Drugs, Law and Conflict

**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…

Cocaine capsules are prepared for human smugglers who will ingest them and transport them to Europe. Photo courtesy Marco Vernaschi.

Hat tip to my friend Alexis for finding this haunting photoessay of the damage caused by drugs and violence in Guinea Bissau, courtesy of über-talented photographer Marco Vernaschi. The full set of photos is available here, and is very much worth seeing, even if hard to stomach.

The UNODC reported on West Africa’s increasing importance in the global drug trade last month in a 102-page report entitled “Transnational Trafficking and the Rule of Law in West Africa: A Threat Assessment.” The pdf is available here.

**Photo courtesy of the AP.

Harsh words from Richard Holbrooke, US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, on Saturday in announcing the end of US eradication policy. Calling eradication “a waste of money” and “a failure,” Holbrooke added that the US would use funds formerly dedicated to destroying poppy fields for “interdiction, rule of law, alternate crops.”

Wow. A big change indeed. But what’s next?

First, it’s important to recognize that the US is just one international actor participating in counter-narcotics and counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan. In fact, the Telegraph reports that Britain “leads international reconstruction efforts in Helmand province, where 60 per cent of the Afghan opium crop is produced. The British government is spending more than £290 million on a three-year-programme of eradication, support for farmers and pursuit of drug barons and traffickers.” And they have no plan to stop.

On the interdiction front, the foreign ministers Holbrooke addressed at Saturday’s G-8 meeting have called for a “regional intelligence network” to slow cross-border flows of precursor chemicals and processed opium. According to Antonio Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the UNODC, Pakistan and Iran will be key players. Highlighting the challenges ahead, though, Iran was uninvited from Saturday’s G-8 meeting following the government’s violent response to the post-election protest movement.

Regarding rule of law initiatives and alternative crop development, the question is not just one of money but also of will. Holbrooke told reporters Saturday that the US would increase its funds for agricultural assistance up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Yet Jessica Thompson, writing for Sterling on Justice and Drugs, stresses the central challenge that remains unresolved: how to keep illegal funds not only out of the hands of al Qaeda terrorists, but also away from the corrupt Afghan government.

Finally, Alex Coolman of Drug Law Blog reminds us that the US continues a failed domestic eradication policy:

[California's CAMP campaign against marijuana] enriches the very people we’re ostensibly trying to combat — drug dealers — just like the Afghan eradication campaign “helped the Taliban” under a misguided attempt to combat the Taliban.This happens because — shock! — reducing the supply of something simply causes a corresponding increase in its price, and the drug producers therefore get to pocket more money than they would in the absence of such intervention…

Eradication didn’t work in Afghanistan. Maybe it’s time to realize that it’s a bad policy for California, too.

Photo of Guinea-Bissau soldiers with intercepted cocaine, courtesy of Semana.

Although the violence pre-dates the surge of organised drug trafficking in the region, the possibility of huge illicit riches has increased the stakes in the power struggle, leading to a vicious cycle of criminality and political instability, the beginnings of which are visible not only in Guinea-Bissau but also in neighbouring Guinea.

This from the International Crisis Group briefing released today on the challenges facing the West African drug transit country of Guinea-Bissau. The report highlights the importance of thoughtful and coordinated security sector reform efforts to strengthen institutions broken by civil war and, now, drugs. Download and read the full 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.

**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

**Poppies and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. Photo courtesy of Nicolas Asfouri/Agence France-Presse.

• “Drug money: the other, other liquid investment capital”: Reuters reports on a newspaper interview with UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa. According to Costa,

In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital… In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.

He added that the UNODC has evidence that “interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities,” but declined to give further details.

• Reform of Afghani government necessary to US success there, not just troop surge, according to a NYTimes opinion piece.

• The chief of Colombia’s National Police tells a Colombian daily that the global drug trade’s “center of gravity” is Mexico, as a result of his country’s anti-drug efforts.

• US opinion on the claim that Mexico could become a failed state, from the Wall Street Journal: “[I]f Mexico is at risk of becoming a failed state, look no further than the large price premium the cartels get for peddling prohibited substances to Americans.”

• Mexico’s ambassador to the United States responds:

The violence unleashed by trafficking organizations in response to President Calderon’s effort to shut them down cannot be denied. If one considers the criteria that could lead to a “sudden collapse” — loss of territorial control; inability to provide public services; refugees and internally displaced people; criminalization of the state; sharp economic decline; and incapacity to interact as a full number of the international community — it is obvious that Mexico simply doesn’t fit the pattern.

• The BBC reports on the recent capture of Santiago Meza, “El Pozolero” or the “stew maker,” who supposedly earned $600 a week from Tijuana-based trafficker Teodoro Garcia Simental (see LATimes profile here) to dissolve the corpses of his rivals in acid. Meza was presented before the media by the Mexican army, and admitted to dissolving nearly 300 bodies.

• Cannabis officially upgraded to Class B drug in the UK, after being downgraded just four years ago. According to the BBC, the reclassificiation will include a “three strikes” approach to possession (an £80 fine for the first and second offense, then arrest on the third offense) as well as an increase in the maximum prison term for possession (from two years to five). But not everyone’s happy, as the decision goes against the advice of the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The BBC reports,

The advisory council’s report, Cannabis: Classification and Public Health, described the drug as a “significant public health issue”. But it said it should still remain a Class C drug, saying the risks were not as serious as those of Class B substances such as amphetamines and barbiturates.

• More on Mexican vigilantes.

The state of the union address Mexican president Felipe Calderón delivered last week is now available online. The videos covering security and rule of law follow after the jump.

On security, Calderón goes into great detail about quantity of drugs seized and specific traffickers detained. Yet he does not address how these successes affect the long-term goal of his policy: in the words of Mexican security expert Jorge Chabat, “to turn the big cartels into lots of small cartels.” As Chabat explains, “If you have 50 small cartels instead of four big cartels, first you have less international pressure, and second, you will have violence in the short term, but in the long term you will have much less violence.” This is the “success” of Colombia: Escobar is dead, and cocaine is now processed and trafficked by dozens of boutique cartels.

Are Calderón’s military operations enough to fracture Mexico’s megacartels, or will this pressure only force them to reorganize? How does the security apparatus measure success in this process? What factors are being monitored and considered behind the scenes, beyond tons of drugs seized?

Finally, on building the rule of law in Mexico, Calderón mentions the creation of an “observatorio ciudadano” for his administration’s rule of law programs. Will be following this closely…
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