Cold War Chickens Come Home To Roost

During the cold war the CIA engaged in black ops to destabilize the Caribbean and other areas of Central and Latin America that they determined were their domain under the Monroe Doctrine. Ironically it was exactly these operations that led to the increase in the drug trade, since they were black ops the money used to pay for them was drug money. As it was in their operations in Viet Nam/Laos and Cambodia and later in Afghanistan and Contra Iran affair. And during this same time the American government began its war on drugs, a war that was bound to fail since it was American policy to encourage drug lords to fight the left, a policy begun after WWII in the port of Marseilles.

Here the consequences of the CIA cold war black ops are still being felt in Jamaica and downtown Toronto......

In a move that mirrored similar operations in Panama and other Latin American countries, U.S. intelligence agencies lent support to emerging right-winger Edward Seaga, then-leader of the Jamaican Labour Party. In a 1977 investigative report, Penthouse magazine, citing U.S. intelligence sources, described how the State Department sought to capitalize on the spreading violence between Mr. Coke’s Shower Posse and the garrisoned neighbourhoods that supported Mr. Manley: “Shipments of guns and sophisticated communication equipment begun to be smuggled into the island. In one shipment alone, which was grabbed by Manley’s security forces, there were 500 submachine guns.”

But after Mr. Seaga’s nine-year stint as prime minister in the 1980s, the U.S. justice system decided that their ally’s enforcer in Tivoli Gardens had become too powerful, as Mr. Coke’s violent network of drug dealers and gun runners boiled over onto U.S. soil. After the elder Mr. Coke’s capture and mysterious death in 1992, the funeral procession numbered in the tens of thousands. Marching next to his casket was Mr. Seaga, who told reporters that the dead man had been “a protector” of the people.

It was U.S. foreign policy that gave rise to the system that propped up the late Mr. Coke and his now fugitive son, said Mr. Crawford, the political analyst. “It is one of the supreme ironies of life, as far as Jamaica is concerned,” he said.