Drugs, Law and Conflict

Photo courtesy of Boston.com Bringas

It seems that the 2009 UN World Drug Report, available here, has inspired The Boston Globe to come up with a compelling photo essay chronicling the War on Drugs and its effects throughout the world – definitely worth a look.

Media are reporting that the Government Accountability Office will release today a report connecting weak and uncoordinated US gun policy to Mexico’s surge in violence. It’s not available on the GAO website yet, but the Washington Post has a link to the pdf. As the Wall Street Journal reports,

GAO investigators cited multiple problems in trying to collect enough data to complete a comprehensive study of arms trafficking from the U.S. The investigators faulted the lack of a coherent anti-arms-trafficking strategy, as well as turf battles among agencies charged with enforcing laws and government policy on the issue.

The study also cited bureaucratic problems in Mexico that reduced the number of weapons submitted to the U.S. for tracing. In addition, congressional restrictions limit the amount of data the bureau can collect and publicly release about gun sales…

The study says that despite claims from critics that Mexican cartels may also be getting weapons from Asia and elsewhere, law-enforcement officials believe that scenario is unlikely.

CNN adds that the report was scheduled to be released at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere regarding arms trafficking.

While on the subject, this Daily Show clip comparing the investment opportunities in the AK-47 versus the AR-15 is truly wonderful.

Part 2 of a 4-part weeklong series

• Fox News picks apart the oft-stated claim that 90% of weapons found in Mexico come from the US. According to the article,

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced — and of those, 90 percent — 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover — were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes. In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

Before the US can start congratulating itself on supplying “only” 5,000 deadly weapons to Mexican cartels last year, we have to ask two questions:

1) Why were 18,000 recovered guns not submitted for tracing? The author argues that for these guns, “it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.” Yet the ICE agent quoted in article states, “Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable.” This doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t come from the U.S. The reasons for not submitting recovered weapons could range from corrupt cops keeping the more powerful and expensive guns for themselves, to insufficient access to e-Trace, the US tracing database.
2) Why were nearly 50% of the submitted guns not able to be successfully traced? Guns sold on the secondary market in the U.S. are more difficult, if not impossible, to trace. Is this part of the problem?

• Obama backtracks on assault weapons ban, citing political opposition. According to the Washington Times, while in Mexico City last week, “Obama indicated that while he favors reinstating the U.S. ban on assault weapons, which Congress allowed to expire five years ago, the move would face too much political opposition to happen soon.” Which is to say he won’t push it in Congress?

• The NRA: “Good Riddance to the Clinton Gun Ban.” Obama’s statements in Mexico should please the NRA, who’ve been releasing plenty of information opposing a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. Calling the expired prohibition the “Clinton Gun Ban,” their argument includes a few central points:

1) “Assault weapon” is an artificial and useless legal definition, which affects some commonly-used target rifles.
2) “More Guns, Less Crime.” Between 1991-2002, violent crime has decreased while private gun ownership has increased.
3) Assault weapons are infrequently used in crime in the U.S. and pro-regulation pundits misuse information to suggest otherwise. (There is no mention of Mexico in the fact sheet.) Citing a 1997 Urban Institute study which noted that “the banned guns and magazines were never used in more than a fraction of all gun murders,” the NRA ignores the issue of the fraction of all assault weapons used for criminal versus legal activity. That is, what other incentives exist for purchasing or owning a semiautomatic assault rifle?
4) Ownership of these guns is a constitutional right. According to the fact sheet, “‘Who needs an assault weapon,’ the anti-gun lobby asks. The premise of that question is, however, at odds with basic American principles.” This is fundamental to the NRA’s argument, and goes hand-in-hand with the widely held belief among their supporters that, in the words of a wise YouTube commenter, “Any ban is just the first step in a total ban.” [expletives omitted]

• 3 page article + slide show + video + interactive graphic = now that’s coverage! Not to be left out of the ever-increasing US media coverage of the drug war in Mexico, the New York Times recently published a comprehensive article discussing the challenges posed by the illegal gun trade. They wisely point out that this is not just a problem of the laws on the books, but also, centrally, of enforcement.

• New State Department fact sheets on the e-Trace system, here and here.

Great editorial from the New York Times today about the effect of “permissive” US gun laws on narco-violence in Mexico. In the words of the Times editorial board, “There should be enormous shame on this side of the border that America’s addiction to drugs is bolstered by its feckless gun controls.”

• Adam Isacson at the Center for International Policy’s “Plan Colombia and Beyond” blog sheds light on the new generation of criminal groups that have risen in Colombia following the official demobilization of the paramilitaries, profiling several known leadership figures. Nevertheless, Isacson warns that,

According to Colombia’s “New Rainbow” think-tank, which has performed extensive research on Colombia’s new paramilitary generation, there are more than 100 new militias, many of whose members and leaders have past relations with old paramilitary groups. They use about 21 different names, are active in 246 of Colombia’s 1,100 municipalities (counties), and have a combined membership estimated at about 10,000. They are cultivating ties with regional economic and political leaders. They often work with the guerrillas on the drug business. They also threaten and kill human-rights defenders, labor leaders, indigenous and afro-Colombian leaders, and independent journalists.

• The US State Department released a new travel advisory for Mexico, with some serious warnings about border violence:

Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades. Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez… The situation in northern Mexico remains fluid; the location and timing of future armed engagements cannot be predicted.

• The FBI investigates whether billionaire Sir Allen Stanford was involved in money laundering schemes with Mexico’s ultra-violent Gulf cartel.

• What are the effects of enhanced sentences in “drug-free school zones” in the US? In a recent article with the spectacular title “You’re Probably in a Drug-Free School Zone Right Now,” the Boston Phoenix highlights the negative consequences, including the disproportionate jailing of urban minorities. The Phoenix cites a 2001 study by William Brownsberger, former Co-Chair of the Harvard Interdisciplinary Working Group on Drugs and Addictions, which found that, “because of the high density of schools in high-poverty and high-crime areas (almost all of Boston falls into enhancement zones), about 80 percent of drug arrests occurred in school zones, though less than one percent of drug cases involved sales to minors.”

• More than 50 members of the US Congress have written a letter to President Obama asking his administration to enforce the ban on imported assault weapons. Regarding the need to enforce the already-existing ban, the letter states,

This ban – first established nearly 20 years ago – was authorized by provisions in the 1968 Gun Control Act allowing ATF to prohibit the importation of firearms and ammunition that are not “particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.” The import restriction is independent of the Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, and was not affected by its “sunset” in 2004.

The ban on assault weapon imports was first enforced by the George H.W. Bush Administration in response to growing threats to law enforcement personnel from the increased use of assault weapons by drug traffickers and in mass shootings, like the Stockton schoolyard massacre in 1989. The import restrictions were later strengthened in 1998 by the Clinton Administration to address foreign manufacturers that were evading the ban by making minor cosmetic changes to their weapons. The definition was changed to include any assault rifle with the “ability to accept a detachable large capacity magazine originally designed and produced for a military assault weapon.”

Unfortunately, in recent years, ATF has quietly abandoned enforcement of the import ban. As a result, the civilian firearms market is flooded with imported, inexpensive military-style assault weapons from primarily former Eastern bloc countries including Romania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslavia. Importers are also able to skirt the restrictions by bringing in assault weapons parts and reassembling them with a small number of US-made parts. Assault weapon “parts kits” for assembly by individuals are also being imported. ATF has further weakened the prohibition by placing certain extremely problematic assault rifles on the “curios or relics” list, making certain firearms automatically eligible for importation.

Congressman Elliot Engel (D-NY) — who wrote the letter along with Michael Castle (R-DE) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) — specifically cites the violence in Mexico as a reason to return to enforcement of this ban.

• A Canadian study finds no link between distribution of medical heroin and crime at the neighborhood level.

** Police patrol the Paraisopolis favela in Sao Paolo, Brazil (Photo courtesy of AP/Nelson Antoine).

• Brazilian police have occupied four Sao Paolo shanty-towns in the largest operation since 2006, designed in part to rid the slums of drug traffickers. Nine Brazilians are detained, according to the New York Times, and ten are counted dead. The Times article recounts how the operation occurs just as Brazil is pushing a new, community-based policing model.

• Marijuana is the “king crop” of Mexican cartels, says the DEA’s Mexico and Central America regional director, in a New York Times article: “It consistently sustains its marketability and profitability.” Mexican organizations are also moving marijuana crops inside the US and developing more advanced trafficking technology to avoid detection, the Times reports.

• Meanwhile, the Mexican Attorney General’s office finds that the Gulf cartel is the country’s most violent, just days before a high-ranking former general and security adviser is killed in Cancún, where this cartel operates.

• Obama’s new Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, vows increased interdiction efforts against drug trafficking from the US to Mexico, but says she hasn’t “thought about” asking Congress to reinstate the Federal Assault Weapons ban.

• The Center for International Policy’s “Plan Colombia and Beyond” blog has two great English translations of recent, revealing interviews out of Colombia.

The first, from ex-paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, who was extradited to the US last year on drug trafficking charges, details the economy of the cocaine trade in Colombia:

There are 160,000 hectares [of coca in Colombia] that produce 80,000 kilograms per month, which equals 1,000 tons per year, which is worth US$7 billion. Where does that statistic come from? The campesino sells it to whoever transforms it [into cocaine] (in general, guerrilla or paramilitary commanders) who then sells it to narcotraffickers. They buy coca base for $2.5-3.0 million pesos [more than US$1,000], transform it, paying $400,000-450,000 pesos [nearly US$200] for a laboratory to do the transformation, and sell it to narcotraffickers for $4.5 million pesos [about US$1,800]. … From every kilo they [the armed group] are getting more or less another million pesos [just under US$500] or maybe a little more due to corruption… It means that about US$7 billion enters the torrent of the national economy every year. How much of that do they repatriate? They repatriate between 80 and 90 percent, with the rest they buy luxury properties and stupid things overseas. But the rest enters the torrent of the national economy.

The second comes from Alan Jara, the former governor of Meta department who was released by the FARC along with three other hostages on Monday:

I’m going to tell another story to illustrate the reach that the FARC have today. One day we arrived in an area where, apparently, there was nothing. There, they were cooking with firewood. I said to the comandante: ‘This wood is making a lot of smoke, we can’t keep cooking without a gasoline stove.’ The next day, the stove was there. They started to cook, but the stove used up a lot of gasoline and the beans they were cooking wouldn’t soften. ‘Why don’t you get a pressure cooker?’ I asked jokingly. And the next day the pressure cooker was there. So, with that demonstration of how they operate, we arrived at a stream at about 11 or 12:00 at night. After walking I don’t know where, it is impossible to say, there was a boat waiting for us. After half an hour, another boat launched, picked us up and we arrived at a site where, with lanterns, from the bank, they signaled that we had to get off at that point.

• Swiss police find a massive marijuana plantation using Google Earth, the Telegraph reports.

**The US-Mexican border; photo courtesy of Monica Almeida/The New York Times

• Beltrán Leyva versus the Zetas (again): El Universal reports that the alliance between the Beltrán Levya cartel and the Zetas (cemented May of last year) may be over, after local police detained several heavily armed Beltrán Levya members on their way to run out Zetas from Jalisco. An interesting detail from the article is that the Tonalá police called the Army directly for back-up, instead of other local or federal police.

• Two US Senators (Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-TX) proposed a bill today that would give the Justice Department’s “Project Gunrunner Initiative” some $30 million more to target arms smuggling across the US-Mexico border, including funding to hire and train an additional 80 agents.

• Meanwhile, Obama and Calderón met in Washington today to discuss the bilateral relationship. To the press, they mostly spoke about cooperation in general terms. (No mention of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban!) See coverage in the Dallas News here. Every English-language news source I read included this line, spoken by Calderón to the press in English: “The more secure Mexico is, the more secure the U.S. will be.”

• The IHT guides us to a recently released report from the United States Joint Forces Command, “Joint Operating Environment 2008″, which cites fears of a possible collapse of the Mexican government. According to the Small Wars Journal, the report is designed to discuss “the future operating environment and their implication for the future joint force” and to “spark discussions with the widest set of national security and multinational partners about the nature of the future security environment and its potential military requirements.” Of Mexico, the Joint Force writes:

In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico… [While state failure in Mexico is less likely than in Pakistan,] the government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state.

The article also states succinctly the big question regarding recent high-level corruption that has emerged as part of Calderón’s “Operation Cleanup”: “Depending on one’s view, the arrests are successes in a publicly declared anticorruption drive or evidence of how deeply criminal mafias have penetrated the organs of the state.”

• The coup in Guinea isn’t making anyone more confident about the drug situation there. Per Reuters,

In recent years, U.N. anti-narcotics experts say Guinea and its neighbours have faced a serious threat to their stability from Colombian drug-trafficking cartels using the West African coast as a transit hub to smuggle cocaine to Europe. “There were reports that drug-traffickers had infiltrated all structures, including law enforcement and the military apparatus,” said Antonio Mazzitelli, the representative in West Africa of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The junta leader has promised a crack down on drugs. But some of the soldiers who support him were among those who ransacked the offices of the counter-narcotics unit in June, destroying all records, when they put down a police mutiny.

• Photo-journalist Alessandro Scotti, a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has created a photo essay about individuals affected by the drug trade in the “Golden Triangle” of Thailand, Laos and Burma.

• Several state prosecutors in the Philippines are facing indefinite leave from their work, after DEA officials received a tip (via text message!) that they were accepting bribes to dismiss drug charges against wealthy Filipinos. According to the AP article, “Senior anti-narcotics agents have repeatedly warned that the Philippine anti-drugs campaign could be compromised because of loopholes in the justice system.”

• The DEA has released new photos of the Tijuana cartel’s “most wanted.”

**Photo of poppies in Afghanistan, courtesy of Goran Tomasevic/Reuters.

• The New York Times reports that some NATO members are objecting to counter-narcotics missions in Afghanistan, citing conflicts with domestic laws. The US officially convinced NATO members in October to include attacks on narcotics “facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency” in their missions. Nevertheless, according to the Times, some NATO members are concerned “that domestic lawsuits could be filed if their soldiers carried out attacks to kill noncombatants, even if the victims were involved in the drug industry in Afghanistan.” According to General David McKiernan, the senior American commander in Afghanistan:

[S]ome of the precise language still needs to be worked out… [Specifically, rules of engagement that] give us greater freedom of action to treat narco-figures and facilities as military objectives.

• Juan Cole, meanwhile, helps us follow the movement of Afghanistan’s heroin from Iran to Iraq.

• How could the coup in Guinea affect the global drug trade? Chris Blattman is worried about the region, pointing to a UN study on Guinea’s use as a transit point of drugs from Latin America to Europe. Indeed, as the UNODC representative for the region told TIME recently, “What we fear is a replica of the Mexico situation.”

• Prosecutors and police raise questions as the Massachusetts marijuana decriminalization law goes into effect, the Boston Globe reports.

• The Los Angeles city council approved a strict set of gun control laws last week, while the AP reports that Houston is the top source for firearms reaching Mexico.

• Governing Through Crime dissects the popular obsession with the super-narco.

• An El Paso reporter likens violence in Juarez to a war-zone in “Baghdad, Mexico.”

• From Reuters: Conflict between the Shining Path and the state has increased since August, when the Peruvian government began sending soldiers into coca-growing regions.

• The Dallas Monthly News reviews the “increasingly sophisticated propaganda” of Mexican drug cartels, highlighting the narcomantas.

• The Guardian produces an excellent series on Afghanistan’s heroin trade. See here and here.

**Mexican soldiers bury their fallen comrades in Guerrero. Photo courtesy of the AP.

• Decapitations in Mexico’s drug war spread to Guerrero, with eight soldiers and one former director of the state preventive police found dead near Chilpancingo, the state capital. Washington Post coverage of the deaths includes a great quote from Friday’s meeting between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mexico’s foreign affairs secretary, Patricia Espinosa, in Washington:

[Rice] said she saw no connection between a 2004 decision by the Bush administration to let a ban on assault weapons expire and the escalating violence in Mexico, which often involves assassinations by military-style commandos armed with automatic weapons… “I follow arms trafficking across the world, and I’ve never known illegal arms traffickers who cared very much about the law,” Rice said.

• Abuse of prescription drugs among Iraqi troops up, thanks to a booming black market, reports the New York Times.

• Ted Galen Carpenter of the libertarian Cato Institute challenges the claims of the recent DEA report and asks, “What is the DEA Smoking?”

• The New York Times has a nicely-written article on drug rehabilitation in the US and the move toward evidence-based treatments. The author cites two interesting legal changes to support more effective treatment for addicts:

1) The Mental Health Parity Act of 2007, passed by Congress, “which for the first time includes addiction treatment under a federal law requiring that insurers cover mental and physical ailments at equal levels.”

2) In Oregon, the state legislature passed Senate Bill 267 in 2003, requiring that programs receiving state funds use evidence-based rehabilitation practices. While the article focuses on Oregon, it also highlights “practice-based evidence,” such as the incentive program designed by the Delaware Division of Substance Abuse and Mental Health. In Delaware, “clinics could earn a bonus of up to 5 percent, for instance, if they kept a high percentage of addicts coming in at least weekly and ensured that those clients met their own goals…”

Deserving of an article in itself is the estimate cited by the Times of American drug users who could benefit from treatment but aren’t getting it: 20 million.

**Mexican soldier with seized marijuana plants; courtesy of the AP.

A few links to start off the week:

• The US Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas reports a significant increase in the amount of marijuana flowing across the border from Mexico, due in part to pressure from the Mexican government. Calderón’s crackdown on Mexican traffickers, according to Border Patrol spokesman John López, has led them to divert their routes from the western to the eastern part of the Rio Grande Valley. Yet López also cites the harvest season (October to early December) as a cause for the increase:

“The same way farmers grow and harvest their crops, narcotics dealers have fields of marijuana hidden away and they harvest it the same way a farmer would.”

…Except in this case, when Border Patrol finds it, they burn it.

• The New York Times has a probing piece on Bill Clinton’s drug czar General Barry McCaffrey, and his work as a consultant for a private military company and on cable news.

• The State Department releases two new fact sheets about the Mérida Initiative. In “Explaining the Merida Initiative: Myths, Facts, and Sound Policy,” a strong response to the question about the US not doing enough on its side of the border:

“We continue to make progress in reducing the demand for illicit drugs in the United States. Cocaine use among 18-25 year-olds, the leading demographic in the U.S., dropped 23% between 2006 and 2007. Cocaine positive tests in the workplace, with no breakdown by age, dropped 19% in the same time period. Additionally, we are increasing resources to U.S. federal agencies responsible for preventing weapons from entering Mexico and Central America from our territory, and we are implementing new strategies to track the flow of bulk cash out of the United States.”

(Note the absence of a mention of the Assault Weapons Ban.)

• The State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs posts what appears to be the very first edition of their newsletter, “The INL Beat.” All sounds pretty positive!

• The Kaibiles, an elite corps of Guatemalan soldiers who committed a number of massacres during the 1960-96 civil war, are serving as peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The fabulous bloggers at Wronging Rights report concern that the notorious Kaibil training may negatively impact their work as blue helmets, and reference reports from 2005 linking former Kaibiles to Mexican drug cartels. Indeed, earlier this year the Mexican Attorney General’s office confirmed information regarding the existence of at least six camps along the US-Mexico border where ex-Kaibiles are training groups of Zetas, the Gulf Cartel’s famously vicious gunmen. It appears that the Zetas are taking advantage of Calderón’s crackdown and their superior skills to stake out their own claim in the trafficking business as the capos fall.

• Old but unfortunately still very relevant: Time photoessays on Mexico’s Drug Wars and The Battle for Culiacán