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.

**The Nogales port of entry at night. Photo by Simon Norfolk for the NYTimes, via (Notes on) Politics, Theory and Photography.

The US and Mexican governments have reached an agreement to refer some Mexicans caught in the US for drug smuggling, on a case-by-case basis, to the Mexican criminal justice system for prosecution.

The New York Times reports that the agreement is being tested in Nogales, on the Arizona-Sonora border, and will be implemented all along the border if deemed successful. Authorities chose Nogales because it is a relatively “controlled setting,” which allows for simpler prosecutions. The Times explains how the new plan works, based on its first test case:

The first referral, last weekend, involved Eleazar González-Sánchez, 27, of Sonora, Mexico. He was detained, Customs and Border Protection officers said, after they found the marijuana hidden in a compartment in the trunk of the car he was driving.

Mr. González-Sánchez was turned over to immigration agents, who, after consulting with federal prosecutors in the United States, informed Mexico’s attorney general’s office.

Mexican prosecutors reviewed the evidence, including sworn affidavits from United States law enforcement officials, and agreed to accept the case, taking custody of Mr. González-Sánchez and a sample of the marijuana for use in the prosecution.

What’s particularly interesting about this development is that the cases most likely to be referred to Mexico are those which US federal prosecutors often reject as too insignificant, and which state and local prosecutors fail to take up based on insufficient resources. Where previously (and still, along the rest of the border) this situation will lead to simple deportation proceedings, these individuals will now be brought into the criminal justice system, with all that entails. How this will turn out for Mexico remains to be seen…

**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.

Mexico City’s historic center. Photo via Luis A. De Jesus R.

President Calderón finally signed a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs yesterday, four months after Mexico’s congress approved it. This law, while viewed by many as controversial, is not a surprise: it was even proposed by ex-president Vicente Fox, before he vetoed it under pressure.

See news coverage from the AP, and in Spanish from El Universal. Also, policy analysis from Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Penales (in Spanish), and the UK-based Transform Drug Policy Foundation.

Blackwater planes dropping supplies to US troops in Afghanistan.

In the the Yucatan Peninsula in July, I had the fortune to run into two friendly engineers from Ciudad Juárez. Over a round of drinks, we shared thoughts on US-Mexico relations and the escalating drug war.

When the subject of US private security contractors came up, though, our lively conversation suddenly turned into a kind of interrogation. There are private citizens serving alongside the US military in Iraq? they asked me in disbelief. They assist with coca fumigation in Colombia, and then hire Colombians to go to the Middle East to share their experience with “urban terrorism”? And these contractors are largely unaccountable under the law?

Unfortunately, I responded.

Moreover, as Reuters reported recently and I scoped here last October, these companies are set to receive a huge amount of funds within the Merida Initiative. That is, most of the $1.4 billion promised to Mexico and Central America will never cross the border.

My new friends shook their heads. Pinches gringos.

And the story of private security firms in US anti-drug efforts just gets more and more interesting. Border Lines noted that last week’s Border Security Conference, attended by Janet Napolitano, was sponsored by big firms Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and SAIC, among others.

Then, yesterday, a truly interesting article from the New York Times on the role of Blackwater contractors in a CIA scheme to kill top al Qaeda leaders. According to the Times,

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program [from 2002-2009], which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects… Officials said that the C.I.A. program was devised partly as an alternative to missile strikes using drone aircraft, which have accidentally killed civilians and cannot be used in urban areas where some terrorists hide.

(We can see that Blackwater, now Xe Services, really covers its bases via today’s Times article, which reveals they also have contracts to assemble the drones.)

Let’s look briefly at how the CIA program developed:

- Although the CIA is banned from carrying out assassinations thanks to a 1976 presidential order, targeted killing of al Qaeda members was considered exempt, since it’s considered to be parallel to attacking enemy soldiers in battle.

- Since the CIA had legal authority to kill al Qaeda leaders, Cheney told the agency there was no need to inform congress that they’d actually contracted out the work.

- The contracting was never “formal,” but through “individual agreements with top company officials.”

That Cheney. Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile… Seriously, though, these revelations have ramifications for US counterdrug activities in Afghanistan, especially considering the Senate just indicated a desire to include certain traffickers on the military’s joint integrated prioritized target list. There is certainly an argument to be made in favor of targeted killings of terrorists, as well as to the benefits associated with classifying insurgency-supporting drug lords as military targets. Yet it’s starting to seem feasible that if we continue in this direction, we could have a “war” between two groups formerly known as noncombatants: (private citizen) contractors, planning the killings of (private citizen) drug traffickers. Or do we already, Mr. Cheney?

US Marines in Helmand Province. Photo courtesy of Eros Hoagland via The New York Times.

On Monday, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations released a report entitled “Afghanistan’s Narco War: Breaking the Link Between Drug Traffickers and Insurgents,” which includes several revealing pieces of information.

First, as the LA Times reports,

The two spy agencies [the CIA and DIA] believe that Taliban leaders receive about $70 million a year from Afghanistan’s lucrative poppy crop — far lower than the $400-million estimate released last year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Now there’s a discrepancy for you. Apparently, the UNODC “is expected to revise its estimate of the drug money flowing to the Taliban, reducing the figure to about $125 million this year. U.N. analysts told Senate aides they had miscalculated the scope of the problem beyond Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where the Taliban is particularly strong.”

That, plus another “oops,” this time from the US side:

In one of its most disconcerting conclusions, the Senate report says the United States inadvertently contributed to the resurgent drug trade after the Sept. 11 attacks by backing warlords who derived income from the flow of illegal drugs. The CIA and U.S. Special Forces put such warlords on their payroll during the drive to overthrow the Taliban regime in late 2001.

“These warlords later traded on their stature as U.S. allies to take senior positions in the new Afghan government, laying the groundwork for the corrupt nexus between drugs and authority that pervades the power structure today,” the report says.

This reminds me of Peter Andreas’ fascinating research on Bosnia, where he found the postwar political and economic elite included smugglers who had proved essential to the war effort — an unintended result of the UN arms embargo.

Okay, so we supported drug-trafficking Afghan warlords. What do we do now? Along with the removal of aerial fumigation from the policy set, the Senate report lays out plans to include major drug traffickers in the military’s “joint integrated prioritized target list.” The New York Times clarifies, “That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time.” Designation for this list requires “two credible sources and substantial additional evidence” that the individual is a major trafficker, and is providing support to the insurgency.

Now, about those credible sources…

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.

In late April, RAND Europe released a report on the global drug market with damning evidence that the war on drugs is failing. Overall, the study found “no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced during the UNGASS period from 1998 to 2007.” Key points include:

• ”Drug retail prices have generally declined in Western countries, including those that increased the stringency of their enforcement against sellers, such as the U.K. and the U.S.A… There are no indications that drugs have become more difficult to obtain.”

• “Interventions against production can affect where drugs are produced… However, there is a lack of evidence that controls can reduce total global production. The same applies to trafficking.”

• “The ties to terrorism and armed insurrection are important but only in a few places, such as Afghanistan and Colombia.”

• “The study estimates a range for the total global cannabis retail market in 2005 between €40 Billion and €120 Billion, with the best estimate being about [€62.25 Billion].”

• “Enforcement of drug prohibitions has caused substantial unintended harms; many were predictable.”

Download the report here.

part 4 of a 4-part weeklong series

• The AFP offers a bleak but must-read portrait of the problems associated with increasing quantities of Afghan heroin passing through Pakistan, as the drug trade shifts:

Pakistan shares a 2,500-kilometre (1,560-mile) porous border with Afghanistan, which supplies 90 percent of the opium used to make heroin worldwide. As such, the largely lawless region is the key transit point for heroin, morphine and hashish heading west to Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Europe, and east to China.

As it passes through what has become the central theatre of the “war on terror,” cheap supplies are left behind for the locals, with one gram costing as little as 80 rupees (one dollar) in Karachi, the southern port on the Arabian Sea and Pakistan’s commercial hub.

The result? Overwhelmed security forces and 4 million drug addicts facing a “chronically underfunded and crumbling health system.” Note that the number of addicts is reported by the Pakistani Anti-Narcotics Force, “which is responsible for investigating and prosecuting drug offences”–ie, not a public health organism. This force, nevertheless, works in conjunction with paramilitary units to patrol the contested border. The article states that the most commonly abused drug in Pakistan is actually hashish, whose production is on the rise in Afghanistan as well. Unfortunately, authorities there are busy combating the opium trade. (Sorry, Pakistan.)

• Haji Juma Khan, one of Afghanistan’s leading opium traffickers, faces new charges in US court. Reuters reports that the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office revealed a superceding indictment including charges of narco-terrorism, conspiracy to fund and financing terrorism. The narco-terrorism charges are some of the first employed under the federal statute passed in 2006. The Guardian last year featured a long profile on the interesting character that is Khan: “an elderly, pious-looking Baluch tribesman” and yet “one of about 20 men who run Afghanistan’s £2bn heroin trade.”

• Success in Helmand? The Washington Times reports on recent successes in Helmand, including the capture of seven major players in the Afghan heroin trade:

While Afghanistan remains the world’s largest source of opium and heroin, the arrests have provided crucial information about the operations of complex South Asian drug syndicates and the links they have with extremists…

“In Afghanistan, you can’t separate drugs from terrorism,” [ex-DEA operations chief Michael] Braun said. “The drug traffickers are trying to destabilize the government, and it’s the same for the terrorists. They all thrive in the same ungoverned space.”

• Speaking of governance… Ashraf Ghani, a candidate in Afghanistan’s August presidential elections, has released a report with the Atlantic Council laying out recommendations for a ten-year plan. According to the Washington Post, the plan has four central components:

“The game changer is to produce a legitimate election that the next government of Afghanistan can have a mandate,” said Ghani, who is seen as an outside contender in the August 20 presidential vote.

Second, the international community needs to develop a coherent strategy to reverse a situation in which development aid efforts are often wasteful, unaccountable and prone to funneling most of the donors’ money to foreign experts and contractors, he said.

Ghani said the third element was new national programs modeled on relatively unheralded successes in Afghanistan such as the National Solidarity Program for rural development and the national telecommunications network.

Finally, eight of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces should be set up as model provinces — laboratories for reforms.

• An editorial in the Toronto Star suggests legalizing opium for medical purposes as part of a holistic counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. The authors write,

No, we’re not advocating the legalization of opium or heroin, but legalizing the poppy agriculture in Afghanistan with contracts to use the opiates to create medicine, like morphine and codeine…

Opiate-based painkillers are already available and cheap, but many under-privileged countries import little or none, largely because they fear the drug will lead to addiction and abuse. Meanwhile, their sick suffer needlessly. While these drugs can be highly addictive when used illegally, doctors in the western world have had great success in treating patients with opiates, and report low levels of addiction. With an aggressive education campaign on the benefits and realities of opiate-based painkillers, developing nations could cause an enormous swell to the world’s demand for poppies.

• Hezbollah relies on Mexican organized crime for smuggling drugs and humans into the US. According to authorities cited by the Washington Times, “The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America’s tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S.”

• …while local Lebanese traffickers target the military in a revenge attack. Last week, gunmen supposedly associated with the hashish and heroin-trafficking Jaafar clan attacked an army truck using small arms and a rocket-propelled grenade, killing five. According to the LA Times, the incident came as a response to the killing of a Jaafar clan patriarch of at an army checkpoint in late March.

• New resources: The Afghan Conflict Monitor has a wonderful Facts and Figures section regarding the drug trade which features a ton of information on three central issues: drugs production, opium trafficking routes and counternarcotics strategy.

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.