Drug Trade Funding Terrorists
Southwest Asia: Iran Accuses West of Ignoring Afghan Opium, US Marines Conveniently Aid Tehran's Case
Iran Wednesday accused the US and NATO of indifference to Afghanistan's booming opium trade and called on the West to help fight smuggling of opium and heroin across the border the two countries sh
European Pressure: Turkey Must Fight Drug War, or Else
Posted in Chronicle Blog by Kalif Mathieu on Tue, 04/22/2008 - 5:14pmEDITOR'S NOTE: Kalif Mathieu is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. His bio is in our "staff" section.
I traveled to the city of Istanbul last week to stay for a few days with my school program of Peace and Conflict Resolution. Istanbul (and Turkey as a whole) is the perfect conduit for heroin being produced in the middle-east to reach Western European markets. Heroin and other drugs are commodities like anything else, and travel through the same general trade routes as other goods. Turkey is so strategically placed that according to Le Monde diplomatique in 1995 “An estimated 80% of the heroin on the European market is being processed in Turkish laboratories." (La Dépêche Internationale des Drogues 1995, Nr. 48)
So you might ask, “what’s so special about heroin traveling through Turkey? It’s just like any other trade between the middle-east and Europe.” The troublesome point is who controls the trafficking through the country and receives the profits of the trade. This happens to be the PKK, or Kurdistan Worker’s Party, a militant organization with a 30-year history of fighting the Turkish government to establish a separate Kurdish state. “According to Interpol […] the PKK was orchestrating 80 % of the European drug market” back in 1992, and “[o]ther sources similarly indicate that the PKK controlled between 60 % to 70 %” in 1994 reported the Turkish Daily News.
The state of Turkey has been increasing its process of Westernization recently in its desire to join the EU, and this has meant adopting a Western policy on drugs. Turkey has been very successful recently in increasing its police and border control effectiveness and eliminating corruption. The Turkish Daily News gave some convincing numbers: “According to the deputy customs undersecretary, there was a 400 percent increase in drug-operation success in the period between 2002 and 2006, when compared to the 1999-2002 period.”
However, even though Turkey has been, in recent years, dealing more and more forcefully with both the PKK militants and the drug trade, has this actually reduced the trafficking of drugs and the profits of the PKK? In the Turkish Daily News: “[t]he annual revenue made by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has increased to 400-500 million euros, a top Turkish general said late Tuesday.” If the PKK’s revenue has increased, then it is logical to assume Turkey’s military campaign against them may not be considered a huge success. Not only that, but “200-250 million euros of [the PKK’s] revenue comes from drugs […] Gen. Ergin Saygun, deputy chief of General Staff said.” That makes drug trafficking 50% of the organization’s income!
The Turkish state has had a history of valuing the effectiveness of force. It was born from war, and the constitution has a controversial but often-utilized article that allows the Turkish army to organize a coup to eliminate the possibility of having a religious party in power. What is the point of these so-called ‘hard-line’ approaches to dealing with the nation’s problems if they are rather ineffective? Very little of course. The trouble comes from what the state could say to its citizens, to the international community, if it negotiated with the violent PKK or began to take the drug trade into the light by moving it towards legalization and either private or state control? If Turkey tried to clean up its smuggling and black market in such a way the majority of Europe, if not the greater ‘global community,’ would probably condemn the entire nation of betraying humanity and literally becoming evil. The reaction of many Turkish citizens would be perhaps lighter, but of a similar nature if the state sat down to negotiations with the ‘terrorist’ PKK. These are strong influences on the Turkish state, and severely limit its options. Therefore it seems Turkey doesn’t have much of a choice but to pursue the same policy of force it has pursued for more than 30 years, whether it benefit the people or not.
Feature: The 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference -- Mr. Costa Meets the Opposition
The 2007 International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans kicked off with a bang Thursday as Antonio Maria Costa, head of the
Southwest Asia: US Plan For Aerial Spraying of Afghan Poppies on Hold -- for Now
Southwest Asia: Opium Accounts for Maybe Half of Taliban Funding, US Commander Says
Black market opium production under the global drug prohibition regime is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of the Taliban, the top US commander in Afghanistan said last week
Editorial: Enough Already -- Stop Funding the Taliban Through Opium Prohibition
David Borden, Executive Director
Southwest Asia: US Turns Up the Pressure to Spray Poppy Fields, Afghan Government Resists -- So Far
US drug warriors have long wanted to unleash herbicidal sprays as a weapon to put a dent in Afghanistan's burgeoning opium poppy crop, but the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai -- along w
Europe: European Parliament Committee Calls for Pilot Project on Medicinal Opium in Afghanistan
The European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee last week called on the European Union council of ministers to prepare a plan for the Afghan government that would include a possible pilot proje
Prohibition: Terror Groups Profit From Drugs, DEA Says -- Missing Forest For Trees
Nearly half of the groups officially listed by the US government as foreign terrorist organizations fund their activities thr
DEA Agent Admits The Drug War Funds Terrorism
Posted in Chronicle Blog by Scott Morgan on Tue, 09/11/2007 - 7:29pmWell, not exactly. But it sure is astounding to hear DEA lament the black market's role in funding terror:
Nearly half of the 42 groups considered by the United States to be terror organisations fund their activities through drug trafficking, a top US official said in Israel Sunday.The Drug Enforcement Administration's Michael Braun told a conference on "The Global Impact of Terrorism", organised by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism, that the DEA "linked 18 of the 42 officially designated Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTO) to drug trafficking activities of some sorts." [Yahoo News]
If there's anything surprising about this, it is the fact that Braun wants to continue the exact policies that make it possible for violent groups to make fast money.
Drug profits are being funneled into numerous terrorist organizations and the people who failed to prevent this sort of thing are instead citing it as evidence that their work is more important than ever.
No. It is 2007. You people have had enough time to try your idea. Clearly, you were wrong about everything. Rather than experiment with news ways of describing the same wrong ideas, it is time for these brave gentlemen to step aside and open up the floor to suggestions. Mine is to de-fund terrorists and countless other jerks by ending the drug war that makes them so damned rich.
Feature: As Afghan Opium Production Goes Through the Roof, Pressure for Aerial Eradication, Increased Western Military Involvement Mounts
To no one's surprise, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced last week that Afghan opium production had reached another record high.
Feature: In Strategy Shift, US Troops to Join Battle Against Opium in Afghanistan
The United States military is melding counterinsurgency with counternarcotics missions in Afghanistan in what officials called "a basic strategy shift" in its Afghan campaign.
Southwest Asia: State Department Says US Afghanistan Drug Policy Will Shift, But Not Much
In a meeting last week with "a select group of Washington analysts," Thomas Schweich, Acting Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, conceded that
Southwest Asia: Afghan Poppy Crop Sets New Record, US Ambassador Says
The Afghan opium poppy crop will set a new record this year, US Ambassador to Afghanistan William Wood
Latin America: Colombia Coca Production Up Again Despite Massive Eradication Efforts
The US government reported Monday that the amount of land under coca cultivation in Colombia had increased for the third straight year.
Ponder This Graph for a Moment, Please
Posted in Chronicle Blog by Phillip Smith on Tue, 05/29/2007 - 1:21pm
(graph from WOLA/AIN memo, link below)
This graph shows what about $10 billion in US taxpayer dollars has accomplished. Note that while coca production has shifted within the region, the 1992 levels and the 2005 levels are essentially identical.
Why is our coca eradication policy not subjected to cost-benefit analysis? Is there anyone who will argue that it is working? If so, I'd like to hear it.
To be fair, that $10 billion has accomplished some things. It has engendered massive social conflict in all three countries, it has led to tens of thousands of peasant farmers being arrested as drug traffickers, it has led to thousands of deaths (especially in Colombia, where the eradication policy is part of the US's broader military intervention in that country's festering civil war). Your tax dollars at work.
$10 billion is a lot of money. Heck, we could finance the Iraq war for a few weeks with it! Or we could give $100,000 college scholarships to 10,000 students. Or build $100,000 homes for 10,000 families. Or numerous other programs that, unlike the coca eradication program, might actually accomplish something.
By the way, I came across the graph above in a memo from the Andean Information Network and the Washington Office on Latin America. That memo was occasioned by the US government's release of coca cultivation estimates for Bolivia. The US government has for months been complaining that Bolivian President Evo Morales' pro-coca policies were going to lead to a boom in production there. Surprise! It didn't. Read the memo for some juicy analysis.
Middle East: Opium Poppies Flower Again in Iraq
Ancient Iraq is the source of some of the earliest written accounts of opium poppy production.
.org
