Manuel Noriega was another infamous narcotics trafficker and CIA asset, as well as a graduate of the School of Americas (SOA), which has since changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). The SOA was responsible for training numerous Latin American dictators and military commanders who were responsible for torturing, murdering, or otherwise “disappearing” countless political opponents and other individuals.
Colombia is also another case where the government has been caught red-handed staging false-flag terrorist attacks. In the late 1970s, a series of bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations against leftist targets was carried out by a terrorist group known as the American Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA or Triple-A). Documents available online at the George Washington University National Security Archives confirm that Triple-A “was secretly created and staffed by members of Colombian military intelligence in a plan authorized by then-army commander Gen. Jorge Robledo Pulido.”
John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, wrote in his follow-up book The Secret History of the American Empire that a second lieutenant in the US army sent to Colombia to establish a “United States-commanded Southern Unified Army” told him, “Everything we do in Colombia just makes it more attractive for the drug business. Why do you think the situation keeps getting worse there? Because we want it to, we’re behind the drug trafficking. The CIA is—just like it was in Asia’s Golden Triangle.”
One might add the “Golden Crescent” to that list. As Foreign Policy Journal previously reported, Dawood Ibrahim “is known to be a major drug trafficker responsible for shipping narcotics into the United Kingdom and Western Europe.” While most Afghan opium is smuggled to Europe over land through Iran and Turkey, much of the amount that goes to Pakistan seems to be taken either by plane or by ship directly to the Europe, principally the UK.
While Pakistan claims Ibrahim is not even in the country, India insists he has been living in Karachi under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.
The ISI worked closely with the CIA during the Soviet-Afghan war and acted as the CIA’s intermediary to provide funding, weapons, and training to the Afghan mujahedeen. The opium trade was used to finance the CIA-backed mujahedeen, and the principle beneficiary of CIA support was Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, who was also a principle drug lord.
And while Western media accounts typically tend to characterize today’s opium trade as being under the control of the Taliban, the fact is that the estimated amount of funds going to the Taliban and all other anti-government elements combined is less than 14 percent of the total estimated export value, and US intelligence agencies are aware of the involvement of high-level officials within the Afghanistan government in the drug trade, such as Rashid Abdul Dostum, former Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces. Dostum was also among the warlords of the Northern Alliance the CIA doled out suitcases of cash to during the initial phase of the US war to overthrow the Taliban.
Viktor Ivanov, the director of Russia’s federal anti-narcotics service, said in an interview recently that “The gathered inputs testify that infamous regional drug baron Dawood Ibrahim had provided his logistics network for preparing and carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks by the militants.” He added that “The super profits of the narco-mafia through Afghan heroin trafficking have become a powerful source of financing organized crime and terrorist networks, destabilizing the political systems, including in Central Asia and Caucasus.”
A Protected Man in India
The $300 million transfer to Hassan Ali Khan from Adnan Khashoggi was “only the tip of the iceberg”, an official from ED told the Hindustan Times. There was also evidence of another $290 million, for instance, in two shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. This was among the evidence obtained from the laptop computer seized from Khan’s home in Pune.
In addition to the money transfers, the ED was investigating Khan’s possession of three Indian passports. He held passports issued from Pune, Patna, and Mumbai, and had also applied for additional passports from Guwahati and Chandigarh. He and his wife had applied for citizenship in Switzerland.
But it wasn’t only the Swiss bank’s apparent unwillingness to cooperate with Indian investigators that was slowing progress in the inquiry into Khan’s dealings. The Times of India reported in February that although the Prevention of Money Laundering Act provided for his arrest, the ED had yet to do so. The ED was “acting cautiously in this case, sources said.” The paper added that “It is shocking that Khan could have concealed all that money without Indian agencies getting to know of it.”
The report says that “The lack of evidence on the transactions seems to have prevented ED from arresting Khan”, while at the same time noting that “The alleged presence of names of Indian politicians also found from Khan’s initial questioning by the income tax and ED officials immediately after the raid last year, don’t figure anywhere in the submissions made by the ED to the HC [High Court]. The Income tax department has failed to get information from the ED on the sources of the $8 bn, despite asking for it again and again.”
In September, the Times of India reported that the intelligence community was “seething with anger for being blamed by politicians for its ‘failure’ to prevent” a series of bombings across the country. A senior intelligence official responded to the charges by telling the Times of India that it was the politicians who were at fault, and connected Khan to investigations of terrorism.
“Take the case of Hassan Ali, the Pune-based businessman,” he said. “He was under the scanner of several Central agencies, including the Intelligence Bureau, Enforcement Directorate, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and other bodies. Finally it was found that he had handled hawala transactions valued at a mind-numbing Rs 35,000 crore through Swiss banks.”
Hawala is an informal money transfer system that is an alternative to formal banking institutions. Often, relatively little money actually exchanges hands between hawala brokers, who operate on an honor system. An amount deposited with one broker is not actually moved to another broker on the receiving end. Rather, that amount is simply taken from the receiving broker’s own reserves. The only funds that actually need be transferred are those used to offset imbalances between brokers, and there is no record of the transaction between the sender of the funds and the beneficiary.
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