaway from the Taliban But I do think that theinterests of peace and security in Central Asiawould be well served if America brought Russiamore closely into joint activities against theglobal drug trade

And as a researcher I believe that Russia has alegitimate grievance against Americarsquos currentAfghan strategy which has left wide open amajor drug corridor into Russia from thenortheastern Afghan province of Badakhshan

ldquoNarco-Aggressionrdquo and Americarsquos SkewedOpiate Strategy in Afghanistan

For this reason America should revise itsskewed drug interdiction strategy inAfghanistan At present this is explicitly limitedto attacking drug traffickers supporting theinsurgents chiefly the Pashtun backers of theTaliban in the southern provinces of Helmandand Kandahar58 Such strategies have theindirect effect of increasing the drug marketshare of the north and northeastern provinces

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

13

These provinces support the past and presentCIA assets in the Karzai regime (headed byHamid Karzai a former CIA asset)59 includingthe presidentrsquos brother Ahmed Wali Karzai anactive CIA asset and Abdul Rashid Dostum aformer CIA asset60 In effect America has allieditself with one drug faction in Afghanistanagainst another61

United Nations Department of Safety andSecurity map of 2007-08 drug cultivationand security situation in Afghanistan by

province Link

This strategy has seen repeated attacks on thepoppy fields and markets of the southernprovinces Meanwhile production in thenortheastern province of Badakhshan thehome of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliancehas continued despite denials to dominate theeconomy of that province62

(The statistics for Badakhshan the mostinaccessible of the Afghan provinces have beenmuch contested A UN map of Afghan poppyproduction for 2007-2008 showed Badakhshanas the provincewith the least opium cultivation200 hectares as opposed to 103590 forHelmand63 But LonelyPlanetcom posted anarticle in 2009 claiming that ldquoBadakhshan issecond only to Helmand for opium productionControlled by Northern Alliance opium is thebackbone of the local economyldquo64 And adetailed article in 2010 reported

The biggest economic asset of theprovince the one business most ofthe would-be Badakhshan VIPs findnecessary and profitable to enterinto sooner or later is in factcross-border smuggling Actuallysome sources claim that the localcontrol of routes and borderc r o s s i n g s i n B a d a k h s h a ncorresponds to the map of politicalpower grouping in the provinceEven if Badakhshan has lost itsformer status as one of theprincipal opium producing regionsin Afghanistan the local expertiseand t rade l inks have beenmaintained Many laboratories forheroin processing are active in theprovincehellip65

Meanwhile there have also been occasionalreports over the last decade of IMU terroristmovements from South Waziristan throughboth Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter ofurgent concern for Russia The Afghan opiatesentering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstanthe chief smuggling route come fromBadakhshan and other northeastern provincesThe reductions of the last three years in Afghandrug production while inadequate overall haveminimally impacted the northeast allowingopiate imports into Russia to continue to growMeanwhile the much-touted clearing of opiumpoppy from the Afghan northern provinces hasin some cases simply seen a switch ldquofromopium poppies to another illegal cropcannabis the herb from which marijuana andhashish are derivedrdquo66

As a result according to UN officialsAfghanistan is now also the worlds biggestproducer of hashish (another drug inundatingRussia)67 This has added to the flow of drugsup the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor Inshort the political skewing of Americarsquos Afghan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

9

government activities29

However the new governmentrsquos chargesagainst Bakiyev and the IMU may have beenself-serving It has become increasingly clearthat the victims of the massacre were ldquomostlyminority Uzbeks [who] say they were attackedby the Kyrgyz military and the police and theiraccounts have been backed up by independentobserversrdquo30 The Uzbek neighborhoods wereleft in ruins while ethnic Kyrgyz areas werelargely untouched31 It may emerge that theviolence grewout of a prior conflict in Mayinvolving local mafia leaders in the wake of theApril 2010 coup32 This led in late May to riotsthat former President Bakiyev was suspected oforganizing33

The situation calls for an impartial internationalinvestigation If the current conflict is notthoroughly resolved it is likely that bothIslamic extremists and local drug traffickerswill be drawn into it34

T h e K y r g y z C r i s i s a n dTransnationalTerror-Drug Mafias

One cannot lightly dismiss the Kyrgyzgovernment charge that the IMU had met inSouth Waziristan to plan violence in CentralAsia Even before the June riots there had beena disturbing report that the IMU (and its Turkicsplit-off the Islamic Jihad Union or IJU) hadestablished control over parts of SouthWaziristan and were planning and training forextended activities in Central Asia35 Ofparticular concern was the fol lowingparagraph

The News International recentlyreported that affluent settlers fromthe Uzbek and Tajik areas ofA f g h a n i s t a n h a d c o m e t oWaziristan and Tank and hadestablished mini-states The Uzbek-and Tajik-Afghans were growing inboth numbers and wealth posing a

threat to local tribesmen the storysaid36

This raises the crucial question of the source ofthis jihadi wealth Was it just from wealthyjihadi sympathizers in Saudi Arabia and theGulf states as has been alleged of theIMU37 Was it also a by-product of the herointraffic as others have surmised Were externalintelligence agencies exploiting the situationfor their own political agendas Or mostalarming of all was it from a milieu fusingjihadi activity the actions of intelligencenetworks and the alarming heroin traffic38

Whatever the answer it is obvious that thecurrent disturbances in Kyrgyzstan andcorresponding breakdown of weak centralauthority are a boon to extremism and drugtrafficking alike

The last possibility that there is a deep forcebehind drug intelligence and jihadi activitywould be consistent with the legacy of theCIArsquos earlier interventions in AfghanistanLaos and Burma and with Americarsquos overallresponsibility for the huge increases in globaldrug trafficking since World War II It isimportant to understand that the more thandoubling of Afghan opium drug productionsince the US invasion of 2001 merelyreplicates the massive drug increases inBurma Thailand and Laos between the late1940s and the 1970s These countries also onlybecame major sources of supply in theinternational drug traffic as a result of CIAassistance (after the French in the case ofLaos) to what would otherwise have been onlylocal traffickers

As early as 2001 Kyrgyzstanrsquos location hadmade it a focal point for transnationaltrafficking groups According to a US Libraryof Congress Report of 2002

Kyrgyzstan has become a primarycenter of a l l aspects of the

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

10

narcotics industry manufacturesale and drug traf f ickingKyrgyzstanrsquos location adjacent tomajor routes across the Tajikmountains from Afghanistancombines with ineffectual domesticsmuggling controls to attractf igures from what a Kyrgyznewspaper report characterized asldquoan international organizationuniting an unprecedentedly widecircle of members in the UnitedStates Romania Brazil RussiaBelarus and KazakhstanhellipTheseare no half-literate Tajik-Afghandrug runners but professionalswho have passed through aprobation period in the mafia clansof the world narcotics systemhelliprdquo39

Others notably Sibel Edmonds in the UnitedStates have alleged that there is a network ofdrug-financed and intelligence-related terroractivities stretching from Kyrgyzstan toAzerbaijan Chechnya and Turkey40

It is because of this possible convergence ofdisparate elements on the Kyrgyz intelligence-terror-drug scene that I have described thetopic of this paper as a syndrome not as asingle-minded scheme or stratagem Some ofthe possible components in this syndrome arebarely visible In his monumental book Descentinto Chaos Ahmed Rashid refers to theexistence of a ldquoGulf mafiardquo to which theTaliban by 1998 was selling drugs directly41 Asearch of Lexis-Nexis yields no results for ldquogulfmafiardquo and there is no other hit in GoogleBooks Yet there is abundant evidence for sucha mafia or mafias even if little is known aboutit or them42

Perhaps the most notorious example of such adrug mafia in the Persian Gulf is the D-Company of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar one of thetwo men (the other is Mexicorsquos Joaquin

Guzman) to be listed both on the Forbes MostWanted Fugitives list and also on the Forbeslist of billionaires Dawood Ibrahim merits aspecial section in a recent CongressionalResearch Service report on the nexus betweencriminal syndicates and terrorist groupsEntitled International Terrorism andTransnational Crime Security Threats USPolicy and Considerations for Congress thereport described Dawoodrsquos involvement with alQaeda the Lashkar-e-Taiba and PakistansInter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)43 Thisdetailed report did not mention the allegationby Yoichi Shimatsu former editor of the JapanTimes that Ibrahim had ldquoworked with the USto help finance the Afghan mujahideen duringthe 1980s and that because he knows toomuch about the Americarsquos lsquodarker secretsrsquo inthe region Pakistan could never turn him overto Indiarsquordquo44

The Congressional Research Service Reportcites Dawood Ibrahimrsquos D-Company as itsprime example of what it calls a fusion crime-terror organization (its next example is theFARC in Colombia) It is possible that theleading Mexican cartels should also beregarded as fusion networks since theirpractice of terroristic violence has become suchan integral part of the political process inMexico We can perhaps predict that suchfusion networks will continue to dominate boththe heroin and the cocaine traffics becauseterrorism and trafficking are so useful to eachother Terrorism creates the kind of anarchythat favors drug production and traffickingwhile drug trafficking provides the mostconvenient and local source of funds forterrorism Add the demonstrated interest of ISIand other intelligence agencies in bothactivities and you have the right environmentto foster what I have called the coup-drug-terror syndrome

In all there are many discrete components ofthe coup-drug-terror syndrome beginning withthe naiumlve American belief that imposing

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

11

American political values on distant countriesbenefits all concerned including the peace andsecurity of the globe The various elements donot have to collude together But pastexperience suggests what are the likelyoutcomes of ill-considered policies that mayhave been meant to achieve something quitedifferent

Moscow Washington and the KyrgyzCrisis

What is particularly alarming about thissyndrome is that both in Laos and inAfghanistan the outcome was a decade ofdevastating and incompletely settled war Atpresent there are no signs that Moscow andWashington are wi l l ing to f ight overKyrgyzstan Fortunately the new leader for themoment Roza Otunbayeva has good relationswith both capitals and they are promising hersupport

Yet there are signs that in both capitals there istension between the dominant policy andmilitant factions less willing to compromise InWashington for example Michael McFaulObamas senior director for Russian affairssaid of Bakiyevrsquos overthrow in April This isnot some sponsored-by-the-Russians couptheres just no evidence of that45 As previouslynoted there were many in Washington whodisagreed including the ideologically motivatedJamestown Foundation Fred Weir has sincedescribed the April events in the ChristianScience Monitor as ldquoa Moscow-backed coupdetat that was thinly disguised as a popularrevoltrdquo46

In Moscow too there are signs that some desirea more militant approach to the Kyrgyz crisisthan that advocated by President MedvedevWhen Roza Otunbayeva appealed to Medvedevfor Russian troops to help quell the spiralingethnic crisis in Osh Medvedev turned herdown ldquorsquoIt is an internal conflict and so farRussia doesnt see conditions for participatingin its resolutionrsquo Russian presidential press

secretary Natalia Timakova saidrdquo47 Medvedevrsquoscaution reflected his underlying concern aboutthe treacherous instability of Kyrgyzstan andhis concern not to involve in the conflict theethnic Russians in Kyrgyzstan (Russia diddispatch a paratrooper battalion to its base atTank in the north of the country where mostethnic Russians reside)48 As Medvedev warnedWashington in April ldquoKyrgyzstan riskedsplitting into North and South If that happensextremists might start flowing in turning thecountry into a second Afghanistanldquo49

The approach of Viktor Ivanov a senior advisorto Putin was more interventionist He told aRussian newspaper on June 20 of this year thatthe Osh area was a major region of Islamist-controlled drug trafficking and thus a Russianmi l i tary base should be establ ishedthere50 Nevertheless in Washington four dayslater Medvedev repeated to Obama that ldquoIthink that the Kyrgyz Republic must deal withthese problems itself Russia didnrsquot plan and isnot going to send contingent of peacekeepingforces though consultations on this issue wereheldrdquo51 Later Nikolay Bordyuzha Secretary-General of the Russian-dominated CollectiveSecurity Treaty Organization (CSTO) assertedthat there was no decision made on setting upa Russian military base in Kyrgyzstanparticularly near Oshrdquo52

Viktor Ivanov wears two hats he is both asenior member of Russias National AntiterrorCommittee and he also heads Russias FederalService for the Control of Narcotics For sometime he has been in the forefront of thoseRussian officials expressing frustration at theAmerican failure to l imit Afghan drugproduction53 He is far from alone in hisconcern about the virtual explosion of Afghandrugs reaching Russia since 2001 which manyRussian observers have labeled ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo

As early as February 2002 Russian DefenseMinister Sergei Ivanov raised the issue of

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

12

ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo with the Organization forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe tellingthem that whereas Russian border guardsseized only 2 kg of heroin in 1996 on theAfghan-Tajik border and about 800 kg in 2000in 2001 more than five metric tons of drugswere seized and half of the drugs wereheroin54

According to Sergei Blagov a reporter inMoscow for ISN Security Watch

Russian officials have estimatedthat the countrys drug addictionrates have increased several foldsince the US-led invasion and theoffensive against the Talibans in2002 which was followed by hikesin Afghan opium productionRussia is now the largest heroinconsumer in the world with anestimated 5 million addicts

Facing what it perceives aswestern willingness to allow opiump r o d u c t i o n t o f l o u r i s h i nAfghanistan Russias top officialshave described the situation asldquonarco-aggressionrdquo against Russiaand a new opium war They alsosuggest that the internationalalliance undertake aerial sprayingagainst Afghanistanrsquos poppy fields

The Russian press has been evenless diplomatic claiming that USand NATO forces were directlyinvolved in the drug trade Russianmedia outlets allege that the bulko f t h e d r u g s p r o d u c e d i nAfghanistanrsquos southern andwestern provinces are shippedabroad on US planes

Not surprisingly Russia regardswith resentment NATOrsquos liberalapproach toward the Afghan drug

industry and the al l iancersquosreluctance to cooperate in fightingthe drug trade Continued NATOinaction on the drug issue couldpotentially undermine Russiassecurity cooperation with the Weston cruc ia l matters such asstrategic arms reduction and non-proliferation55

Repeatedly Viktor Ivanov has appealed toAmerica to eradicate poppy f ie lds inAfghanistan as systematically as it has attackedcoca plantations in Colombia and for theinternational community to join Russia in thisappeal5 6 On June 9 2010 both he andPresident Medvedev addressed an InternationalForum on Afghan Drug Production (which Iattended) in an effort to muster thisinternational support57 I myself share theAmerican conclusion that spraying opium fieldswould be counterproductive because it wouldfatally weaken efforts to woo Afghan farmersaway from the Taliban But I do think that theinterests of peace and security in Central Asiawould be well served if America brought Russiamore closely into joint activities against theglobal drug trade

And as a researcher I believe that Russia has alegitimate grievance against Americarsquos currentAfghan strategy which has left wide open amajor drug corridor into Russia from thenortheastern Afghan province of Badakhshan

ldquoNarco-Aggressionrdquo and Americarsquos SkewedOpiate Strategy in Afghanistan

For this reason America should revise itsskewed drug interdiction strategy inAfghanistan At present this is explicitly limitedto attacking drug traffickers supporting theinsurgents chiefly the Pashtun backers of theTaliban in the southern provinces of Helmandand Kandahar58 Such strategies have theindirect effect of increasing the drug marketshare of the north and northeastern provinces

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

13

These provinces support the past and presentCIA assets in the Karzai regime (headed byHamid Karzai a former CIA asset)59 includingthe presidentrsquos brother Ahmed Wali Karzai anactive CIA asset and Abdul Rashid Dostum aformer CIA asset60 In effect America has allieditself with one drug faction in Afghanistanagainst another61

United Nations Department of Safety andSecurity map of 2007-08 drug cultivationand security situation in Afghanistan by

province Link

This strategy has seen repeated attacks on thepoppy fields and markets of the southernprovinces Meanwhile production in thenortheastern province of Badakhshan thehome of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliancehas continued despite denials to dominate theeconomy of that province62

(The statistics for Badakhshan the mostinaccessible of the Afghan provinces have beenmuch contested A UN map of Afghan poppyproduction for 2007-2008 showed Badakhshanas the provincewith the least opium cultivation200 hectares as opposed to 103590 forHelmand63 But LonelyPlanetcom posted anarticle in 2009 claiming that ldquoBadakhshan issecond only to Helmand for opium productionControlled by Northern Alliance opium is thebackbone of the local economyldquo64 And adetailed article in 2010 reported

The biggest economic asset of theprovince the one business most ofthe would-be Badakhshan VIPs findnecessary and profitable to enterinto sooner or later is in factcross-border smuggling Actuallysome sources claim that the localcontrol of routes and borderc r o s s i n g s i n B a d a k h s h a ncorresponds to the map of politicalpower grouping in the provinceEven if Badakhshan has lost itsformer status as one of theprincipal opium producing regionsin Afghanistan the local expertiseand t rade l inks have beenmaintained Many laboratories forheroin processing are active in theprovincehellip65

Meanwhile there have also been occasionalreports over the last decade of IMU terroristmovements from South Waziristan throughboth Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter ofurgent concern for Russia The Afghan opiatesentering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstanthe chief smuggling route come fromBadakhshan and other northeastern provincesThe reductions of the last three years in Afghandrug production while inadequate overall haveminimally impacted the northeast allowingopiate imports into Russia to continue to growMeanwhile the much-touted clearing of opiumpoppy from the Afghan northern provinces hasin some cases simply seen a switch ldquofromopium poppies to another illegal cropcannabis the herb from which marijuana andhashish are derivedrdquo66

As a result according to UN officialsAfghanistan is now also the worlds biggestproducer of hashish (another drug inundatingRussia)67 This has added to the flow of drugsup the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor Inshort the political skewing of Americarsquos Afghan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

10

narcotics industry manufacturesale and drug traf f ickingKyrgyzstanrsquos location adjacent tomajor routes across the Tajikmountains from Afghanistancombines with ineffectual domesticsmuggling controls to attractf igures from what a Kyrgyznewspaper report characterized asldquoan international organizationuniting an unprecedentedly widecircle of members in the UnitedStates Romania Brazil RussiaBelarus and KazakhstanhellipTheseare no half-literate Tajik-Afghandrug runners but professionalswho have passed through aprobation period in the mafia clansof the world narcotics systemhelliprdquo39

Others notably Sibel Edmonds in the UnitedStates have alleged that there is a network ofdrug-financed and intelligence-related terroractivities stretching from Kyrgyzstan toAzerbaijan Chechnya and Turkey40

It is because of this possible convergence ofdisparate elements on the Kyrgyz intelligence-terror-drug scene that I have described thetopic of this paper as a syndrome not as asingle-minded scheme or stratagem Some ofthe possible components in this syndrome arebarely visible In his monumental book Descentinto Chaos Ahmed Rashid refers to theexistence of a ldquoGulf mafiardquo to which theTaliban by 1998 was selling drugs directly41 Asearch of Lexis-Nexis yields no results for ldquogulfmafiardquo and there is no other hit in GoogleBooks Yet there is abundant evidence for sucha mafia or mafias even if little is known aboutit or them42

Perhaps the most notorious example of such adrug mafia in the Persian Gulf is the D-Company of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar one of thetwo men (the other is Mexicorsquos Joaquin

Guzman) to be listed both on the Forbes MostWanted Fugitives list and also on the Forbeslist of billionaires Dawood Ibrahim merits aspecial section in a recent CongressionalResearch Service report on the nexus betweencriminal syndicates and terrorist groupsEntitled International Terrorism andTransnational Crime Security Threats USPolicy and Considerations for Congress thereport described Dawoodrsquos involvement with alQaeda the Lashkar-e-Taiba and PakistansInter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI)43 Thisdetailed report did not mention the allegationby Yoichi Shimatsu former editor of the JapanTimes that Ibrahim had ldquoworked with the USto help finance the Afghan mujahideen duringthe 1980s and that because he knows toomuch about the Americarsquos lsquodarker secretsrsquo inthe region Pakistan could never turn him overto Indiarsquordquo44

The Congressional Research Service Reportcites Dawood Ibrahimrsquos D-Company as itsprime example of what it calls a fusion crime-terror organization (its next example is theFARC in Colombia) It is possible that theleading Mexican cartels should also beregarded as fusion networks since theirpractice of terroristic violence has become suchan integral part of the political process inMexico We can perhaps predict that suchfusion networks will continue to dominate boththe heroin and the cocaine traffics becauseterrorism and trafficking are so useful to eachother Terrorism creates the kind of anarchythat favors drug production and traffickingwhile drug trafficking provides the mostconvenient and local source of funds forterrorism Add the demonstrated interest of ISIand other intelligence agencies in bothactivities and you have the right environmentto foster what I have called the coup-drug-terror syndrome

In all there are many discrete components ofthe coup-drug-terror syndrome beginning withthe naiumlve American belief that imposing

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

11

American political values on distant countriesbenefits all concerned including the peace andsecurity of the globe The various elements donot have to collude together But pastexperience suggests what are the likelyoutcomes of ill-considered policies that mayhave been meant to achieve something quitedifferent

Moscow Washington and the KyrgyzCrisis

What is particularly alarming about thissyndrome is that both in Laos and inAfghanistan the outcome was a decade ofdevastating and incompletely settled war Atpresent there are no signs that Moscow andWashington are wi l l ing to f ight overKyrgyzstan Fortunately the new leader for themoment Roza Otunbayeva has good relationswith both capitals and they are promising hersupport

Yet there are signs that in both capitals there istension between the dominant policy andmilitant factions less willing to compromise InWashington for example Michael McFaulObamas senior director for Russian affairssaid of Bakiyevrsquos overthrow in April This isnot some sponsored-by-the-Russians couptheres just no evidence of that45 As previouslynoted there were many in Washington whodisagreed including the ideologically motivatedJamestown Foundation Fred Weir has sincedescribed the April events in the ChristianScience Monitor as ldquoa Moscow-backed coupdetat that was thinly disguised as a popularrevoltrdquo46

In Moscow too there are signs that some desirea more militant approach to the Kyrgyz crisisthan that advocated by President MedvedevWhen Roza Otunbayeva appealed to Medvedevfor Russian troops to help quell the spiralingethnic crisis in Osh Medvedev turned herdown ldquorsquoIt is an internal conflict and so farRussia doesnt see conditions for participatingin its resolutionrsquo Russian presidential press

secretary Natalia Timakova saidrdquo47 Medvedevrsquoscaution reflected his underlying concern aboutthe treacherous instability of Kyrgyzstan andhis concern not to involve in the conflict theethnic Russians in Kyrgyzstan (Russia diddispatch a paratrooper battalion to its base atTank in the north of the country where mostethnic Russians reside)48 As Medvedev warnedWashington in April ldquoKyrgyzstan riskedsplitting into North and South If that happensextremists might start flowing in turning thecountry into a second Afghanistanldquo49

The approach of Viktor Ivanov a senior advisorto Putin was more interventionist He told aRussian newspaper on June 20 of this year thatthe Osh area was a major region of Islamist-controlled drug trafficking and thus a Russianmi l i tary base should be establ ishedthere50 Nevertheless in Washington four dayslater Medvedev repeated to Obama that ldquoIthink that the Kyrgyz Republic must deal withthese problems itself Russia didnrsquot plan and isnot going to send contingent of peacekeepingforces though consultations on this issue wereheldrdquo51 Later Nikolay Bordyuzha Secretary-General of the Russian-dominated CollectiveSecurity Treaty Organization (CSTO) assertedthat there was no decision made on setting upa Russian military base in Kyrgyzstanparticularly near Oshrdquo52

Viktor Ivanov wears two hats he is both asenior member of Russias National AntiterrorCommittee and he also heads Russias FederalService for the Control of Narcotics For sometime he has been in the forefront of thoseRussian officials expressing frustration at theAmerican failure to l imit Afghan drugproduction53 He is far from alone in hisconcern about the virtual explosion of Afghandrugs reaching Russia since 2001 which manyRussian observers have labeled ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo

As early as February 2002 Russian DefenseMinister Sergei Ivanov raised the issue of

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

12

ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo with the Organization forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe tellingthem that whereas Russian border guardsseized only 2 kg of heroin in 1996 on theAfghan-Tajik border and about 800 kg in 2000in 2001 more than five metric tons of drugswere seized and half of the drugs wereheroin54

According to Sergei Blagov a reporter inMoscow for ISN Security Watch

Russian officials have estimatedthat the countrys drug addictionrates have increased several foldsince the US-led invasion and theoffensive against the Talibans in2002 which was followed by hikesin Afghan opium productionRussia is now the largest heroinconsumer in the world with anestimated 5 million addicts

Facing what it perceives aswestern willingness to allow opiump r o d u c t i o n t o f l o u r i s h i nAfghanistan Russias top officialshave described the situation asldquonarco-aggressionrdquo against Russiaand a new opium war They alsosuggest that the internationalalliance undertake aerial sprayingagainst Afghanistanrsquos poppy fields

The Russian press has been evenless diplomatic claiming that USand NATO forces were directlyinvolved in the drug trade Russianmedia outlets allege that the bulko f t h e d r u g s p r o d u c e d i nAfghanistanrsquos southern andwestern provinces are shippedabroad on US planes

Not surprisingly Russia regardswith resentment NATOrsquos liberalapproach toward the Afghan drug

industry and the al l iancersquosreluctance to cooperate in fightingthe drug trade Continued NATOinaction on the drug issue couldpotentially undermine Russiassecurity cooperation with the Weston cruc ia l matters such asstrategic arms reduction and non-proliferation55

Repeatedly Viktor Ivanov has appealed toAmerica to eradicate poppy f ie lds inAfghanistan as systematically as it has attackedcoca plantations in Colombia and for theinternational community to join Russia in thisappeal5 6 On June 9 2010 both he andPresident Medvedev addressed an InternationalForum on Afghan Drug Production (which Iattended) in an effort to muster thisinternational support57 I myself share theAmerican conclusion that spraying opium fieldswould be counterproductive because it wouldfatally weaken efforts to woo Afghan farmersaway from the Taliban But I do think that theinterests of peace and security in Central Asiawould be well served if America brought Russiamore closely into joint activities against theglobal drug trade

And as a researcher I believe that Russia has alegitimate grievance against Americarsquos currentAfghan strategy which has left wide open amajor drug corridor into Russia from thenortheastern Afghan province of Badakhshan

ldquoNarco-Aggressionrdquo and Americarsquos SkewedOpiate Strategy in Afghanistan

For this reason America should revise itsskewed drug interdiction strategy inAfghanistan At present this is explicitly limitedto attacking drug traffickers supporting theinsurgents chiefly the Pashtun backers of theTaliban in the southern provinces of Helmandand Kandahar58 Such strategies have theindirect effect of increasing the drug marketshare of the north and northeastern provinces

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

13

These provinces support the past and presentCIA assets in the Karzai regime (headed byHamid Karzai a former CIA asset)59 includingthe presidentrsquos brother Ahmed Wali Karzai anactive CIA asset and Abdul Rashid Dostum aformer CIA asset60 In effect America has allieditself with one drug faction in Afghanistanagainst another61

United Nations Department of Safety andSecurity map of 2007-08 drug cultivationand security situation in Afghanistan by

province Link

This strategy has seen repeated attacks on thepoppy fields and markets of the southernprovinces Meanwhile production in thenortheastern province of Badakhshan thehome of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliancehas continued despite denials to dominate theeconomy of that province62

(The statistics for Badakhshan the mostinaccessible of the Afghan provinces have beenmuch contested A UN map of Afghan poppyproduction for 2007-2008 showed Badakhshanas the provincewith the least opium cultivation200 hectares as opposed to 103590 forHelmand63 But LonelyPlanetcom posted anarticle in 2009 claiming that ldquoBadakhshan issecond only to Helmand for opium productionControlled by Northern Alliance opium is thebackbone of the local economyldquo64 And adetailed article in 2010 reported

The biggest economic asset of theprovince the one business most ofthe would-be Badakhshan VIPs findnecessary and profitable to enterinto sooner or later is in factcross-border smuggling Actuallysome sources claim that the localcontrol of routes and borderc r o s s i n g s i n B a d a k h s h a ncorresponds to the map of politicalpower grouping in the provinceEven if Badakhshan has lost itsformer status as one of theprincipal opium producing regionsin Afghanistan the local expertiseand t rade l inks have beenmaintained Many laboratories forheroin processing are active in theprovincehellip65

Meanwhile there have also been occasionalreports over the last decade of IMU terroristmovements from South Waziristan throughboth Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter ofurgent concern for Russia The Afghan opiatesentering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstanthe chief smuggling route come fromBadakhshan and other northeastern provincesThe reductions of the last three years in Afghandrug production while inadequate overall haveminimally impacted the northeast allowingopiate imports into Russia to continue to growMeanwhile the much-touted clearing of opiumpoppy from the Afghan northern provinces hasin some cases simply seen a switch ldquofromopium poppies to another illegal cropcannabis the herb from which marijuana andhashish are derivedrdquo66

As a result according to UN officialsAfghanistan is now also the worlds biggestproducer of hashish (another drug inundatingRussia)67 This has added to the flow of drugsup the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor Inshort the political skewing of Americarsquos Afghan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

11

American political values on distant countriesbenefits all concerned including the peace andsecurity of the globe The various elements donot have to collude together But pastexperience suggests what are the likelyoutcomes of ill-considered policies that mayhave been meant to achieve something quitedifferent

Moscow Washington and the KyrgyzCrisis

What is particularly alarming about thissyndrome is that both in Laos and inAfghanistan the outcome was a decade ofdevastating and incompletely settled war Atpresent there are no signs that Moscow andWashington are wi l l ing to f ight overKyrgyzstan Fortunately the new leader for themoment Roza Otunbayeva has good relationswith both capitals and they are promising hersupport

Yet there are signs that in both capitals there istension between the dominant policy andmilitant factions less willing to compromise InWashington for example Michael McFaulObamas senior director for Russian affairssaid of Bakiyevrsquos overthrow in April This isnot some sponsored-by-the-Russians couptheres just no evidence of that45 As previouslynoted there were many in Washington whodisagreed including the ideologically motivatedJamestown Foundation Fred Weir has sincedescribed the April events in the ChristianScience Monitor as ldquoa Moscow-backed coupdetat that was thinly disguised as a popularrevoltrdquo46

In Moscow too there are signs that some desirea more militant approach to the Kyrgyz crisisthan that advocated by President MedvedevWhen Roza Otunbayeva appealed to Medvedevfor Russian troops to help quell the spiralingethnic crisis in Osh Medvedev turned herdown ldquorsquoIt is an internal conflict and so farRussia doesnt see conditions for participatingin its resolutionrsquo Russian presidential press

secretary Natalia Timakova saidrdquo47 Medvedevrsquoscaution reflected his underlying concern aboutthe treacherous instability of Kyrgyzstan andhis concern not to involve in the conflict theethnic Russians in Kyrgyzstan (Russia diddispatch a paratrooper battalion to its base atTank in the north of the country where mostethnic Russians reside)48 As Medvedev warnedWashington in April ldquoKyrgyzstan riskedsplitting into North and South If that happensextremists might start flowing in turning thecountry into a second Afghanistanldquo49

The approach of Viktor Ivanov a senior advisorto Putin was more interventionist He told aRussian newspaper on June 20 of this year thatthe Osh area was a major region of Islamist-controlled drug trafficking and thus a Russianmi l i tary base should be establ ishedthere50 Nevertheless in Washington four dayslater Medvedev repeated to Obama that ldquoIthink that the Kyrgyz Republic must deal withthese problems itself Russia didnrsquot plan and isnot going to send contingent of peacekeepingforces though consultations on this issue wereheldrdquo51 Later Nikolay Bordyuzha Secretary-General of the Russian-dominated CollectiveSecurity Treaty Organization (CSTO) assertedthat there was no decision made on setting upa Russian military base in Kyrgyzstanparticularly near Oshrdquo52

Viktor Ivanov wears two hats he is both asenior member of Russias National AntiterrorCommittee and he also heads Russias FederalService for the Control of Narcotics For sometime he has been in the forefront of thoseRussian officials expressing frustration at theAmerican failure to l imit Afghan drugproduction53 He is far from alone in hisconcern about the virtual explosion of Afghandrugs reaching Russia since 2001 which manyRussian observers have labeled ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo

As early as February 2002 Russian DefenseMinister Sergei Ivanov raised the issue of

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

12

ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo with the Organization forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe tellingthem that whereas Russian border guardsseized only 2 kg of heroin in 1996 on theAfghan-Tajik border and about 800 kg in 2000in 2001 more than five metric tons of drugswere seized and half of the drugs wereheroin54

According to Sergei Blagov a reporter inMoscow for ISN Security Watch

Russian officials have estimatedthat the countrys drug addictionrates have increased several foldsince the US-led invasion and theoffensive against the Talibans in2002 which was followed by hikesin Afghan opium productionRussia is now the largest heroinconsumer in the world with anestimated 5 million addicts

Facing what it perceives aswestern willingness to allow opiump r o d u c t i o n t o f l o u r i s h i nAfghanistan Russias top officialshave described the situation asldquonarco-aggressionrdquo against Russiaand a new opium war They alsosuggest that the internationalalliance undertake aerial sprayingagainst Afghanistanrsquos poppy fields

The Russian press has been evenless diplomatic claiming that USand NATO forces were directlyinvolved in the drug trade Russianmedia outlets allege that the bulko f t h e d r u g s p r o d u c e d i nAfghanistanrsquos southern andwestern provinces are shippedabroad on US planes

Not surprisingly Russia regardswith resentment NATOrsquos liberalapproach toward the Afghan drug

industry and the al l iancersquosreluctance to cooperate in fightingthe drug trade Continued NATOinaction on the drug issue couldpotentially undermine Russiassecurity cooperation with the Weston cruc ia l matters such asstrategic arms reduction and non-proliferation55

Repeatedly Viktor Ivanov has appealed toAmerica to eradicate poppy f ie lds inAfghanistan as systematically as it has attackedcoca plantations in Colombia and for theinternational community to join Russia in thisappeal5 6 On June 9 2010 both he andPresident Medvedev addressed an InternationalForum on Afghan Drug Production (which Iattended) in an effort to muster thisinternational support57 I myself share theAmerican conclusion that spraying opium fieldswould be counterproductive because it wouldfatally weaken efforts to woo Afghan farmersaway from the Taliban But I do think that theinterests of peace and security in Central Asiawould be well served if America brought Russiamore closely into joint activities against theglobal drug trade

And as a researcher I believe that Russia has alegitimate grievance against Americarsquos currentAfghan strategy which has left wide open amajor drug corridor into Russia from thenortheastern Afghan province of Badakhshan

ldquoNarco-Aggressionrdquo and Americarsquos SkewedOpiate Strategy in Afghanistan

For this reason America should revise itsskewed drug interdiction strategy inAfghanistan At present this is explicitly limitedto attacking drug traffickers supporting theinsurgents chiefly the Pashtun backers of theTaliban in the southern provinces of Helmandand Kandahar58 Such strategies have theindirect effect of increasing the drug marketshare of the north and northeastern provinces

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

13

These provinces support the past and presentCIA assets in the Karzai regime (headed byHamid Karzai a former CIA asset)59 includingthe presidentrsquos brother Ahmed Wali Karzai anactive CIA asset and Abdul Rashid Dostum aformer CIA asset60 In effect America has allieditself with one drug faction in Afghanistanagainst another61

United Nations Department of Safety andSecurity map of 2007-08 drug cultivationand security situation in Afghanistan by

province Link

This strategy has seen repeated attacks on thepoppy fields and markets of the southernprovinces Meanwhile production in thenortheastern province of Badakhshan thehome of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliancehas continued despite denials to dominate theeconomy of that province62

(The statistics for Badakhshan the mostinaccessible of the Afghan provinces have beenmuch contested A UN map of Afghan poppyproduction for 2007-2008 showed Badakhshanas the provincewith the least opium cultivation200 hectares as opposed to 103590 forHelmand63 But LonelyPlanetcom posted anarticle in 2009 claiming that ldquoBadakhshan issecond only to Helmand for opium productionControlled by Northern Alliance opium is thebackbone of the local economyldquo64 And adetailed article in 2010 reported

The biggest economic asset of theprovince the one business most ofthe would-be Badakhshan VIPs findnecessary and profitable to enterinto sooner or later is in factcross-border smuggling Actuallysome sources claim that the localcontrol of routes and borderc r o s s i n g s i n B a d a k h s h a ncorresponds to the map of politicalpower grouping in the provinceEven if Badakhshan has lost itsformer status as one of theprincipal opium producing regionsin Afghanistan the local expertiseand t rade l inks have beenmaintained Many laboratories forheroin processing are active in theprovincehellip65

Meanwhile there have also been occasionalreports over the last decade of IMU terroristmovements from South Waziristan throughboth Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter ofurgent concern for Russia The Afghan opiatesentering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstanthe chief smuggling route come fromBadakhshan and other northeastern provincesThe reductions of the last three years in Afghandrug production while inadequate overall haveminimally impacted the northeast allowingopiate imports into Russia to continue to growMeanwhile the much-touted clearing of opiumpoppy from the Afghan northern provinces hasin some cases simply seen a switch ldquofromopium poppies to another illegal cropcannabis the herb from which marijuana andhashish are derivedrdquo66

As a result according to UN officialsAfghanistan is now also the worlds biggestproducer of hashish (another drug inundatingRussia)67 This has added to the flow of drugsup the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor Inshort the political skewing of Americarsquos Afghan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

12

ldquonarco-aggressionrdquo with the Organization forSecurity and Co-operation in Europe tellingthem that whereas Russian border guardsseized only 2 kg of heroin in 1996 on theAfghan-Tajik border and about 800 kg in 2000in 2001 more than five metric tons of drugswere seized and half of the drugs wereheroin54

According to Sergei Blagov a reporter inMoscow for ISN Security Watch

Russian officials have estimatedthat the countrys drug addictionrates have increased several foldsince the US-led invasion and theoffensive against the Talibans in2002 which was followed by hikesin Afghan opium productionRussia is now the largest heroinconsumer in the world with anestimated 5 million addicts

Facing what it perceives aswestern willingness to allow opiump r o d u c t i o n t o f l o u r i s h i nAfghanistan Russias top officialshave described the situation asldquonarco-aggressionrdquo against Russiaand a new opium war They alsosuggest that the internationalalliance undertake aerial sprayingagainst Afghanistanrsquos poppy fields

The Russian press has been evenless diplomatic claiming that USand NATO forces were directlyinvolved in the drug trade Russianmedia outlets allege that the bulko f t h e d r u g s p r o d u c e d i nAfghanistanrsquos southern andwestern provinces are shippedabroad on US planes

Not surprisingly Russia regardswith resentment NATOrsquos liberalapproach toward the Afghan drug

industry and the al l iancersquosreluctance to cooperate in fightingthe drug trade Continued NATOinaction on the drug issue couldpotentially undermine Russiassecurity cooperation with the Weston cruc ia l matters such asstrategic arms reduction and non-proliferation55

Repeatedly Viktor Ivanov has appealed toAmerica to eradicate poppy f ie lds inAfghanistan as systematically as it has attackedcoca plantations in Colombia and for theinternational community to join Russia in thisappeal5 6 On June 9 2010 both he andPresident Medvedev addressed an InternationalForum on Afghan Drug Production (which Iattended) in an effort to muster thisinternational support57 I myself share theAmerican conclusion that spraying opium fieldswould be counterproductive because it wouldfatally weaken efforts to woo Afghan farmersaway from the Taliban But I do think that theinterests of peace and security in Central Asiawould be well served if America brought Russiamore closely into joint activities against theglobal drug trade

And as a researcher I believe that Russia has alegitimate grievance against Americarsquos currentAfghan strategy which has left wide open amajor drug corridor into Russia from thenortheastern Afghan province of Badakhshan

ldquoNarco-Aggressionrdquo and Americarsquos SkewedOpiate Strategy in Afghanistan

For this reason America should revise itsskewed drug interdiction strategy inAfghanistan At present this is explicitly limitedto attacking drug traffickers supporting theinsurgents chiefly the Pashtun backers of theTaliban in the southern provinces of Helmandand Kandahar58 Such strategies have theindirect effect of increasing the drug marketshare of the north and northeastern provinces

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

13

These provinces support the past and presentCIA assets in the Karzai regime (headed byHamid Karzai a former CIA asset)59 includingthe presidentrsquos brother Ahmed Wali Karzai anactive CIA asset and Abdul Rashid Dostum aformer CIA asset60 In effect America has allieditself with one drug faction in Afghanistanagainst another61

United Nations Department of Safety andSecurity map of 2007-08 drug cultivationand security situation in Afghanistan by

province Link

This strategy has seen repeated attacks on thepoppy fields and markets of the southernprovinces Meanwhile production in thenortheastern province of Badakhshan thehome of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliancehas continued despite denials to dominate theeconomy of that province62

(The statistics for Badakhshan the mostinaccessible of the Afghan provinces have beenmuch contested A UN map of Afghan poppyproduction for 2007-2008 showed Badakhshanas the provincewith the least opium cultivation200 hectares as opposed to 103590 forHelmand63 But LonelyPlanetcom posted anarticle in 2009 claiming that ldquoBadakhshan issecond only to Helmand for opium productionControlled by Northern Alliance opium is thebackbone of the local economyldquo64 And adetailed article in 2010 reported

The biggest economic asset of theprovince the one business most ofthe would-be Badakhshan VIPs findnecessary and profitable to enterinto sooner or later is in factcross-border smuggling Actuallysome sources claim that the localcontrol of routes and borderc r o s s i n g s i n B a d a k h s h a ncorresponds to the map of politicalpower grouping in the provinceEven if Badakhshan has lost itsformer status as one of theprincipal opium producing regionsin Afghanistan the local expertiseand t rade l inks have beenmaintained Many laboratories forheroin processing are active in theprovincehellip65

Meanwhile there have also been occasionalreports over the last decade of IMU terroristmovements from South Waziristan throughboth Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter ofurgent concern for Russia The Afghan opiatesentering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstanthe chief smuggling route come fromBadakhshan and other northeastern provincesThe reductions of the last three years in Afghandrug production while inadequate overall haveminimally impacted the northeast allowingopiate imports into Russia to continue to growMeanwhile the much-touted clearing of opiumpoppy from the Afghan northern provinces hasin some cases simply seen a switch ldquofromopium poppies to another illegal cropcannabis the herb from which marijuana andhashish are derivedrdquo66

As a result according to UN officialsAfghanistan is now also the worlds biggestproducer of hashish (another drug inundatingRussia)67 This has added to the flow of drugsup the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor Inshort the political skewing of Americarsquos Afghan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

13

These provinces support the past and presentCIA assets in the Karzai regime (headed byHamid Karzai a former CIA asset)59 includingthe presidentrsquos brother Ahmed Wali Karzai anactive CIA asset and Abdul Rashid Dostum aformer CIA asset60 In effect America has allieditself with one drug faction in Afghanistanagainst another61

United Nations Department of Safety andSecurity map of 2007-08 drug cultivationand security situation in Afghanistan by

province Link

This strategy has seen repeated attacks on thepoppy fields and markets of the southernprovinces Meanwhile production in thenortheastern province of Badakhshan thehome of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliancehas continued despite denials to dominate theeconomy of that province62

(The statistics for Badakhshan the mostinaccessible of the Afghan provinces have beenmuch contested A UN map of Afghan poppyproduction for 2007-2008 showed Badakhshanas the provincewith the least opium cultivation200 hectares as opposed to 103590 forHelmand63 But LonelyPlanetcom posted anarticle in 2009 claiming that ldquoBadakhshan issecond only to Helmand for opium productionControlled by Northern Alliance opium is thebackbone of the local economyldquo64 And adetailed article in 2010 reported

The biggest economic asset of theprovince the one business most ofthe would-be Badakhshan VIPs findnecessary and profitable to enterinto sooner or later is in factcross-border smuggling Actuallysome sources claim that the localcontrol of routes and borderc r o s s i n g s i n B a d a k h s h a ncorresponds to the map of politicalpower grouping in the provinceEven if Badakhshan has lost itsformer status as one of theprincipal opium producing regionsin Afghanistan the local expertiseand t rade l inks have beenmaintained Many laboratories forheroin processing are active in theprovincehellip65

Meanwhile there have also been occasionalreports over the last decade of IMU terroristmovements from South Waziristan throughboth Afghan and Tajik Badakhshan

The Badakhshan drug corridor is a matter ofurgent concern for Russia The Afghan opiatesentering Russia via Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstanthe chief smuggling route come fromBadakhshan and other northeastern provincesThe reductions of the last three years in Afghandrug production while inadequate overall haveminimally impacted the northeast allowingopiate imports into Russia to continue to growMeanwhile the much-touted clearing of opiumpoppy from the Afghan northern provinces hasin some cases simply seen a switch ldquofromopium poppies to another illegal cropcannabis the herb from which marijuana andhashish are derivedrdquo66

As a result according to UN officialsAfghanistan is now also the worlds biggestproducer of hashish (another drug inundatingRussia)67 This has added to the flow of drugsup the Badakhshan-Tajik-Kyrgyz corridor Inshort the political skewing of Americarsquos Afghan

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

14

anti-drug policies is a significant reason for themajor drug problems faced by Russia today

What are the reasons for Americarsquos relativeinactivity against Badakhshan drug flowsSome observers not only Russian havewondered if there is a larger strategy directedagainst Russia itselfAn article in Indiarsquos majorjournal The Hindu entitled ldquoRussia victim ofnarco-aggressionrdquoincluded the followingsuggestive reference by John MacDougallwriting for Agence France-Presse

In 1993 Russian border guardsreturned to Tajikistan in an effortto contain the flow of drugs fromopium-producing Afghanistan In2002 alone they intercepted 67tonnes of drugs half of themheroin However in 2005 TajikPresident Imomali Rakhmonhoping to win financial aid fromthe US asked the Russian borderguards to leave saying Tajikistanhad recovered enough from a five-year civil war (from 1992-97) toshoulder the task Within monthsof the Russian withdrawal cross-border drug trafficking increasedmanifold68

And we have already noted the Kyrgyz chargethat in 2009 the US Ambassador toKyrgyzstan Tatiana Gfoeller ldquodemonstratedfull indifferencerdquo as Kurmanbek Bakiyevrsquosbrother Janysh closed down the Drug ControlAgency there69

Whatever the causes for the spectacular drugflow it should be both a global priority and anAmerican priority to address this crisis morevigorously The reasons for doing so are notjust humanitarian Earlier this year Ivanov toldNewsweek

I have no doubts that drug trafficfeeds terrorism in Russia Hugeamounts of illegal money flow toradical groups from the drug tradeAt a recent meeting of the SecurityCouncil in Mineralniye Vody [in theNorth Caucasus] we saw reportsthat the drug traffic coming toDagestan has increased by 20times over the last year That iswhat fuels terrorism becauseterrorists buy their communicationequipment and weapons with drugmoney70

Conclusion The Global Banking Systemand the Global Drug Trade

I believe that Ivanov is correct in linkingterrorism to local drug money I fear also thatthere might be an additional dimension to theproblem that he did not mention transnationaldeep forces tapping into the even morelucrative market for drugs in western Europeand America Undoubtedlyproceeds from theglobal opiate traffic (estimated at $65 billion in2009) are systematically channeled into majorbanks as has also been well documented forthe profits from cocaine trafficking into USbanks When just oneUS bank ndash Wachovia ndashadmits that it violated US banking laws tohandle $378 billion in illicit cocaine funds thissupplies a measure of how important is thetransnational dimension underlying local fusiondrug-terror networks whether in Dagestan orthe Persian Gulf71

Antonio Maria Costa head of the UN Office onDrugs and Crime has alleged that ldquoDrugsmoney worth billions of dollars kept thefinancial system afloat at the height of theglobal crisisrdquo According to the LondonObserver Costa

said he has seen evidence that theproceeds of organised crime were

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

15

the only liquid investment capitalavailable to some banks on thebrink of collapse last year He saidthat a majority of the $352bn(pound216bn) of drugs profits wasabsorbed into the economic systemas a resulthellip Costa said evidencethat illegal money was beingabsorbed into the financial systemwas first drawn to his attention byinte l l igence agenc ies andprosecutors around 18 months agoIn many instances the moneyfrom drugs was the only liquidinvestment capital In the secondhalf of 2008 liquidity was thebanking systems main problemand hence liquid capital became animportant factor he said72

As a former diplomat I sincerelyhope that theUS and Russian governments will collaborateto address these drug-related problemstogether in Kyrgyzstan in Afghanistan and onthe level of curbing a venal global bankingsystem

As a researcher I have to say that I see theUS Government as part of the problem not asa very likely solution to it We have too oftenseen the US habit of turning to drugtraffickers as covert assets in areas where it isweak from Burma in 1950 right down to theUS invasion of Afghanistan in 200173

I conclude that some other major force willhave to be assembled to force a change in USgovernment behavior Russia is right inbringing this problem to the attention of theSecurity Council but this is a problemtranscending governments Perhaps religiousorganizations around the world could be oneplace to start mobilizing an extra-governmentalforce Journalists and other researchers couldalso supply a component Somehow the worldmust be made aware that it does indeed face atriple threat the threat of drugs the threat of

drug-financed terrorism and eventually thethreat of war

Meanwhile it is far too early to predict whatmay eventually transpire between America andRussia in Kyrgyzstan But it is none too soon toassert that history is repeating itself in analarming and predictable way and to recallthat the ingredients of the coup-drug-terrorsyndrome have led to major warfare in thepast

My personal conclusion is that deep forces notful ly understood are at work now inKyrgyzstan as they have been earlier inAfghanistan and other drug-producingcountries My concern is heightened by myincreasing awareness that for decades deepforces have also been at work in Washington

This was demonstrated vividly by the USgovernmentrsquos determined protection in the1980s of the global drug activities of the Bankof Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)which has been described as ldquothe largestcriminal corporate enterprise everrdquo74 A USSenate Report once called BCCI not just aldquorogue bank hellip but a case study of thevulnerability of the world to international crimeon a global scope that is beyond the currenta b i l i t y o f g o v e r n m e n t s t ocontrolrdquo75 Governments indeed long failed toregulate BCCI because of its ability toinfluence governments and when BCCI wasfinally brought down in 1991 it was as theresult of relative outsiders like RobertMorgenthau District Attorney of New York

In going after BCCI Morgenthausoff ice quickly found that inaddition to fighting off the bank itwould receive resistance fromalmost every other institution ore n t i t y c o n n e c t e d t o B C C I[including] the Bank of Englandthe British Serious Fraud Officeand the US governmentrdquo76

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

16

I have tried to show elsewhere that BCCI wasonly one in a series of overlapping banks withsimilar intelligence connections dating back tothe 1940s77

When I first wrote about Washingtonrsquosprotection of BCCI I assumed that the BCCIbenefited from its status as an asset orinstrument for covert USand Britishintelligence strategies Since then I have cometo wonder if CIA and BCCI were not both alikeinstruments for some deeper force or forcesembedded in the state but not confined to itwhich has or have been systematicallyexploiting the drug traffic as a means to globalpower

Not until there is a more general awareness ofthis deep force problem can we expectWashington to respondwith a more rationaldrug policy My hope in this essay is to providea further step in the effort to clarify just whatthese deeper forces are and the extent towhich they are responsible for Americarsquoscurrent grave constitutional crisis

Peter Dale Scott a former Canadian diplomatand English Professor at the University ofCalifornia Berkeley is the author of Drugs Oiland War The Road to 9 11 The WarConspiracy JFK 911 and the Deep Politics ofWar His American War Machine Deep Politicsthe CIA Global Drug Connection and the Roadto Afghanistan is in press from Rowman ampLittlefield

His website which contains a wealth of hiswritings is here

He wrote this article for The Asia-PacificJournal

Recommended citation Peter Dale ScottKyrgyzstan the USand the Global DrugProblem Deep Forces and the Syndrome ofCoups Drugs and Terror The Asia-Pacific

Journal 28-3-10 July 12 2010

Wherever you may be in the world you canalways make use of an online addictiontreatment program locator to give youinformation on the best rehab programsavailable

Notes

1 Martin Stuart-Fox A History of Laos (Cambridge Cambridge University Press1997) 112-26

2 Peter Dale Scott The Road to 911 77-78Diego Cordovez and Selig S Harrison Out ofAfghanistan the Inside Story of the SovietWithdrawal (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1995) 16

3 Le Nouvel Observateur January 15-21 1998In his relentless determination to weaken theSoviet Union Brzezinski also persuaded Carterto end US sanctions against Pakistan for itspursuit of nuclear weapons (David Armstrongand Joseph J Trento America and the IslamicBomb The Deadly Compromise (HanoverNH Steerforth Press 2007) ThusBrzezinskirsquos obsession with the Soviet Unionhelped produce as unintended byproductsboth al Qaeda and the Islamic atomic arsenal

4 For instance President Bush State of theUnion address January 20 2004 andPresident Addresses American LegionFebruary 24 2006 [W]ersquore advancing oursecurity at home by advancing the cause offreedom across the world because in the longrun the only way to defeat the terrorists is todefeat their dark vision of hatred and fear byoffering the hopeful alternative of humanfreedom [T]he security of our nationdepends on the advance of liberty in othernationsrdquo

5 Scott Road to 911 71-73 77 Robert

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

15

the only liquid investment capitalavailable to some banks on thebrink of collapse last year He saidthat a majority of the $352bn(pound216bn) of drugs profits wasabsorbed into the economic systemas a resulthellip Costa said evidencethat illegal money was beingabsorbed into the financial systemwas first drawn to his attention byinte l l igence agenc ies andprosecutors around 18 months agoIn many instances the moneyfrom drugs was the only liquidinvestment capital In the secondhalf of 2008 liquidity was thebanking systems main problemand hence liquid capital became animportant factor he said72

As a former diplomat I sincerelyhope that theUS and Russian governments will collaborateto address these drug-related problemstogether in Kyrgyzstan in Afghanistan and onthe level of curbing a venal global bankingsystem

As a researcher I have to say that I see theUS Government as part of the problem not asa very likely solution to it We have too oftenseen the US habit of turning to drugtraffickers as covert assets in areas where it isweak from Burma in 1950 right down to theUS invasion of Afghanistan in 200173

I conclude that some other major force willhave to be assembled to force a change in USgovernment behavior Russia is right inbringing this problem to the attention of theSecurity Council but this is a problemtranscending governments Perhaps religiousorganizations around the world could be oneplace to start mobilizing an extra-governmentalforce Journalists and other researchers couldalso supply a component Somehow the worldmust be made aware that it does indeed face atriple threat the threat of drugs the threat of

drug-financed terrorism and eventually thethreat of war

Meanwhile it is far too early to predict whatmay eventually transpire between America andRussia in Kyrgyzstan But it is none too soon toassert that history is repeating itself in analarming and predictable way and to recallthat the ingredients of the coup-drug-terrorsyndrome have led to major warfare in thepast

My personal conclusion is that deep forces notful ly understood are at work now inKyrgyzstan as they have been earlier inAfghanistan and other drug-producingcountries My concern is heightened by myincreasing awareness that for decades deepforces have also been at work in Washington

This was demonstrated vividly by the USgovernmentrsquos determined protection in the1980s of the global drug activities of the Bankof Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)which has been described as ldquothe largestcriminal corporate enterprise everrdquo74 A USSenate Report once called BCCI not just aldquorogue bank hellip but a case study of thevulnerability of the world to international crimeon a global scope that is beyond the currenta b i l i t y o f g o v e r n m e n t s t ocontrolrdquo75 Governments indeed long failed toregulate BCCI because of its ability toinfluence governments and when BCCI wasfinally brought down in 1991 it was as theresult of relative outsiders like RobertMorgenthau District Attorney of New York

In going after BCCI Morgenthausoff ice quickly found that inaddition to fighting off the bank itwould receive resistance fromalmost every other institution ore n t i t y c o n n e c t e d t o B C C I[including] the Bank of Englandthe British Serious Fraud Officeand the US governmentrdquo76

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

16

I have tried to show elsewhere that BCCI wasonly one in a series of overlapping banks withsimilar intelligence connections dating back tothe 1940s77

When I first wrote about Washingtonrsquosprotection of BCCI I assumed that the BCCIbenefited from its status as an asset orinstrument for covert USand Britishintelligence strategies Since then I have cometo wonder if CIA and BCCI were not both alikeinstruments for some deeper force or forcesembedded in the state but not confined to itwhich has or have been systematicallyexploiting the drug traffic as a means to globalpower

Not until there is a more general awareness ofthis deep force problem can we expectWashington to respondwith a more rationaldrug policy My hope in this essay is to providea further step in the effort to clarify just whatthese deeper forces are and the extent towhich they are responsible for Americarsquoscurrent grave constitutional crisis

Peter Dale Scott a former Canadian diplomatand English Professor at the University ofCalifornia Berkeley is the author of Drugs Oiland War The Road to 9 11 The WarConspiracy JFK 911 and the Deep Politics ofWar His American War Machine Deep Politicsthe CIA Global Drug Connection and the Roadto Afghanistan is in press from Rowman ampLittlefield

His website which contains a wealth of hiswritings is here

He wrote this article for The Asia-PacificJournal

Recommended citation Peter Dale ScottKyrgyzstan the USand the Global DrugProblem Deep Forces and the Syndrome ofCoups Drugs and Terror The Asia-Pacific

Journal 28-3-10 July 12 2010

Wherever you may be in the world you canalways make use of an online addictiontreatment program locator to give youinformation on the best rehab programsavailable

Notes

1 Martin Stuart-Fox A History of Laos (Cambridge Cambridge University Press1997) 112-26

2 Peter Dale Scott The Road to 911 77-78Diego Cordovez and Selig S Harrison Out ofAfghanistan the Inside Story of the SovietWithdrawal (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1995) 16

3 Le Nouvel Observateur January 15-21 1998In his relentless determination to weaken theSoviet Union Brzezinski also persuaded Carterto end US sanctions against Pakistan for itspursuit of nuclear weapons (David Armstrongand Joseph J Trento America and the IslamicBomb The Deadly Compromise (HanoverNH Steerforth Press 2007) ThusBrzezinskirsquos obsession with the Soviet Unionhelped produce as unintended byproductsboth al Qaeda and the Islamic atomic arsenal

4 For instance President Bush State of theUnion address January 20 2004 andPresident Addresses American LegionFebruary 24 2006 [W]ersquore advancing oursecurity at home by advancing the cause offreedom across the world because in the longrun the only way to defeat the terrorists is todefeat their dark vision of hatred and fear byoffering the hopeful alternative of humanfreedom [T]he security of our nationdepends on the advance of liberty in othernationsrdquo

5 Scott Road to 911 71-73 77 Robert

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

16

I have tried to show elsewhere that BCCI wasonly one in a series of overlapping banks withsimilar intelligence connections dating back tothe 1940s77

When I first wrote about Washingtonrsquosprotection of BCCI I assumed that the BCCIbenefited from its status as an asset orinstrument for covert USand Britishintelligence strategies Since then I have cometo wonder if CIA and BCCI were not both alikeinstruments for some deeper force or forcesembedded in the state but not confined to itwhich has or have been systematicallyexploiting the drug traffic as a means to globalpower

Not until there is a more general awareness ofthis deep force problem can we expectWashington to respondwith a more rationaldrug policy My hope in this essay is to providea further step in the effort to clarify just whatthese deeper forces are and the extent towhich they are responsible for Americarsquoscurrent grave constitutional crisis

Peter Dale Scott a former Canadian diplomatand English Professor at the University ofCalifornia Berkeley is the author of Drugs Oiland War The Road to 9 11 The WarConspiracy JFK 911 and the Deep Politics ofWar His American War Machine Deep Politicsthe CIA Global Drug Connection and the Roadto Afghanistan is in press from Rowman ampLittlefield

His website which contains a wealth of hiswritings is here

He wrote this article for The Asia-PacificJournal

Recommended citation Peter Dale ScottKyrgyzstan the USand the Global DrugProblem Deep Forces and the Syndrome ofCoups Drugs and Terror The Asia-Pacific

Journal 28-3-10 July 12 2010

Wherever you may be in the world you canalways make use of an online addictiontreatment program locator to give youinformation on the best rehab programsavailable

Notes

1 Martin Stuart-Fox A History of Laos (Cambridge Cambridge University Press1997) 112-26

2 Peter Dale Scott The Road to 911 77-78Diego Cordovez and Selig S Harrison Out ofAfghanistan the Inside Story of the SovietWithdrawal (New York Oxford UniversityPress 1995) 16

3 Le Nouvel Observateur January 15-21 1998In his relentless determination to weaken theSoviet Union Brzezinski also persuaded Carterto end US sanctions against Pakistan for itspursuit of nuclear weapons (David Armstrongand Joseph J Trento America and the IslamicBomb The Deadly Compromise (HanoverNH Steerforth Press 2007) ThusBrzezinskirsquos obsession with the Soviet Unionhelped produce as unintended byproductsboth al Qaeda and the Islamic atomic arsenal

4 For instance President Bush State of theUnion address January 20 2004 andPresident Addresses American LegionFebruary 24 2006 [W]ersquore advancing oursecurity at home by advancing the cause offreedom across the world because in the longrun the only way to defeat the terrorists is todefeat their dark vision of hatred and fear byoffering the hopeful alternative of humanfreedom [T]he security of our nationdepends on the advance of liberty in othernationsrdquo

5 Scott Road to 911 71-73 77 Robert

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

17

Dreyfuss Devils Game How the United StatesHelped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (NewYork Metropolitan BooksHenry Holt 2005)254

6 McCoy Politics of Heroin 461-62

7 ldquoTouching Baserdquo AsiaTimesOnLineNovember 15 2003 Even Americarsquos FreedomHouse which helped to overthrow Akayevdescribed him in 2002 as ldquoOnce regarded asCentral Asias most democratically mindedleader and a self-professed admirer of Russianhuman rights advocate Dr Andrei Sakharovrdquo(Press release of September 20 2002)in 2005

8 According to the Akayev governmentsstatistics from 2002 more than four-fifths ofKyrgyz families lived below the poverty linewhile nearly 40 percent of the countrys 5million inhabitants lived on less than $3 permonth From 1990-96 economic growthdeclined 49 percent (John CK Daly ldquoSino-Kyrgyz relations after the Tulip RevolutionrdquoAssociation for Asian Research June 7 2005)

9 Ahmed Rashid Jihad (New Haven YaleUniversity Press 2002) 70-71 198-99

10 Aram Roston Nation April 21 2010 ldquoRedStar had the same London address and phonenumber as Iraq Today a purportedlyindependent and short-lived newspaperlaunched in the wake of the invasion of IraqThe paper had been set up by a formerjournalist who worked with Mina Corpldquo

1 1 ldquoTouching Baserdquo AsiaTimesOnLineNovember 15 2003 A year later Akayevproclaimed at a public event that all Kyrgyzstanwas ldquofirmly and forever devoted to friendshipwith great Russiardquo (Kyrgyz Television ChannelOne in BBC Sumary of World BroadcastsOctober 12 2004)

12 John CK Daly ldquoKyrgyzstan BusinessCorruption and the Manas Airbaserdquo OilPriceApril 15 2010 A parenthetical aside in 2005

Kyrgyzstan had a population of 55 million andthe capital Bishkek less than 800000 Onewonders what might have happened if the UShad devoted $12 million to reinforcing thenascent democracy first fostered by Akayevinstead of spending it later to overthrow himBut that is a utopian thought

13 ldquoKyrgyzstanrsquos Leaders Struggle to Cope withRioting and Lootingrdquo Independent (London)March 26 2005

14 Craig S Smith ldquoKyrgyzstans Shining HourTicks Away and Turns Out To Be a Plain OldCouprdquo New York Times April 3 2005 6

15 Ariel Cohen ldquoKyrgyzstanrsquos Tulip RevolutionrdquoWashington Times March 27 2005 B3 In hisSecond Inaugural Address Bush hadproclaimed ldquoThe survival of liberty in our landincreasingly depends on the success of libertyin other lands The best hope for peace in ourworld is the expansion of freedom in all theworldhellip So it is the policy of the United Statesto seek and support the growth of democraticmovements and institutions in every nation andculture with the ultimate goal of endingtyranny in our worldrdquo (Second InauguralAddress of US President George W BushJanuary 20 2005)

1 6 ldquoBush Georgia rsquos Example a HugeContribution to Democracyrdquo Civil Georgia May10 2005 Likewise Zbigniew Brzezinski wasquoted by a Kyrgyz news source as saying ldquoIbelieve revolutions in Georgia Ukraine andKyrgyzstan were a sincere and snap expressionof the political willrdquo (Link March 27 2008)

17 ldquoGeorgian Advisors Stepping Forward inBishkekrdquo Jamestown Foundation Eurasia DailyMonitor March 24 2005 ldquoThese members ofparliament are Givi Targamadze chair ofparliaments committee for defense andsecurity Kakha Getsadze a delegate from theruling United National Movement Partysfaction and Temur Nergadze a legislator fromthe Republican Partyrdquo

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

18

18 Revolutions Speed Russias DisintegrationrdquoDer Spiegel April 4 2005 cf F WilliamEngdahl ldquoRevolution geopolitics andpipelinesrdquo AsiaTimesOnLine June 30 2005 Ihave written elsewhere about the role of theAlbert Einstein Institution in the GeorgianldquoRose Revolutionrdquo in The Global Drug Meta-Group Drugs Managed Violence and theRussian 911 Lobster October 31 2005

19 Owen Matthews ldquoDespotism Doesnrsquot EqualStabilityrdquo Newsweek April 7 2010

20 Peter Leonard ldquoHeroin trade a backdrop toKyrgyz violencerdquo San Francisco ChronicleJune 24 2010

21 ldquoKyrgyzstan Relaxes Control Over DrugTraffickingrdquo Jamestown Foundation EurasiaDaily Monitor 724 February 4 2010

22 ldquoKyrgyz ex-drug official says ousted leadersbrother behind abolishing agencyrdquo BBCWorldwide Monitoring July 3 2010 citing Delo[Bishkek] May 19 2010 June 2 2010

23 Alexander Cooley ldquoManas Hysteria Why theUnited States cant keep buying off Kyrgyzleaders to keep its vital air base openrdquo ForeignPolicy April 12 2010

24 Dmitry Sidorov ldquoTo make progress onAfghanistan and Russia Obama must getKyrgyzstan rightrdquo Christian Science MonitorJune 24 2010

25 Pavel Felgenhauer ldquoMoscow Opens theProspect of an Iranian Arms EmbargordquoJamestown Foundation Eurasia Daily Monitor773 April 15 2010

26 Violence in Kyrgyzstan orchestrated andwell-plannedrdquo Ummidcom June 16 2010ldquoThe declaration by the UN that the fightingwas orchestrated targeted and well-plannedmdash set off by organized groups of gunmen in skimasks mdash bolsters government claims that hiredattackers marauded through Osh shooting at

both Kyrgyz and Uzbeks to inflame oldtensions Rupert Colville spokesman for theUN High Commissioner for Human Rightssaid It might be wrong to cast it at least inorigin as an inter-ethnic conflict There seemsto be other agendas driving it initially

2 7 Deirdre Tynan ldquoKyrgyz ProvisionalGovernment Alleges Bakiyev-Islamic MilitantLinkrdquo EurasiaNet June 24 2010 GeneralAbdullo Nazarov head of the National SecurityMinistry off ice in the Taj ik region ofBadakhshan later denied ldquoreports by somemedia outlets that Nazarov met in Tajikistanwith Janysh Bakiev former Kyrgyz PresidentKurmanbek Bakievs brother before theviolence broke out in Kyrgyzstanrdquo He ldquoblamedthe ethnic clashes on some `superpowersrsquo whohe said wanted to `ignite a firersquo in Kyrgyzstanin order to embed themselves in the regionsaffairsrdquo (ldquoTajik General Denies Involvement InKyrgyz Violencerdquo Radio Free EuropeRadioLiberty July 1 2010)

28 Tony Halpin ldquoSnipers and dread linger inaftermath of pogromrdquo Times (London) June16 2010

29 Eg ldquoInvolvement of Russian OrganizedCrime Syndicates Elements in the RussianMilitary and Regional Terrorist Groups inNarcotics Trafficking in Central Asia theCaucasus and Chechnyardquo Federal ResearchDivision Library of Congress October 2002 1ldquoThe Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) isknown to rely heavily on narcotics traffickingover a number of Central Asian routes tosupport its military political and propagandaactivities That trafficking is based on movingheroin from Afghanistan through TajikistanUzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan into Russia andthen into Western Europerdquo

30 Andrew E Kramer ldquoAfter Kyrgyz Unrest aQuestion Lingers Whyrdquo New York Times June27 2010

31 Andrew E Kramer ldquoInvestigation by Kyrgyz

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

19

police said to be corrupted Uzbeks are beingblamed for violence that targeted them rightsgroups sayrdquo International Herald Tribune July2 2010

32 Sanobar Shermatova ldquoKyrgyz South andUzbek issuerdquo Ferghanaru June 9 2010 Thestory did not identify the mafia leaders OnApril 21 Radio Free Europe reported that theKyrgyz interim government was seeking toarrest a naturalized American citizen YevgeniyGurevich for embezzling state money togetherwith Kurmanbek Bakiyevs son Maksim Onemonth earlier Italian authorities announcedthat Gurevich was wanted in Rome forembezzling some $27 billion from divisions ofTelecom Italia and the Fastweb telecomcompany (ldquoKyrgyzstan Wants Business PartnerOf Ex-Presidents Son Arrestedrdquo Radio FreeEuropeRadio Liberty April 21 2010 cfldquoBusiness Associate Of Kyrgyz Presidents SonWanted By Italyrdquo Radio Free EuropeRadioLiberty March 10 2010) Rosa Otunbaevathen in opposition denounced Gurevich as ldquoanaccountant for the Italian mafiardquo (ldquoKyrgyzOpposition Party Demands President And HisSon Resignrdquo Radio Free EuropeRadio LibertyMarch 12 2010) Cf John Daly OilPricecomJuly 2 2010 ldquoOn 9 March the Italian mediareported that Judge Aldo Mordzhini in Romehad issued an arrest warrant for Gurevich oncharges of embezzling $27 billion from Italiantelecom companies money laundering and tiesto the Mafiardquo

33 Aleksandr Shustov ldquoSouth Kyrgyzstan AnEpicenter of Coming Conflictsrdquo StrategicCultural Foundation May 25 2101 Shustovastutely predicted the June massacres warningthat ldquothe tensions are likely to evolve into aconflict similar in character to a civil warrdquo CfKramer New York Times June 27 2010ldquoFormer government officials say the newleaders stumbled early in their rule by failing towin over the police or oust commandersappointed by the former president Bolot ESherniyazov the inter ior min is ter

acknowledged difficulties assuming commandof the police but he said in an interview onSaturday that he was now largely in control lsquoIam in command of 80 percent of the Ministry ofInterior he said lsquoThe other 20 percent is stillwafflingrsquo The problems first emerged as earlyas May 13 they say in a little-noticed but inhindsight critical confrontation after supportersof Mr Bakiyev seized a provincial governmentbuilding in Jalal-Abad a city in the south Facedwith a regional revolt and unable to appeal tothe police members of the government asked aleader of the Uzbek minority in the southKadyrzhan Batyrov a businessman anduniversity director to help regain control withvolunteer gunmen which he did In thetinderbox of ethnic mistrust in the south thisdecision turned out to be a fateful erroraccording to Alikbek Jekshenkulov a formerforeign minister recasting the political conflictin ethnic terms lsquoThey got the Uzbeks involvedin a Kyrgyz se t t l ing o f scores rsquo Mr Jekshenkulov said The next day a crowd ofthousands of Kyrgyz gathered to demand thatthe interim government arrest Mr BatyrovlsquoInstead of standing up to this mob theyopened a criminal case against Batyrovrsquo eventhough he had been responding to thegovernments plea for help said Edil Baisalovwho served as Ms Otunbayevas chief of staffuntil he resigned this monthrdquo

34 Aleksandr Shustov who in May foresaw theJune ethnic riots warned further ldquoIn case anew conflict erupts Uzbekistan - and possiblyTajikistan hellipwould inevitably be drawn into itand thus the escalation hellip would breed broaderhostilities between three of the five CentralAsian republics and a serious threat to theregions overall stabilityrdquo (Shustov ldquoSouthKyrgyzstan An Epicenter of ComingConflictsrdquo)

35 Javed Aziz Khan ldquoForeign Militants Active inWaziristanrdquo CentralAsiaOnline May 27 2010Cf Einar Wigen (2009) Islamic Jihad Union al-Qaidarsquos Key to the Turkic World

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

20

36 Ibid

37 Poonam Mann ldquoIslamic Movement ofUzbekistan Will It Strike Backrdquo StrategicAnalysis 262 Apr-Jun 2002 lsquoThe IMU alsogets funds from the Uzbek eacutemigreacute communityin Saudi Arabia lsquoThese Uzbek Saudis are veryrich they hate Karimov and they have enlistedArabs across the Gul f States to helpNamanganirsquo says a Tajik politician and friendof Namanganirdquo

38 Experts differ as to whether the forcesunderlying jihadism and the drug traffic are thesame or different Russian drug tsar ViktorIvanov has alleged that ldquoNot a single [instanceof] drug trafficking goes on [in Kyrgyzstan] thatis not controlled by this terrorist network offundamentalist organizations (ldquoRussian drugstsar suggests setting up military base inKyrgyzstanrdquo BBC Worldwide Monitoring June21 2010) Contradicting him his deputyNikolay Tsvetkov has asserted ldquoIn generaldrugs and political extremism just as drugsand terrorism are separate major topicsObviously drugs or more to the point thebillions of drug-dollars are being used tofinance and arm bandits in a great variety oflsquoideologicalrsquo huesrdquo (ldquoRussian narcotics serviceofficial views 9-10 June forum on Afghan drugindustryrdquo Interview by Igor Yavlyanskiy ofNikolay Tsvetkov deputy chief of Russias Anti-Drug Service BBC Worldwide Monitoring June20 2010)

39 ldquoInvolvement of Russian Organized CrimeSyndicates Elements in the Russian Militaryand Regional Terrorist Groups in NarcoticsTrafficking in Central Asia the Caucasus andChechnyardquo Federal Research Division Libraryof Congress October 2002 26 citing

Aleksandr Gold ldquoBishkek Heroin InterpolrdquoVecherniy Bishkek [Bishkek] 28 December2001 (FBIS Document CEP 20020107000187)

40 Sibel Edmonds American ConservativeNovember 2009

41 Ahmed Rashid Descent into Chaos TheUnited States and the Failure of NationBuilding in Pakistan Afghanistan and CentralAsia (New York Viking 2008) 320

42 See for example the abundant references onthe Internet to Dawood Ibrahim discussed alsoin Gretchen Peters Seeds of Terror HowHeroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda(New York Macmillan 2009) 165ff

4 3 Congress ional Research Serv ice International Terrorism and TransnationalCrime Security Threats US Policy andConsiderations for Congressrdquo January 5 201015 cf Bill Roggio ldquoDawood Ibrahim al Qaedaand the ISIrdquo Longwarjournalorg January 72010 ldquoD-Company is believed to have bothdeepened its strategic alliance with the ISI anddeveloped links to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT)which was designated by the United States as aforeign terrorist organization (FTO) in 2001During this time period some say D-Companybegan to finance LeTrsquos activities use itscompanies to lure recruits to LeT trainingcamps and give LeT operatives use of itssmuggling routes and contacts66 Pressaccounts have reported that Ibrahimrsquos networkmight have provided a boat to the 10 terroristswho killed 173 people in Mumbai in November200867 The US government contends that D-Company has found common cause with AlQaeda and shares its smuggling routes withthat terrorist group68 The United Nations hasadded Ibrahim to its list of individualsassociated with Al Qaedardquo A rising successorto D-Company is the split-off Ali Budesh gangnow based in Bahrain In March 2010 AliBudesh declared an open war ldquoOperation Drdquoagainst Dawood Ibrahim and D-company

44 Jeremy Hammond ldquoRole of Alleged CIA Assetin Mumbai Attacks Being DownplayedrdquoForeign Policy Journal December 10 2008 CfPeter Dale Scott American War Machine DeepPolitics the Global Drug Connection and theRoad to Afghanistan (Lanham MD Rowman amp

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

21

Littlefield 2010) forthcoming

45 Guardian April 10 2010

46 Christian Science Monitor June 28 2010

47 Sergei L Loiko ldquoKyrgyz riot toll rises to 77Russia rejects a plea to send troops to quellethnic clashes in the ex-Soviet republicrdquo LosAngeles Times June 13 2010 A4 According toSteve LeVine ldquoBefore Kyrgyzstan turned toRussia it informally asked Washington formilitary assistance including a supply of rubberbullets to quell ethnic bloodletting in the southof the country but was turned downrdquo(ldquoKyrgyzstan requested US military aid andrubber bullets but was turned downrdquo ForeignPolicy June 13 2010)

48 Canberra Times (Australia) June 17 2010

49 ldquoKyrgyzstan Risks Turning Into SecondAfghanistan ndash Medvedevrdquo Voice of Russiareissued on GlobalResearchca April 14 2010

50 ФСКН обвиняет наркобаронов в событиях вКиргизииrdquo Commersantru June 21 2010 CfldquoRussian drugs tsar suggests setting upmilitary base in Kyrgyzstanrdquo BBC WorldwideMonitoring June 21 2010 ldquoITAR-TASS quotedIvanov as saying that drug trafficking was oneof the causes of instability in Kyrgyzstan lsquoAmassive flow of drugs from Afghanistan isgoing through Kirgizia Osh the Kirgiz [city of]Dzhalal-Abad the Fergana valley - that is theregion which is unfortunately involved in drugtraffickingrsquo he said lsquoNot a single [instance of]drug trafficking goes on that is not controlledby this terrorist network of fundamentalistorganizations Ivanov went onrsquo

51 Daniyar Larimov ldquoDmitry MedvedevKyrgyzstan has to settle order itselfrdquo BishkekNews Agency June 25 2010 Ivanovrsquos proposalwas also strongly opposed in Moscow on June28 by the anti-Kremlin Russian current affairswebsite Yezhednevnyy Zhurnal (BBCWorldwide Monitoring June 29 2010)

52 RIANovosti July 1 2010 supplied by BBCWorldwide Monitoring

53 Sergei Blagov ldquoMoscow Accuses West ofNarco-Aggressionrsquordquo International News andSecurity Network April 1 2010

54 ldquoRussian defence minister calls for fightagainst drug traffickingrdquo BBC Summary ofWorld Broadcasts February 3 2002 Cf ldquoTheDrug Flow from Afghanistan Is SkyrocketingrdquoWebsite report from Delo [Bishkek] April 242002 (FBIS Document CEP20020425000145)

55 Sergei Blagov ldquoMoscow Accuses West ofNarco-Aggressionrsquordquo International News andSecurity Network April 1 2010

56 ldquoAfghan drug trade threat to global stability -Russian drug chiefrdquo RIANovosti June 8 2010ldquoViktor Ivanov The real price of AfghanistanrdquoIndependent (London) June 10 2010

57 See Andrei Areshev ldquoThe Afghan DrugIndustry mdash a Threat to Russia and anInstrument of Geopolitical Gainsrdquo The GlobalRealm June 15 2010

58 James Risen ldquoUS to Hunt Down AfghanLords Tied to Talibanrdquo New York TimesAugust 10 2009 rdquoUnited States militarycommanders have told Congress thathelliponlythose [drug traffickers] providing support tothe insurgency would be made targetsrdquo

59 Nick Mills Karzai the failing Americanintervention and the struggle for Afghanistan(Hoboken NJ John Wiley 2007) 79

60 New York Times October 27 2009

61 See Matthieu Aikins ldquoThe master of SpinBoldak Undercover with Afghanistans drug-trafficking border policerdquo Harperrsquos MagazineDecember 2009 Cf Richard Clark ldquoUnitedStates of America Chief Kingpin in theAfghanistan Heroin Traderdquo OpEdNewsDecember 4 2009 (no longer viewable at

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

22

httpwwwopednewscomauthorauthor8235html) ldquoWhat we have is essentially a drug war inAfghanistan and US forces are simply helpingone side against the other Unbeknownst toAmerican taxpayers drug lords collaboratewith the US and Canadian officers on a dailybasis This collaboration and alliance wasforged by American forces during the USinvasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and hasendured and grown ever since The drug lordshave been empowered through US money andarms to consolidate their drug business at theexpense of drug-dealing rivals in other tribesforcing some of them into alliance with theTalibanrdquo

62 This route is of major concern to Russia It ishowever secondary in importance to the so-called ldquogolden routerdquo that ldquogoes overland fromPakistans Balochistan province across theborder into Iran then passes through thenorthwestern region which is inhabited byKurds and finally into laboratories in Turkeywhere the opium is processedrdquo (Syem SaleemShahzad ldquoOpium gold unites US friends andfoesrdquo Asia Times Online September 2 2005)Some of this heroin also reaches Russiathrough the Caucasus

63 Cf ldquoNarcoticsrdquo Institute for the Study of War(2009) ldquoPoppy cultivation is now exclusivelylimited to the particularly Pushtun provinces insouth and southwest particularly FarahNimroz Hilmand Kandahar Uruzgan andZabulrdquo

64 ldquoIntroducing Badakhshanrdquo Lonely PlanetFebruary 17 2009

65 Fabrizio Foschini ldquoCampaign Trail 2010 (1)Badakhshan ndash drugs border crossings andparliamentary seatsrdquo Afganistan AnalystsNetwork June 19 2010

66 Kiurk Semple ldquoThe War on Poppy Succeedsbut Cannabis Thrives in an Afghan ProvincerdquoNew York Times November 4 2007

67 Vivienne Walt ldquoAfghanistans New BumperDrug Crop Cannabisrdquo Time April 1 2010

68 Vladimir Radyuhin ldquoRussia victim of narco-aggressionrdquo The Hindu February 4 2008quoting John MacDougall ldquoRussia facing acatastrophic rise in drug addiction accuses theUS military of involvement in drug traffickingfrom Afghanistanrdquo Agence France-PresseFebruary 23 2008 emphasis added

69 ldquoKyrgyz ex-drug official says ousted leadersbrother behind abolishing agencyrdquo BBCWorldwide Monitoring July 3 2010

70 ldquoMoscowrsquos Terror Fighterrdquo Newsweek April1 2010

71 Michael Smith ldquoBanks Financing MexicoGangs Admitted in Wells Fargo DealrdquoBloomberg June 29 2010 ldquoWachovia admittedit didnrsquot do enough to spot illicit funds inhandling $3784 billion for Mexican-currency-exchange houses from 2004 to 2007 Thatrsquos thelargest violation of the Bank Secrecy Act ananti-money-laundering law in US history -- asum equal to one-third of Mexicorsquos currentgross domestic product lsquoWachoviarsquos blatantdisregard for our banking laws gaveinternational cocaine cartels a virtual carteblanche to finance their operationsrsquo saysJeffrey Sloman the federal prosecutor whohandled the caserdquo

72 Rajeev Syal ldquoDrug money saved banks inglobal crisis claims UN advisorrdquo ObserverDecember 13 2009

73 Scott Drugs Oil and War 27-33 59-66185-99 Scott Road to 911 124-25

74 Jonathan Beaty and SC Gwynne The OutlawBank A Wild Ride into the Secret Heart ofBCCI (New York Random House 1993) xxivDavid C Jordan Drug Politics Dirty Money andDemocracies (Norman OK University ofOklahoma Press 1999) 109

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

23

75 US Congress Senate 102nd Cong 2ndSess The BCCI Affair A Report to the SenateCommittee on Foreign Relations from SenatorJohn Kerry Chairman and from Senator HankBrown Ranking Member Subcommittee onTerrorism Narcotics and InternationalOperations September 30 1992 17

76 Senate The BCCI Affair 241

77 Scott American War Machine forthcoming

An early example was the Kincheng Bank inTaiwan part-owner of the CIA proprietaryairline CAT Inc which supplied the forwardKMT bases in Burma which managed the localdrug traffic The Kincheng Bank was under thecontrol of the so-called Political Science Cliqueof the KMT whose member Chen Yi was thefirst postwar KMT governor of Taiwan (ChenHan-Seng ldquoMonopoly and Civil War in ChinardquoFar Eastern Survey 1520 [October 9 1946]308)

Click on the cover to order

Click on the cover to order

APJ | JF 8 | 28 | 3

24

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Click on the cover to order