Pot times July 17, 2005
US Requires New Tactics In Drug War
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1127/a01.htmlNewshawk: Herb
Pubdate: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 U.S. REQUIRES NEW TACTICS IN DRUG WAR
Source: Roanoke Times (VA)
Copyright: 2005 Roanoke Times
Contact:
karen.trout@roanoke.com
Website: http://www.roanoke.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/368
Author: Amy Hensley and Will Reisinger
Note: Hensley and Reisinger are recent graduates of Emory & Henry
College. Reisinger wrote an honors thesis on U.S. drug policies in Bolivia.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm
(Cocaine)
The U.S. spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually combating the
global drug trade. It spends billions more each year fighting "the
war on terror." But we have never really recognized how intimately
connected the two wars are.
The Bush administration warns that terrorist organizations around the world
threaten the health, economy and security of Americans. But the
administration seldom tells us that these terrorists often finance their evil
acts by producing and trafficking illegal drugs.
Therefore, if we are to win the war on terror, we must have a viable
counter-drug strategy. Without such a strategy, Americans will face even
greater security problems in the years to come.
Take Afghanistan. It produces 90 percent of the world's illicit opium, and
in 2004, its opium poppy harvest increased by 64 percent. Currently, our
anti-terrorism plan for Afghanistan consists of stabilizing a small slice of the
country immediately around Kabul and publicly declaring victory as often as
possible while allowing the countryside to fall into chaos. Our tragically
simplistic eradication approach - if we destroy the drugs and drug crops, then
we will eliminate the drug problem - to controlling drug supplies cannot work
effectively in the Afghan countryside.
Last year, for example, we spent millions to destroy a paltry 13,000 acres of
opium. We have refused to challenge or question many drug lords who helped
us oust the Taliban three years ago, even though their drug empires have now
have become the financial engines that sustain the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Our ineffective counter-drug policy in Afghanistan is increasing the likelihood
that terrorists will have the capacity to hit us hard again. In
Afghanistan the threat is now, and the threat is real: The thriving opium trade
fuels the terrorist groups that threaten Americans.
In the South American Andes, however, a new threat is just emerging.
Colombia is the world's largest producer of coca and of processed cocaine.
The administration's counter-drug plan for Colombia and the other
cocaine-producing nations in the Andes is a State Department program called the
Andean Counterdrug Initiative ( ACI ), which will funnel approximately $730
million into the region next year. The clear focus in Colombia is
eradication, and millions of U.S. dollars are used to aid the physical
destruction of coca plants. Fumigation efforts have resulted in health
problems for the local people and ecological damage to the Colombian forests,
but there has been no significant decline of cocaine production.
The situation in Colombia poses a threat to our national security because the
FARC, which the U.S. State Department has characterized as South America's
largest and most dangerous terrorist organization, has thrived in the chaotic
environment that swirls in the wake of military-based eradication efforts.
The FARC is a violent, anti-U.S. Marxist insurgent group with sovereign
control of much of rural Colombia. Its ranks are swelled by Colombian
youth who are angry about U.S. intervention in the region, and the group
is financed and sustained by its involvement in the booming cocaine trade.
The U.S. continues to discuss increasing its military aid to the Colombian
government and the eradication war while overlooking the fact that this mission
is not failing because it is underfunded. It is failing because the policy
fortifies the dangerous rebel army it was designed to defeat. If groups
like the FARC become more powerful, like the Taliban or al-Qaida, we could be
dealing with a serious national security threat much closer to home.
Many Americans believe the Bush administration and the Republicans can handle
the war on terror. But the way the administration is fighting the war on
drugs is not making Americans safer. Instead, the dangers of terrorist
attacks are increasing because of a misguided and counterproductive drug policy
that gives our most dangerous enemies new life. To win the war on terror,
we must understand that we have to win the war on drugs, and policies centered
on eradication and military buildup are not working.
Instead, the U.S. should adopt more of a market solution to the problem.
After all, farmers in Colombia don't grow coca because they necessarily want to.
They do it because it puts food on their tables. We should use our
resources to support foreign producers, paying them the difference between what
they would make selling coca and a commodity that we would like them to produce.
Currently, U.S. aid for eradication efforts and the Colombian military
dwarfs aid for alternative crop development programs; enhancing the markets for
viable nondrug crops in drug-producing nations might give poor farmers other
ways to feed their families besides growing drug crops.
A more cooperative approach would ensure that those who plan to kill Americans
would have less drug revenue with which to pay for their projects and fewer
desperate and aggrieved people to recruit to their cause.
