Drugs, Law and Conflict

A wall separating two slums in Rio de Janeiro, occupied by police after eight young people were kidnapped. Photo courtesy of Douglas Engle/Australfoto, via The Guardian.

The Guardian recently highlighted “Dancing With the Devil,” a documentary about violence in Rio de Janeiro’s slums. Professor Silvia Ramos of Brazil’s Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania writes,

Rio de Janeiro is no stranger to the sound of gunfire or to images of out-of-breath policemen sprinting into the favelas. Each week the newspapers are filled with pictures of bulletproof vehicles and automatic weapons, of gun-battles and drug busts, of people being arrested and people being killed.

But Dancing With The Devil shows us something we have never before seen on the big screen: the faces of Rio’s drug traffickers and policemen, who tell their stories staring straight into the camera, without disguises or masks.

See a clip of the film here.

**A wall pierced by bullet holes in a botched drug raid in Sinaloa, Mexico, via TIME.

Thanks to WOLA for alerting us to Rep. Eliot Engel’s bill H.R. 2134, which would create a commission to evaluate US drug policy in the Western Hemisphere. I’m pleased to see the commission plans to focus not just on (much-needed) assessment of Plan Colombia and Merida Initiative aid, but also explicitly on demand in the US, including existing prevention and treatment programs. Also quite welcome is an exploration of current cooperation mechanisms with foreign governments, NGOs and regional bodies.

See the full text of the legislation here, and testimony from WOLA’s John Walsh before the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere here.

Update 10/23: See testimony from Crisis Group’s Mark Schneider before the subcommittee here.

Human Rights Watch is hiring researchers for Brazil and Mexico, two countries where they have strong work related to rights violations in the drug war.

They recently released an important 76-page report on Mexico, “Uniform Impunity,” focusing on the lack of justice for human rights abuses committed during counter-drug and public security operations. The Mexico country page features all related letters, reports and denuncias. Job description for the researcher here.

In Brazil, HRW’s work has focused on the abysmal prison system and police violence. See the country page for more information, and check out the Brazil job description here.

Part 3 of a 4-part weeklong series

**Peruvian children walk on dried coca leaves spread over a soccer field in the Vizcatán region of Peru. Photo courtesy of Moises Saman for the NYTimes.

• A resurgence of the Shining Path in Peru? Thank the cocaine trade. The revival of what was considered a basically defunct guerrilla group, however limited, highlights the essential issue of rural poverty in the Andes and the need for viable alternative crops. The New York Times reports,

The front lines lie in the drizzle-shrouded jungle of Vizcatán, a 250-square-mile region in the Apurímac and Ene River Valley. The region is Peru’s largest producer of coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine…

“There are those who say, ‘Why worry about a few hundred fighters in the jungle?’ ” said Alberto Bolívar, a counterinsurgency expert. “But they easily forget the Shining Path began their armed struggle in 1980 with just a few hundred guys. Two decades later, 70,000 people were dead.”

But the Shining Path appears to have learned lessons, too. Coca farmers here describe today’s Maoists as a disciplined, well-armed force, entering villages in groups of 20 in crisp black uniforms. Little is known about their leaders, aside from the belief that two brothers, Victor Quispe Palomino, known as José, and Jorge Quispe Palomino, alias Raúl, are at the helm.

The photo slide show by Peruvian photographer Moises Saman is beautifully mind-blowing, and an absolute must-see.

• Mexican government claims drug-related violence down 26% in the first quarter of 2009. Milenio cites President Calderón saying that narco-executions have decreased in two of the country’s most violent cities–Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez–by a dramatic 78% and 82% respectively since October-December 2008. See the graph provided:

The Washington Post points out that claims of human rights abuses by the military in these entities have increased, with the exceptional nature of Calderón’s strategy:

The military occupation of Juarez, an industrial city of 1.3 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso, is the most extreme example of Calderón’s high-risk strategy of using the army to confront Mexico’s powerful drug cartels. Besieged city officials signed an agreement surrendering responsibility for civilian law enforcement to the military.

The Juarez police department is now under the command of a retired three-star general and a dozen top military officers handpicked by Mexico’s defense secretary. Soldiers are the cops — they write traffic tickets, investigate domestic disputes, arrest drunks and run every department, including the jail, the training academy and the emergency call center.

More than 10,000 soldiers and federal agents patrol Juarez’s gritty streets. Dressed in green camouflage and carrying automatic weapons, they stage raids, detain suspects, and search travelers at the airport and border crossings, assuming unprecedented law enforcement duties.

• Obama in Mexico last week. The White House released a press release citing advances in the bilateral relationship following Obama’s visit to Mexico City. Most interesting, perhaps, is the designation of the Sinaloa Cartel, Los Zetas (not the Gulf Cartel), and La Familia Michoacana as “Significant Foreign Narcotics Traffickers,” thereby “exposing them and their associates to financial sanctions under the U.S. Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.” The LA Times explains that Alan Bersin, an “aggressive former federal prosecutor credited with taming a once-lawless area of the region,” is to be named Obama’s border czar. Also, the Mexican government has approved Carlos Pascual as the new US ambassador; he now awaits Senate confirmation.

• El Chapo Guzmán: the world’s most controversial billionaire? Forbes named Mexico’s most wanted drug trafficker on its annual billionaires list, to much chagrin. (A Slate blogger questions how much money El Chapo and other traffickers could actually be raking in.) In what has become a major scandal, Durango-based Roman Catholic Archbishop Hector Gonzalez claimed over the weekend that “everyone knows” where El Chapo lives in this state and yet the government does nothing. (Does this lend power to the claims of La Reina del Pacífico?)

• The capture of Don Mario: “One capo goes down, another takes his place.” TIME reports on the potentially violent fall-out from the Colombian government’s successful capture of Medellín-based narco-paramilitary Don Mario. The Center for International Policy’s Plan Colombia and Beyond blog has links to media coverage and a profile of Don Mario.

• Building walls around Rio’s favelas: protecting the environment, or defending against narcos? El Pais reports (in Spanish) on the security wall constructed around the favela of Morro Dona Marta, which appears to serve a dual purpose. Dona Marta is one of the favelas occupied by the military police last year as part of the government’s aggressive new clear-and-hold strategy. The Guardian featured an interesting op-ed on the wall issue a few months back, clearly pointing out the rights issues involved.

• A decade of the drug war in numbers. From Adam Isacson at the Center for International Policy, “a compendium of drug war statistics.”

• New resources: The Citizens’ Institute for the Study of Crime (ICESI; Instituto Ciudadano de Estudios sobre la Inseguridad) has released its 5th annual victimization survey, a well-respected project which serves to help understand the incidence of crime in Mexico and its reporting. Also, Brookings’ Vanda Felbab-Brown published last month a fascinating paper entitled “The Violent Drug Market in Mexico and Lessons from Colombia”–a recommended read.

**Soldiers in Sierra Leone; photo courtesy of Reuters.

• The “biggest drugs trial in West African history” starts in Sierra Leone after the seizure of more than $40 million of cocaine. According to the UK-based Telegraph,

The twin-engined Cessna 441, carrying Venezuela’s national flag beneath fake Red Cross insignia, landed at Lungi airport last July with 703kg of cocaine. To extend its range, 34 containers filled with aviation fuel were in the rear of the plane. By pumping the vital liquid into the engines, the crew had kept the Cessna airborne for the trans-Atlantic flight…

Senior politicians have been mentioned during the trial, notably Ibrahim Kemoh Sesay, the transport minister. His brother, Ahmed, is among the accused.

• California State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano presents legislation to legalize and regulate the cultivation and sale of marijuana in the state, with the Marijuana Control, Regulation, and Education Act (text here). The plan would prohibit the sale of marijuana to anyone under 21, while bringing the state an estimated $1.3 billion a year (in tax revenue and a $50 fee to be imposed on registered retail outlets per ounce). According to the San Francisco Chronicle, an analysis from California’s tax collecting agency found that “legalizing marijuana would drop its street value by 50 percent and increase consumption of the substance by 40 percent.” As for the federal prohibition on marijuana, Ammiano said recently, “It’s not my nature and it’s not in California’s history to wait around for the feds.”

• The Department of Justice claims success against the Sinaloa cartel upon completion of “Operation Xcellerator.” See DOJ press release here. The DOJ will also end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, Attorney General Eric Holder says.

• In the coming weeks, the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold hearings on Mexico’s drug violence, reports Reuter. According to Committee Chair Sen. Joseph Lieberman, “The recent escalation of violence along the southern border demands our immediate attention… We must assess border security programs and plans in place and we must review the readiness of federal, state, and local law enforcement.” The first hearing will occur in Washington DC on March 25; the second will be in Arizona in April.

• The LA Times reports that 5,000 more Mexican troops will be sent to Ciudad Juárez, to support the 1,600 local police, 2,000 soldiers and 425 federal police officers already there. This just a few days after Roberto Orduña Cruz, the city’s police chief, quit “after several officers were slain and someone posted threats saying more would be killed unless he stepped down.”

• In Foreign Policy, Robert Haddick from Small Wars Journal asks if Mexico is dealing with a crime problem, or war. Using the US Defense Department’s definition of irregular warfare (”a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations”), Haddick argues that “Mexico’s struggle against the drug cartels seems more like a counterinsurgency campaign than a fight against crime.”

• Ex-president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, one of the co-chairs of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, answers questions about the Commission’s recommendations in Foreign Policy.

• Quote of the week: “I confess I feel somewhat frustrated.”–Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime

A number of important reports on international drug control have been released recently.

• Today, the UN released the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) Annual Report. The report highlights new supply routes through the Balkans and West Africa into Europe, and the falling price of cocaine. Check out related articles here and here.

• The South East Asia Opium Survey, issued by the UNODC, “shows that the region, once notorious as heroin’s Golden Triangle, has a limited opium problem that is concentrated in just one region of Myanmar.” According to UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa, “This is a drug control success story.”

• The UNODC’s Opium Winter Assessment finds “a likely reduction in the amount of opium grown in Afghanistan in 2009.”

• The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, headed by the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, released its main findings in a much talked-about statement entitled, “Drugs and Democracy: Toward a Paradigm Shift.” The report is worth a read in its entirety, but essentially calls for an end to the “failed war” against drugs and a re-framing of international efforts–toward consumption reduction, alternative development, decriminalization of marijuana, and public health, plus a redirection of repressive strategies toward high-level traffickers.

**The Mexican Federal Police present detainees and seized contraband from an operation against hitmen for the the Beltrán Leyva cartel in the state of Mexico.

• The Wall Street Journal reports on the detention of 10 hitmen for the Beltrán Levya cartel near Mexico City. The group, which includes two minors, were supposedly sent to deal with rivals from “La Familia Michoacana” in the state of Mexico, and took orders from the infamous Edgar Valdez Villarreal, aka “La Barbie.” El Economista adds that the police are investigating the possibility of collusion between the cartel and the municipal police in Tultitlán and Cuautitlán. Several interesting profiles of “La Barbie” — in English, from the New York Times and Dallas News, and Spanish — highlight his ruthlessness and role as Beltrán Levya’s chief muscle.

• Mexican gunmen tragically kill a state police officer and 10 of his family members in Tabasco, reports the LA Times.

• The UK Home Office announces that the price of cocaine and heroin has fallen dramatically. As far as press coverage goes, the Metro newspaper wins for most alarmist headline: “Line of cocaine costs less than coffee.”

• Ecstasy use in Brazil up among wealthy youth, as the upper and middle classes import from Europe, and the police respond with… corruption? According to the New York Times piece,

Ecstasy’s emergence as the drug of Brazil’s wealthy has opened the door even wider for corrupt police officers to seize upon users and their families. Now that Brazil has eliminated prison sentences for drug users, sending them to treatment or community service instead, the police are extracting sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for not charging those caught with Ecstasy as drug dealers, according to defense lawyers and three convicted drug dealers now out of prison…

[T]he image of machine gun-wielding drug bandits is the furthest thing from the minds of users who have found themselves in handcuffs for selling Ecstasy, or sometimes for sharing a few pills with friends. “They refer to drug dealers as ‘them,’ the guys in the slums,” [Sao Paolo Police] Superintendent Magno said.

Drug laws in Brazil protect those who have completed a university degree, placing them in special prisons. But even one credit short of graduation means being dumped in with the general prison population.

Meanwhile, Argentina debates decriminalizing possession of illicit drugs, amid rising domestic ecstasy and cocaine consumption.

• West African police are being trained in Colombia in counter-drugs tactics, in a program sponsored by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime and the European Commission. The LA Times article notes that police from seven countries (Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa and Togo) are to receive two weeks of training from Latin American, British, US and Spanish counter-drug agents in Bogotá.

• A New York Times profile of Gil Kerlikowse, tapped to be Obama’s drug czar.

• Michael Phelps faces no criminal charges for the marijuana photo, but does lose a sponsorship deal with Kellogg. SNL asks, “Really!?!”.

• New “Above the Influence” anti-marijuana PSA out in the US: (via Videogum)

** 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.

• In this week’s Newsweek, Adam Kushner challenges the effectiveness of Plan Colombia and the logic of counter-drug policies which seek cartel fragmentation:

Meanwhile, the fragmenting drug trade makes crackdowns even tougher. Before Uribe became president, the drug trade was managed by three vertically integrated groups that controlled every aspect of the business, often through violence, intimidation and bribery. After years of intense battle, the government broke them up in the 1990s by arresting or killing their leaders and wrecking infrastructures. That helped stem the violence, and Uribe’s subsequent assault on the FARC terrorist group brought urban crime rates to new lows. But the destruction of the cartels left a vacuum that was filled by more specialized criminal groups…

The article closes with serious doubts as to the endgame for Colombia and the U.S., as Plan Colombia yields diminishing returns on the drug front.

• Mexico, then, is just 20 years behind Colombia, according to a U.S. Senate aide quoted in the Dallas Morning News. “The endgame here is to debilitate [the Mexican cartels] to the point where they cannot function the same way,” the aide is quoted as saying. “We’re trying to reduce it from the existential problem threatening democracy in Mexico and law enforcement.” (More on “existential threats” here.) The problem is so critical in places like Ciudad Juárez, which closed 2008 with 1,600 drug-related murders (a warlike homicide rate of 100 per 100,000), that some officials are referring to them as “failed cities,” according to the News.

• …and two more disturbing pieces of news from the same News article. First, a U.S. intelligence official warns that “all bets are off” with Mexican cartels, and that Americans may be targeted in Mexico via car bombs outside embassies or attacks on “specific individuals,” as the stakes are raised. Second, assistance to Mexico from the Mérida Initiative may take twice as long as scheduled to arrive in Mexico (six years instead of three), as a result of the economic crisis in the U.S.

• Rumors of a truce between Mexican cartels surface as violence affects profits, while the gruesome violence in Tijuana reminds us that such truces are unstable. From the San Diego Tribune:

[Tijuana's killers] belong to a new generation of criminals operating with fewers controls as drug cartels evolve from traditional hierarchies to networks of smaller, semi-independent cells. “In the world of drug traffickers, alliances are always very fragile,” said Victor Clark, director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana who has studied cartels for years. “Ambition, large sums of money, all the different interests around make it an unstable activity in terms of alliances.”

• Kidnapping of Mexicans with family in the US causing fear in Zacatecas, leading some to move northward, the New York Times reports.

• The federal guidelines past last year to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine are leading to some complicated court cases, reports the Washington Post. Since the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s guidelines are being applied retroactively (over Bush administration objections), thousands of inmates are now able to petition judges for shorter sentences.

In weighing the requests, judges must evaluate several factors, including criminal records and the amount of crack the offenders were convicted of possessing or distributing. Then there are the intangibles. Some judges want a strong indication that offenders are remorseful for their conduct…

The biggest legal issue facing the cases is whether judges can reduce sentences below the new guideline ranges. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the guidelines, once mandatory, were only advisory. To appease concerns about sentence reductions being larger than intended under the new rules, the commission said judges could not resentence offenders to terms below the new ranges. But [one assistant federal public defender] has persuaded three judges to do just that, winning immediate release for two inmates.

• A bill before the state legislature in Rio de Janeiro is sparking a debate over the relationship between organized crime and funk music from Brazil’s favelas. The Guardian reports:

A bill due to be voted on early this year in Rio’s state legislature would elevate funk to a sort of protected culture, outlawing “any type of social, racial or cultural discrimination against the funk movement and its followers”. But the proposal has highlighted tensions between Rio’s many funk aficionados and those who say funk lyrics encourage underage sex and organised crime…

Members of Rio’s police force also claim many funk parties are frequented by drug-traffickers who use the events to increase cocaine sales. Last year one of Rio’s most powerful military policemen, Colonel Marcus Jardim, provoked outrage among the city’s funkeiros with his views. “Funk parties in the favelas are meetings for scumbags,” he told reporters, claiming drug traffickers used the parties to sell more drugs. “I do not have the power to prohibit these dances but I can make their realisation more difficult.”

**Update: The US Department of Justice has released the National Threat Drug Assessment for 2009. Download it here.

• Mexico’s attorney general warns, “We’re still seeing the curve [of homicide rates] rise. We still haven’t reached the peak of violence.” As the BBC article notes, Medina Mora “stressed that Mexico’s overall murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants is 11, compared with 33 in Colombia or 50 in El Salvador.” Still, the number of executions jumped some 117% during 2008.

• News in US-Mexico cooperation: The director of the FBI meets with Mexican officials, while private security company DynCorp (last reported on here in October) is getting ready to do some work redesigning the Mexican judicial system, according to Milenio.

• The New York Times reports on the effect of drug trafficking in Brazil near the border with Colombia. Although traffickers have used the area since the 1970s, the local police superintendent tells the Times that Colombian president Álvaro Uribe’s crackdown on the guerrillas has caused a greater spillover of drugs into Brazil. According to the article, “The federal police in Manaus have seized more than two tons of cocaine this year, about 1,700 pounds in November alone.”

And several outstanding resources on Afghanistan:
• Frontline special “The War Briefing” discusses the challenge, from poppies to Pakistan.
• A look into the Afghan police: “Letter from Pashmul: Policing Afghanistan,” in The New Yorker.
• An interview with Christina Oguz, Country Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan. Best lines: 1) “Drug reduction its still a major major major major problem so there remains a lot to do, to say the least.” (That’s four ‘major’s, now…); 2) “The reduction [of poppy cultivation] is in the areas where there is a government. The rest of the 98 per cent of the production is in the areas where the government has lost control; areas which are controlled by a kind of alliance of insurgents, corrupt officials and criminal networks.” (The problem, of course, is that the government seems to be losing control fast.)