WHITE PAPER ON INSURGENT/TERRORIST INVOLVEMENT IN INTERNATIONAL DRUG TRADE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M00539R000200190001-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 18, 2009
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: January 3, 1986
• Content Type: MEMO

CONFIDENTIAL
Central Intelligence Agency
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MEMORANDUM FOR: William F. Martin
Executive Secretary
National Security Council
0 3 JAN 1986
SUBJECT: White Paper on Insurgent/Terrorist Involvement in
International Drug Trade
Executive Secretary
Attachment:
As stated
1. Attached, as requested, is an unclassified report on the growing links
between insurgent and terrorist groups and international drug traffickers.
This unclassified analysis summarizes what the Intelligence Community knows
about these links worldwide. Some insurgent groups are heavily involved in
drug trafficking and others have the opportunity, motive, and capability to
participate in the drug trade. Evidence of involvement of terrorist
organizations with drug traffickers is limited, but the Community considers
this an increasingly serious problem.
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CONFIDENTIAL
SUBJECT: White Paper on Insurgent/Terrorist Involvement in International
Drug Trade
DCI/NIO/CT/CAllen/j
Distribution
1 - Executive Secretary
1 - Executive Registry
1 - C/NIC
1 - VC/NIC
1 - OLL
1 - PAO
1 - D/ OG I
1 - C/CPN
1 - ANIO/CT
1 - NIO/CT-c ron
(3 January 1985)
CONFIDENTIAL
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31 December 1985
White Paper on Insurgent/Terrorist Involvement in
International Drug Trade
No nation is immune to the dangers of drug abuse, and no government has
proven able to fight the problem alone. Narcotics abuse and trafficking have
invaded nations around the world. Traditional producing countries like
Pakistan, Peru, and Colombia are being transformed into consuming countries as
more and more of their citizens become involved with drugs. Similarly, the
so-called transit countries through which the drugs move on their way to final
market are also becoming infected by drug abuse as traffickers pay off
expediters with some of the product.
In addition to the incalculable health and social costs, the very security
of some nations is being undermined by the corrupting influences' of the
narcotics trade. This profitable trade generates so much money that
traffickers can and do bribe customs officials, police and judges wherever
necessary. Worse yet, they are becoming even more ruthless in seeking to
frustrate narcotics control efforts.
The level of violence is rising. Drug dealers arranged for the
assassination of the Colombian Minister of Justice in April 1984 because he
was taking a strong stand against narcotics trade. In Peru, coca eradication
workers have been killed on several occasions, and in Mexico recently, 21
policemen were ambushed by armed traffickers.
One of the most alarming trends in recent years has been the growing
involvement of some insurgent groups with narcotics growers and traffickers.
Insurgent/terrorist links to drug traffickers are probably deepest and
most extensive in Colombia, and have been growing stronger in recent years.
The group most active in Colombia's extensive narcotics industry has been the
FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), long identified as the militant
arm of the Colombian Communist Party. It is mainly rural-based and divided
into a number of small guerrilla "fronts", many of which operate in coca or
marijuana growing areas. FARC regularly collects protection money from
narcotics growers operating in its territory, uses traffickers..', resources to
get arms and ammunition, and guarantees the security of a'number of
clandestine airstrips vital to the traffickers. It also probably engages in
coca cultivation and refining. In November 1983, the Colombian army
discovered 90 hectares of coca and a processing lab next to an abandoned FARC
camp in southern Colombia. Citing an informed source, a leading Colombian
newspaper reported in late 1985 that Carlos Lehder, one of the country's
leading traffickers, has offered to pay FARC for protection services. Several
other militant organizations in Colombia are also connected in one fashion or
another with the drug trade. The leftist 19th of April Movement (M-19)
cooperated with another major drug trafficker, Jaime Guillot-Lara, who
provided them with weapons, with Cuban help, in the early 1980s. The M-19
also carried out the recent bloody seige of the Ministry of Justice in
Bogota. Colombian authorities have said that one of the first things they
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attacked were the files pertaining to extradition of suspected traffickers to
the US. In May 1984, the Colombian press reported that 24 ELN guerrillas
(another smaller insurgent group) were in possession of 150 metric tons of
marijuana when arrested.
Insurgent groups elsewhere also have the opportunity, motives and
capability to participate in the drug trade. For one thing, insurgency and
illicit drug cultivation tend to occur in remote regions for the same
reasons--the government presence is usually limited, these areas tend to be
lightly inhabited and very poor, the local people are often' alienated from the
national government, and perhaps most importantly, the very remoteness and
lack of roads make it hard for police or military forces to control such
activity.
Thus, operating in the same or similar regions fosters opportunities for
the two types of groups to interact. Drug cultivation or trafficking offer
access to large amounts of money which in turn insurgents can use to acquire
arms or other supplies. Some insurgent groups tax drug growers and
traffickers the way they tax other profitable operations in the areas they
control. Others encourage the activity and provide protection from the
authorities in return for a share of the profits. A few become full-fledged
trafficking operators in their own right. Perhaps the most notorious of such
groups is the Burmese Communist Party. Burma is a major producer of opium,
and between one-half to two-thirds of it is grown in areas controlled by
leftist and ethnic separatists, mainly the BCP, which oversees opium
production in its area, collects protection taxes and sometimes extracts or
forces deliveries from growers. Over the past two years, the BCP has been
establishing refineries to convert opium into heroin and begun selling that
drug to middlemen i.#self. The BCP's moves have brought it into increasing
conflict with the San United Army (SUA), a sort of "warlord" organization
that has dominated such refining. Although once an insurgency, the SUA has
become little more than a drug trafficking organization.
Elsewhere, Sri Lankan dissidents have been denounced by Colombo for
involvement in international drug smuggling to raise money. In March 1985,
Italian authorities issued 100 arrest warrants for Tamil drug traffickers,
some of whom were connected with the separatist Tamil movement. In the Middle
East, Lebanon is a leading producer of hashish, much of which is processed in
the Bekaa valley. Some of the warring factions in Lebanon almost certainly
obtain revenue from the drug industry either directly or by providing
protection to those who smuggle it.
Moreover, insurgents may pose as protectors of local, drug growing
peasants against a national government that seeks to eradicate such
cultivation. In some areas in Peru, for example, coca cultivation is by far
the most profitable work available to the farmers. When the Peruvian
government has tried to move against this activity, the major Peruvian
insurgent group, Sendero Luminoso, has sought to exploit peasant unhappiness.
Links between traffickers and insurgent groups are likely to grow over
time. Large areas of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Burma, and Pakistan are already
nearly beyond the effective reach of national police and military forces. If
and when these national governments make even stronger efforts to control and
eradicate narcotics trafficking, there will be a greater danger that local
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inhabitants will turn to insurgents for help in maintaining their narcotics
business. Alliances between traffickers and insurgents or dissidents are thus
likely to be forged.
Terrorist involvement in the narcotics business has been less visible than
insurgent links to the industry. But terrorists and traffickers also have a
lot in common--both operate underground, both are willing to use violence,
both want access to easy money, and both are involved in one form or another
of smuggling.
Armenian terrorists have operated in many countries, but many seem to be
based in Beirut. It seems almost inevitable tin that climate of smuggling and
violence, that some drug profits make their way into terrorist coffers. In
the early 1980s, a number of Armenian narcotics smugglers were linked to
various Armenian terrorist groups. Palestinian terrorist groups are also
probably involved, at least at low levels, with at least some forms of drug
trade, and/or with the common mechanisms used by both types of organization to
move illicit goods. [Note: The Peruvian insurgent group, Sendero Luminoso
also engages in terrorist tactics as do many other insurgent groups.]
Drug abuse in the Basque region of Spain has grown over the past few
years, and so have press allegations that the Basque terrorist group ETA has
been involved in the trade. There have also been many press reports that the
Italian Red Brigades get at least some of their funding from the drug trade.
Similarly, Turkish terrorists of both right and leftist persuasions have been
linked to narcotics smuggling.
Since terrorist groups are small and secretive, ties between narcotics
traffickers and terrorists are harder to detect. Moreover, terrorists tend to
need less money per'member for their operations; thus few drug deals, hard to
detect amid the welter of traffickers, would suffice to support a terrorist
group for some time.
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