Drug control strategy - Colombia, Afghanistan

Hi there,

Today I want to share with you an article I found through a friend of mine. I think it contains some important, well-researched facts and figures. Thank you for updating yourselves at the source site, i.e. the International Relations and Security Network of the ETH-Z: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=17270

Take care!

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Plan Afghanistan: Another Colombia mistake

The next US ambassador to Afghanistan may have good credentials but failed US policies in Colombia should not be implemented in Afghanistan.

Image: Wikipedia

Commentary by Sam Logan for ISN Security Watch (20/02/2006)

William Wood, the US ambassador to Colombia since mid-2003, has been nominated to serve as the US ambassador to Afghanistan. His credentials, most agree, are strong. But it is worrying that he might promote the same failed policies used in Colombia - a supply-side drug control strategy that has a heavy military element with little development aid attached.

Colombia and Afghanistan have some commonalities. The governments of both countries fight an asymmetric war against an insurgency determined to remove it from power. Colombia is the world's leading supplier of cocaine, Afghanistan of heroin. And both countries receive heavy amounts of military aid directed at combating "terrorism" and reducing drug demand inside the US and elsewhere through inflating street prices by attacking the supply.

This policy has failed in Colombia. Fumigation alone - the leading method for reducing the supply of coca plants - has eradicated other, legitimate crops and caused international disputes between Colombia and Ecuador. Environmental concerns linked to the use of herbicide to kill coca bushes inside Colombia's national parks underline the lengths the US government will go to target small, clandestine coca plantations in Colombia. Aircraft spraying chemicals in Colombia must fly at high altitudes to avoid damage due to small arms fire from the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Numbers kept by the US government prove fumigation does not work. When Wood took his post in mid-2003, the US State Department had measured 113,850 hectares of coca plantations in Colombia. By year-end 2005, the last set of data publicly available, the State Department measured 144,000 hectares of coca in Colombia.

According to the United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC), the volume of planted coca in Colombia from 2003 to 2005 did not change, remaining at 86,000 hectares.

At the beginning of Wood's post, the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy estimated the US street price for a gram of cocaine at US$210. By the end of 2005, the price dropped to US$170 - the opposite effect of the policy's goal. Many argue that purity levels have risen, suggesting there is now more supply to go around.

The dismal results of billions in tax payer dollars and years of implementing Plan Colombia, the policy framework Wood spent years defending, are not the fault of the ambassador alone. This colossal failure is the result of a complete breakdown in the most important part of the policy-making cycle: accepting feedback and making the necessary adjustments.

There are concerns that the same mistakes will be made in Afghanistan.

Wood answered questions on 15 February during a confirmation hearing that indicated US policies implemented in Colombia may be repeated in Afghanistan. And even before Wood's congressional appearance, there were other indications of this worrying possibility.

General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on 19 January that policies used in Colombia could serve as a template for policies the US and Afghanistan could jointly implement to combat the drug trade, according to The Washington Post.

Afghan poppy cultivation has surged. Many farmers have little other option for survival. They are part of a two million-strong force, some 10 percent of the Afghan population, directly involved in the yearly harvest of poppies.

Afghanistan currently supplies the world with over 80 percent of the opium required to make heroin. With over 350,000 Afghan households directly involved in poppy cultivation, heroin traffickers in Afghanistan earn some US$2.8 billion a year, nearly 65 percent of Afghan GDP in 2005, according to the UN.

Development programs that push alternative crops, such as wheat, cannot compete. Gross profit per hectare of poppy reaches some US$4,600 a year, compared to some US$390 per hectare of harvested wheat.

Whether by fumigation or by hand, poppy removed from the ground before farmers are able to use the proceeds to pay their debts would seal the fate for the sharecropper unable to repay his patron. He and his family would be kicked off the land; he may be injured, or worse, killed. Taking up arms with the Taliban may be the only option left.

Two years ago, a consortium of international aid agencies sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declaring that "premature acts [of eradication] risk destabilizing large parts of the country." That warning is truer today than ever.

Wood should consider US government failures in Colombia and do everything he can to prevent the use of Plan Colombia as a template for Plan Afghanistan. Colombia may be able to absorb years of poor US policy, but it is almost certain that Afghanistan cannot.

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Sam Logan is an investigative journalist who has reported on security, energy, politics, economics, organized crime, terrorism and black markets in Latin America since 1999. He is a senior writer for ISN Security Watch.

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Colombia: Absurdities in the war on drugs

Hello again

Those of you who know me will be aware of the fact that Colombia is very close to my heart, for matters of family, friendship, culture and, recently, because of the massive human rights abuses that have been occurring in that fantastic country for the past thirty, forty years. Here's another instalment in this sad tale, a report by Sergio de Leon, Associated Press Writer (for credits etc. see end of post). I am posting it here because this information needs to find as many readers as possible to put pressure on the Uribe government to stop illogical actions that damage the poorest members of Colombian society. Is it a coincidence that they are part of the indigenous population? I think not. Thank you for your support!


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Coca-Cola Vs Coca Sek in Colombia* (by Sergio de Leon)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - President Alvaro Uribe is taking the war on drugs to the supermarket, prohibiting the sale of products made from the coca plant.

With the help of more than $600 million a year in U.S. aid, Uribe has strengthened Colombia's anti-narcotics police, seized record tons of cocaine and extradited 520 drug trafficking suspects to U.S. jails.

But until recently, his hardline government had not gone after natural coca products made by Indians, acknowledging that millions of peasants have chewed calcium-rich coca for thousands of years to stave off hunger and as a remedy for ailments from altitude sickness to stomach aches.

Uribe's presidential Web site even promoted natural coca products as a rare commercial enterprise for poor Indian communities, and the federal food-safety agency provided quality-control advice to the manufacturers
of coca tea, cookies, shampoo and other consumer goods.

That suddenly changed in February, when Uribe's administration started banning the sale of coca products outside the reservations where Indians have a constitutional right to grow the hearty plant. Though it's still
possible to find coca products at boutique markets and health food stores, inspectors have begun to forcibly remove them from supermarket shelves.

What prompted the switch?

For one, the success of Coca Sek, an energy drink made by the Nasa [indigenous] tribe.

The carbonated drink made with coca, which looks like apple cider and tastes vaguely like ginger ale, was becoming a trendy alternative to Coca-Cola among Colombia's urban youth. The logo on the can even
mimicked the popular U.S. soft drink's curvy script.

Newspapers around the world ran David-and-Goliath stories about the challenge by an unknown Indian tribe to the U.S. soda behemoth. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. responded with a trademark-infringement suit that Colombian authorities quickly dismissed.

Word also reached Austria, where the International Narcotics Control Board enforces a 1961 treaty that requires the "uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild" and bans the distribution of products with even
trace amounts of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine.

The board sent Colombia's foreign minister a letter asking how the "refreshing drink made from coca and produced by an Indian community" didn't violate the treaty - and months later, the food safety agency
quietly imposed the ban.

The Nasas cried foul, suspecting behind-the-scenes pressure from Coca-Cola.

Colombia's food safety agency, the narcotics control board and Coca-Cola Co. all denied that. Agency lawyer Carolina Contreras says it was the control board's letter that prompted the ban, and the control board says
it had no communication from Coca-Cola before sending it.

But the Indians remain suspicious. While they've appealed the ban, their $15,000-a-month income from the sale of Coca Sek and other coca products is suffering, says David Curtidor, a Nasa in charge of the company that produces the drink.

"Why don't they also ban Coca-Cola?" he said, claiming: "It's also made of coca leaves."

Dana Bolden, a spokesman at Coca-Cola's Atlanta headquarters, would neither confirm nor deny that a coca extract is part of the secret recipe. He repeated the company's longstanding refusal to reveal any elements of the Coca-Cola formula.

A loophole in the 1961 treaty allows coca leaves to be sold internationally if they are later distilled of their cocaine alkaloid to produce a "flavoring agent." That's what Northfield, Ill.-based Stepan Co. does under a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration license.

The Stepan Co., according to its Web site, is a "a global manufacturer of specialty and intermediate chemicals used in consumer products and industrial application." The company didn't respond to repeated requests to confirm that Coca-Cola is a client.

Stepan is the only U.S. firm currently importing coca, a DEA spokeswoman told The Associated Press. It buys about 55 tons of Peruvian coca leaves each year, said Jimmy Salcedo, commercial manager for Peru's state-owned National Coca Company, Enaco.

Many Indians in the Andes – where coca is revered as a sacred plant and a matter of national pride in several countries – are angry that the United States is importing coca leaves legally while their own coca products are banned.

"The coca leaf is legal for Coca-Cola and illegal for medicinal purposes in our country and in the whole world," Bolivian President Evo Morales told the U.N. General Assembly last year.

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*Associated Press writer Josh Goodman in Bogotá and AP researcher Judith Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.
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*This report dated May 10, 2007, was sent out by
EUROPEAN COALITION FOR JUST AND EFFECTIVE DRUG POLICIES
Lange Lozanastraat 14 – 2018 Antwerpen - Belgium
E-mail: info@encod.org – http://www.encod.org