* Originally By: Joe Horman
 * Originally To: Rich Woods
 * Originally Re: ciadrugs] Drug Stops War
 * Original Date: 22 Dec 96  09:56:08
 * Original Area: National Civil Liberties Discussion Echo.
 * Forwarded by : Blue Wave/386 v2.30
Apparently-to: rich.woods@245.genesplicer.org
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 11:56:08 -0600
From: Joe Horman 
London Times 12-22-96
Revealed: Israel made the
                  Egyptian army go to pot 
                IN one of the more bizarre episodes of the Middle East
                conflict, Israel flooded Egypt with cheap hashish for
                decades to make the Egyptian soldiers so stoned that
                they would be incapable of fighting effectively. 
                Tons of hashish were smuggled from Lebanon via Israel
                into Egypt, according to eight Israeli officers who were
                directly involved and have been interviewed by The
                Sunday Times. The operation, codenamed Lahav
                (Hebrew for "blade") began in the 1960s and continued
                until the end of the 1980s. The shipments were
                co-ordinated by Israeli officers who arranged for them
to
                be escorted to the Egyptian border in military vehicles. 
                The hashish was then sold to dealers who supplied
                Egypt's conscript army. 
                The operation was launched amid rising fears about the
                threat to Israel in the build-up to the Six Day war with
                Egypt in 1967. According to the officers, it continued
                well after the 1979 peace agreement between Israel and
                Egypt. 
                One former colonel, who was in charge of shipments in
                the early 1970s, said: "I have no regrets. It allowed us
to
                control and practically avoid drug smuggling into Israel
                and increase the use of drugs within the Egyptian army. 
                "Sometimes they [the units in charge of the smuggling]
                said they had too much so I authorised them to dump the
                drugs in the sea west of Tel Aviv." 
                Initially the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) intended only
to
                cut off the traditional smuggling routes out of the
Bekaa
                Valley in Lebanon, 20 miles from the Israeli border and
                one of the biggest sources of hashish in the world. The
                idea was to block the border with Lebanon and patrol
                the eastern Mediterranean to stop shipments by boat. 
                According to senior military sources, IDF officers soon
                realised they were missing a golden opportunity: they
                could run the drug shipments themselves, flooding Egypt
                with cut- price narcotics and weakening the Egyptian
                army. 
                The proposal is said to have been passed up the military
                chain of command and given official sanction.
                Commissions from the lucrative deals are claimed to have
                been channelled into a secret IDF fund which paid for
                other covert operations. 
                Last week the IDF denied all the allegations by its
former
                members. "Officers of the IDF do not engage in drug
                traffic," it said. 
                Those who have admitted their part deny they acted
                independently or for personal gain. One commander
                stationed at an IDF base at Nahariya, a city less than
10
                miles from the Lebanese border, says he oversaw drugs
                being brought ashore in the early 1970s and is adamant
                that the operation was sanctioned by a higher authority.
                "What I have done was authorised by my superiors," he
                said. 
                Detailed information about Operation Lahav has also
                been provided by six other military officers, two of
whom
                are still serving in the IDF. One, involved in the
project
                from 1977 to 1987, said the drugs were generally
                smuggled into Egypt from Lebanon in Israeli military
                trucks escorted by IDF officers. 
                On most trips an Israeli army colonel was said to have
                sat beside a Lebanese drug dealer in a saloon car as the
                drugs were being escorted south. On other shipments,
                Israeli navy combat boats escorted Lebanese drug boats
                to Nahariya, from where the drugs were smuggled
                through Israel and across the border. 
                One Israeli officer told how he first learnt about the
                operation more than a decade ago after being ordered by
                his superiors to transport "important material" from
                Lebanon to the Egyptian border. 
                "I had to sign a document of confidentiality warning me
                that if I talked about what I saw I would be sentenced
to
                at least 20 years' imprisonment," he said. "A colonel
                named Jacob Z escorted us into Lebanon. Jacob ordered
                us to start loading our truck with the contents of a
                Lebanese lorry which moved closer to ours. 
                "When the Lebanese removed the cover from their truck,
                I was shocked. It was crammed with hundreds of small
                packages. I recognised it immediately as hashish. Jacob
                told me to shut up and continue loading our truck." 
                Another officer said that on one occasion the Israeli
army
                in south Lebanon was instructed to close down a
                selected area in the Bekaa Valley by imposing a curfew.
                Drug dealers then arrived with their merchandise on the
                Israeli border, where IDF officers were waiting to
                receive it. 
                Several meeting points were then set up to co-ordinate
                the transfer of the drugs to the Egyptian drug dealers.
                They were told to sell the drugs to the hundreds of
                thousands of Egyptian soldiers posted between Sinai and
                Cairo. 
                The Egyptian military said last week that during the
late
                1960s and early 1970s drug consumption in the ranks
                rose by 50%, with almost two out of three soldiers
                regularly smoking hashish. 
                In Cairo, rumours that Israel was behind the increased
                flow of hashish into Egypt circulated for many years.
                Egyptian military authorities were surprised by reports
                after the 1967 war that some of their soldiers had been
                incapable during combat. 
                One Israeli soldier was quoted in the Israeli press
shortly
                after Egypt had been defeated as saying: "We were
                shooting them like ducks. They were running towards us
                as if they were on drugs."
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