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"Sean McBride" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue Jun 29, 2004 9:53 pm
Subject: A Fantastic Tale: Turkey, Drugs, Faustian Alliances & Sibel Edmonds (John Stanton)
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A Fantastic Tale
Turkey, Drugs, Faustian Alliances & Sibel Edmonds
by John Stanton
www.dissidentvoice.org
June 29, 2004Taking Turkey as the focal point and with a start date of 1998, it is easy to speculate why Sibel Edmonds indicated that there was a convergence of US and foreign counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and US national security and economic interests all of which were too preoccupied to surface critical information warning Americans of the attacks of September 11, 2001. After all, who would have believed drug runners operating in Central Asia? And besides, President Clinton was promoting Turkey, one of the world�s top drug transit points, as a model for Muslim-Western cooperation and a country necessary to reshape the Middle East.
The FBI�s Office of International Operations, in conjunction with the CIA and the US State Department counter-narcotics section, the United Kingdom�s MI6, Israel�s Mossad, Pakistan�s ISI, the US DEA, Turkey�s MIT, and the governments and intelligence agencies of dozens of nations, were in one way or another involved in the illicit drug trade either trying to stop it or benefit from it. What can be surmised from the public record is that from 1998 to September 10, 2001, the War on Drugs kept bumping into the nascent War on Terror and new directions in US foreign policy.
It�s easy to imagine the thousands of drug couriers, middlemen, financiers and lab technicians moving back and forth between Pakistan and Turkey, and over to Western Europe and the United States, and the tidbits of information they gleaned from their sponsors as they traveled. As information gathering assets for the intelligence agencies of the world, they must have been invaluable. And given the dozens of foreign intelligence services working the in the counter-narcotics/terrorism fields, the �chatter� that just dozens of well-placed operatives may have overheard about attacks against Western targets must have found its way into the US intelligence apparatus. But, again, who could believe the audacity of non-state actors organizing a domestic attack against the supreme power of the day, the USA? Implementing a new strategic direction and business deals may have overcome the wacky warnings from the counter-narcotics folks.
Back in the late 1990�s and early 2000, who would have believed the rants of a drug courier from Afghanistan saying that some guy named Bin Laden was going to attack America, particularly if it involved America�s newest friend, Turkey? Or that a grand design to reshape Central Asia and the Middle East with Turkey and Israel as pivot points was being pushed by the Clinton Administration as a matter of national policy.
The historical record shows that the US War on Drugs and the nascent War on Terror kept colliding with not only within the US intelligence, policy and business apparatus, but also with European strategic and business interests. Turkey continues its push for entry into the European Union and the USA wants that to happen as the June 2004 meeting of NATO, and President Bush�s attendance under dangerous circumstances, in Turkey demonstrates. Turkey is one of the USA�s and Europe�s top arms buyers and is located near what could be some of the biggest oil and natural gas fields in the world. At this point it�s worth noting that the one of the FBI�s tasks is to counter industrial espionage and to engage in it. Where big arms sales pit the US against its European competitors--as is the case in Turkey (particularly starting in 1998)--the FBI is busy making sure the US gets the edge over its competittion. Allies are friends only so far.
Did warnings foretelling of an attack on American soil by Bin Laden�s crew get lost in the War on Drugs or the US national and economic interest in troublesome Turkey? It seems only Ms Edmonds knows.
Turkey Cold to UK and USA Concerns
In 1998, the US Department of State (DOS) was finally forced to admit that Turkey was a major refining and transit point for the flow of heroin from Southwest Asia to Western Europe, with small quantities of the stuff finding its way to the streets of the USA. In that same year, Kendal Nezan, writing for Le Monde Diplomatique, reported that MIT, and the Turkish National Police force were actively supporting the trade in illicit drugs not only for fun and profit, but out of desperation.
�After the Gulf War in 1991, Turkey found itself deprived of the all-important Iraqi market and, since it lacked significant oil reserves of its own, it decided to make up for the loss by turning more massively to drugs. The trafficking increased in intensity with the arrival of the hawks in power, after the death in suspicious circumstances of President Turgut �zal in April 1993. According to the minister of interior, the war in Kurdistan had cost the Turkish exchequer upwards of $12.5 billion. According to the daily H�rriyet, Turkey�s heroin trafficking brought in $25 billion in 1995 and $37.5 billion in 1996...Only criminal networks working in close cooperation with the police and the army could possibly organize trafficking on such a scale. Drug barons have stated publicly, on Turkish television and in the West, that they have been working under the protection of the Turkish government and to its financial benefit. The traffickers themselves travel on diplomatic passports�the drugs are even transported by military helicopter from the Iranian border.�
Nowhere is the pain of Turkey�s role in the heroin trade felt more horribly than in the United Kingdom. According to London�s Letter written by a Member of Parliament, �The war against drugs and drug trafficking in Britain is huge. Turkish heroin in particular is a top priority for the MI6 and the Foreign Ministry. During his visit to the British Embassy in Ankara, the head of the Foreign Office�s Turkey Department was clear about this. He reassured an English journalist that the heroin trade was more important than billions of pounds worth off trade capacity and weapons selling. When the journalist in question told me about this, I was reminded of my teacher�s words at university in Ankara ten years ago. He was also working for the Turkish Foreign Ministry. The topic of a lecture discussion was about Turkey�s Economy and I still remember his words today,
�50 billion dollars worth of foreign debt is nothing, it is two lorry loads of heroin...�
Afghanistan: Top Opiate Producer and America�s Friend
Both the DOS and the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) described in detail the transit routes and countries involved in getting the goods to Turkey. Intelligence organizations here and abroad must have sanctioned the role that they, and Turkey and Afghanistan, played in the process. �Afghanistan is the original source of most of the opiates reaching Turkey. Afghan opiates, and also hashish, are stockpiled at storage and staging areas in Pakistan, from where a ton or larger quantities are smuggled by overland vehicles to Turkey via Iran. Multi-ton quantities of opiates and hashish also are moved to coastal areas of Pakistan and Iran, where the drugs are loaded on ships waiting off-shore, which then smuggle the contraband to points in Turkey along the Mediterranean, Aegean, and/or Marmara seas. Opiates and hashish also are smuggled overland from Afghanistan via Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia to Turkey.
Turkish-based traffickers and brokers operate directly and in conjunction with narcotic suppliers, smugglers, transporters, laboratory operators, drug distributors, money collectors, and money launderers in and outside Turkey. Traffickers in Turkey illegally acquire the precursor chemical acetic anhydride, which is used in the production of heroin, from sources in Western Europe, the Balkans, and Russia. During the 27-month period from July 1, 1999 to September 30, 2001, over 56 metric tons of illicit acetic anhydride were seized in or destined for Turkey.�
The Ankara Pact
The Middle East Report concluded in 1998 that probably the greatest strategic move in the Clinton post-Cold War years is what could be called "The Ankara Pact" -- an alliance between the U.S., Turkey, and Israel that essentially circumvents and bottles up the Arab countries. Earlier inn 1997, Turkish Prime Minister Yilmaz visited with Bill Clinton to ensure him that Turkey would attempt to improve its human rights record by slaughtering less Kurds, but also mentioned that if the US pushed too hard on that subject or if the US Congress adopted an Armenian Genocide Resolution, Turkey might award a billion dollar contract for attack helicopters to a Europe or maybe even Russia.
Snip- See http://www.dissidentvoice.org/June04/Stanton0629.htm
John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer specializing in national security and political matters. He is author of the forthcoming book, America 2004: A Power, But Not Super. He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED].
Other Articles by John Stanton
* United Kingdom, United States and Israel: Kings of Pain
* Don�t Live the Lie, Boycott It
* Which Way John Kerry?
* The End of Freedom
* Landmine Mania: America�s Love Affair with Anti-Personnel Mines
* The Ghost of Adolph Hitler: Nazi Influence in America
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