International Drug Control and the War on Drugs

International Drug Control and the War on Drugs
Tom BlickmanTNI Briefing, December 2000

"This article is published in the Brazilian version of Le Monde Diplomatique: Rumo à guerra biológica? (Jornal do Brasil, January 2001) and in the German version: Moral gegen Vernunft - Der heilige Krieg der USA gegen die Drogen (Die Tageszeitung, February 16, 2001)"

"We are winning. And we have to believe that we can win and eliminate drugs," Pino Arlacchi, the executive director of the United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) told a Reuters correspondent. He was confident that a 1998 UN pledge to eradicate cultivation of opium poppy and coca bush by 2008 could be met ahead of schedule. "The results have been beyond expectations," he said. The overall cultivation of illegal crops in the world has decreased by 15 percent. "This is the result of our strategy just two years after it was launched. It is an unprecedented result." (1)

But is Arlacchi really winning? The facts suggest otherwise. The reduction of opium poppy is mainly due to a severe drought in Afghanistan where 79 per cent of the world's opium is produced. This year's production was less than last year's record harvest, but still higher than 1998's crop. Frustrated by the declining support from Western donors and the indifference of the ruling Taleban, the United Nations must wind down its efforts in persuading farmers to swap from opium poppy to alternative, legal crops.

Even the UNDCP officials give little credibility to an edict by the Taleban leadership banning the cultivation of opium poppy. "It's not the first time we have heard this," one said. "We believe their interests linked to drug cultivation are very important to them, and a major factor contributing to the Afghan war." Burma, the second largest opium producer, is completely uncooperative in drug control due to the fact that the dictatorship is involved in the drug trade. Burma has also become a major source of amphetamine-type stimulants.

Coca production has not decreased despite highly trumpeted eradication results in Bolivia and Peru. It simply moved to Colombia. Cocaine availability in consumer countries is up and prices are down, indicating there is no shortage. Coca-farmers have been constructing roadblocks in Bolivia and Peru claiming that alternative development projects intended to help them switch to legal crops has been unsuccessful while their only subsistence crop has been eliminated. Coca farmers have been killed in confrontations with police and military in Bolivia. Human rights violations parallel forced eradication operations. Opium poppy is thriving in Colombia and on the rise in Peru.

Coca cultivation in Colombia has risen with 250 percent the last six years, despite large-scale fumigations with herbicides. Damaging severely the Amazon rainforest, these operations set in motion a vicious circle of chemical pollution, livelihood destruction, migration into even more vulnerable areas, deforestation, displacement and expansion of the areas of illicit crop cultivation, which then are again fumigated etc. (2) The drug war in Colombia risks exploding into a full-blown, country-wide war between government and guerrilla - who are taxing drug production to fund their struggle. The escalation of this 40-year internal political conflict is driven and financed by the United States under the guise of drug control.

Drug control is one of the most controversial issues of the last decades. The United Nations conventions are the backbone for international drug control policy. Waging the global "War on Drugs" has focused almost exclusively on wiping out production in developing countries - or the supply-side of the equation, rather than tackling the complexities of issues in the rich countries - or the demand side of the equation. Over time, eradication strategies have become increasingly militarized, and have led to human rights abuses and environmental degradation. And, the war has failed. Drug cultivation and production has not decreased.

UNDCP's victories exist mainly in glossy brochures and in the pep-talks of its director. The 1998 UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS), intended to evaluate global drug control policies, was hijacked by the UNDCP and its drug war allies. The output from the special session resulted in a reaffirmation of existing drug policies and a promise to double the collective efforts. Arlacchi presented his Strategy for Coca and Opium Poppy Elimination (SCOPE) aimed at eradicating illicit cultivation of both crops in ten years, by the year 2008. (3)

Potential donor countries were reluctant toward SCOPE, as it was presented, and prevented it from becoming an official contribution to the UNGASS agenda. The General Assembly adopted a political declaration committing governments to substantially reduce illicit drug demand and supply by 2008. The political declaration calls for a 'comprehensive' global strategy for the simultaneous reduction of both supply and demand, essentially endorsing the SCOPE framework. Even though SCOPE, in name, was not adopted by the Commission on Narcotics Drugs (CND) - which oversees the UNDCP, - the UNDCP is working within this framework. During UNGASS it was stressed that drug control is a shared responsibility between consumer and producer countries, yet, to date, the UNDCP has not developed a comprehensive ten-year strategy for reducing demand.

The Programme suffers from a lack of funding from donor states while the growing uneasiness over Arlacchi's leadership increases. Internal divisions rack the UNDCP. No official wants to go on record, but there is widespread frustration. "I cannot think of any matter on which the UNDCP is not divided," said one source. "It is an unhappy and fear-ridden organisation in which the worst of people get the best of most things." Access to Arlacchi is restricted to a relatively small number of trusted followers. Even some high level officials barely see their director.

So, the war on drugs is in the hands of its other principal proponent, the United States of America. This means that the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs also assumes the role of global ringleader on drug control. Every year, through the drug certification process, Washington unilaterally judges which country fully cooperates with US anti-narcotics efforts, or takes sufficient steps to meet the terms of the 1988 UN drug control convention. If not, sanctions could include the withdrawal of US foreign assistance not directly related to counter-narcotics programs as well as opposition to loans those countries seek from multilateral development banks.

But opposition is mounting. The Organisation of American States (OAS) decided to set up its own drug monitoring process to counter the unilateral decision making of the US. And US efforts to rally Colombia's neighbouring states behind its military approach to counter drug cultivation in Colombia has been unsuccessful. In August Clinton visited Colombia with a US$ 1.3 billion aid package to the country's peace programme, Plan Colombia. The US contribution is largely earmarked for military anti-drug operations and intends to unleash an unprecedented campaign of massive spraying with herbicides to destroy coca and opium poppy fields. Dozens of armed helicopters will be donated and three new elite counter-narcotics army battalions will be trained and equipped.

The drug war is now focused on Colombia and many observers fear the military aid will endanger the already fragile peace process between president Pastrana and the FARC guerrilla. The FARC is protecting coca farmers against fumigations while taxing cultivation and transport of coca paste. Colombian and US officials stress that the aid for Plan Colombia is to be used in the fight against drug trafficking, not at counterinsurgency operations against the guerrillas. But officials also acknowledge that "the distinction is so blurred as to be meaningless," according to the Washington Post. (4)

The aid openly intends to deny the FARC its income from the drug industry. Washington is branding the FARC as a ‘narco guerrilla'. A memorandum of the US State Department outlined this strategy. It said, "with the purpose to avoid international controversy and within Congress itself, intelligence and military operations against the FARC and ELN are primarily focused on their status as ‘narco-guerrillas'." [5)

At the same time Clinton landed in Colombia, Latin American leaders gathered in Brazil expressed their strong doubts about the US driven escalation of the conflict in Colombia. Colombia's neighbours fear a ‘spill over' of the conflict and of coca cultivation. According to columnist Andrés Oppenheimer, "there is a near unanimous consensus in Latin America that US-financed programs to help coca growers switch to other crops are not providing enough funds to help growers make up for their lost income". To make things worse, he says "Europe and the United States are making it increasingly difficult for Latin American countries to export their legal crops", because of subsidies for domestic agricultural producers which have grown over the past years. (6)

"Unless the next US president comes up with new anti-drug plans with greater responsibilities for drug consuming countries, there will be a growing confrontation over the drug war," Oppenheimer concluded. "And even the closest US allies will be on the other side of the fence." In the case of Colombia, Europe is clearly taking distance from the US, whose officials on several occasions, expressed that the US would not allow the peace process to continue at the expense of the drug war. "We have made it very clear to the Pastrana government that ‘peace at any price' is not an acceptable policy," said Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers. "The peace process must not interfere with counter-narcotics cooperation, and any agreement must permit continued expansion of all aspects of this cooperation, including aerial eradication". (7)

"The US focus on enforcement-related assistance, the so-called ‘stick', will allow other sponsors to provide support for the ‘carrot', developmental and humanitarian assistance projects," Beers said on US intentions with Plan Colombia. Europe was expected to provide the billion-dollar ‘carrot'. But at a donor conference in Madrid this past July, almost all European countries were reluctant to pledge any assistance and voiced strong criticism about the Plan's military approach and the absence of civil society consultation throughout the process. Most countries expressed objections to the indiscriminate chemical spraying policy, which they regard as incompatible with the requested European investments in rural development projects in drug regions.

Curiously, the EU security representative and former secretary general of NATO, Javier Solana, announced confirmation of European support for Plan Colombia, just before the Madrid meeting, much to the chagrin of other European officials, indicating that within Europe there is also support for the US approach. Spain broke away from the EU common position, donating $100 million USD. In the corridors of the Madrid meeting EU officials spoke of Spain and Solana's treason.

Finally, at the donor meeting for Colombia in October in Bogotá the European Union declared it would support the peace process in Colombia, but not Plan Colombia. The amount Europe will contribute (around $ 300 million USD) is less than the one billion expected. The EU will also closely monitor events every six months, beginning in March 2001. Spain seems to be back in line with its European partners and Solana has kept quiet of late. Marianne da Costa de Moraes, Austria's ambassador to Colombia, expressed Europe's reservations best, "The military aid [in the plan] has been like putting a blue stocking in the wash with white clothes - everything comes out blue." (8)

A broad coalition of Colombian civil society, under the name of Paz Colombia, tries to prevent the escalation of violence and war caused by Plan Colombia. They see and experience it as a plan of war rather than one of peace and have proposed to all parties a one-hundred day truce to reconsider the options. With regards to drugs, Paz Colombia proposes a ‘harm reduction' approach, which argues for ending the policy of aerial fumigations, a gradual substitution process with full participation of the involved communities and demands respect for human rights and international humanitarian law. (9)

Even Colombia's established newspaper, El Tiempo, argued in an editorial that Plan Colombia should be the final battle in the war on drugs. The ultimate battle to demonstrate that the drug war has not failed because it is the wrong model, but because it has not been applied forcefully enough. "If it is lost [...] the United States, without whose consent it will be impossible, has the historical responsibility to explore and consent to legalisation of drugs". (10)

References

1 UN Anti-Drug Official Predicts End Of Cocaine and Opium Trades, Reuters, 12 October 2000
2 See: The Vicious Circle. The Chemical Spraying of Drug Crops in Colombia Martin Jelsma, TNI, March 2000
3 See SCOPE
4 Pact Near on Aid to Colombia, The Washington Post, 9 October 1999
5 La agenda secreta para Colombia, El Espectador, 4 June 1999
6 Latin America sees US drug policy as hypocrisy, The Miami Herald, 22 October 2000
7 Statement of Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, before the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, 21 September 1999
8 EU Cuts Back On Drug Aid For Colombia, The Guardian Weekly, 26 October 2000
9 See the website of Paz Colombia
10 La última batalla, editorial in El Tiempo, 8 October 2000