Jun 052007
The White House “Drug Czar’s” office has now posted its estimate of Colombian coca cultivation last year. The official number is about 157,200 hectares (388,400 acres) under cultivation in 2006, slightly more than the 156,000 that Colombian President Ãlvaro Uribe reported last Friday. This is about 13,200 hectares more than the U.S. government detected in 2005.
The official release offers some interesting observations and alarming proposals.
- The U.S. government acknowledges that coca cultivators have found ways to get around fumigation. “Rapid crop reconstitution, a move to smaller plots, and the discovery of previously unsurveyed coca growing areas, have posed major challenges to the techniques and methodologies used to understand Colombia’s coca cultivation and cocaine output. After losing one-third of the estimated coca cultivation to herbicidal spraying between 2001 and 2004, traffickers and growers implemented the widespread use of techniques such as radical pruning and replanting from seedlings.”
- A subtle push to expand spraying into nature preserves and along the Ecuadorian border. “Moreover, farmers appear to be focusing on expanding cultivation into areas off-limits to the spray program, such as national parks and the area along the border with Ecuador, where Colombia suspended spraying in 2006 due to protests from the Ecuadorian government.”
- An admission of uncertainty about how much cocaine is actually being produced in Colombia. “Building on joint research aimed at understanding the yield of the coca bush, the U.S. Government and the Government of Colombia will work in advance of next year’s estimate to better reflect the impact of coca eradication on cultivation estimates and estimates of the output of finished cocaine.”
- On the other hand, a surprising degree of certainty about how much the FARC is profiting from the cocaine trade. “According to a U.S. government study, FARC drug profits declined from $90–150 million in 2003 to $60–115 million in 2005. The FARC’s overall profit per kilogram of cocaine declined from a range of $320–460 in 2003 to $195–320 in 2005.”
- No information whatsoever about how much paramilitaries – current and former – are profiting from the cocaine trade. Not a mention of paramilitaries at all, even though many coca-growing areas (significant amounts in Antioquia, Córdoba, Meta, Nariño and elsewhere) are in paramilitary-dominated zones.
- A proposal to spray more in areas where the Colombian government is trying to increase state presence. “[T]he U.S. Government, working with the GOC, is shifting the focus of its aerial eradication in coordination with Colombian civil and military efforts to target the areas of most intensive coca cultivation. Complementing Colombia’s Democratic Security Strategy, which seeks to bring security, as well as increased availability of health care, transportation, justice and education services to isolated parts of the country, the U.S. Government will seek to work with the Government of Colombia to increase the tempo of spraying, to help counter the growing tendency toward pruning and replanting.”
But if security and government services are being established, why not make voluntary, manual, permanent coca eradication a part of that? Why intensify the spraying?
June 5th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
The Office of National Drug Control Policy Press Release is more about counterinsurgency than about counter-narcotics. Or, to put it more aptly, about counterinsurgency disguised as counternarcotics. It is of interest that 14 out of 51 lines, or almost one-third of the press release, are devoted to describing the FARC. And that description is highly biased. And, of course, no mention of paramilitaries, whose role in drug trafficking has dwarfed that of the FARC. And this is not to mention the quite different uses to which the two groups put their drugs earnings. But the paramilitaries are not a threat to Colombia’s grotesque socioeconomic status quo, or to Washington’s comfort level with it. And what about the atrocities and human suffering behind the maintenance of that status quo? Washington has for a decade preferred to look the other way.
Can this be a surprise to anyone? And who in Washington really cares these days?
June 5th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Complementing Camilo Wilson above, it’s well known that people that cannot be cataloged as belonging to any of these two groups is also buoyant swimming in green bills. Also the fact that the peso (colombian currency) is reevaluating at such an incredible rate, as well as real state rocketing sky high, is a clear sign of the Colombia Narcotics bonanza during this administration. Apparently they want to continue spraying the country, no matter what.
June 5th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Jaime and Camilo: Some of that may be part of the puzzle, but I think there are other elements as well.
But also some questions. I think it’s not too hard to see that even from a pro-counterinsurgency point of view, the current counternarcotics program can be seen as highly counterproductive and even outright negative. Being against FARC doesn’t mean being in favor of fumigations, though that may initially seem to be the view of some. Just being against FARC doesn’t mean being in favor of the status quo, and vice versa.
So why do they insist on fumigations? It is clear that some people do think that counternarcotics helps fight FARC, but if anything, there’s plenty of evidence of the opposite, as seen on this website and elsewhere. Even the status quo is potentially hurt by the damage caused by current drug policies, if you think about it beyond the surface.
As for the paramilitaries, they do have a much greater role in the drug trade than FARC, but the guerrillas aren’t exactly “dwarfs” in it. Perhaps they were, during most of the 80s and early 90s, but at this time I wouldn’t be surprised if the “dwarf” had grown to more human-like proportions. There are certainly indications of that, and few things remain unchanging in this world.
Plus, in truth, the paramilitaries have been named in other U.S. documents about the drug trade, so even if they’re not the main target of such efforts their existence isn’t necessarily seen as irrelevant. So the absence of paramilitaries in the report may be a sign of the “ideological bias” of those who prepared it, but not necessarily of everyone in the U.S. government.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:45 am
I have to agree with bits and pieces of all the posts here, and more or less jcg’s total post. But I think there are some important things to point out on top of all of the previous dialogue.
One thing is the surprising certainty with which the US government points out the FARC’s income. While Adam did mention this, it deserves more attention. This is perhaps the most specific reference the government (US) has made about FARC financing. The fact that they do not mention paracos could be for numerous reasons, perhaps all combined. The first would be Camilo’s logic. The second could be maybe the writers actually believe the paras have truly and fully demobilized,for whatever ignorant reason. Next could be that they just don’t know. It is possible they don’t know, but I think this is highly unlikely noting the paramilitaries control over the complete production ladder of cocaine in numerous regions.
One more thing that we should keep in mind here is that it was revealed last year with the UN’s Coca Survey that more cocaine is being extracted with the same (or less) amount of coca. Thus, while coca growth has increased, we should remember that cocaine production has increased, and at a higher rate than just 10%. (It’s 1:30 am and I just got home from work, so I don’t feel like doing the math right now to find out the cocaine production increase.) We’ll see what the UN report says when it comes out in the next few weeks or so.
Next is a question I will pose that hopefully a few of us can answer. The press release states:
The significant overlap between the two years’ estimates means that it is not possible to infer year-to-year trend information.
Then, what’s the point? At least, the government does this to try to analyze/adjust policy (though that doesn’t seem to be happening), but if no year-to-year trends can be infered, i.e. pattern (which are huge in policy analysis), why do it? If you want to find out if the policies are working, you must do a year-to-year inference. (ps – I like how they try to play off their estimate increase by starting the press release off with “The results of the 2006 U.S. Government survey of cultivation in Colombia indicate that statistically there was no change in the amount of coca being grown between 2005 and 2006.” But then they go on to say “The survey estimates that there were 157,200 hectares under cultivation, an increase of 13,000 hectares from the 2005 estimate, subject to the confidence limitations described above.”)
Lastly, Adam’s final question is an important one. If you are bringing governance and opportunity to these places, why spray? I think coca farmers would get rid of the coca one their own (don’t believe me click here.. In fact, in Putumayo last year, a proposal made by campesinos to the Colombian and US gov’t (though the only person there that represented either of these was a either (a) Colombian from USAID or (b) someone from Accion Social (rumors of both, either way, the person was only there on day 1 and I was there 2 and 3)), was that if the government invested in the area as desired, the campesinos would voluntarily, gradually get rid of their coca. When I go over it, if both sides stick to their side of the bargain, it could work well. Fumigation, though, does not help. All the governance and schools will not put food on the table, and spraying coca (and the food) won’t either.
June 6th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Can I also take this space to say Thanks to Adam and those at CIP, and say a job well done as well. Not only have they had solid analysis and good discussion on their blog, but for the past few weeks they have had a blog entry everyday week day, including three on May 31. The discussion, breadth of coverage, insight, and analysis has been frequent and great.