A Bolivian cocalero shows his leaf-picking technique. Credit: Diana Cariboni/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2014 (IPS)

This week, the U.N. reported that coca cultivation in Bolivia fell nine percent last year, and a massive 26 percent in the past three years.

Two mid-altitude regions – Yungas de La Paz and the Cochabamba Tropics – account for nearly all cultivation in Bolivia and both areas saw significant reductions in 2013. Remarkably, illegal cultivation in Bolivia’s national parks was cut in half, to only one thousand hectares.“A very small country challenged the basic premises of U.S. domination and policy implications, and it succeeded." -- Kathryn Ledebur

The nationwide decrease, to an area of only 23,00 hectares, or 12 miles, is widely regarded as a laudable achievement, but overlooked is the fact that Bolivia’s success has come on its own terms – not Washington’s – and with vital cooperation from many of the country’s small coca farmers.

“Bolivia reduced the crop through eradication efforts, but also with the participation of coca growers and farmers,”Antonino de Leo, U.N. Office for Drugs and Crime’s representative in Bolivia, told IPS.

“They are doing this in a climate of participation and dialogue – they call it social control,” he added. “Not only does the government have a target for illicit cultivation, but it’s the very same as what farmers and the union of farmers have.”

After his election in 2005, President Evo Morales, himself the former head of the country’s Cocalero union, began negotiating with farmers and their unions, working to convince them that mutually agreed upon cultivation totals would mean higher prices and a sustainable income for tens of thousands of subsistence growers.

Indeed, last year, the price of coca in Bolivia, already higher than in neighbouring Colombia and Peru, rose a further seven percent, from 7.40 dollars to 7.80 dollars per kg.

While the total value of Bolivia’s coca crop fell from 318 million dollars to 283 million dollars, farmers for the most part no longer live in fear of having their livelihoods destroyed by the severe eradication efforts that were funded by the U.S. and characterised drug policy in the Andean nation for decades.

A militarised response favours criminal gangs and armed factions and leads to a concentration of illicit wealth among those groups. In Bolivia, the annual coca allowance of one cato – usually 1600 square metres – is seen as a sort of minimum wage, rather than a bonanza for a small elite.

Unlike in Peru and especially in Colombia, where forced eradication, fumigation and seizures are still the preferred method of handling illegal coca production, farmers in Bolivia allow officials to visit and measure their mountainside fields – measurements that are then verified by satellite data.

Because of this, data reported by the government closely match U.S. figures (they were identical in 2012), while the two sets of numbers can vary wildly in neighbouring countries.

“Nothing is done entirely without friction, but it has done away with cycles of protest and violence and the deaths of coca growers,” Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, told IPS. “There continue to be human rights violations, but in the past they would rip out all their coca and there was no plan for how they should eat in the meantime.”

In Colombia, the government destroys roughly 100,000 hectares every year. Because small farmers often have no economic alternative, they replant coca, and the cycle begins again.

Bolivia’s programme does have strict limits and well-defined geographic allotments for growing. Any plants found to be in excess of the cato or in areas not approved for cultivation are destroyed.

“Good practices show that in order to reduce illicit crops in a sustainable way and avoid the balloon effect, there is a need to combine eradication efforts with long-term participatory development programmes that create real opportunities for the farmers, and they need to be comprehensive,” said de Leo.

In 2008, Morales expelled U.S. ambassador Philip Goldberg; the following year the Bolivian government kicked the DEA out the country, and drug funding from the U.S. ceased.

The moves were a precursor to a carefully planned re-working of Bolivia’s obligations under the U.N. convention system that governs global drug policy. In 2011, the country took the unprecedented step of withdrawing from the 1961 convention on Narcotics Drugs, but the following year re-acceded – with the stipulation that Bolivia be allowed to maintain a legal domestic market for coca leaves.

The decision was accepted by the overwhelming majority of member states, who accepted that coca was a traditional plant used, without abuse, by millions of Bolivians.

Like various other efforts, including marijuana legalisation in several U.S. states, the decision served to chip away at a uniform and prohibitionist legal interpretation of the conventions. But unlike Uruguay, Washington and Colorado, Bolivia has official approval from the international community.

“If 15 years ago someone asked what would happen to an Andean country that loses all U.S. funding, we’d be talking about Marines coming in and things falling apart, but none of those things have happened,” said Ledebur.

“A very small country challenged the basic premises of U.S. domination and policy implications, and it succeeded,” she added.

Last year, the U.S.government cited Bolivia’s withdrawal from the conventions when it decertified it for failing “demonstrably to make sufficient efforts to meet its obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.” But in the same memorandum, authorities acknowledged the “pure potential cocaine production” of the country had decreased 18 percent in 2012.

While Bolivia may have made peace with its coca growers, it’s still the third largest producer of cocaine in the world. In 2013, the government destroyed over 5,000 cocaine production facilities and maceration pits and seized 20,400 kilogrammes of cocaine paste.

Fueling production in the Andes is the growth in demand in Brazil, today the second largest cocaine market in the world behind the U.S.

“As long as there is a solid demand for cocaine, it’s going to be very difficult to compete with coca – it will always be a very attractive crop,” said de Leo.

Though users are generally not criminalised for use to the extent in other countries, law 1008, a draconian, U.S.-influenced legislation signed in 1988 still underpins drug policy in the Bolivia. A lack of clarity in the law means a worker labouring inside a cocaine factory can be treated the same as a powerful “narcotraficante”.

Law enforcement efforts still tend to target the poorest members of Bolivia’s society. One survey found 60 percent of prisoners were earning less than 300 dollars every month before they were arrested.

“They pursue interdiction in a very traditional way,” said Ledebur.

Buoyed by his successes, Morales has announced a goal of further reductions in the coca crop, down to 14,700 hectares. To this point, curtailment has been sufficiently absorbed by growers, but greater cuts could run up against opposition. If farmers feel squeezed, Morales, the former coca grower, could find he’s bit off more than he can chew.

A group of drug users in a Dhaka suburb. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron, Map/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 2013 (IPS)

An internal United Nations draft document leaked last weekend has offered outsiders a rare look at longstanding disagreements between member states over the course of U.N. drug policy.

The document, first publicised by the Guardian and obtained by IPS, contains over 100 specific policy recommendations and proposals from member states, many at odds with the status quo on illicit drug eradication and prohibition.“Countries feel real pain. But they are being told they should strengthen interdiction.” -- Guatemala's U.N. Ambassador Gert Rosenthal

It confirms a widespread belief that discontent is growing among national governments and in the corridors of New York and Vienna, where the leak originated from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In a candid proposal, Norway calls for “questions relating to decriminalization and a critical assessment of the approach represented by the so-called War on Drugs.”

“It’s not particularly news to me,” said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Programme. “What’s news is that we are talking about it.

“I think there is this sort of façade put up by the U.N. as a whole, which is ‘we are one big happy family’, but that hasn’t been true for years,” she told IPS.

As early as 1993, Mexico told the U.N. General Assembly in a letter that because “consumption is the driving force that generates drug production and trafficking, the reduction in demand becomes the radical – albeit long-term– solution of the problem.”

But despite recent moves in Latin America and Europe towards policies of harm reduction, U.N. reforms remain mired in mid-20^th-century dogmas and perennial horse-trading between member states.

As prices drop for drugs that are purer by the year, governments continue to spend 100 billion dollars annually on enforcement measures. The U.N. estimates the illicit drug trade has grown to over 350 billion dollars per year. And by 2050, the number of illicit drug users is set to rise by 25 percent.

In the document, Switzerland notes “with concern that repressive drug law enforcement practices can force drug users away from public health services and into hidden environments where the risk of overdose, infection with hepatitis C, HIV and other blood-borne diseases become markedly elevated.”

Switzerland elsewhere voices support for the Organisation of American States (OAS), which this year proposed alternative forums for discussions of international drug policy. The OAS has been outspoken on the damage that drug traffickers – attracted by voracious North American consumption and potentially huge profits – have wrought on large swaths of Latin America.

In September, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina told the U.N. General Assembly “we have clearly affirmed that the war against drugs has not borne the desired results, and that we cannot continue doing the same waiting for different results.”

Among the recommendations, Ecuador asks that “special efforts are made in order to achieve significant reduction of demand” and that enforcement measures are completed “with full respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states and human rights.”

“Countries feel real pain,” Gert Rosenthal, Guatemala’s U.N. representative, told IPS. “But they are being told they should strengthen interdiction.”

Such documents are whittled down, behind closed doors, into unified policy recommendations. In this case, a consensus statement will be presented at the High-Level Review by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs next March in Vienna. That meeting will set the stage for a Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly in 2016, when member states are expected to outline an updated drug policy for the next decade.

The consensus process, which can give outsized control to already powerful pro-interdiction countries like Russia and the U.S., has come under criticism, says Tom Blickman, a research at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.

“If one country is blocking reform, they can be successful,” Blickman told IPS. “Countries are tired – it shouldn’t be this way.”

In negotiations, the EU speaks on behalf of all its members, further homogenising opinion, says Malinowska-Sempruch. “The voice of Portugal and other more progressive countries get drowned out because they are part of a bigger block.”

A spokesperson for UNODC told IPS it had a policy of not commenting on draft documents and would not speak about the consensus process.

Since the heavily U.S.-influenced 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics laid the groundwork for the modern “war on drugs,” countries have struggled to navigate its legal obligations. Much as later conventions led to the normalising of individual drug testing, the agreements in effect required countries to practice virtual total prohibition in order to gain acceptance internationally.

Today, most countries still schedule drugs based on guidelines set in 1961 and in the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Under the 1961 convention, certain plants and their derivatives are considered prima-facie illegal. But under the 1971 convention, which applied to psychoactive and pharmaceutical drugs mostly produced in Western countries, prohibition only follows proof of a drug’s danger. The disparity means that in the eyes of international law, chewers of cocoa leaves in the Andes are considered as aberrant as Oxycontin or methamphetamine abusers in the United States.

“Certain drugs have been demonised and it’s hard to turn the clock back,” said Blickman.

In the U.S., the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 had introduced mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, assuring a nascent private prison industry with a steady flow of inmates. And a final 1988 U.N. convention required signatories to criminalise the possession of drugs included in the previous conventions, overnight creating a global criminal class of drug users.

In its draft recommendations from the leak, the U.S. reasserts the three conventions “remain the cornerstone of the international drug system.”

How far, how quick?

For countries like Uruguay, where marijuana decriminalisation awaits only a procedural Senate vote, skirting the agreements can be a delicate game of geopolitical chicken.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), a quasi-judicial organisation charged with keeping tags on countries’ compliance with the three agreements, threatening the proposed law “would be in contravention of the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs.”

“Looking at Switzerland, or Germany that has heroin injection sites, or Netherlands with coffee shops, or Portugal or Uruguay, it is clear there are countries that think there should be different policies,” said Malinowska-Sempruch.

But while these countries may make headlines – Portugal removed all penalties for drug users in 2000 – smaller states fear offending the likes of the U.S. and Russia, perennial aid sources and holders of Security Council veto power.

Under U.S. law, the Department of State must every year publish a report that includes evaluating whether foreign aid recipients meet the “goals and objectives” of the 1988 agreement.

“Not that many care about drugs enough to fight so hard and make enemies, because they know they will need those votes for what they really care about,” said Malinowska-Sempruch.

Most UNODC funding comes from member states, which can attach strings to “special-purpose funds.”

This means countries can maintain both private and public stances on drug policy. Switzerland, which began offering heroin-assisted treatment for addicts in 2008, backtracked this week in a press statement that stressed the leaked document was part of a “brainstorming” session and that it “does in no way support any efforts or attempts of changing the three U.N. Drug Conventions as they are today.”

As for 2016, Blickman says it’s important the special session be organised not just by UNODC but also by the U.N.’s human rights and development arms.

But while the session could prove a pivotal turning point, activists also say reform will likely first come out of piecemeal efforts to disentangle the conventions’ cascading legal web. Because the agreements exist in so far as countries enforce them, simply ignoring their mandate could as effective as anything else.

“There is leeway in the convention,” says Blikman. If countries start flouting them, the “INCB couldn’t do anything except maybe not allow certain (pharmaceutical) drugs into the country.”

If that trend continues, an ignored INCB could eventually be relegated to the scholarly study of an historical document.

Bombed-out ruins in Afghanistan. Credit: Anand Gopal/IPS

By Giuliano Battiston
HERAT, Afghanistan, Sep 10 2013 (IPS)

The threat to the stability of the Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan arises not so much from outside as from within. And the one thing that is eating into its edifice is the malaise called corruption.

“Corruption is undermining what little legitimacy the government has left,” Qader Rahimi, head of the western branch of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, tells IPS. “The people do not trust the government. They do not believe that it works for the good of all.”

The international community, he says, has so far concentrated its fight against Al-Qaeda and terrorism. But it’s time it turned its focus on corruption, “our biggest enemy,” he adds.

The available statistics do little to counter his pessimism. According to a joint survey conducted by the Afghan High Office of Oversight and Anti-corruption (HOOAC) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), half of Afghan citizens paid a bribe in 2012 while requesting a public service.

The survey, titled Corruption in Afghanistan: Recent Patterns and Trends, was released in February. It put the total cost of such corruption at 3.9 billion dollars.

With just over a year left for the NATO-led forces to disengage with Afghanistan and bring the transition process to an end, there is serious introspection within the country over what the international community and the Afghan government have achieved since 2001, when the war against terror began. Many Afghans are still trying to figure out why they should be still in a war that is counting its 12th year and becoming more and more destructive.

According to the latest mid-year report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict released by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the country saw a 23 percent rise in the number of civilian casualties over the first six months of 2013.

And one of the factors Afghans see as fostering the conflict and encouraging anti-government mobilisation either directly or indirectly is the lack of confidence and trust in the government.

“There is an enormous communication gap between the people and the government,” says Abdul Khaliq Stanikzai, regional manager for Sanayee Development Organisation, a non-governmental body. “People do not have the mechanisms and instruments to make their voices heard and to influence government choices,” he tells IPS.

This, according to him, has created a high level of mutual distrust.

The lack of confidence in the government is only growing, due to the gap between expectations and actual achievement in terms of economic development, guaranteed rights, functioning institutions and, above all, social justice and equality.

“Initially, after the removal of the Taliban regime, people were hoping for a transparent and equal government. Now, no one expects anything from the government,” says Asif Karimi, project coordinator in Kabul for The Liaison Office, an Afghan organisation focusing on communitarian peace-building. Most people, he tells IPS, are neutral, wanting neither the government nor the Taliban.

Mirwais Ayobi, lecturer in law and political science at the University of Herat, thinks that trust in the Taliban is growing. “If you ask the Taliban to solve a dispute,” he tells IPS, “they focus on reconciliation instead of demanding money.”

He considers corruption in the political and administrative systems an enormous challenge, because it is eroding the citizens’ trust.

Afghanistan was placed third in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2012, after Somalia and North Korea.

The average size of the bribes, according to the HOOAC-UNODC survey, varies from sector to sector.

“Bribes tend to be larger in the justice sector,” it notes, “where the average bribe paid to both prosecutors and judges is more than 300 dollars.” The amounts given to local authorities and customs officials, at 200-odd dollars, are smaller. Bribes paid to other officials range from 100-150 dollars, it found.

Many consider the problem to be structural. Among them is Rahman Salahi, former head of the Herat Professionals Shura, an independent, non-political organisation in Afghanistan’s western province comprising associations of lawyers, economists, teachers, engineers and others advocating a more active engagement of the local civil society with the country’s reconstruction.

“Until a few years ago we had what was basically a socialist economic system, based on the mould left by the Soviet occupation,” Salahi tells IPS. “When the international community came, we adopted a free trade system lacking adequate institutional structures for oversight and policy guidelines.”

For Antonio Giustozzi, visiting professor at the Department of War Studies in King’s College, London, and a specialist on Afghanistan, “The quantity of aid earmarked for the country, as well as the mechanisms for its distribution and assignment, exceeded the society’s overall absorption capacity and the institutions’ capacity to manage it.”

The mismatch between the wide flood of aid and the narrow absorption capacity gave raise to corruption, says Giustozzi, something which he thinks is now “totally entrenched within the political system.”

Apart from these structural reasons, the international community too is seen to have fostered a culture of impunity in the country through the empowerment of the so-called warlords.

“International (bodies) gave political power and money to warlords, to those who have committed crimes, to those who killed thousands of innocent people, to those who are involved in the corruption system,” says Sayed Ikram Afzali, head of Advocacy and Communication for Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a civil society organisation.
“People had hoped things would change, that they would get justice and equality after the Taliban was defeated,” he tells IPS. But that did not happen.

There is still hope, though, he feels. “The warlords do not have strong roots among the people, they deny them social justice. They have hijacked the State. The time has come to free the State from these people.”