Battles won, a war still lost
Posted by Don Henry Ford Jr. - February 12, 2005 at 1:18 pm
Link to an article about the current situation surrounding the production and availablity of cocaine
New and dangerous trends in the Andean drug business
LOOKED at in one way, these are good times for America's drug warriors, at least with regard to cocaine. Traditionally, some 70% of the white powder has come from Colombia. The $3 billion in aid that the United States has spent there since 2000 under Plan Colombia has produced what American officials present as some spectacular numbers—especially since Álvaro Uribe became president two years later and allowed large-scale aerial eradication of drug crops....
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The Successes of a Lost War
Submitted on February 13th, 2005 by Benjamin MelançonThese are not the successes of a lost war of which I speak. I'll get to those later.
The Economist, contrary to the interests of its prime source, director John Walters of the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), writes plainly that the U.S. continues to lose its war on drugs. The writers cite ready availability and lower prices for cocaine as conclusive proof.
Still, The Economist does not mention the losses of life, livelihood, human health, and ecological diversity that has been the cost of these "battles won."
It also does not consider the perspective held by nearly every person in the Narcosphere as well as most people who study reality: that a supply-side approach to ending drug abuse will never work.
So it comes as no surprise to Narco News readers (or people who live in New York City) that three billion dollars in five years in Colombia has not made a dent in the availability or consumption of cocaine powder or crack cocaine.
Nonetheless, the details of this failure bear close scrutiny. The Economist article states that cocaine-bound coca from Peru continues at normal levels, and Bolivia's exports here have only increased a small amount.
So, this simple reporter asks, where are all these drugs coming from, cheaper than in the past in the United States and flooding Europe, Mexico, and Brazil, too, where cocaine use is rising?
The answer can only be Colombia. (The very statistics on eradication and interdiction – allegedly fewer hectares of coca under cultivation yet more labs destroyed and more product intercepted – appear potentially contradictory.) The Economist speculates that "coca has spread to new areas, some undetected, and that yields and productivity are rising." With that the magazine leaves Colombia and considers the increasing corruption and violence in other countries caused by the United States government's imposition of drug policies.
If we linger a moment longer in Colombia, we can learn the war on drugs is not failing in its real pupose. If there is any truth to the figures claimed for hectares of coca sprayed with herbicide (or victories for the government in the other touted war in Colombia, against the country's leftist guerillas) the source of cocaine within Colombia must include areas fully controlled by the Colombian armed forces or their allies, right-wing paramilitary groups. Far more than simply allowing the growing of coca, the U.S.-supported Colombian army and the Colombian army-backed paramilataries must permit and likely participate in the processing and transporting of cocaine that ends up in the United States. And the billions of dollars from the U.S. government keep flowing, along with increasing numbers of U.S. military advisors and U.S.-paid private contractors.
The Real Success
With Plan Colombia, the U.S. government keeps its colonial governor Alvaro Uribe in power. It keeps a military presence around Venezuela, whose democracy it seeks to destroy, including in countries it fears could follow Venezuela's path to freedom from U.S. economic control.
Only the Andean countries in the direct crossfire of this war on drugs are still in negotiations for the U.S. government's desired, but widely opposed and now unceremoniously collapsed, Free Trade Area of the Americas.
More broadly, the war on drugs helps the U.S. government keep its military-to-military contacts in virtually every country in Latin America. The U.S. government also abuses the drug war to pressure governments in countries like Bolivia and Peru to attack social movements that include peasant coca growers.
The latest incarnation of the lost war on drugs reveals all of this.
The continued Colombian output of cocaine clearly relies on the collusion of a government which the U.S. government supports more strongly than ever. This proves that stopping drugs isn't the reason for U.S. military involvement or embassy meddling, in Colombia or elsewhere in América. Narcotics aren't the cause, they're the cover.
The real purpose is the maintenance and expansion of economic empire.
That war, too, is far from over.
I agree
Submitted on February 13th, 2005 by Don Henry Ford Jr.FARC begins counterattack
Submitted on February 13th, 2005 by Benjamin Melançon(Get the AP Latin America newswire at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website.)