The
Drug Trail Ends in Kathmandu
By
JOSEPH PIETRI
I first went to Nepal in 1970 it was
the end of the now famous Hippie Trail that started overland
from either Amsterdam or London. Buses full of Hippies would
disembark at the end of New Road and to this day this street
is called Freak Street. Nepal was Hippie nirvana being that marijuana
and hashish were legal and sold openly in Government licensed
shops! At the time there were no opium dens in Kathmandu nor
is opium grown or heroin produced in Nepal! There was no such
thing as a Nepalese junkie. Cannabis was only illegal to export
and Hippies caught at the airport were fined $100 USD and deported
on the next flight out of Kathmandu.
The King Mahendra died in 1972
and his son Birendra ascended to the throne and I remember the
most solemn ragas that mourned the old King's passing on Radio
Nepal. Who can forget the huge procession to Pashupatinath Temple
where the King was cremated, or the bizarre ritual of a Brahman
priest taking over the bad karma of the King and even getting
a share of his earthly possessions and then being banished from
the Kingdom on a Royal elephant. I left for India in 1973 just
before Cannabis prohibition in Nepal. Richard Nixon and his recently
formed DEA paid the new king 50-70 million dollars to outlaw
pot--his in a Hindu country where everyone must take cannabis
once a year on Lord Shiva's birthday. Hippies were deported to
India. It was a sad day on Freak Street.
I returned to Nepal in 1981
and to my amazement the country now had a heroin problem. Hashish
was 20-30 times more expensive than in 1970 and a very cheap
and low grade of smokable heroin was now making the rounds. The
Nepalese, not really knowing the difference between brown sugar
heroin and marijuana, were easily seduced by smack. Not only
that but Double UO Globe Brand heroin was available for export
the finest Golden Triangle heroin made. Heroin was now being
imported from Burma and brought overland from East Nepal on Army
and Police trucks by the Royal Family. The Royals control every
aspect of the black market in Nepal. What was once Hippie Nirvana
was now a major heroin hub.
Sometime in 1983 my Nepali
partner and I were invited to lunch at one of the Ministers'
homes. There over lunch and drinks he explained that for the
first time in the history of Nepal the Royal Nepalese soccer
team was going to compete at the Olympics in Los Angeles the
next summer. He said was working with Prince Gyanendra who was
in charge of the Olympic committee. Due to my long history in
Nepal they felt I could handle the merchandise they were sending
along with the team. I took it for granted that they were talking
about 150 kilos of hashish. He then spoke to my associate in
Nepalese and then talked directly to me that their intentions
were to send 150 kilos of heroin to LA. My first thought was
to look over at my Nepali associate and tell him that whatever
he promised these people to forget it. I explained to the Minister
it was impossible and managed to squirm my way out of there.
When I got back home my old
pal Patrick came by and I told him what had happened. Patrick
says that if I would have gone along with the Minister's proposal,
I would have ended up in prison or dead. I was being set up as
a fall guy for the Royal Family. The Black Prince, as he was
known around Kathmandu, had once been stopped with a bunch of
his cronies trying to lift the kneeling Malla King Statue in
Patan (a national treasure) with a crane! The policeman who stopped
this theft was "disappeared", but the statue stayed
a top its pillar, and the Black Prince was sent packing to Europe.
A bitter rivalry existed between
King Birendra and his brother Gyanendra that went back to the
1950s when King Mahendra and the Crown Prince fled to India fearing
an assassination attempt and left Gyanendra in Kathmandu as the
defacto king. Upon returning to Nepal, it went back to the status
quo. Gyanendra has always felt he would have made a better King
than his drunkard brother.
During the 1980s and the introduction
of brown sugar heroin into Nepal one of the casualties was the
Crown Prince, who was rumored to having been sent to rehab in
Switzerland. In 1984 the Nepalese Soccer team was detained at
LAX carrying that 150 kilos of pure heroin. It was quick news
as it disappeared instantly from the media and was never talked
about since. A year later bombs went off in the lobby of the
Annapurna Hotel (Royal Family owned) at the palace gates as well
as other government buildings, apparently in retaliation for
the mess in LA.
In 1986 Henry Kissinger and
a group of narcotics agents come to Kathmandu for a SAARC conference.
The agents bought 2 kilos of pure heroin on the back streets
of Asan Tol market with traveler checks! These two kilos they
threw down on the desk of Inspector General of Police D. B. Lama
and threaten to cut off all aid to Nepal. The agents produced
a list of all the people who were involved in the Cannabis trade
who still lived in Nepal. Soon wany Westerners with private vehicles
or extended Visas were rousted. Overnight the jails swelled with
Westerners and Nepalese most of whom were not involved in the
heroin trade. Nepalese and Westerners were tortured into confessions.
D.B. Lama was one of the front men for the Royal Family heroin
trade, sort of a sticky wicket, but I escaped the inquisition
to Bangkok and did not return to Nepal until 1988. The inquisition
was still going on so I left for good. D. B. Lama the Inspector
General of Police had been arrested. They found the pipes in
his house were pure gold painted over gray to resemble pipe and
boxes of foreign currency. I guess they traced old Henry the
K's traveler checks back to the Inspector General of Police himself
and the Royals were forced to sacrifice D. B. Lama.
Student demonstrations for
democracy, the Monarchy's medieval repressive tactics and the
attention it got around the world finally brought 30 years of
absolute rule to an end and in 1990 King Birendra reinstated
multi-party democracy in Nepal. A treaty was signed with Pakistan
and flights now come in from Karachi. Military ties were initiated
and with that Afghan heroin is now available by the ton in Kathmandu.
Nepal has become a major player on the global heroin trade.
Democracy brought a succession
of governments that throughout the 1990's were marked by one
being more corrupt than the last. In 1996 the Maoists took to
the field and it's been a bloodbath ever since with nearly 12,000
killed and disappeared as of this writing.
King Birendra never unleashed
the Royal Nepalese Army against the Maoist's and the gains they
made led to the Royal massacre of June 1, 2001. Everyone in the
way of the Black Prince becoming king was killed. Most media
today refer to it as the shoot out at the palace! It was a coup
d' etat engineered by the Prince and the Royal Army with
the blessings of outside interests. I was told that the Crown
Prince was executed at the Balaju army barracks where he had
run to escape the assassinations.
Very few Nepalese believe the
official account and the Crown Prince was an easy patsy due to
his long time heroin addiction and alcohol problems. There was
no way that the Black Prince would allow the junkie Crown Prince
to ascend to the throne if his brother should die suddenly, and
the King had health problems due to his alcohol abuse. The Military
felt the same way and the Black Prince is now the King of Nepal
and the iron rule of his father has returned.
The events of September 11th
altered the equation as Nepal joined the war on terror and allowed
B-52's to fly over the nation on their bombing runs into Afghanistan.
The King declareed the Maoist movement terrorists and now receives
unprecedented support from the US, UK, and India. American and
British Special Forces train the Royal army. The King hired 400
private mercenaries, who now lead the Royal Army into battle.
What has the Black King promised the Bush Administration for
US support?
The Nepalese Royal Family has
a long history of involvement with the CIA. Through out the 1960s
and 1970s the CIA maintained a secret base at Lo Mustang on the
Tibetan plateau bordering China. This was the jumping off point
for CIA-trained Tibetan Khampa guerillas fighting the Chinese.
Today they are building a road from the Indian border to Lo Mothang
and it's quite obvious that once again it will be used as a forward
base.
At this point the Maoist control
85 percent of the countryside and five districts outright in
Western Nepal. Peasant women, tired of being sold to brothels
in India, comprise 40 percent of the arms-carrying cadre. A free
election would bring Socialism to Nepal and if the people could
they would vote the King to be gone! The Maoist movement is a
Nationalist movement of people who are awakening from 250 years
of feudalism! The one road from the Indian Border town of Birgunj
to Kathmandu is easily shut down by strikes called by Maoist's!
The Royal Army is reduce to guarding Kathmandu and other major
border towns and protecting the convoys of supplies that keep
Kathmandu alive.
On February the 1, 2005, the
Black King dismissed the government and declares a state of emergency.
He then suspended telephone, internet, and air links, effectively
cutting off Nepal from the rest of the world. The Black King
assumeed total power and suspended constitutional freedoms of
press, speech, and expression, constitutional protection against
news censorship and preventative detention! Hundreds were jailed,
leaders of all major political parties were put under armed
house arrest. Students protesting the King in Pokhara were fired
upon from helicopters and 20 were wounded. The iron fist rule
of his father has returned.
Once Time magazine came
out with a report critical of King Mahendra. When the magazine
arrived at the news stand in Kathmandu that page had been completely
blacked out. Hitler, Stalin, Saddam had absolute power and now
the Black King, Every since the massacre at the palace they have
been trying to clean Gyanendra's image internationally by blaming
the heroin trade on his younger brother who was also killed at
the palace. The facts are that Gyanendra and his Uncle, who owned
the Annapurna hotel, have been heavily involved in the heroin
trade going all the way back to the 1960s. Nepal today is 8 times
poorer than in 1970.
How can that be with all the
foreign aid, the carpet industry, textile industry, tourist industry?
Think Marcos, for years the Royal family has siphoned off from
every dollar coming into Nepal. Nepal is a classic example of
failed American foreign policy and how we create terrorism. Today
we are supporting a heroin dealing despot king and again killing
people who can't afford shoes in the mountains and jungles of
Nepal.
Joe Pietri author The
King of Nepal. He can be reached at: jpietri@msn.com
