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Volume 8 | Issue 28 | Number 3 | Article ID 3384 | Jul 12, 2010 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Kyrgyzstan, the U.S.and the Global Drug Problem: Deep Forcesand the Syndrome of Coups, Drugs, and Terror キリギ スタン、米国、世界的麻薬問題——深い勢力とクーデター・麻薬・テ ロ症候群 Peter Dale Scott Kyrgyzstan, the U.S.and the Global forces that the drug traffic creates. Drug Problem: Deep Forcesand the In this syndrome, something like the following Syndrome of Coups, Drugs, and pattern emerges. Terror Peter Dale Scott 1) Covert U.S. activity results in the ousting of a moderate Will the current crisis in Kyrgyzstan lead to government, and its replacement greater instability, and perhaps an expansion of by a more corrupt and unpopular the current conflict in Central Asia? There are one, unsupported by the culture of good reasons to be concerned. Deep forces, not the country on which it is imposed. adequately understood, are at work there; and these forces have repeatedly led to major 2) A successor regime, to maintain warfare in the past. its uncertain grip on power, intensifies its control over the local The pattern of events unfolding in Kyrgyzstan drug traffic. is ominously reminiscent of how America became involved in Laos in the 1960s, and later 3) This control involves in Afghanistan in the 1980s. American covert collaboration with local drug involvement in those countries soon led to civil mafias, leading to their expansion. wars producing numerous casualties and refugees. It will take strenuous leadership from 4) The flow of drugs from the both Obama in Washington and Medvedev in country (or through, in the case of Moscow to prevent a third major conflict from Kyrgyzstan) increases significantly. breaking out in Kyrgyzstan. 5) Eventually, in the context of I call the pattern I refer to “a Laotian weakened legitimacy and syndrome” of coups, drugs, and terror, since it strengthened illegitimacy, a was first clearly illustrated by American successor government is ousted. interventions in Laos in the late 1950s and 1960s. The syndrome involves a number of 6) What ensues is a violent civil independent but interactive elements whose war. interconnection in the past has not generally been recognized. What it reflects is not a single 7) The final outcome is a agenda, but a predictable symbiosis of government not to America’s divergent groups, responding to the powerful liking. 1 8 | 28 | 3 APJ | JF The pattern does not repeat itself identically. In fundamentalism represented a Laos, CIA intrigue and money in 1959 produced world menace, Brzezinski replied, an unpopular pro-American regime under right- "Nonsense!"3 wing general Phoumi Nosavan, which lasted eighteen months.1 Similar CIA intrigues in Afghanistan two decades later completely The last decade of Kyrgyz history suggests that backfired, and produced instead an equally U.S. and Russian covert operators have unpopular anti-American regime under Nur continued to tussle in the “great game” of Mohammed Taraki, which lasted sixteen dominating the Central Asian heartland. And months.2 once again, while the leaders of both countries seek to evolve common policies for Kyrgyzstan, But the root problem was the same: the CIA’s there may be bureaucrats below them who gratuitous destabilization of an inoffensive harbor more belligerent intentions. country encouraged local intrigues and paranoia, and soon produced an unstable and divisive government without a popular base. Eventually a resulting weakened government (the next in Laos, a little later in Afghanistan) favored both drug and terrorist activity in its territory, as predictably as a pine forest weakened by drought will invite an infestation of beetles. The longer-term result was a country where civil politics had been replaced by civil war. In the case of Laos and Afghanistan U.S. covert activity, waged as part of the Cold War, produced Soviet military and intelligence responses. (It may, in the case of Afghanistan, Central Asia have been designed to produce such To the general public, it would seem obvious responses.) Former Carter advisor Zbigniew that none of these developments have been in Brzezinski, who authorized the CIA’s covert Afghan operations of 1978-79, later boasted to the interests of either America or the world. Yet a French newspaper: American agencies have still not learned from the obvious fiasco of their Laotian venture, which resulted in a huge increase in opium The secret operation was an production, before this peaceful Buddhist excellent idea. It drew the nation ceased (thanks to American efforts) to Russians into the Afghan trap and be neutralist, and instead became nominally you want me to regret it? On the Communist. day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to America’s destabilization of remote Laos, a President Carter, saying, in neutral and harmless nation, was in accordance essence: 'We now have the with the ideological doctrine being peddled in a opportunity of giving to the USSR book by three policy hawks at the time: A its Vietnam War.'" … Forward Strategy for America, by Robert Strausz-Hupé. William R. Kintner and Stefan T. When asked whether Islamic Possony. The book rejected coexistence as a 2 8 | 28 | 3 APJ | JF foreign policy, and argued for “a strategy of 1980.6 Did someone want it to happen again? active pressures directed against the communist bloc,” wherever it was seen to be All in all, the coup-drug-terror syndrome in vulnerable. Kyrgyzstan well illustrates the Marxist dictum that history repeats itself, first as tragedy The American sponsored “Tulip Revolution” in (Afghanistan in 1978-80), and the second time Kyrgyzstan (March 2005) is a conspicuous as farce. product of the forward strategy doctrine. This is no accident: it came at a time when George The Coup-Drug-Terror Syndrome in W. Bush repeatedly spoke of a “forward Kyrgyzstan strategy of freedom,” or a “forward strategy for After the break-up of the former Soviet Union freedom.”4 But by the 21st century the forward in 1991, Kyrgyzstan, under the leadership of strategy in countries with drug economies had Askar Akayev, was relatively the most a track record, which its advocates in moderate and open government among the six Washington might well have reviewed before post-Soviet “stans” of Central Asia. Alone advocating an intervention so close to both among the successor strong men, Akayev was Russia and China. not a long-time Communist Party apparatchik, but an intellectual who read Heine, a physicist, In 1959 the CIA attempted to impose a right- “a researcher in St Petersburg and an associate wing government in Laos: after a decade and a of legendary Russian physicist and dissident half of expanding drug trafficking and a futile, Andrei Sakharov.”7 bloody, drug-financed war, Laos became (at least nominally) a communist nation.It is true that Akayev’s initial efforts to make Undeterred by the dismal outcome in Laos, in Kyrgyzstan an open and pluralistic democracy 1978-79 Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert Gates, did not last long: an on-going economic crisis and the CIA mobilized right-wing elements made his regime increasingly unpopular.8 again in Afghanistan, another nationMeanwhile he soon came under pressure from 5 contiguous to the then Soviet Union. The neighboring Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, and China immediate result was the same as Laos: the to crack down on the dissidents who were replacement of a neutralist regime by a radical using Kyrgyzstan as a base for mobilizing and polarizing one (in this case communist), against their home countries.9 Eventually the followed by another radical increase in drug country’s economic problems led to popular trafficking, and another decade of bloody and protests and their brutal suppression. unsuccessful war. But in international policy Akayev managed at What were the forward strategists hoping for in first to maintain good relations with both the Kyrgyzstan? In April of this year the unpopular U.S. and Russia. In December 2001, following regimeinstalled by the 2005 Tulip Revolution 9/11, he granted America a vital base at Manas, was itself replaced. Although it is too early to for support of its war effort in land-locked predict the outcome of these dislocations, Afghanistan. Almost immediately, the Pentagon thousands of lives have been lost in the ethnic awarded the Akayev family payoffs on fuel violence of June 2010, and drug traffickers are supplies to Manas, via two Gibraltar-based apparently profiting from the near anarchy to companies (named Red Star and Mina) set up consolidate their hold on southern Kyrgyzstan. by a retired U.S. Army lieutenant That is just what happened to Laos in 1959; it colonel.10 American dollars proceeded to is what Jimmy Carter’s drug advisor David accelerate government corruption, just as they Musto warned would happen in Afghanistan in had earlier in Laos and Afghanistan. 3 8 | 28 | 3 APJ | JF Then in October 2003 Akayev allowed Putin to In truth the so-called Tulip Revolution was no reopen an old Soviet base in Kant, as what was revolution in the true sense at all, but a palace described as “a deterrent to international coup, replacing the northern Kyrgyz coterie terrorism” in nearby Uzbekistan andbehind Akayev with a new southern coterie Tajikistan.11 This move was not well received. behind his replacement, Kurmanbek Bakiyev.Craig Smith in the New York Times acknowledged as much even before the coup Though [Kant was] less than a was over: quarter of the size of Manas, Akayev’s decision landed him on America’s “watch list” and A malaise is settling over this increased aid flowed to the Kyrgyz country as the uprising a week ago opposition via American NGOs. In begins to look less like a 2004 Washington in assisting the democratically inspired revolution democratic process directed $12 and more like a garden-variety million, an amount six times the coup, with a handful of seasoned ‘formal” rent for Manas, into politicians vying for the spoils of Kyrgyzstan in the form of the ousted government.

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