hidden drug cache, Afghanistan 2008 (from nato.int)

The policy was announced earlier this year, when the US persuaded reluctant NATO allies to come on board as it began shifting its Afghan drug policy from eradication of peasant poppy fields to trying to interdict opium and heroin in transit out from the country. But it is receiving renewed attention as the fight heats up this summer, and the release of the report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has brought the policy under the spotlight.

The report, Afghanistan's Narco War: Breaking the Link between Drug Traffickers and Insurgents, includes the following highlights:

• Senior military and civilian officials now believe the Taliban cannot be defeated and good government in Afghanistan cannot be established without cutting off the money generated by Afghanistan's opium industry, which supplies more than 90 percent of the world's heroin and generates an estimated $3 billion a year in profits.
• As part of the US military expansion in Afghanistan, the Obama administration has assigned US troops a lead role in trying to stop the flow of illicit drug profits that are bankrolling the Taliban and fueling the corruption that undermines the Afghan government. Simultaneously, the United States has set up an intelligence center to analyze the flow of drug money to the Taliban and corrupt Afghan officials, and a task force combining military, intelligence and law enforcement resources from several countries to pursue drug networks linked to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan awaits formal approval.
• On the civilian side, the administration is dramatically shifting gears on counternarcotics by phasing out eradication efforts in favor of promoting alternative crops and agriculture development. For the first time, the United States will have an agriculture strategy for Afghanistan. While this new strategy is still being finalized, it will focus on efforts to increase agricultural productivity, regenerate the agribusiness sector, rehabilitate watersheds and irrigation systems, and build capacity in the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture Irrigation and Livestock.

While it didn't make the highlights, the following passage bluntly spells out the lengths to which the military is prepared to go to complete its new anti-drug mission: "In a dramatic illustration of the new policy, major drug traffickers who help finance the insurgency are likely to find themselves in the crosshairs of the military. Some 50 of them are now officially on the target list to be killed or captured."

Or, as one US military officer told the committee staff: "We have a list of 367 'kill or capture' targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and insurgency."

burning of captured Afghanistan hashish cache, world record size, 2008 (from nato.int)

Not everyone agrees that killing civilian drug traffickers in a foreign country is legal. The UN General Assembly has called for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. In a 2007 report, the International Harm Reduction Association identified the resort to the death penalty for drug offenses as a violation of the UN Charter and Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

"What was striking about the news coverage of this this week was that the culture of US impunity is so entrenched that nobody questioned or even mentioned the fact that extrajudicial murder is illegal under international law, and presumably under US law as well," said Steve Rolles of the British drug reform group Transform. "The UK government could never get away with an assassination list like this, and even when countries like Israel do it, there is widespread condemnation. Imagine the uproar if the Afghans had produced a list of US assassination targets on the basis that US forces in Afghanistan were responsible for thousands of civilian casualties."

Rolles noted that while international law condemns the death penalty for drug offenses, the US policy of "capture or kill" doesn't even necessarily contemplate trying offenders before executing them. "This hit list is something different," he argued. "They are specifically calling for executions without any recourse to trial, prosecution, or legal norms. Whilst a 'war' can arguably create exceptions in terms of targeting 'enemy combatants,' the war on terror and war on drugs are amorphous concepts apparently being used to create a blanket exemption under which almost any actions are justified, whether conventionally viewed as legal or not -- as recent controversies over torture have all too clearly demonstrated."

But observers on this side of the water were more sanguine. "This is arguably no different from US forces trying to capture or kill Taliban leaders," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert on drugs, security, and insurgencies at the Brookings Institution. "As long as you are in a war context and part of your policy is to immobilize the insurgency, this is no different," she said.

"This supposedly focuses on major traffickers closely aligned to the Taliban and Al Qaeda," said Ted Galen Carpenter, a foreign policy analyst for the Cato Institute. "That at least is preferable to going around destroying the opium crops of Afghan farmers, but it is still a questionable strategy," he said.

But even if they can live with hit-listing drug traffickers, both analysts said the success of the policy would depend on how it is implemented. "The major weakness of this new initiative is that it is subject to manipulation -- it creates a huge incentive for rival traffickers or people who simply have a quarrel with someone to finger that person and get US and NATO forces to take him out," said Carpenter, noting that Western forces had been similarly played in the recent past in Afghanistan. "You'll no doubt be amazed by the number of traffickers who are going to be identified as Taliban-linked. Other traffickers will have a vested interest in eliminating the competition."

"This is better than eradication," agreed Felbab-Brown, "but how effective it will be depends to a large extent on how it's implemented. There are potential pitfalls. One is that you send a signal that the best way to be a drug trafficker is to be part of the government. There needs to be a parallel effort to go after traffickers aligned with the government," she said.

"A second pitfall is with deciding the purpose of interdiction," Felbab-Brown continued. "This is being billed as a way to bankrupt the Taliban, but I am skeptical about that, and there is the danger that expectations will not be met. Perhaps this should be focused on limiting the traffickers' power to corrupt and coerce the state."

Another danger, said Felbab-Brown, is if the policy is implemented too broadly. "If the policy targets low-level traders even if they are aligned with the Taliban or targets extensive networks of trafficking organizations and ends up arresting thousands of people, its disruptive effects may be indistinguishable from eradication at the local level. That would be economically hurting populations the international community is trying to court."

Felbab-Brown pointed to the Colombian and Mexican examples to highlight another potential pitfall for the policy of targeting Taliban-linked traffickers. "Such operations could end up allowing the Taliban to take more control over trafficking, as in Colombia after the Medellin and Cali cartels were destroyed, where the FARC and the paramilitaries ended up becoming major players," she warned. "Or like Mexico, where the traffickers have responded by fighting back against the state. This could add another dimension to the conflict and increase the levels of violence."

The level of violence is already at its highest level since the US invasion and occupation nearly eight years ago. Last month was the bloodiest month of the war for Western troops, with 76 US and NATO soldiers killed. As of Wednesday, another 28 have been killed this month.

Phillip S. Smith, Writer/Editor

For quite a while now, I've breathed a sigh of relief that my children are grown and not subjected to today's middle schools and high schools, with their achingly paranoid approaches to security and their obeisance to the principles of zero tolerance. As I've watched news account after news account of some kindergartener arrested for kissing a classmate, a middle school girl suspended for possessing Midol, an entire South Carolina high school raided for drugs as if it were an Afghan Taliban hangout, I've known that something was rotten in the way we treat our kids.

But I never gave it serious thought, never developed a comprehensive critique of our ever more freaked-out approach to youth, our desire to protect them from some drugs while doping them with others, or our increasingly authoritarian educational system. "The War on Kids" does. Winner of the best educational film at this year's New York International Independent Film and Video Festival, the 99-minute film smartly and entertainingly documents baseless and excessive punishment by schools and police, extreme forms of social repression, scapegoating by the media, exclusion from mainstream society and what can only be called pharmacological abuse.

All of this dehumanizing and psychological damaging abuses rise from our desire to protect -- or is it control? -- our kids. We want to protect them from violence and from drugs, from teenage sex and drinking. And this, of course, is where the war on drugs intersects with the war on kids, each reinforcing the other in an ever-increasing spiral of repressive, oppressive responses.

Unsurprisingly -- although this is underdeveloped in the film -- our story begins in the scary Reagan years of "just say no" and teen "superpredators." That was the time of the rise of zero tolerance, a policy that substitutes rigid, harshly punitive rules for common sense and an individual approach. Zero tolerance was originally about protecting students from weapons, but devolved into suspending them for drawing pictures of guns. And it was about protecting them from violence, but devolved into arresting them for schoolyard fights. And it was about protecting them from drugs -- some drugs anyway -- but devolved into strip searches of teen girls for Ibuprofen, suspending them for possession of Alka-Seltzer, and turning over anyone caught with a joint to the police.

As youth sociologist Mike Males, author of "Scapegoat Nation," put it in the film: "They must conform, they must have constant monitoring and supervision, schools won't tolerate a single drop of alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs, no sex. This is absolutist conformity to arbitrary rules that are one size fits all."

Males goes on to note that despite the virtual panic over teen prescription drug use and overdoses, the real pain pill and OD epidemic is among the middle-aged. "It's not permissible to discuss drug use as a middle aged problem, so we have this unreal discussion about teens," he notes.

The youth, of course, are a convenient scapegoat. As much as they encapsulate our hopes and dreams, they also represent our fears and nightmares. Much better to project all that crap onto the kids than look into the mirror and deal with it ourselves.

The flip side of the war on drugs is the bizarre resort to the doping of a generation with Adderall, Ritalin, and the rest of the cavalcade of "good drugs." Here again, the filmmakers shine, turning a bright spotlight onto such insidious, invidious practices. The juxtaposition of the film's two drug chapters also shines a bright light on our whole insane approach to pharmaceutical substances. If a kid gets caught with cocaine, he is expelled and jailed. If a kid is on prescription Ritalin, all is good. Never mind that the two drugs produce almost identical biopharmaceutical effects.

"The War on Kids" is not just about the war on drugs. It also delves into the ever more Orwellian surveillance state built in the schools, the roles of administrators and teachers as akin to those of prison guards, and even the authoritarian architecture of the public school. (When driving through the countryside and coming across a grim, fenced, nearly windowless edifice, I find myself saying, "That's either a school or a prison.")

But the war on drugs and the war on kids feed on each other. Our draconian approaches to drug use and drug policy are a critical component of the war on kids. "The War on Kids" reveals that interaction, but also places it within the much broader context of our society's fear of urge to control our youth. In so doing, it unmasks the cant, the hypocrisy, and the fear-mongering that too often pass for reasoned analysis of the problems of youth.

As the Who once famously put it: "The kids are alright!" It's the grown-ups that have me worried.

As the world marks the end of the first century of drug prohibition -- the first international anti-drug convention was signed in Shanghai in 1909 -- the global anti-drug bureaucracy finds itself on the defensive. Faced with a rising chorus of critics, the bureaucracy fought back this week as the United Nations Office on Crime and Drugs (UNODC) issued its World Drugs Report 2009. That the UNODC finally feels compelled to confront -- instead of ignore -- its critics is a sign of progress.

HCLU demonstration at March '09 UN drug summit, Vienna

On decriminalization in Portugal the report noted that:

Portugal is an example of a country that recently decided not to put drug users in jail. According to the International Narcotics Control Board, Portugal's "decriminalization" of drug usage in 2001 falls within the Convention parameters: drug possession is still prohibited, but the sanctions fall under the administrative law, not the criminal law. Those in possession of a small amount of drugs for personal use are issued with a summons rather than arrested. The drugs are confiscated and the suspect must appear before a commission. The suspect's drug consumption patterns are reviewed, and users may be fined, diverted to treatment, or subjected to probation. Cases of drug trafficking continue to be prosecuted, and the number of drug trafficking offenses detected in Portugal is close to the European average.

These conditions keep drugs out of the hands of those who would avoid them under a system of full prohibition, while encouraging treatment, rather than incarceration, for users. Among those who would not welcome a summons from a police officer are tourists, and, as a result, Portugal’s policy has reportedly not led to an increase in drug tourism. It also appears that a number of drug-related problems have decreased.

The report then goes on to say that "while incarceration will continue to be the main response to detected traffickers, it should only be applied in exceptional cases to users." Combined with Costa's "people who take drugs need medical help, not criminal retribution," in the preface, it suggests that the UNODC would not oppose decriminalization, but the report doesn't say that. Instead, it advocates for drug courts and drug treatment.

When it comes to legalization, in the preface, Costa acknowledged his anti-prohibitionist critics and attempted to confront their arguments. His comments are worth quoting at length:

"...Of late, there has been a limited but growing chorus among politicians, the press, and even in public opinion saying: drug control is not working. The broadcasting volume is still rising and the message spreading. Much of this public debate is characterized by sweeping generalizations and simplistic solutions. Yet, the very heart of the discussion underlines the need to evaluate the effectiveness of the current approach. Having studied the issue on the basis of our data, UNODC has concluded that, while changes are needed, they should be in favor of different means to protect society against drugs, rather than by pursuing the different goal of abandoning such protection.
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Several arguments have been put forward in favor of repealing drug controls, based on (i) economic, (ii) health, and (iii) security grounds, and a combination thereof.

The economic argument for drug legalization says: legalize drugs, and generate tax income. This argument is gaining favor, as national administrations seek new sources of revenue during the current economic crisis. This legalize and tax argument is unethical and uneconomical. It proposes a perverse tax, generation upon generation, on marginalized cohorts (lost to addiction) to stimulate economic recovery. Are the partisans of this cause also in favor of legalizing and taxing other seemingly intractable crimes like human trafficking? Modern day slaves (and there are millions of them) would surely generate good tax revenue to rescue failed banks. The economic argument is also based on poor fiscal logic: any reduction in the cost of drug control (due to lower law enforcement expenditure) will be offset by much higher expenditure on public health (due to the surge of drug consumption). The moral of the story: don't make wicked transactions legal just because they are hard to control.

Others have argued that, following legalization, a health threat (in the form of a drug epidemic) could be avoided by state regulation of the drug market. Again, this is naive and myopic. First, the tighter the controls (on anything), the bigger and the faster a parallel (criminal) market will emerge -- thus invalidating the concept. Second, only a few (rich) countries could afford such elaborate controls. What about the rest (the majority) of humanity? Why unleash a drug epidemic in the developing world for the sake of libertarian arguments made by a pro-drug lobby that has the luxury of access to drug treatment? Drugs are not harmful because they are controlled -- they are controlled because they are harmful; and they do harm whether the addict is rich and beautiful, or poor and marginalized.

The most serious issue concerns organized crime. All market activity controlled by the authority generates parallel, illegal transactions, as stated above. Inevitably, drug controls have generated a criminal market of macro-economic dimensions that uses violence and corruption to mediate between demand and supply. Legalize drugs, and organized crime will lose its most profitable line of activity, critics therefore say. Not so fast. UNODC is well aware of the threats posed by international drug mafias. Our estimates of the value of the drug market (in 2005) were groundbreaking. The Office was also first to ring the alarm bell on the threat of drug trafficking to countries in West and East Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and the Balkans. In doing so we have highlighted the security menace posed by organized crime, a matter now periodically addressed by the UN Security Council. Having started this drugs/crime debate, and having pondered it extensively, we have concluded that these drug-related, organized crime arguments are valid. They must be addressed. I urge governments to recalibrate the policy mix, without delay, in the direction of more controls on crime, without fewer controls on drugs. In other words, while the crime argument is right, the conclusions reached by its proponents are flawed. Why? Because we are not counting beans here: we are counting lives. Economic policy is the art of counting beans (money) and handling trade-offs: inflation vs. employment, consumption vs. savings, internal vs. external balances. Lives are different. If we start trading them off, we end up violating somebody's human rights. There cannot be exchanges, no quid-pro-quos, when health and security are at stake: modern society must, and can, protect both these assets with unmitigated determination. I appeal to the heroic partisans of the human rights cause worldwide, to help UNODC promote the right to health of drug addicts: they must be assisted and reintegrated into society. Addiction is a health condition and those affected by it should not be imprisoned, shot-at or, as suggested by the proponent of this argument, traded off in order to reduce the security threat posed by international mafias. Of course, the latter must be addressed, and below is our advice.

First, law enforcement should shift its focus from drug users to drug traffickers. Drug addiction is a health condition: people who take drugs need medical help, not criminal retribution. Attention must be devoted to heavy drug users. They consume the most drugs, cause the greatest harm to themselves and society -- and generate the most income to drug mafias. Drug courts and medical assistance are more likely to build healthier and safer societies than incarceration. I appeal to Member States to pursue the goal of universal access to drug treatment as a commitment to save lives and reduce drug demand: the fall of supply, and associated crime revenues, will follow. Let's progress towards this goal in the years ahead,and then assess its beneficial impact on the next occasion Member States will meet to review the effectiveness of drug policy (2015).

Second, we must put an end to the tragedy of cities out of control. Drug deals, like other crimes, take place mostly in urban settings controlled by criminal groups. This problem will worsen in the mega-cities of the future, if governance does not keep pace with urbanization. Yet, arresting individuals and seizing drugs for their personal use is like pulling weeds -- it needs to be done again the next day. The problem can only be solved by addressing the problem of slums and dereliction in our cities, through renewal of infrastructures and investment in people -- especially by assisting the youth, who are vulnerable to drugs and crime, with education, jobs and sport. Ghettos do not create junkies and the jobless: it is often the other way around. And in the process mafias thrive.

Third, and this is the most important point, governments must make use, individually and collectively, of the international agreements against uncivil society. This means to ratify and apply the UN Conventions against Organized Crime (TOC) and against Corruption (CAC), and related protocols against the trafficking of people, arms and migrants. There is much more our countries can do to face the brutal force of organized crime: the context within which mafias operate must also be addressed...

To conclude, transnational organized crime will never be stopped by drug legalization. Mafias coffers are equally nourished by the trafficking of arms, people and their organs, by counterfeiting and smuggling, racketeering and loan-sharking, kidnapping and piracy, and by violence against the environment (illegal logging, dumping of toxic waste, etc). The drug/crime trade-off argument, debated above, is no other than the pursuit of the old drug legalization agenda, persistently advocated by the pro-drug-lobby (Note that the partisans of this argument would not extend it to guns whose control -- they say -- should actually be enforced and extended: namely, no to guns, yes to drugs).

So far the drug legalization agenda has been opposed fiercely, and successfully, by the majority of our society. Yet, anti-crime policy must change. It is no longer sufficient to say: no to drugs. We have to state an equally vehement: no to crime. There is no alternative to improving both security and health. The termination of drug control would be an epic mistake. Equally catastrophic is the current disregard of the security threat posed by organized crime."

While Costa's preface can only be read as an attack on the anti-prohibitionist position (while essentially calling for decriminalization of drug use), it also marks an engagement with the anti-prohibitionists. And they are ready to engage right back at him.

"The UN drug czar is talking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand he admits global drug prohibition is destabilizing governments, increasing violence, and destroying lives," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "But on the other hand he offers facile arguments dismissing the need for serious debate on alternative drug policies. The report erroneously assumes that prohibition represents the ultimate form of control when in fact it represents the abdication of control," Nadelmann added.

"The world's 'drug czar,' Antonio Maria Costa, would have you believe that the legalization movement is calling for the abolition of drug control," said Jack Cole, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and a retired undercover narcotics detective. "Quite the contrary, we are demanding that governments replace the failed policy of prohibition with a system that actually regulates and controls drugs, including their purity and prices, as well as who produces them and who they can be sold to. You can't have effective control under prohibition, as we should have learned from our failed experiment with alcohol in the US between 1920 and 1933."

LEAP wants to keep the conversation going, and it wants citizens around the world to let the UNODC head know what they think. "We're asking people to go to http://www.DrugWarDebate.com, where they can send a message to the world 'drug czar' to educate him about the effects of policies he is supposed to be leading on," said Cole. "Now is the time for action. It's clear that prohibitionists are concerned about reformers' rapidly growing political clout when they attack us on page one of their annual report but didn't even mention us in last year's."

After ignoring anti-prohibitionist critics for years -- the legalization movement wasn't even mentioned in last year's report -- the global anti-drug bureaucracy has come out swinging. Costa has made his best case for smarter, better drug prohibition, and his arguments deserve to be addressed seriously.

But as successful nonviolent social movement leader Mohandas Gandhi famously observed: "First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." It appears that the anti-prohibitionist struggle is now in its penultimate stage.