After the massacre of innocents during the siege of a school in Beslan, Russia, recently Russian President Putin remarked on America’s double standards in having talks with Chechen rebels in Washington recently, thus undermining Russia’s fight against terrorism which has taken the lives of hundreds of people in the last year. Britain and America constantly butt into conflicts on the basis of "Human Rights", whilst supplying arms to regimes (and those rebel groups) to inflict violations of human rights.
According to a US Congressional study released recently, it was stated thus: "Developing countries continued to be the primary focus of foreign arms sales activity by conventional weapons suppliers". In 2002 the US sold $10.241 billion worth of weapons (40% of the world market); an year later it sold $14.5 billion weapons - an increase of $4.25 billion and now commands a market share of 56.7% of all global arms sales, of that 50.8% is to Asia which purchased $33.8 billion worth of arms during 2000 and 2003. In money it could have been used to alleviate poverty.
Although the West expresses concern over the Middle Eastern problems, it does not hesitate to sell arms to those unstable governments. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not at war with anyone but became the largest purchasers of weapons in 2002. Egypt smuggles weapons to the Palestinians and to African rebels, whilst Saudi Arabia is home to thousands of Islamic Jihadis, most of whom are in Iraq helping to kill innocent Iraqi civilians. There are upto 5,000 Jihadis in Iraq killing at will.
For years, Britain’s MI6 and the US’s CIA funded Ahamed Chalabi’s party, the Iraqi National Congress. It is known that US$ 87 million of American taxpayers’ money ended up in the coffers’ of the INC; furthermore, the US maintained an INC office in Teheran, Iran at a cost of $26,500 a month - until the rift between the West and Chalabi. The present Interim Prime Minister, Ayab Allawi was trained by MI6 and the CIA. Double standards?
Take the Sri Lanken example, just how many rebel leaders found a safe haven in Britain? There is Anton Balasingham of the LTTE (and his Australian wife), Somawansa Amarasinghe of the JVP, and other minor non-celebrities. President Chandrika Bandaranaike owns a home in Britain, educated her children there, and even holidays there (at public expense). It is obvious that during his Oxford education, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike came under a certain influence and went on to destabilize Sri Lankans with radical ideology which went on to ruin this country. We see the patronage given to Ranil Wickremesinghe by the Americans. Any leader benign to American expansionism becomes a "hero".
We see the link between Drug Trafficking and Terrorism. During the Nicaraguan fiasco, arms for the Contras were flown in by the CIA in return for narcotics. In the 1980’s, there was a "crack" epidemic solely in the Black neighbourhoods (source: CIA Crack Cocaine Connection by Gary Webb who is also the author of "Dark Alliance" where he links the contras and drug trafficking in black neighbourhoods of Los Angeles).
"The one thing I learned about the drug business when I was researching it is that it is in many ways the epitome of capitalism. It is the purest form of capitalism. You’ve got no government regulation, a wide-open market, a buyer’s market, anything goes" - Gary Webb.
If we take Sri Lanka, hasn’t Terrorism and Drug Trafficking grown side by side: It is now known that Rs. 50 million per day is spent on narcotics by addicts, a phenomenal Rs. 18.25 billion an year — if that is the sort of official figure, double it. There is no doubt in my mind that governments are involved in this "capitalist" business, for such a scourge cannot flourish without government’s patronage, just as much as Terrorism cannot flourish without international patronage.
This is the modus operandi of the West on governments they do not like. They set out methodically to rip apart the social and economic fabric of the country. They set out to create conditions where the farmer can’t get his produce to market, where children can’t go to school, where women are terrified inside their homes as well as outside their homes, where the hospitals are treating wounded people instead of sick people, where government administration simply grinds to a halt and things cease to function and international capital is scared away and the country goes bankrupt. This is the destabilization process. In those bleak circumstances, there is heavy trafficking in narcotics, humans for slavery and sexual abuse and children as soldiers and sex victims.
Into this scene arrives humanitarian aid workers comprising fundamentalists, representatives of the IMF and World Bank, of which Britan and the US are major shareholders, and representatives of the G8 countries of which the above two, Britain and the US are members. They offer aid on conditions of privatization of public sector institutions — to them!
These are not conspiracy theories, but cold, hard facts: Global Terrorism and Narcotics Trafficking are working alongside each other, one financing the other. Use of narcotics degrades nations, diminishes their productive force and fosters social ills. Terrorism divides nations by encouraging rebellious ethnic or religious to rise up. It discourages public debates on problems.
Linda van Schagen,
Mt. Lavinia
