The Dope, Inc. Banks,
Or the New Silk Road?

by Michael Billington

[Print version of this editorial]

Oct. 4—The recent revelation that the U.S. Office of Special Counsel has demanded that the Department of Justice investigate a complaint filed by whistleblowers from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in Haiti, that the DEA had allowed a huge shipment of heroin and cocaine to pass through “unimpeded” in 2015, and has continued that practice since then, shines a new light on the role of “Dope, Inc.” (as EIR called it in our best-selling series of books by that name) in the destitution of the island nation of 11 million people.

The Special Counsel’s letter charges that the DEA—

has been looking the other way, [and] for over a decade Port au Prince has been a safe port to ship heroin and cocaine without interference through Haiti, generally destined for Florida in the United States.

Following the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, which killed as many as 250,000 people, virtually nothing was done to restore the massive damage in Haiti, let alone create modern water and sanitation infrastructure, or a modern health system. Cholera, largely eliminated in Haiti and elsewhere at that time, spread across the island, killing thousands.

Drugs are not produced in Haiti—in fact, there is little significant consumption of drugs, either, as almost no one can afford it. It is only valuable to Dope, Inc. as a transshipment point to the United States. Not so for China. As covered in depth in the October 1, 2021 issue of EIR:

In August of 2017, two Chinese companies—the Southwest Municipal Engineering and Design Research Institute of China (SMEDRIC), and the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC)—outlined a series of detailed projects valued at $4.7 billion to carry out the rebuilding of the capital [Port-au-Prince] and its environs. In publicizing its proposal and producing a short video on it, the SMEDRIC company indicated that the projects for Haiti’s capital were part of a broader $30 billion proposal for the whole country.

The EIR article provides maps and descriptions of the Chinese plan for transforming the almost non-existent sewage and water system, road and rail development, power systems, and more, to create a modern, humane economy in Haiti.

Why did this Haiti extension of China’s Belt and Road Initiative not get implemented? EIR reports:

The Schiller Institute was told at the time that the International Monetary Fund and related Wall Street interests put the squeeze on Haiti to reject them. The State Department and the U.S. government, already nervous that Panama had broken with Taiwan just two months earlier, on June 13 [2017], were not going to tolerate any plan whose acceptance by Haiti would imply its willingness to break with Taiwan.

The Dope, Inc. connections won out against China’s New Silk Road approach.

A Similar Showdown in Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, a similar showdown is taking place between Dope, Inc. and the New Silk Road. In the years preceding the U.S.-NATO invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, UN Under Secretary Pino Arlacchi, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (1997-2001), successfully negotiated with the Taliban government to shut down the opium production, substituting food production with financial and technical help from the UN. The fact is, Arlacchi told anyone listening, that opium production earned less than food production for the farmers, and also for the Taliban government—the money from drugs is centered in the banks which finance the international trade.

Thus, when the British forces occupied the prime opium production centers in Helmand Province, opium production soared, to well beyond its previous highs, to the point that Afghanistan has been producing 80% of the world’s opium during the U.S./NATO occupation, consumed primarily in Russia and Europe. The City of London and Wall Street prospered.

It is of note that Antonio Maria Costa, who served in the same capacity at the UN as Arlacchi, but from 2002-2010, in an interview with the Observer in December 13, 2009, and as reported byThe Guardian, said this, following the collapse of the Western financial system in 2008:

In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.

Had the restoration of the opium trade in Afghanistan not taken place following the U.S.-NATO invasion, the wildly speculative Western banking system may well have gone under in 2008.

Now, with Afghanistan again under Taliban rule, the acting Taliban government in Kabul has again pledged to eliminate the opium trade. Of course, if they continue to be denied access to the nation’s own money—which has been frozen by the Treasury Department and U.S. Federal Reserve—and denied foreign investment to restore the destruction wrought by 20 years of U.S.-NATO bombing, then the farmers will have no choice but to continue eking out a living through opium poppy cultivation.

Another Option

But history has created another option: the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, with 140 nations as partners, offering basic infrastructure development to all countries, as the means for the formerly colonized nations to finally escape from poverty, just as China eliminated its own abject poverty entirely as of 2020. Every country in the Central Asian region is offering support to the concept of extending the Belt and Road into Afghanistan. This would include a rail extension of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, through the Khyber Pass west of Peshawar, to Kabul and north to Uzbekistan, offering the Central Asian nations their first connection to the ocean via Gwadar and Karachi in Pakistan, and Chabahar in Iran.

It would include a crop substitution policy to eliminate opium, as proposed again in 2010 from Pino Arlacchi, when at that time he was a member of the European Parliament, which endorsed the concept. Schiller institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche has recommended that Arlacchi become the special international representative for the development of Afghanistan. The approach will include a modern health system, with water and power development to sustain a modern agro-industrial nation.

Who could oppose such a new paradigm for a nation which has suffered 40 years of warfare? Only the international financial oligarchy, who, in this moment of financial crisis far more severe than that of 2008—worse even than 1929—requires the hot money from their Dope, Inc. enterprise to stay afloat for a bit longer, and to continue deadening the minds of their own populations through the legalization of these poisonous drugs, a process now sweeping the United States and Europe.

What is true in Haiti and Afghanistan is equally true globally. The choice facing mankind can be characterized as a showdown between Dope, Inc.—the City of London and Wall Street banks running both the drug trade and the “Green Finance” scam, denying credit to productive industry and agriculture—versus the New Silk Road, now in place as the Belt and Road Initiative. The U.S., in particular, must choose, whether to stay with Dope, Inc., and prevent China and its many partners from developing Haiti, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and the nations of Africa and Ibero-America; or whether instead, to join the New Silk Road, and collaborate with China, Russia, and eventually every nation on Earth, in a new paradigm based on peace through development.

In the United States, the program for this new paradigm, of creating a world worthy of the dignity of man, was released in September by The LaRouche Organization. The 56-page report is titled, “The Coming U.S. Economic Miracle on the New Silk Road.” Read it and help circulate it everywhere.