South Asia

Frequent commenter Arun has a number of excellent recent posts on South Asian history and related matters. Among the most interesting for me were some of those relating US relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan and how the CIA's war with Russian in Afghanistan fed both the drug trade and the Taliban.

Arun includes a long excerpt from US Ambassador to India John Gunther Dean's oral history, from which I grabbed this snippet:
In order to understand U.S. relations with South Asia in the 1980s, one must also have some understanding of Indian-Pakistani relations during that period, and the crucial role of Pakistan in U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. Little was written in the United States during the 1980s about the links between arms for those fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the boom in the drug culture in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Perhaps the overriding U.S. policy consideration toward all of South Asia in those days was "to trap and kill the Russian bear in Afghanistan, and Pakistan was a staunch ally in its strategy."

... As I stated in earlier chapters, different agencies and departments of the U.S. Government could have conflicting positions. This was also the case in Embassy New Delhi; specifically, it applied to the relationship of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Generally speaking, to protect its "assets" abroad, the CIA had ensured in those days that the DEA's concerns outside the United States were subordinated to its own.

The CIA did achieve its goal of getting the Russian Bear driven out of Afghanistan, but the side effects included corruption of Pakistan and the creation of a formidable engine of Islamic extremism.

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