The Ballad of Tom Carew

[reprehensor]

Since 9/11, people around the world have become interested in the origins of Al Qaeda, the Mujahideen, and how these forces were partly shaped by US Foreign Policy. Books by Chalmers Johnson are selling well, and the internet is exploding with more and resources, (with various levels of value), on a daily basis.

Some books published prior to 9/11 that dealt with U.S. Foreign Policy specifically have achieved cult status, like Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard.

For the lay scholar who has only recently become aware of the activities of the Council on Foreign Relations, (and their on-call scholars like Brzezinski), The Grand Chessboard is a tiresome read, propaganda-like in its skewed recitation of RealPolitik history.

Some books, like Jihad! by Tom Carew never even made the radar, especially in North America.

Carew is the assumed name of a British soldier who claims that he was hired by the British Ministry of Defence to do a recon mission into Afghanistan shortly after the Soviet invasion in 1979. The book was initially well received in Britain, but when the BBC exposed Carew's history as an SAS member as false, sales slacked off, only to pick up again dramatically after 9/11... in Britian, that is.

When Carew had his initial briefing about his mission into Afghanistan, he met a senior officer from the Ministry of Defense as well an American officer. He would meet the American two more times when debriefing.

Carew was to study how the Afghans were organised, how they were conducting their defense, where their bases were located, and to bring back any pieces of Soviet military hardware he could lay hands on, tops on his list; the latest version of the AK-47, and armor from the latest attack helicopters.

Carew found the Afghans in disarray, conducting hit and run attacks where they could, but largely at the mercy of the Soviet helicopters and Afghan army regulars who were cooperating with the Soviets. He managed to obtain an AK-47 prototype and a large chunk of a helicopter fuselage while traveling and fighting with the Afghans.

Getting the fuselage back into Pakistan is where the story gets interesting.

While traveling back to Pakistan, his group ran into a different fighters who had fresh camels. He had his translator explain what Carew was doing, and the leader of the fighters agreed to lend him some men and camels to safely get into Pakistan. At first, the leader of the new group was very reluctant to give up any camels. Carew noted that most of them were heavily laden with large bags of what he thought was flour.

A couple of days later, he was invited by one of the new fighters to go for a little walk. Carew noted that the fellow was acting strangely, like he was drunk, although most of the Afghans he traveled with did not drink at all. They went to a nearby cave where others were gathered, passing around a pipe. They were smoking Opium. That's when Carew realized that those camels weren't hauling flour.

When Carew and crew left Afghanistan and entered into Pakistan, they were separated from their camels near Rawalpindi at a large, heavily fortified military base. At the time, this base may have been the secret headquarters of Pakistan's infamous ISI.

Carew saw Pakistan army regulars all over the place at this base which suggests complicity at the very least. (Google Rawalpindi for hours of fun!)

One week later, Carew did his first debriefing in London where he met the British and American officers who commissioned his work. Also at the debriefing were two unidentified American officers. Everything went smoothly until Carew got to the part about the Opium.

The two new officers promptly got up and left the debrief at the first mention of the drugs. Carew's jaw metaphorically hit the floor, and his Brit chief told him, don't worry Tom, they 'didn't need to know' about this part of the operation.

Indeed.

A few days later, Carew was flown to the US to debrief Pentagon types and an even more insidious incident occurred. This time he finished his presentation and was quizzed by by two officers. 'Why did you think it was opium?' Carew neglected to mention that he was offered the pipe, and inhaled. (However, all he got was sick.) 'What do you think they were doing with it?'

He told them that he thought the Afghans were exporting the dope to Pakistan with the compliance of the ISI and the Pakistan army. Obviously some of the money was being used to buy arms for the Afghans. All he got was blank looks in return.

After his presentation, he was approached by two plainclothesmen who told him that the 'agency' would prefer it if he didn't mention the opium aspect 'at all' in any future reports.

The ISI is a progeny of the CIA. 'War on Drugs' indeed.

"The legacy of our intervention has been somewhat more dubious. The need to pay for the war led the Mujahideen to increase the production of opium tenfold, and Afghanistan is now one of the most important sources of raw material for the illegal narcotics trade. They no longer have to spend their profits on weapons and they are reaping vast rewards." (page 281)

Carew then goes on to relate how he and another British operative set up the initial camps in that would eventually be taken over by the ISI and CIA to train the Muj in elements of warfare, and, Carew claims, urban terrorism;

"One point of disagreement that I'd had with the Americans all along was that they were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism - car bombing and so on - so that they could strike at the Russians based in the major towns. Personally, I wasn't prepared to do that although, of course, I realized that eventually they would find someone who was. In any event, if the fact that the US was sponsoring terrorism and teaching the terrorists how to do it leaked out, there would be hell to pay. Much, easier, therefore, to keep it all tidied away inside Afghanistan under the cover of the fog of war. In Pakistan, or one of the friendly Gulf States, it was much more likely that the press would get wind of what we were doing and thus scupper it." (page 245)

It's not difficult to see possible reasons for 'Carew' to take elaborate steps to conceal his identity. As you read his recitation of his imaginary days at the SAS, you get the definite feeling that this guy is being a bit too jocular when he talks about the brutal training SASers go through.

When he relates his Afghan tale, he is dead serious.

Michael Ruppert at www.copvcia.com has been talking about CIA complicity in the global drug trade for years. Michel Chossudovsky at www.globalresearch.ca has been connecting the dots between the ISI, the CIA and Al Qaeda doggedly since August, 2001.

After reading Carew's book, which seems to bolster some of the gossamer threads which tie together the theories of Ruppert and Chossudovsky, they just don't seem as outlandish as they do when you encounter them for the first time.

To close;

"There is also the problem of terrorism. The jihad in Afghanistan attracted Muslim volunteers from all over the world, all of whom received military training and fundamentalist indoctrination, and many of whom are now using their knowledge and experience to wage war on everything else they hate: Americans, Jews, Sunnis, Shias; whoever. It's a sad irony that bogeymen like Osama bin Laden acquired their skills as a result of the CIA's training programs." (page 282)

Blowback, writ large.

-reprehensor.

[teryang]

1. 18th Century Anglos developed the taste for tea

...and Chinese crafts. Their financial elites sponsored trade with the East to get them. Unfortunately, the Chinese didn't have a taste for western furniture which is what they brought to trade. So the traders developed the practice of stopping in India to pick up some opium to trade for tea. The Chinese didn't want that either. And so began the opium wars. Some of the old opium trading American elites are today among the wealthiest American families.

Opium is still a solution to balance of payments problems and a source of funds for conducting warfare you don't need to account for. It is an old colonial secret.