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.

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.

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…

**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.

It’s World Drug Day! Or, officially as per the UNODC website devoted to this day (seemingly designed in 1995…?), the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

In honor of this day, the UNODC has released the World Drug Report 2009, available as a pdf here. See also the report highlights and executive summary in English. While the UNODC itself highlights the better side of global coverage, reformers have a slightly different perspective. Briefly…

• Transform Drug Policy Foundation notes the discrepancy between the UNODC’s critical analysis of the situation and acknowledgment of problems caused by punitive measures, and the status quo prescription they offer.

• Drug Policy Alliance, along with some 40 international groups and drug policy experts, has released a “call to action” for more humane and effective global policies (full text here).

• In the New York Times, the United Nations special rapporteurs on health and torture remind us that governments around the world abuse human rights in the name of the drug war, and that their failure to “ensure access to controlled medicines for pain relief or to treat drug dependence may violate international conventions proscribing cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” They conclude, “This is not only a human rights problem: It is bad public policy.”