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…

**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.

Full results here.

There are two new bills out, one in the Senate, the other in the Massachusetts House, that show interesting drug policy developments. The Senate Bill (S.1789) would eliminate sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine (see this WaPo article on the subject).

The MA bill (No. 2929) would create a taxation and regulation scheme for marijuana. See the bill here. As you may recall, in November 2008, Massachusetts decriminalized personal possession of marijuana.

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?

This new book on the lives of homeless drug addicts in San Francisco, “Righteous Dopefiend,” looks just spectacular. I’m disappointed, but also pleased, that every copy in the county library is checked out, with holds already placed!

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.

A friend of mine recently published a well-researched and thought provoking article in Slate on the regulation and taxation of marijuana. Considering the new proposals from California to Illinois, Jeremy asks reformers what specific policies they recommend for taxing the drug. He gets a real sense of the mood of the movement right now, and clearly points out the challenge in finding the right tax level and system to achieve the three oft-promised goals of legalization: eradication of black markets, reduction of budget deficits, and improvements in public health.

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.