The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia

[Cain]

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia is a major, nonfiction book on heroin trafficking—specifically in Southeast Asia from before World War II up to (and including) the Vietnam War. Published in 1972, the book was the product of eighteen months of research and at least one trip to Laos by Alfred W. McCoy who was the principal author and who wrote Politics of Heroin while seeking a PhD in Southeast Asian history at Yale University. Cathleen B. Read, co-author and graduate student, also spent time there during the war.

Its most groundbreaking feature was its documentation of CIA complicity and aid to the Southeast Asian opium/heroin trade; along with McCoy's Congressional testimony, its initially controversial thesis has gained a degree of mainstream acceptance. The central idea is that at the time, the vast majority of heroin produced was produced in the Golden Triangle, from which:

    "It is transported in the planes, vehicles, and other conveyances supplied by the United States. The profit from the trade has been going into the pockets of some of our best friends in Southeast Asia. The charge concludes with the statement that the traffic is being carried on with the indifference if not the closed-eye compliance of some American officials and there is no likelihood of its being shut down in the foreseeable future."

Air America, which was covertly owned and operated by the CIA, was used for this transport, in particular. At the same time, the heroin supply was partly responsible for the parlous state of US Army morale in Vietnam: "By mid 1971 Army medical officers were estimating that about 10 to 15 per cent... of the lower ranking enlisted men serving in Vietnam were heroin users."

Having interviewed Maurice Belleux, former head of the French SDECE intelligence agency, Mc Coy also uncovered parts of the French Connection scheme, as the French military agency had financed all of its covert operations, during the First Indochina War, from its control of the Indochina drug trade.

The full text is available here http://www.drugtext.org/library/books/McCoy/default.htm

[Aucoq]

I wish I could say I'm shocked that we'd have a hand in something like that, but that is, sadly, par for the course.

Thank you for the great link, Cain.  I'm definitely going to read it.

[Adios]

I remember some of this.

[Cain]

McCoy's work is also the basis of a lot of the Canadian diplomat and Professor, Peter Dale Scott's political work.  In fact, I have a copy of his "Drugs, Oil and War" in front of me right now, which is essentially McCoy's thesis applied to modern day Columbia and Afghanistan.

For the record, PDS does get some things wrong (for example, he seems to think the Taliban were genuine in their aim to wipe out the drugs trade, which makes no sense when you remember they were allied with Al-Qaeda, who were heavily involved in the heroin trade.  Instead the Taliban were stockpiling it in order to drive prices up), but by and large the thesis seems to hold.  I mean, come on, FARC controls 2.5% of the Columbian drug trade, where as the right-wing militias allied with the military, and thus the USA, control 40% of it.  The Northern Alliance is practically made up of narco-warlords.  The Turkish gangs transporting heroin into Europe?  Linked to the CIA through the Turkish Special Warfare Department. The Kosovan Liberation Army were known to be drug-dealing terrorists before Clinton allied with them in 99 to take Serbia down a notch.

[Thurnez Isa]

mmmm... i can't get the link working... is it just my interwebs?

[Aucoq]

mmmm... i can't get the link working... is it just my interwebs?

It doesn't work for me either.

[Cain]

Works just fine for me, on the latest version of Firefox.  Only think I can think of is if you're using a work computer, the firewall may be filtering the site because of the word "drug" in the title.

[Adios]

Worked fine for me.