Drugs, Law and Conflict

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.

**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.