Newsgroups: soc.culture.colombia,talk.politics.drugs
From: [S--Y--A] at [SUVM.SYR.EDU] (Sergio Rivera)
Subject: Re: War on drugs
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 1994 04:33:23 GMT
Copyright 1991 Jonathan Marshall
Drug Wars
Corruption, Counterinsurgency, and Covert Operations in the Third World
SECTION: Chapters I-II, Pages 1-28
HEADLINE: Going to the source-Drug enforcement as counterinsurgency
BYLINE: By Jonathan Marshall
DATELINE: Oakland, California
International narcotics control rests upon the central premise -- or
pretense -- that by helping foreign government stamp out drugs abroad,
the United States can avoid curbing its own demand for them at home.
The reality is all too different. Time after time, the very
governments and foreign security agencies Washington supports with anti-
drug assistance shield the drug kings or monopolize the traffic
themselves. Corruption knows no borders. Exposure of the ''French
Connection'' showed that drug profits ensnare politiicians, police and
intelligence officials even in a First World nation like France, with its
strong tradition of professionalism. (4) Plenty of drug corruption
scandals in the United States itself prove the same point.
Such corruption often follows a progression as it becomes entrenched.
Drug enforcement is a form of market regulation and Darwinian selection.
Police weed out traffickers less skilled at evading detection or buying
protection. ''Efficient'' traffickers develop a symbiotic relationship
with ambitious agents of the law. Police need underworld informants to
make their cases; successful traffickers in turn need police to block
their rivals. Both have an incentive to arrest large numbers of weak,
unprotected competitors. These mutual needs may, and often do, promote
outright cooperation and corruption.
Over time police may come to realize that taking bribes offer fewer
rewards than dealing the drugs themselves, while still using drug laws to
eliminate independent competitors. In extreme cases, drug profits may
even strengthen corrupt police or military elites vis-a-vis other
government institutions to the point where they seize state power, as the
Bolivian military did in the infamous 1980 ''cocaine coup.''
In the Third World particularly, where government institutions have
short histories and questionable legitimacy, officials may rationalize
their takeover of lucrative drug rackets as needed to preempt independent
syndicates that threaten state power. Failure to bring those independent
traffickers under control can lead to internal chaos, civil war or
warlordism. As the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board
noted in its 1984 annual report, ''Illegal drug production and
trafficking financed by organized crime is so pervasive that the
economies of entire countries are disrupted, legal institutions menaced
and the very security of some states threatened.'' (5) Once again, the
problem is not unique to the Third World. Even Italy had to send an anti-
terrorist commander (Gen. Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa) to combat Mafia
strongholds in Sicily -- and he was brazenly assassinated.
Where efforts to suppress drugs produce instability, not security,
authorities may try to take control of the drug traffic rather than wage
continual war against it. Using drug laws and armed force as weapons
against independent competitors, governments can create 'de facto' drug
monopolies to help consolidate their power within the national territory.
Chiang Kai-shek used that classic tactic in his campaign to unify China
under his party, the Kuomintang (KMT). By seizing poppy fields and
monopolizing drug marketing channels in the name of opium
''suppression,'' he undercut independent warlords financed from regional
drug profits. Ironically, in the 1940s the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics
trained Chiang's secret police -- who ganged up with the head of the
Shanghai underworld to run what may have been the world's largest drug
trafficking syndicate. (6)
Similar symptons of gross corruption afflict country after country
where drugs are produced or transshipped:
[...]
Peru
Responsible for producing more than half the cocaine shipped to the
United States, Peru depends on more than 200,000 acres of coca for as
much as a quarter of its gross domestic product. (33) With hyperinflation
raging in the four-digit range, foreign exchange reserves depleted, the
economy shrinking and a fanatical left-wing insurgency terrorizing much
of the country, coca production may be one of the few ''bright'' spots on
the Peruvian scene.
Or at least that's how it may seem to the tens of thousands of
peasants who make their living growing and harvesting the traditional
Andean coca leaf for export -- and to the countless underpaid government
officials who look the other way in return for bribes.
Peru ranks with Bolivia for the sheer ubiquity of corruption
throughout government ranks.
The military has had its hand in the cocaine trade ever since 1949,
when the government established a state coca monopoly and set aside all
profits for the construction of military barracks. (34) In the brief
period from July 1984 to December 1985, when the army exercised emergency
powers over the center of Peruvian coca cultivation, the Upper Huallaga
Valley, drug production soared. The army confined the anti-drug police to
their barracks while chasing leftwing Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)
guerrillas. Army officers reportedly raked in hundreds of thousands of
dollars for protecting the drug lords during those operations. ''It's
better for the narcos when the army is here,'' said one police official.
(35) The government finally had to pull the army out before it became a
total appendage of the drug elite. (36) When the army returned to the
Upper Huallaga Valley in 1989, however, it once again declared major drug
regions ''off-limits'' to Peruvian police and DEA agents. Soldiers
loading cocaine paste onto transport planes have reportedly even fired on
US-piloted anti-drug helicopters. (37)
In 1982, a former Peruvian air force general was sentenced to 15 years
in prison after being caught with 5 kilos of cocaine on his way to Miami.
(38) The same year the war minister accused two former ministers of
interior with conspiring to undertake a major cocaine deal. (39)
In 1985, a huge drug scandal prompted President Alan Garcia to dismiss
at least 100 air force personnel, more than 200 top officers from Peru's
three national police forces and well over 1,000 policemen. Several
hundreds judges also came under investigation for suspected corruption.
(40)
Yet corruption remains endemic to Peruvian law enforcement. In 1988,
the State Department's top narcotics official admitted that allegations
of corruption were still ''swirling around the PIP,'' Peru's FBI. (41) A
congressional staff report confirmed that ''repeated compromises of DEA
information [through PIP] eventually led to a virtual termination of
relationship between the two agencies'' and added that ''corruption in
all segments of the Peruvian government continues to impede meaningful
antinarcotics efforts.'' (42)
The politicians are no clearer. In late 1988, West German police
arrested a leader of Peru's ruling party, APRA, while attempting to cash
a large check signed by one of Peru's most notorious traffickers. (43)
Around the same time, the head of President Alan Garcia's press office
was arrested with two satchels of cocaine; he used his influence to
destroy the police file but was later unmasked. (44) Suspicions of APRA's
deep involvement in the drug trade fed reports that the Garcia government
purposedly ignored widespread coca trafficking in the Cusco area in the
southern part of the country. (45)
[...]
Peru
The US push for narcotics enforcement in Peru, as in Mexico, has
evolved into a counterinsurgency campaign. The main targets in this case
are the fanatical Maoist guerrillas of Sendero Luminoso.
In the early 1980s, the United States began training and equipping an
anti-drug police unit based in Tingo Maria, a center of the coca growing
region northeast of Lima. The police began conducting joint operations
with the air force and counterinsurgency-trained civil guard. (107)
A series of devastating guerrilla raids, including police station
bombings, forced a cancellation of police field operations. The 'New
York Times' reported in August 1984 that with drug programs shut down
''the strike force is now almost fully occupied in the counterinsurgency
campaign. This new role has raised questions among United States
officials in Peru and in Washington about the spending of United States
Government funds that are earmarked for narcotics control, not for
counterinsurgency.'' (108)
Although Sendero guerrillas do garner tens of millions of dollars each
year from taxing the coca trade, US officials admit there is little
evidence of a close alliance between the smugglers and the guerrillas.
(109) Peru's security forces use the drug issue as an excuse to go after
the greater danger. In July 1984 President Fernando Belaunde Terry
declared a ''holy war'' against what he called the ''narcotics-terrorism
threat,'' extending a state of national emergency for 30 days to give the
armed forces a chance to use ''new methods'' against the guerrillas.
(110)
The army, however, did not see narcos and guerrillas as allies. It
shut down anti-drug police operations and enlisted traffickers in the war
against Sendero. ''We have to have popular support to fight terrorism,''
one officer said. ''We have to have a friend in the population. You can't
do that by eradicating coca.'' (111)
The army has returned to the Upper Huallaga Valley -- and so has the
counterinsurgency campaign. US personnel are even joining the fight
against Sendero. In early 1990, Shining Path guerrillas attacked the main
anti-drug base at Santa Lucia in the Upper Huallaga Valley. US
helicopters pilots took to the air in Huey gunships for a two-hour battle
to beat them off. To plan and carry out its operations in the region, the
DEA has teamed up with the Pentagon's Center for Low Intensity Conflict,
a classic counterinsurgency outfit. (112)
In early 1990, the Bush administration announced plans to deliver $ 35
million in military aid, under the anti-drug program, to combat Sendero
directly. The money would finance a large military training base in the
heart of the Upper Huallaga Valley, staffed by Special Forces
counterinsurgency trainers; six army battalions; and refurbishing of 20
A-37 jets. Melvyn Levitsky, the State Department's top narcotics officer,
explained, ''We have to up the capability to hit the Sendero, to provide
a cover -- a security cover for the operations by the police and the
military against the drug traffickers.'' (113)
That rationale falls apart under examination. Sending aid to the
Peruvian military in the name of fighting drugs is almost a contradiction
in terms. Levitsky himself admitted that widespread reports of military
corruption ''have ranged from taking payoffs from the traffickers so that
they could go after the Sendero, that is to let the [drug] flights in, to
other kinds of collusion.'' (114)
Top military officers have made no secret about halting drug
eradication efforts in order to win peasant support against the
guerrillas -- just as they did in 1984-1985. General Alberto Arciniega,
the army's field commander in the Upper Huallaga Valley until 1990, said,
''The magnitude of the problems we face is far greater than narcotics. My
order is: nobody must touch the 'campesino' coca grower. This doesn't
mean I support drug trafficking.'' He might as well, though. ''We hit
laboratories,'' said one senior US embassy official, ''but there are no
arrests, no seizures. It's just harassment. We're not making major
progress here.'' As a result, coca fields have expanded and drug
shipments are picking up.'' (115)
Worse yet, the Peruvian military only fuels the insurgency by
brutalizing the peasantry. The State Department's own annual report on
human rights around the globe blamed government security forces for more
than 500 forced disappearanced in 1989, a world record that year.
According to Juan Mendez, executive director of Americas Watch, army
units sometimes react to ambushes and attacks ''by invading a community
and killing dozens of young and old males, sometimes in view of
relatives.'' In addition, right-wing death squads linked to the army
''have targeted journalists, lawyers and human right monitors,'' bombing
the headquarters of no fewer than three rights organizations in Lima in
one week. The most prominent of these death squads, the Rodrigo Franco
Front, was reportedly financed by funds that police confiscated in
narcotics raids. (116)
Sending more military aid to Peru -- a project jeopardized by the
breakdown of US talks with the government of Alberto Fujimori in
September 1990 -- would put counterinsurgency ahead of all other
political and economic priorities. In Peru's unstable situation,
bolstering a military that held total power from 1968 to 1980 can only
shift the balance of forces in favor of an institution whose loyalties
to democracy, human rights and civilian rule are tenuous at best.
Endnotes
(1) The White House, 'National Drug Control Strategy,' September 1989,
61-2; Senate Government Operations Control Committee, Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations (hereafter SPSI), hearings, 'Federal
Drug Interdiction: Role of the Department of Defense' (Washington:
USGPO, 1989), 18.
[...]
(4) James Mills, 'Underground Empire,' (Garden City: Doubleday, 1986),
555.
(5) 'San Jose Mercury,' January 17, 1985.
(6) Jonathan Marshall, ''Opium and the Politics of Gangsterism in
Nationalist China,'' 'Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars,' VIII
(July-September 1976), pp. 19-48; 'New York Times,' September 14,
1945.
[...]
(11) House Committee on Foreign Affairs [hereafter HCFA], staff report,
'US Narcotics Control Programs Overseas: An Assessment,' February
22, 1985, p. 17; 'High Times,' May 1984, p. 19; 'New York Times,'
July 21, 1984; 'San Francisco Examiner,' August 26, 1984.
[...]
(33) 'Hoy' [La Paz], March 8, 1990.
(34) Antonil, 'Mama Coca,' p. 96.
(35) 'Wall Street Journal,' May 1, 1987; cf. HCFA, staff report, 'US
Narcotics Control Programs Overseas: An Assesment,' 20.
(36) Richard Craig, ''Illicit Drug Traffic,'' 'op. cit.'
(37) 'SPSI, hearings, US Government Anti-narcotics Activities in the
Andean Region of South America, 289; 'US News and World Report,'
April 30, 1990; 'Miami Herald,' March 28, 1990.
(38) 'Boston Globe,' January 24, 1982.
(39) 'LAWR,' March 5, 1982.
(40) 'Newsweek,' February 25, 1985; 'Oakland Tribute,' June 2, 1985;
'Los Angeles Times,' December 1, 1985.
(41) Ann Wrobleski, Assistant Secretary of State for International
Narcotics Matters, testimony, HCFA, hearing, 'Narcotics Review in
South America' (Washington: USGPO, 1988), 100.
(42) HCFA, staff report, 'US Narcotics Control Programs in Peru,
Bolivia, Colombia and Mexico: An Update,' 7-12.
(43) 'LAWR,' November 3, 1988.
(44) 'LAWR,' December 1, 1988.
(45) James Petras, ''Drug-War Rhetoric Conceals Cartels' Capital Ties,''
'In These Times,' November 15, 1989.
[...]
(107) 'LAWR,' August 17, 1984; 'New York Times,' September 13, 1984,
'LAWR,' June 22, 1984.
(108) 'New York Times,' August 13, 1984.
(109) Testimony of Gustavo Gorriti, SPSI, hearings, 'US Government Anti-
narcotics Activities in the Andean Region of South America,' 226;
'Wall Street Journal,' August 10, 1984; testimony of Hon. Edwin G.
Corr, former ambassador to Peru, in SPSI hearings, 'International
Narcotics Trafficking,' p. 199; statement of Clyde Taylor, Acting
Assistant Secretary of State for INM, Senate Committee on Labor and
Human Resources, Subcommittee on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse,
hearing, 'Drugs and Terrorism, 1984' (Washington: USGPO 1984), 25;
cf. 46-49. Congressional investigators cited ''disturbing -- though
unconfirmed -- reports that the military has actually collaborated
with the drug traffickers to identify guerrilla strongholds.''
(HCFA, staff reports, 'US Narcotics Control Programs Overseas: An
Assessment,' February 22, 1985, p. 20. On bloody clashes between
Sendero and the narcos, see Agence France Presse, May 13, 1987.
(110) 'San Francisco Examiner,' July 7, 1984; 'Norfolk Virginian-Pilot,'
July 29, 1984.
(111) 'Washington Post,' December 29, 1984; Rensselaer Lee II, ''Why the
US Cannot Stop South American Cocaine.''
(112) 'New York Times,' April 12, 1990; SPSI, hearings, US Government
Anti-narcotics Activities in the Andean Region of South America,'
p. 50.
(113) 'New York Times,' April 22, 1990; SPSI, hearings, US Government
Anti-narcotics Activities in the Andean Region of South America,'
p. 155.
(114) 'Ibid.,' 170.
(115) 'Ibid.,' 294; 'Los Angeles Times,' January 6, 1990; 'New York
Times,' December 6, 1989.
(116) 'Christian Science Monitor,' May 3, 1990; 'New York Times,' May 7,
1990; 'San Francisco Chronicle,' August 15, 1990. See also Amnesty
International, Peru Briefing, ''Caught between two fires,''
November 1989.