The CIA and Burma

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2024/12/19/how-memoirs-by-american-officials/

This article provides a quick summary of the facts connected to CIA operations in Burma and the various memoirs that omit this reality. Their reasons undoubtedly vary and are not always clear, but are (in themselves) food for thought.

I was pleased to see that Waters noted the presence of the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) in Burma in the aftermath of their 1949 defeat at the hands of Mao and the communists. As he states, everyone knows the Taiwan story, but few are aware of the KMT units that fled to Burma and continued to haunt the border region for years to come. They would be receive CIA-orchestrated support and remain a threatening presence on the PRC's southern border. Further they became instrumental in the establishing the Golden Triangle (the region where Burma, Laos, and Thailand come together) as a key hub for opium production. This story quickly becomes complicated and controversial and is connected to drug use by American troops in Vietnam and by some accounts the introduction of drugs into US markets. The profits were too tempting and to this day laundered drug money plays a significant part in the US economy. It's an epic-sized scandal that few talk about.

The story becomes even more byzantine when the US takes up the 'War on Drugs' in the 1970's creating a vast bureaucracy and security-state infrastructure to fight the importation of narcotics - and yet the very smugglers and gangs have so often been found to have ties to US intelligence. At times it's as if the formal state is in combat with the shadow/deep state (a legitimate concept now more confused than ever), and in other cases it's as if law enforcement agencies are allowed to score token 'victories' and yet are unable to ever really deal the industry any kind of serious blow. I just find it noteworthy how many times I've heard law enforcement officials express frustration that as they continued to investigate the drug traffickers and work their way up the chain, they always encounter brick walls and connections to US intelligence that effectively shut down their investigation. Those (investigators and journalists) who persisted seemed to face ruin or end up dead.

I found this paragraph from Waters to be particularly poignant:

The involvement of American clandestine services, both the CIA and DEA facilitated by the State Department, in the suppression of both Communism and drug production are hardly unknown stories. Journalists, academics, and retired agents have for decades written about the involvement of the CIA and DEA, particularly in northern Burma. Movies as spectacular as Rambo IV, and the Free Burma Rangers Movie dramatized the role of Americans in Burma battling for righteousness. CIA and DEA agents are known, and many named in print, including three of the four authors reviewed here. All four were deeply involved with the CIA, DEA, and State Department in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. To make the American exceptionalism story-line work, in all four books, the Burmese military is cast as the villains, while the “highland tribes” are the victims. The Americans and their aid programs, of course, are rescuers. This is despite the fact that a former British police officer in the 1920s Burmese Colonial service, George Orwell, shows that hegemony is not always what the powerful say it is.

And so Waters goes on to offer commentary on these works which in the end are demonstrably disingenuous. Remember this the next time you're in a Barnes and Noble or other book store looking at the rows of memoirs and histories with the Establishment imprimatur. There are sometimes overt lies in these works but more often than not it's the omissions that present a false picture and allow the narrative to be framed in an inaccurate and disingenuous way.

It's clear that the first author mentioned (Broman) is less than candid about how the CIA works outside US borders. Like many connected to the agency, there is a pretence of morality and integrity. In reality the agency relies on not just the bribery that's mentioned but blackmail, deceit, and outright threats. It's a sordid business and some seem to realize this, do their perceived 'duty' and then retire not wishing to relive the 'glory days'. Others such as Broman seem to lack a conscience or have completely deceived themselves and consequently wish to revisit and celebrate their deeds.

The US relationship to the regime is complicated and we find similar things taking place in connection to Libya under Gaddafi. There's a lot of double-dealing taking place as well as an obscure calculus that at first glance makes little sense.

The Murphy narrative is less complicated and controversial but sheds some light on US-Myanmar relations that are often less than well known. Aung San Suu Kyi remains an international figure but her reputation was also tarnished as she voiced support for the military during the Rohingya clampdown, an episode that many consider to be an attempted genocide - an awkward position for a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Additionally the Bush and Obama administration used the guise of humanitarianism as a kind of gunboat diplomacy (or gunboat philanthropy as Alex De Waal put it) - something the Yangon generals know all too well. But it's never presented that way in US accounts. 'Humanitarian' Imperialism was all the rage in the aftermath of the Cold War but it's still alive and well.

The Marciel book in question is in keeping with many that I've found over the years while perusing libraries and book stores. It's a completely self-referential and self-absorbed narrative concerning US policy and regional strategy and yet one completely divorced from reality. My question is this - how many in the State Department and other agencies are like Marciel, believing they have a handle on how things work and why, and yet actually live behind a veil of near total ignorance? Or is the book itself merely a farce, fodder for Establishment academics and students at a place like Georgetown and yet one in which the author as well as many of the book's readers will know that (at best) it's only telling one aspect of the story.

And the Fox (or I should say Fox-Kennedy) work cited here is also fairly typical. These are the sorts of books I struggle to finish as I reach a point where the author just doesn't seem credible. Given her CIA-connection and now partnership with her father-in-law RFK Jr. and the Trump administration - I doubt I would take anything she says at face value.

Her conscience that led her to question the CIA and US foreign policy then led her to work with RFK and Trump?

I was pleased to read the rest of Waters' commentary as well as his citation of Alfred McCoy's work on The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, and of course the lessons learned from Eric Blair/George Orwell.

The situation in Burma remains confusing and tense and this is no less true when it comes to the ethnic Christian groups involved in the civil war.

See also:

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2025/10/rare-earth-metals-and-myanmars-civil-war.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2019/03/myanmar-woes.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2025/03/yakuza-smugglers-myanmar-and-manhattan.html

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-myanmar-coup-and-china.html