Annual Report 2001

TNI

Julio 2005

Overview of TNI's work in 2001

Following the September 11 attacks in the US, the illicit drug economy became a focus of international attention. The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets. That is another part of their egime that we should seek to destroy, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in his attempts to sell the war in Afghanistan. It was, in fact, Mr. Blairs ally the Northern Alliance that was profiting most from heroin trafficking at that time. While opium poppy cultivation was down in Taliban-controlled territories, it flourished in the North.

Distorting information on the illicit drug economy has been an issue the TNIs Drugs programme has had to deal with since it started in 1996. In Colombia, the war on drugs is fought with similar disinformation and is set to escalate in the context of an internal conflict between government, the guerrilla and paramilitary forces. The aim of the TNI Drugs programme is to achieve a eassessment of the conventional prohibitive and epressive drug policy approaches, eplacing them with policies and operational directives based on principles consistent with a commitment to harm eduction, fair trade, development, democracy, human rights and conflict prevention.

Drugs and Peace in Colombia

In 2001, a major focus of the programme was Colombia, where the US-led war on drugs hampers the negotiations between the government and guerrilla forces to end the 40-year civil war. Together with TNIs counterpart in Colombia, Acción Andina, the programme campaigned around two major issues: the chemical fumigation of drug crops and the ill-conceivedPlan Colombia , with its emphasis on a militarised approach to the drug problem. Both initiatives threatened to escalate the civil war in Colombia, this time potentially engulfing the entire region.

Plan Colombia was originally launched by President Andrés Pastrana as a broadMarshall Plan to support the peace process. Within months, the US intervened to subvert Plan Colombia, turning it into an anti-drugs strategy aimed at denying the FARC guerrilla income from taxes on drug cultivation and crude production. In order to stop the violence affecting the country and threatening the sub-region, it would be essential to fight thenarco-guerrilla, Clintons drug czar General Barry McCaffrey argued. Washington has been categorical that its anti-drug scheme was non-negotiable and that the peace process should not interfere with the anti-narcotics effort. This led to contradictions and mutually exclusive approaches in Plan Colombia with respect to drugs, the peace process and development.

The new Plan Colombia was negotiated with the US alone, without the consent of, or consuLtations with, the Colombian Congress, never mind other relevant social actors. In fact, the Plan was originally drafted in English and not even available in Spanish until February 2000, four months after it was agreed to with the US. As an editorialist in one of Colombia's leading newspapers commented, the principle problem of Plan Colombia was that it was conceived as a strategy to solve problems for the United States and not for Colombia.

European Union carrots

Furthermore, the US$ 1.3 billion in largely military aid that Washington allocated for Plan Colombia marked it as a war strategy and not a peace plan. What waspeace-building in Colombia has become the anti-narcotics strategy of the US, observed TNI Associate Fellow, Ricardo Vargas of Acción Andina. While the US was providing thestick for Plan Colombia, the plan was to get Europe to provide thecarrot in the form of development aid for drug crop substitution and other economic support. TNI actively campaigned against the involvement of the European Union in the US anti- narcotics strategy in Plan Colombia.

In April, an international donor conference in Brussels was scheduled to finalise Europes position and financial support. Prior to the conference, TNI launched its new Drugs & Conflict debate papers series with Europe and Plan Colombia, which clarified the confusion in the decision-making process around Plan Colombia. The fundamental flaws in the schemes for voluntary eradication orsocial pacts, trumpeted by the Colombian government as alternatives offered to small coca farmers, were exposed as being extorted under threat of fumigations. A proposal was presented for an authentic dialogue with the communities involved, exploring options for gradual eradication schemes that were truly voluntary.

As with the previous donor conferences, TNI in close collaboration with European and Colombian organisations lobbied European countries, organised a parallel NGO conference and briefed the press in order to persuade Europe not to support Plan Colombia. The argument was made that the US-supported militarised anti-narcotics dimension would negate any investment EU countries might make, and did not take sufficient account of the views of Colombias citizens. The campaign was successful in that Europe ultimately rejected Plan Colombia and restricted its financial aid to projects in support of the peace process. A European official voiced Europes position most clearly, saying: The military aid [in the plan] has been like putting a blue stocking in the wash with white clothes - everything comes out blue.

Chemical and Biological Warfare

Colombia had begun massive aerial spraying in December 2000, under the aegis of Plan Colombia and backed by the US with more helicopters, drug dusters, newly trained anti-narcotic battalions and logistical and intelligence support. The fumigations set in motion strong opposition from peasant and indigenous communities, and from national and international civil society organisations, as well as the democratically elected governors of most of the provinces concerned. The cacophony of voices denouncing the use of chemical herbicides to eradicate illicit crops grew spectacularly in 2001, focusing on the consequences of fumigation for health and the environment and generating an even broader debate about Colombias drug policy in general.

A new chemical formula of the herbicide Roundup Ultra, produced by Monsanto, mixed with a surfactant to enhance the penetration of the herbicide in the coca leaves, was being deployed with serious consequences for human health. In response to the growing publicity about the harmful effects of chemical fumigations, the US State Department issued a fact sheet in January asserting its harmlessness. In reaction, TNI, Acción Andina and the Colombian environmental organisation Rapalmira issued a counter-fact sheet contradicting the disinformation emanating from Washington.

Colombia has enjoyed little autonomy with respect to the management of illicit crops, as a strong link exists between aerial spraying and the dynamics of the civil war. A decision to suspend fumigation was unlikely to be based on technical arguments as it depends largely on political considerations with respect to the course the armed conflict is taking. It is therefore of paramount importance that US, Colombian and European peace and human rights organisations have taken up the issue, thereby increasing the political pressure to end fumigations. To support these efforts, TNI published Vicious Circle - The Chemical and Biological War on Drugs, an extensive report covering not only chemical umigations in Colombia, but also attempts to develop a biological fungus to attack drug crops.

Central Asia

The fungus project in Colombia, sponsored by the US and the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), had been exposed by TNI in 2000. After an intensive campaign, involving scientists, environmental groups, indigenous peoples and neighbouring governments, the Colombian government decided against field testing. A similar research project in Uzbekistan to destroy opium poppy - sponsored by the US and the United Kingdom, in co-operation with the UNDCP - still continued, however. In Central Asia, the fungus is now ready for use. Its deployment depends on the conclusions of a scientific review panel evaluating potential risks for the environment, legal crops and human health. On the basis of its conclusions, project donors and the UNDCP will decide whether or not to go ahead.

The Vicious Circle report was successful in the ongoing campaign to stop fumigations in Colombia. TNI advised several government officials and parliamentarians in the Andean region and Europe on the issue. The German Ministry of Development Cooperation entered into negotiations with the Colombian government about suspending fumigations in areas where they finance drug crop substitution projects. In early July, these negotiations resulted in the cessation of chemical spraying in these areas.

Vicious Circle was widely distributed to Europarliamentarians, government representatives and the media. In the international campaign around Plan Colombia, several NGOs used the brochure in their contacts with media and policy circles. In the US, the publication was used to persuade Congress members to oppose fumigations in Colombia and the US military aid package. Several media used it as background for articles and radio programmes, including in France, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands, the UK, Mexico and Colombia. TNI even hit the front page of the New York Times.

After new waves of fumigations in Colombia in June and early July, the debates intensified. Several Colombian governmental agencies called for suspension; Ecuador protested; legal actions were instituted; opposition mounted in the US Congress; Europe and the UNDCP expressing serious concern, calling for international monitoring and evaluation. In response to critical articles in the British press (The Observer and The Guardian), the British chemical multi-national ICI announced it would stop sales of an additive used to prepare the herbicide mixture applied in Colombia. The US Senate conditioned further use of funds for the purchase of chemicals for spraying on independent verification of health risks for the local population.

Colombian Legal Reform

In August, the controversy sparked debate in the Colombian Congress on the countrys drug policy as a whole. TNI Associate Fellow, Ricardo Vargas, was called on to advise a group of parliamentarians. Three proposals were launched, still under discussion in the Congress: 1) the legalisation of illicit drugs production, distribution and consumption, to be placed under state monopoly; 2) the decriminalisation of small peasants planting illicit crops; and 3) a legal ban to halt fumigation of illicit crops. The need for evaluation or verification of the harmful effects of fumigation was acknowledged. The UNDCP proposed the creation of an international body to monitor the spraying programme. Colombian civil society organisations proposed the creation of an independent international commission to evaluate drug policies more broadly, an idea strongly promoted by TNI and Acción Andina.

In September, TNI released a second issue of the Drugs & Conflict series, In the Heat of the Debate: Fumigation and Conflict in Colombia. The objective was to inform all groups involved in the campaign about recent developments, while nourishing the ongoing policy debates with TNIs own proposals. Meanwhile, however, the Colombian courts lifted the temporary ban on fumigations, and a new wave of intense spraying began, appropriately namedOperation Apocalypse.

Forward Operating Locations

The developments in Colombia had also reached the Dutch political arena. In 1999, the Dutch government signed a one-year treaty with the US to establish Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) on the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curaçao both part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. These US military support air bases compensated for the loss of military facilities in the Panama Canal Zone returned to Panama. Two thousand counter-drug missions were flown out of Panama annually to monitor, detect and intercept drug transports in the transit zone to US shores, and to locate drug cultivation and production in the Andean region. Other FOLs were established in Manta (Ecuador) and Comalapa (El Salvador).

Since the initial one-year treaty and the signing of a ten-year treaty in March 2002, TNI had been engaging the Dutch government, parliament and public on the wisdom of allowing US military bases to operate from Dutch territories, arguing that this was tantamount to supporting the US military war on drugs and Washingtons interventions in Colombia's civil war. TNI pointed out the contradiction with liberal Dutch domestic drug policies and foreign policy guidelines concerning human rights, conflict prevention and environmental protection. Due to the controversy generated around the FOLs, the parliamentary debate on ratification was postponed several times.

TNI was asked to speak at public meetings and in radio debates, consulted by the press as well as by parliamentarians drafting questions for parliament and preparing their positions. TNI commissioned the Amsterdam International Law Center (AILC) of the University of Amsterdam to investigate the international legal consequences of the treaty. The AILC report concluded that The Netherlands could be held responsible for violations of international law and would be co-responsible for human right violations as a result of operations conducted from the FOLs. The press and parliamentarians cited the report regularly during the debate in May.

Parliamentary controversy

Prior to the parliamentary debate, TNI initiated a petition to parliament not to ratify the FOL treaty signed by Dutch human rights, developmental, environmental and drug policy reform organisations. On the eve of the debate, TNI organised a public event attended by 120 people. For this purpose, Ricardo Vargas, TNIs principal researcher in Colombia, and Joy Olson, an expert on US military anti-drug operations from the Washington based Latin America Working Group, were invited over. The panel discussion that followed their presentations included the two key parliamentarians on the issue, a representative of Doctors without Borders, and TNIs own Martin Jelsma.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, a heated debate took place in the newspapers, on radio and television. The deliberations in parliament turned into an unusually fierce session lasting more than 12 hours. The vote itself, as anticipated, was in Favour of ratifying the treaty. Nevertheless, the government was forced to limit the use of the FOL to pure interdiction of drug shipments, putting restrictions on the sharing of intelligence gathered rom the FOL and stipulating an annual evaluation of the operations carried out from the islands.

In 2001, the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) faced a serious internal crisis. The position of Pino Arlacchi, the Executive Director of the Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP), which includes the UNDCP, became untenable when the UN Inspector Generals Office issued two very critical reports investigating allegations of mismanagement, nepotism and possible fraud. While press coverage focused on the scandals within ODCCP, little attention was given to the negative legacy of Mr. Arlacchi on the direction of international drug control policy itself. In fact, the five years under Mr. Arlacchis leadership have been a lost opportunity for the UNDCP to evaluate current failed international drug control policies. During his reign, availability of drugs has not dropped and prices are lower than ever.

UNDCP in Crisis

As a result of Mr. Arlacchis failure, the UNDCP today is an agency out of touch with shifting opinions on international drug control, even as significant progress has been made in several, mostly European countries, to find an alternative along the lines of harm reduction policies measures that reduce the harm drugs do, both to users and to society at large. At the same time thewar on drugs in producer countries is escalating. Eradication strategies, especially in Colombia, have become increasingly militarised, resulting in human rights abuses and environmental degradation. Alternative development to substitute drug crops with legal agricultural products is in crisis because it has been subordinated to forced eradication.

TNI is one of the few institutes working on United Nations drug control policy. In 1997-98, TNI was a lead NGO involved in the preparations and actual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem. TNI prepared a briefing, Caught in the Crossfire - Developing Countries, the UNDCP, and the War on Drugs, on the controversial Strategy for Coca and Opium Poppy Elimination (SCOPE) developed by the UNDCP, and made the SCOPE documents available to the public through its website and mailing lists. The briefing paper was the only available serious critique on one of the most controversial issues of UNGASS. Next to the reluctance of several delegations, it is fair to say that TNIs campaign contributed to a presentation of SCOPE being taken off the agenda at the actual UNGASS in New York in June 1998.

Moreover, TNI played an important role in opening up UNGASS to critical NGOs and ensuring that the voices of drug users and producers were heard in the General Assembly. TNI was able to organise a panel in the UN building, which represented a bureaucratic victory in the battle for NGO participation. Since that time, TNI has followed developments at the UN level closely.

Chemical and Biological War on Drugs

In February 2000, TNI exposed UNDCPs support for research and development of biological herbicides to counter coca and opium poppy cultivation. In this controversial programme, pathogenic fungi are being developed for use in narcotics-producing areas globally, but especially Asia and South America. The agents are environmentally unsafe, and threaten to affect wild plants and agriculture in fragile ecosystems. These biological agents also endanger human health and serve to undermine the global ban on biological weapons.

In March 2001, TNI distributed two hundred copies of the report Vicious Circle among the delegates to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), which controls the UNDCP, at its March session in Vienna. The objective was to expose the controversial role UNDCP was playing in advancing the fungus research. TNI passed on critical information to the media and to delegates of major European donor countries. TNI also advanced its view on the UNGASS+5 evaluation that will take place in April 2003 and urged donor countries to use the internal crisis in the UNDCP to pressure for the much needed internal reform of the agency.

Short-sighted and Narrow-minded

During the mid-term session of the CND in December, TNI distributed yet another new outreach instrument with the launch of the TNI Drug Policy Briefings. The 150 copies of the first issue of this briefing series, New Possibilities for Change in International Drug Control, were gone within an hour. The briefing aimed to shift the focus of attention away from allegations about Mr. Arlacchis mismanagement and towards his negative legacy as regards direction in inter-national drug control policy, the absence of evaluation processes and the internal culture of the agency that punishes dissent and suffocates substantive debate. Recommendations for reform were made that addressed these more structural deficiencies.

The UNDCP is too narrowly focused on drug law enforcement. Health and development issues that are essential aspects of drug control policy have been made subordinate to drug eradication goals. Co- operation with other UN agencies like the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is insufficient. The result is conflicting views and policies on the drug issue within the UN community. The new executive directors main task will have to be to guide the urgent process of internal reform so necessary for UNDCP and to open it up to challenging views from outside the agency.

In 2002, TNIs main focus will be to prepare for the UNGASS+5 review in April 2003. Building on the recognition that current international drug policies have failed, a case will be made to reevaluate the UN treaties on drug control and current international policies and to redirect policies toward harm reduction principles. The overall objective is to convince European policy makers, the media and NGOs of the urgent need to reassess international drug policies and enhance Europes role as a potential counterweight to the US-driven War on Drugs.

Post-September 11: Afghanistan and Colombia

As a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the illicit drug economy became a focus of international attention. Drug trafficking was identified as a source of finance for terrorism, especially in the case of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This ignored the fact that the Taliban had banned opium cultivation in July 2000, while the Northern Alliance, the ally of the US-led alliance against terrorism, relied on income from the opium economy.

In December, the third in the Drugs & Conflict series, Merging Wars: Afghanistan, Drugs and Terrorism was devoted to this issue and drew attention to the need to take account of the importance of the opium economy in post-war reconstruction. A special web page on War and Opium in Afghanistan was put online.

The objective of Merging Wars was to respond to the emerging threat of a new escalation in the War on Drugs as a proxy to the one against terrorism. The two major producers of opium poppy and coca, Afghanistan and Colombia, are in the midst of shifting counter-drug strategies. In Merging Wars the complicated issue of opium cultivation in Afghanistan was described and the paper sharply criticised UNDCPs ill-fated interventions in and around Afghanistan over the past years. The detailed analysis of the drugs economy in Afghanistan resulted in several in-depth interviews with international media.

The consequences of linking drugs and terrorism in Colombia were also assessed as having endangered the troubled peace talks between the government and the FARC guerrilla.

At the CND session in December, Merging Wars was distributed among delegates and UNDCP officials. Such critical analysis, at a time when the UNDCP was trying to impose an opium ban as a condition for international community aid programmes in Afghanistan, strengthened donor countries in disregarding UNDCPs position.

During the last decade, UNDCP alternative development projects in Afghanistan have been largely unsuccessful, highly politicised and plagued by controversy, casting doubt on the ability of the agency to play a constructive role in the country. In the aftermath of war, understanding the illicit drugs economy as a cross-cutting issue affecting security and development is essential. To address the endemic conflict inside Afghanistan; the severe social and development crisis; and the refugee drama, policy-making has to consider the drugs factor. The reconstruction of the country, prevention of recurring armed conflict and facilitation of the return of the displaced population will have to be accompanied by considered policy approaches, which take account of the reality of a re-bound of the opium economy as a basic component of local survival strategies.

Implementing unsound strategies as UNDCP has done for a decade in Afghanistan or forcing the new government to enforce the opium ban installed by the former Taliban regime under heavy UNDCP pressure, may well become obstacles to a sustainable solution of the crisis. TNI advocated that the international community look beyond applying the blunt instrument of such conditionality, threatening as UNDCP tried to do the new government that reconstruction aid will be dependent on strong anti-drug measures.

Several ministries requested bulk copies of this Drugs & Conflict issue for their internal discussions. During the subsequent donor conferences for Afghan reconstruction, the arguments that drugs is a cross-cutting issue over which UNDCP cannot have sole ownership and that the UNDCP has to collaborate more with other UN agencies and interests, appear to have now entered mainstream discourse.