Burma, Opium & the CIA
Danny | 29.09.2007 22:12 | Analysis | History
Burma is one corner of 'the Golden Triangle' of opium production. Until the recent US 'liberation' of Afghanistan made it the worlds largest producer, this was where most of the worlds heroin came from. Neither Burma, Vietnam, Laos or Thailand had any history of opium production until colonial times, when they were used in the British Opium Wars to produce enough opium to corrupt and subjectate China.
Afghan heroin passes directly through Iran, destablising Iran with the worst heroin problem in the world. Some of it reaches China too, but far more would reach China if the Golden Triangle regained it's former lustre. There is strong evidence that the CIA has been encouraging heroin production in Burma throughout the dictarorship, and some evidence that the juntas second-incommand, General Maung Aye, was CIA trained.
http://www.ibiblio.net/obl/reg.burma/archives/199906/msg00266.html
Upon searching about Burma, one website that sticks out like a sore thumb is Dictator Watch. It carries many articles about Burma, but shows it's true colours with this one, LESSONS FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. It claims "to provide guidance to the people of such nations as Burma, China, Guinea, North Korea, the Sudan and Zimbabwe, as they struggle to be free of their own tyrannical governments". http://www.dictatorwatch.org/articles/amrev.html It should be noted that this is a far from comprehensive list of dictatorships, simply a list of official US enemies.
"What I'm talking about is something we found out in Burma (May 1987). We found it out from a man named Khun Sa. He is the recognized overlord of heroin in the world. Last year (1986) he sent 900 tons of opiates and heroin into the free world. This year it will be 1200 tons. On video tape he said to us something that was most astounding: that US government officials have been and are now his biggest customers, and have been for the last twenty years."
http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/opi007.htm
"During the early 1950s, the CIA covert operations in northern Burma fostered political alliances that inadvertently linked the poppy fields of northern Burma with the region's urban drug markets. After the collapse of the Nationalist Chinese government in 1949, some of its forces fled across the border into Burma, where the CIA equipped them for several aborted invasions of China in 1950.
To retaliate against Communist China for its intervention into the Korean War, President Truman had ordered the CIA to organize these Nationalist elements inside Burma for an invasion of China. The idea was that the masses of southwestern China would rise up
in revolt against communism and China would evidently pull its troops out of Korea, and our troops in Korea would be saved. The
logic was bizarre, and the records for this operation remain secret, I suspect, because it was one of the most disastrously foolish operations mounted by any agency of the U.S government. After their invasions of 1950 were repulsed with heavy casualties, these Nationalist troops camped along the border for another decade and turned to opium trading to finance their operations. Forcing local hill tribes that produced opium, the Nationalist troops supervised a massive increase of opium production on the Shan Plateau of Burma.
After the Burmese army evicted them in 1961, the Nationalist forces established a new base camp just across the Burma border in Thailand and from there dominated the Burma opium trade until the mid-1980s. By the early 1960s, when this CIA operation finally ended, Burma's opium production had risen from fifteen to three hundred tons, thus creating the opium zone that we now call the Golden Triangle. "
http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/reg.burma/archives/199710/msg00184.html
From The Nation, DECEMBER 2, 1996:
Communications between the D.E.A.'s Rangoon office and higher officials in Washington reveal that agent Horn had every intention of working with the Wa people to implement Lu's proposal. But for reasons that remain unclear, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department had other ideas. D.E.A. Sensitive e-mails state that former C.I.A. chief of station Arthur Brown "destroyed this project in one swift move." According to the e-mails, Brown delivered an early version of the Wa proposal -- signed by Lu -- to SLORC military intelligence officer Col. Kyaw Thein. When Thein threatened to pick up Lu once more and teach him a lesson in respect, Horn was able to intervene temporarily. In Horn's view, the C.I.A. destroyed a unique opportunity for a dramatic drug eradication program in the poppy fields of the world's biggest heroin producer. (Horn, now a D.E.A. group supervisor in New Orleans, is suing the C.I.A., claiming it illegally surveilled his residence in Rangoon to gain information about his plans, which the C.I.A. went on to foil.)
In September 1993, Horn was forced out of the country by the State Department under pressure from the C.I.A.
http://www.ibiblio.net/obl/reg.burma/archives/199906/msg00266.html Upon searching about Burma, one website that sticks out like a sore thumb is Dictator Watch. It carries many articles about Burma, but shows it's true colours with this one, LESSONS FROM THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. It claims "to provide guidance to the people of such nations as Burma, China, Guinea, North Korea, the Sudan and Zimbabwe, as they struggle to be free of their own tyrannical governments".
http://www.dictatorwatch.org/articles/amrev.html It should be noted that this is a far from comprehensive list of dictatorships, simply a list of official US enemies. "What I'm talking about is something we found out in Burma (May 1987). We found it out from a man named Khun Sa. He is the recognized overlord of heroin in the world. Last year (1986) he sent 900 tons of opiates and heroin into the free world. This year it will be 1200 tons. On video tape he said to us something that was most astounding: that US government officials have been and are now his biggest customers, and have been for the last twenty years."
http://www.a1b2c3.com/drugs/opi007.htm "During the early 1950s, the CIA covert operations in northern Burma fostered political alliances that inadvertently linked the poppy fields of northern Burma with the region's urban drug markets. After the collapse of the Nationalist Chinese government in 1949, some of its forces fled across the border into Burma, where the CIA equipped them for several aborted invasions of China in 1950.
To retaliate against Communist China for its intervention into the Korean War, President Truman had ordered the CIA to organize these Nationalist elements inside Burma for an invasion of China. The idea was that the masses of southwestern China would rise up
in revolt against communism and China would evidently pull its troops out of Korea, and our troops in Korea would be saved. The
logic was bizarre, and the records for this operation remain secret, I suspect, because it was one of the most disastrously foolish operations mounted by any agency of the U.S government. After their invasions of 1950 were repulsed with heavy casualties, these Nationalist troops camped along the border for another decade and turned to opium trading to finance their operations. Forcing local hill tribes that produced opium, the Nationalist troops supervised a massive increase of opium production on the Shan Plateau of Burma.
After the Burmese army evicted them in 1961, the Nationalist forces established a new base camp just across the Burma border in Thailand and from there dominated the Burma opium trade until the mid-1980s. By the early 1960s, when this CIA operation finally ended, Burma's opium production had risen from fifteen to three hundred tons, thus creating the opium zone that we now call the Golden Triangle. "
http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/reg.burma/archives/199710/msg00184.html From The Nation, DECEMBER 2, 1996:
Communications between the D.E.A.'s Rangoon office and higher officials in Washington reveal that agent Horn had every intention of working with the Wa people to implement Lu's proposal. But for reasons that remain unclear, the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department had other ideas. D.E.A. Sensitive e-mails state that former C.I.A. chief of station Arthur Brown "destroyed this project in one swift move." According to the e-mails, Brown delivered an early version of the Wa proposal -- signed by Lu -- to SLORC military intelligence officer Col. Kyaw Thein. When Thein threatened to pick up Lu once more and teach him a lesson in respect, Horn was able to intervene temporarily. In Horn's view, the C.I.A. destroyed a unique opportunity for a dramatic drug eradication program in the poppy fields of the world's biggest heroin producer. (Horn, now a D.E.A. group supervisor in New Orleans, is suing the C.I.A., claiming it illegally surveilled his residence in Rangoon to gain information about his plans, which the C.I.A. went on to foil.)
In September 1993, Horn was forced out of the country by the State Department under pressure from the C.I.A.
Danny