Begin forwarded message:
From: Alamaine <fratl...@gra.midco.net>
Date: March 9, 2009 5:33:23 AM PDT
To: CTRL <c...@yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [ctrl] Cocaine production surge unleashes wave of violence in
Latin America
Reply-To: c...@yahoogroups.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/09/cocaine-production-united-nations-summit
Cocaine production surge unleashes wave of violence in Latin America
Rory Carroll in Caracas
The Guardian, Monday 9 March 2009
Article history
Cocaine production has surged across Latin America and unleashed a
wave of
violence, population displacements and corruption, prompting urgent
calls
to rethink the drug war.
More than 750 tonnes of cocaine are shipped annually from the Andes in a
multi-billion pound industry which has forced peasants off land,
triggered
gang wars and perverted state institutions.
A Guardian investigation based on dozens of interviews with law
enforcement officials, coca farmers, refugees and policymakers has
yielded
a bleak picture of the "war" on the eve of a crucial United Nations drug
summit.
Almost 6,000 people died in drug-related violence in Mexico last year
alone, an unprecedented level of mayhem that is showing signs of
spilling
northwards into the United States. More than 1,000 have been killed
already this year in Mexico.
A new trafficking route between South America and west Africa has
grown so
quickly that the 10th latitude corridor connecting the continents has
been
dubbed Interstate 10.
Almost all those interviewed agreed that insatiable demand for cocaine
in
Europe and north America had thwarted US-led efforts to choke supply and
inflicted enormous damage on Latin America.
"We consider the war on drugs a failure because the objectives have
never
been achieved," said César Gaviria, Colombia's former president and
co-chair of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy.
"Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and
criminalisation have not yielded the expected results. We are today
farther than ever from the goal of eradicating drugs."
The commission is urging a "paradigm shift" from repression to a public
health approach, including decriminalisation of marijuana. Dismal
statistics about coca cultivation, cocaine exports and murder rates have
amplified calls to replace a policy which dates back to Nixon with one
which focuses on curbing demand.
"The strategy of the US here, in Colombia and Peru was to attack the raw
material and it has not worked," said Colonel René Sanabria, head of
Bolivia's anti-narcotic police force.
A report by the Brookings Institution, and a separate study by Harvard
economist Jeffrey Miron which was endorsed by 500 economists, have
joined
the chorus demanding change.
The debate comes to a head on Wednesday when ministers from across the
world convene in Vienna to forge a new UN approach to drugs. The
European
Union and some Latin American countries hope to shape a strategy based
on
"harm reduction" measures, such as needle exchanges. But holdovers from
the Bush administration are lobbying Barack Obama to stick with
traditional US emphasis on supply.
Even Colombia's president, Alvaro Uribe, who backs Washington's drug
war,
has sounded the alarm. "Organised crime could destroy us all if we do
not
come together to fight it," he told regional leaders recently.
The crucible is Colombia, the world's main cocaine exporter. Since
2000 it
has received $6bn in mostly military aid from the US for the drug war.
But
despite the fumigation of 1.15m hectares of coca, the plant from which
the
drug is derived, production has not fallen. Across the whole of South
America it has spiked 16%, thanks to increases in supply from Bolivia
and
Peru. Defenders of the drug war point out that the military-led strategy
clawed back territory from armed groups and stabilised Colombia.
"It's not fair to say there has been no progress," said Aldo Lale-Demoz,
head of the Bogota headquarters of the UN Office on Drug and Crime. "We
are not winning and we are not losing. We are controlling."
Successive US drug czars put a brave face on the results but
Washington's
patience has frayed. A recent report by the Government Accountability
Office concluded the war had failed in Colombia. It was commissioned by
Joe Biden, then a senator, now the vice president.
A spokesman for the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which
spearheads Washington's approach, hinted the new administration may
switch
tack.
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/maps_and_graphs/2009/03/08/DRUG_MAP.gif
--
... . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alamaine, IVe
"The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its
existence, rather a condition of it."
Friedrich Nietzsche
... . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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