Agricultural Drug Economies:
Cause or Alternative to Intra-State Conflicts?
Abstract
Through case studies selected among the world’s main drug-producer
countries and regions (Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia,
Morocco, Peru, and West Africa) this paper depicts the global
scene in order to improve understanding of how agricultural
illicit drug economies may foster the emergence of intra-state
conflicts, help prolong intra-state conflicts or, conversely,
prevent some crises. The paper thereby examines the complex
connections between agricultural illicit drug production
and intra-state conflict in the all-important context of
underdevelopment and globalisation.
Because it is illegal, drug production may
affect international security, above all through the armed
violence it creates and the uses to which resulting profits
are put (financing of armed groups and criminal organisations,
and even – as has been recently though mostly erroneously
claimed – terrorist organisations). However, it is important to avoid
restricting the question of drug production to security
issues, and instead to examine the phenomenon overall in
an analysis encompassing everything from the causes of the
recourse to an illegal drug economy to the effects of official
responses.
Through case studies selected from the main
regions of illegal agricultural drug production (Afghanistan,
West Africa, Burma (Myanmar), Bolivia, Colombia, Morocco
and Peru) this paper aims at improving our understanding
of how such production might foster the emergence of conflicts,
ease their prolongation or, conversely, prevent crises in
certain situations. These three questions require examining
the connections between the agricultural economy of illegal
drugs and conflict in the all-important context of underdevelopment
and of globalisation.
The diversity of local drug economies
Many of the regions where cultivation of opium
poppies, coca or cannabis takes place suffer from varying
degrees of food-supply deficiency, and sometimes do not
benefit (the Wa region in Burma), or no longer benefit (destruction
of irrigation canals in Afghanistan), from irrigation techniques
or the means to implement them. In Morocco’s Rif Mountains,
the tendency towards single-crop cultivation of cannabis,
an economic “godsend” in this ecologically fragile region,
has led to progressive abandonment of food-producing agriculture,
with all the resulting adverse effects.
But besides these factors, which specifically
relate to agricultural methods and systems, the recourse
to an illegal drug economy is also encouraged by the special
characteristics of drug markets at the local, national and
international level. Farm-gate prices for opium, coca and
cannabis are generally far higher than those of food crops
(wheat, rice, barley, maize, yucca, yam, etc.) or even licit
cash crops (cocoa, coffee, tea, bananas, sugar cane, citrus
fruit, olives, etc.). At any rate, in the contexts of underdevelopment
in which most regions find themselves, licit agricultural
products rarely allow the inhabitants to be self-sufficient
in food or, when needed, to buy foodstuff. Furthermore,
unlike other agricultural crops opium and cannabis derivatives
(marijuana and hashish) keep for a long time and can therefore
be stored by farmers, for whom they often represent an essential
form of savings.
In contrast, once harvested, coca leaves rapidly
lose most of their active properties. Therefore they must
be quickly sold off or transformed into “coca paste” (an
intermediary product from which cocaine is then refined)
by a simple chemical process, which in many cases has been
carried out by the farmers themselves for the last ten years
or so. Thus, coca farmers are often more than just farmers:
they are involved “one step further” in the illegal economy,
and therefore are a little more dependent on it. Moreover,
coca (unlike “paste” or cocaine) is not an illegal commodity
in Bolivia and Peru because it also has legal and valued
uses in Andean societies as a whole, while playing a central
role in the culture of indigenous Quechua and Aymara people,
to mention only the two main groups. As a commodity which
is both legal and illegal, coca’s ambiguity makes the question
of its cultivation in Bolivia and Peru all the more intricate.
Opium, coca and cannabis, as high-value, sought-after
products, are also a special case in that they allow many
farmers access to credit – as in Afghanistan, for example,
where the salaam system has opium being bought by
negotiators a year or two in advance, or farmers being able
to borrow on forecasts of future crops. Moreover, at global
level, the illegal drug market, at least as far as heroin
and cocaine are concerned, greatly benefits from yet another
advantage which makes its perpetuation easier: the fact
that while supply is elastic demand is not. As Becker and
Murphy explain, “‘elasticity of
demand’ is a term economists use to describe how sensitive
consumers are to price. If consumers are more price-sensitive,
this indicates that demand is elastic; if consumers are
less price sensitive that suggests demand is inelastic”. Drug supply is elastic because drug
producers and markets are very price sensitive: when opium,
coca, or cannabis production dries up in one country because
of law enforcement, falling prices, or climatic vagaries,
other sources of supply emerge (and vice versa).
Drug demand is inelastic because drug consumers are not
price sensitive: levels of drug consumption are not related
to price. While forced eradication raises the price of drugs
at the farm gate and ends up being an incentive for increased
production, the drug war only slightly affects prices of
consumed drugs as traffickers and dealers often alter the
purity of heroin and cocaine instead of raising the price.
The varied and complex consequences of recourse
to an illegal drug economy
The consequences of the recourse to an illegal
drug economy are extremely varied and highly complex. For
example, consequences on the environment and on human health
are among the negative dimensions of such a recourse: fast
degradation of forest cover (deforestation by lack of arable
land, unsuitable or excessive slash and burn) and soil potential
(soil erosion and depletion); ground and river pollution
(by waste from chemicals used to produce heroin and cocaine);
increased consumption of opium, heroin, cocaine, marijuana,
and hashish along with increased addiction rates and the
spread of HIV/AIDS through intravenous injection in unsanitary
conditions; and persecution of users. The public policies
of forcible eradication by spraying chemical herbicides
also have adverse effects on the health of people and livestock
and on legal agricultural production. Generally speaking,
spraying of this kind runs counter to basic environmental
protection. Worse, if used, the biological defoliants (mycoherbicides)
that are already being tested risk even more negative consequences.
From a socio-political point of view, the consequences
of the recourse to an illegal drug economy are not less
significant. In Afghanistan and Burma, for instance, opium,
long the sinews of war, has become one of its main stakes,
conditioning economic development to obtaining peace – and
vice-versa. In Bolivia, the serious social conflict
between Indian coca producers in the tropical Andean foothills
and the Creole government in La Paz supported by Washington,
has taken on socio-economic, ethnic and geopolitical dimensions
and is clearly not just an agro-economic issue. In Morocco,
a history of contention between Riffian Berbers and the
state has done much to encourage the latter to leave the
farmers in peace and to tolerate the illegal cultivation
of cannabis that is taking place in the Rif Mountains. By
contrast, in West Africa it would appear that cannabis cultivation
is a socio-political response by local elites to structural
setbacks (especially exhaustion of forest reserves) affecting
the main legal export agricultural products, cocoa and coffee. In Morocco
and in West Africa, cannabis production thus seems to contribute to the perpetuation
of an economic, social, and political status quo.
In what conditions, then, and to what extent,
does an illegal drug economy lead to perpetuation or prevention
of conflict when economic development or the very survival
of some sectors of the population is at stake? And what
are the effects of agricultural production of illegal drugs
depending upon whether producing countries are in conflict
situations or not?
The role of
opium in the transition from war economies to peace economies
in Asia
War
and drug production: how symbiotic a relationship?
In Asia, the internal peace of a number of
countries has been affected, sometimes even conditioned,
by the existence of illegal agricultural production and
the ensuing illegal trade. However, through loss of politico-territorial
control, conflicts in certain states has made possible and
even encouraged the development of such agricultural production
and trafficking. Significant systemic effects have long
existed between guerrilla economies and civil war economies
on the one hand, and the economies resulting from illegal
activities on the other. War economies and drug economies
have a long common history, in Asia and elsewhere.
In Burma, as in Afghanistan, the opium economy
has been partly responsible for financing the war efforts
of some of the opposing factions. But if opium has clearly
been one of the sinews of war for Burmese and Afghan guerrillas,
it often subsequently has become one of the stakes of war.
Understandably, the strong synergies existing between civil
war economies and drug economies have therefore weighed
upon the two countries’ potential for political and economic
development. As well as allowing and even encouraging prolongation
of conflict and making any resolution of crises all the
more difficult, the conflict/drug “synergy” has also laid
the foundations for criminalization of these countries’
peace economies, so potentially compromising their internal
peace and security.
Through these connections with the war economy,
the opium economy has certainly had a destabilising effect
in the recent histories of Afghanistan and Burma. But while
the opium economy has surely helped perpetuate the Afghan
and Burmese conflicts, it did not cause them, and the current
politico-territorial and economic crises in the two countries
do not result from it – at least, not directly. Nor did
the opium economy simply finance some of the parties at
war to a greater or lesser extent. It also enabled some
of the two countries’ farmers to survive as best as they
could during long periods of economic depression.
State building and opium suppression
At present, both Afghanistan and Burma strive
at making gradual and fragile transitions to peace economies
and have to face up to the many legacies of their respective
armed conflicts. For instance, both countries have to address
opium production, major underdevelopment and extreme poverty,
especially in rural areas. Despite considerable differences,
the two countries do have a number of characteristics in
common, two of which are of particular relevance here: opium
production, and precarious and relative peace situations.
Being at the planning stage or currently underway,
projects for accelerated suppression of the opium economy
are the main common factor between the two countries and
risk compromising the food security of producers and destabilising
transitions to a peace economy.
In Afghanistan, where a fragile peace but a
deteriorating security imply a gradual and difficult state
reconstruction, and in Burma, where ceasefires between the
junta and the rebel armies have multiplied over the last
ten years, the question is now whether or not their respective
opium economies threaten to destabilise these early stages
of transition. The question is further complicated since
it is also necessary to determine whether solutions such
as opium poppy eradication or abrupt prohibition of its
cultivation might in themselves lead to economic, social
and political violence.
In Afghanistan, the arduous installation of
a democratic regime, however imperfect, is in contrast with
the continuation, even reinforcement, of Burma’s dictatorial military regime, which means taking
a different view of the threat represented by the opium
economy. In Afghanistan, the main threat is said by many,
including the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to reside in
the opium economy, with its capacity for financing Taliban
resistance and international insecurity – not to mention
terrorism – as well as the state corruption that it engenders.
In Burma, where local conflicts have continued since the
country’s independence in 1948, the main threat is more
political and military in nature since the long xenophobia
and isolationism of the ruling junta could well threaten
the ceasefires agreed with ethnic groups in outlying areas
of the country. Deterioration of relations between the junta
and the autonomist and powerful United Wa State Army (UWSA),
for example, would in all likelihood have an impact on the
fast process of opium suppression currently imposed by the
UWSA in the border areas it controls and where most of Burma’s opium was produced until recently.
However, both countries share more than just
opium production as they face major pressure to suppress
their respective opium economies using very similar means:
whether from international organizations and donor countries,
as in Afghanistan, or from the junta and certain autonomist
groups, as in Burma. The opium economy is said to have been
equivalent to 46% of Afghanistan’s GDP in 2006, and therefore
may well have contributed to one third of the overall Afghan
economy, one of the world’s poorest. In Afghanistan as well
as in Burma, while all the rural poor do not systematically
resort to opium production, it nonetheless constitutes one
of the rare viable coping strategies of some of the poorest.
Considering Afghanistan’s highly and increasingly volatile
context and Burma’s fragile cease-fires and deepening economic
and humanitarian crises, it is therefore all too possible
that hastened and unbalanced opium suppression projects
could constitute a grave risk of destabilisation – if not
of the states themselves, at least of the construction of
their peace economies. Afghanistan is especially at risk,
for people and government are still in the difficult process
of recovering from over 20 years of war and complex and
destructive partisan divisions, while endeavouring to recover
from one of the world’s worst economic situations.
The opium economy clearly fosters corruption
in Afghan society at large and provides resources for parties
opposed to state reconstruction. Above all, it seems to
increase corruption in the central government and provincial
authorities. However, opium cannot directly be blamed for
corruption and opposition to state reconstruction. In the
same way that the opium economy resulted from the Afghan
conflicts, it is now perpetuated by the country’s extreme
underdevelopment, and as such it is a consequence of Afghanistan’s
political and economic crisis. Therefore, if there is a
challenge to be faced up to in Afghanistan, in addition
to sustaining peace, it is economic development.
Risks
of forcible eradication without economic compensation
While being far more serious in terms of national,
regional, and international security threats, the risks
faced by Afghanistan are similar to those created by the
recent opium suppression experienced in Burma even if the
two situations bear significant differences. On the one
hand, in Burma the issue is not state-building but the illegitimacy,
and therefore the fragility, of the state already in place.
On the other hand, the ruling junta has for years tacitly
authorized certain autonomous ethnic groups, sometimes heavily
militarized (UWSA), to resort to the production and trafficking
of opiates in order to be able to agree on and maintain
ceasefires with them. It is common knowledge that, in Burma,
opium has long played a major role in strategic negotiations.
On that ground, during the very last years the significant
reduction in production, against the background of the junta’s
inner crisis, represents a serious risk of economic, social
and political instability, since the inadequately or insufficiently
prepared opium suppression programmes were not supported
by sufficient development programmes that offered alternative
revenue for the targeted farmers.
In Burma, the food crisis that has already struck the Kokang region and that
now threatens the Wa region stems directly from the ban
on opium production proclaimed by the local ethnic groups
and their armies (MNDAA and UWSA, respectively). Even
though the Wa Central Committee has planned for the ban
since 1990 and has implemented three five-year development
plans that have somewhat improved health, education, infrastructure
and agricultural enterprises, hundreds of thousands continue to lack the
means to make up for the money and food deficits that the
ban has caused. The geographical
and political isolation of the Kokang and the Wa regions,
worsened by Burma’s international pariah status, has led to there being very little
early international intervention to offset the dual deficit
now bound to occur: structural deficit in rice and lack
of money to buy rice, with no obvious way out.
Within such contexts, abruptly implemented
programmes that do not show much concern for economics are
a security threat, since they may generate economic, social
and, a fortiori, political trouble. Opium production
in Afghanistan and Burma is clearly no longer primarily
an issue of military security but rather a question of food
security, and therefore an economic and political problem.
The history of the ‘war on drugs’ in Asia and
Latin America clearly shows – as highlighted by one of the
latest World Bank reports on Afghanistan – that the banning and eradication
of opium poppies are counterproductive if they are not preceded
by implementation of development programmes leading to substitution
of one economy for another and certain ways of life for
others.
Thirty years of reduction in opium production
in Thailand illustrate to a certain extent that sustainable
success can be achieved in this field. Even though the Thailand
results may not be perfect and lend themselves – as do some
of the methods and means deployed – to controversy, it has
to be admitted that large-scale commercial opium production
has been suppressed in a sustainable manner in the kingdom.
This success is largely due to the fact that, since the
beginning of the implementation of poppy growing suppression
programmes, the king of Thailand made crop substitution
and integrated development of the country’s highlands a
prerequisite to any forcible eradication. Initial introduction
of crop substitution in opium producer areas took place
in the early 1970s, before rural integrated development
projects took over in the 1980s, to be followed by participatory
alternative development in the 1990s. Each phase provided
lessons to be learnt concerning errors previously made,
so helping to correct adverse effects. It is worth mentioning
that it was only in 1984 that the Thai authorities started
to resort to forcible eradication, once the development
programmes and projects were largely underway.
The case of Thailand, like that of Pakistan
– where production was also virtually suppressed, but under
different conditions – has therefore shown that suppression
of illegal opium production can be achieved in a sustainable
manner if the most appropriate and logical development measures
are implemented some years before law enforcement is applied.
Both examples also show that sustainable suppression of
illegal crops takes time and requires forced eradication
only as a last resort, once economic development has taken
place and law enforcement is needed. This, however, was
a lesson evidently not learnt in Burma and in Laos where
accelerated suppression of opium production over the last
few years put many opium farmers in a situation of great
hardship.
Results in Thailand and Pakistan were in any
case only relatively successful, since the falls in their
respective opium production were compensated for, regionally
and worldwide, by increased production on the territory
of some of their direct neighbours, Afghanistan and Burma
especially. Although known and foreseeable, this “balloon
effect” phenomenon is never taken into consideration at
the design and implementation stages of programmes for reduction
in illegal agricultural drug production and is often yet
another adverse effect added to those caused by hastened
suppression. In addition to causing serious food insecurity
for drug-producing people, forcible suppression of such
farming activities causes systematic hikes in opium farm-gate
prices, making production all the more attractive. Moreover,
in phases of transition from a war to peace economy, abrupt
suppression and eradication without economic consideration
sow the seeds of potentially violent social unrest.
Worse, eradication without compensation also
creates a number of other risks with multiple adverse effects:
expansion of predatory economies, especially trafficking
in human beings, prostitution, illegal trading of timber,
protected species, antiques, weapons and contraband. It
is therefore potentially destabilising, while rarely enabling
targeted crops to be permanently suppressed or curbed, and
does not address the economic causes behind the resort to
illegal drug production in the first place. On the contrary,
it makes these causes more acute since it increases the
poverty and underdevelopment of drug-producing countries
and peoples, which are already amongst the world’s poorest.
Cannabis in
Africa: an alternative to development?
A necessary
production that is more economic than strategic
Although cannabis appears to be very widely
cultivated in Africa, the poorest continent in the world
with a post-colonial history marked by a succession of armed
conflicts, knowledge of the cannabis economy is at best
fragmented. A study by United Nations Drug Control Programme
(UNDCP) states, “There is little reliable information
on the extent of cannabis cultivation. Though cannabis is
the most widely abused illicit drug, actual knowledge of
the extent of production is much more limited than for other
narcotic plants.” The widest gaps in knowledge probably
concern the African situation, as there are very few field
studies on cannabis production south of the Sahara. In world
literature, opium poppy production and coca production are
the subjects of more frequent and in-depth studies than
cannabis: so much so that Asia and South America are the focus of all the attention of anti-drug organisations and
alternative development projects of aid agencies.
Nevertheless, cannabis production in Africa may provocatively
yet adequately be thought of as a possible “alternative
to development”, where the cannabis economy enables many
African farmers to make up for the underdevelopment that
they have been faced with for several decades. The cannabis
economy would thus contribute to maintaining a certain level
of stability. At least, it helps guarantee a socio-economic
status quo in many places. Based on the few studies available, it may be estimated that illegal
cannabis production in sub-Saharan Africa has boomed over
the last 25 years, due to the implementation of structural
adjustment programmes.
This increase may be explained – at least in part – by
the deterioration of national economic situations and the
eruption of armed conflicts, since falling living standards
and war stimulate both demand and supply of cannabis in
Africa south of the Sahara. A significant proportion of the African population views marijuana
as a stimulant that helps to increase performance and endurance
at work or to “get courage” in dangerous situations. As
a result of this “utilitarian” social representation of
cannabis, it is highly likely that the number of cannabis
consumers and the amounts of cannabis consumed have strongly
increased in Africa
since the 1980s, when the continent entered a series of
crises leading to a considerable hardening of living conditions.
The survival strategies implemented by Africans have frequently
implied increasing individual workloads, and it is probable
that many people have resorted to the “utilitarian” effects
of marijuana in order to cope with the extra efforts required
to survive, especially since retail prices for marijuana
are generally low.
Starting in the late 1980s and well into the 1990s, another
phenomenon has stimulated the demand for cannabis in Africa–war.
Although, as far as is known there are no studies on the
subject, there is little doubt that cannabis use is extremely
widespread among African fighters, most of whom are young
males and child soldiers. The mushrooming of violent conflicts
in Africa
has led to more African fighters using cannabis in search
of it “utiltarian” effects on courage and endurance.
In addition to increased domestic demand for marijuana,
other factors have contributed to an expansion of the agricultural
production of cannabis south of the Sahara. The fall in prices of licit agricultural raw materials on world markets,
the deregulation implemented in many sectors, especially
agriculture, and ecological setbacks have often resulted
in a very sharp drop in the revenue of many players in the
agricultural as well as the trade and transport sectors.
State coffers, and the civil servants that informally “tax” economic activities, have also suffered a loss of income
due to the crisis of agriculture.
Because cannabis
can adapt to a wide range of environmental settings, even
to degraded or naturally poor quality soil, it may be grown
on lands unsuitable for other crops. Given this “performance”,
it may be integrated into agricultural production systems
practically regardless of the agro and economic criteria
normally governing them, namely access to land, capital
and workforce. This means that cannabis cultivation is accessible
to a wide range of farmers and, under present conditions,
it seems to be imposing itself as an alternative crop of
prime importance in West Africa as well as in Central Africa and Southern Africa.
Generally speaking, cannabis production in
Africa is more of an economic necessity than a strategic
one since little revenue from cannabis is used for financing
armed conflicts, unlike opium in Afghanistan and Burma,
and coca in present-day Colombia. Cannabis certainly has
a role in African conflicts, but probably less as a financial
resource than as a stimulant for individual fighters. It seems clear that development of cannabis
cultivation in sub-Saharan Africa is more a consequence of the continent’s economic, political and ecological
problems than one of its causes.
Cannabis in the Moroccan Rif:
limits of a status quo
Whether cannabis production
can be a factor of prevention of armed conflict is also
at issue in North Africa,
precisely in Morocco, where the first
United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime (UNODC)
survey was conducted in 2003 in the northern Rif Mountains. UNODC confirmed the long-suspected extent of cannabis cultivation
in Morocco, estimating that at least 130,000 hectares of
cannabis were under cultivation in 2003 – the same surface
dedicated to opium poppies in Afghanistan in 2004. The issue
of the role and place of cannabis within the Moroccan context
can therefore be raised in terms very similar to sub-Saharan
Africa: how do
cannabis crops presently guarantee stability and what are
the economic and social consequences of the likely forthcoming
failure of this system.
The Rif is not only
a region of intense cannabis cultivation but also one of
the poorest in Morocco, with population density three times higher than in the rest of the country
and one of the highest demographic growths. Within such
a context, where natural conditions make it difficult for
its largely rural population to produce sufficient food
and cash crops, the cannabis economy can subsidise basic
needs. As the region’s economic development has never featured
among the Moroccan state’s priorities, cannabis production
has progressively become the region’s main economic activity
– 75% of the villages, totalling 96,000 families or 800,000
people, resort to it. Cannabis has clearly kept the population
within the region while mitigating economic and political
resentment.
Morocco is now highly likely to be the world’s
main source of hashish, which is largely exported to the European consumer market.
The Rif economy and therefore the socio-economic and political stability of
the region depend on this production—a fact that poses a
major problem for both the Moroccan state and the European
Union, since hashish production and consumption are illegal
in Morocco and in the countries of European Union (EU).
Following the publication of the first United
Nations survey on cannabis in Morocco, the Moroccan state,
which has long condoned cannabis production in order to
make up for its inability and lack of political will to
promote Riffian development, can no longer ignore the region’s
economic and social problems. Likewise, the EU and its members
will now have to act on a massive problem, which it is hard
to believe that they had hitherto been unaware of. Moreover,
overexploitation of the environment by a rapidly expanding
population does indeed represent a grave risk of ecological
crisis and eventually, within this largely agricultural
context, of serious economic and social crisis. Increasingly
confronted to hashish trafficking and international migration
issues, the EU and its members now also have to address
what has long been ignored.
The Moroccan state’s tolerance of what is an
illegal agricultural production partially stems from the
region’s cultural and political context, with past rebellions
(1921-1926; 1954; 1984) of the Rif Berbers lending weight
to their claim to the right to cultivate cannabis. Tolerance
may also be explained by the potentially explosive outcome,
in economic and social terms, of any effective prohibition
of cannabis within the region and, by way of migration,
across the Mediterranean Sea.
Since the contraband economy and illegal migration, or harraga, already
act as safety valves for the Rif region and Morocco at large, the economic
shock provoked by the suppression of the cannabis economy
would most likely increase south-north migration movements
at a time when the
toughening of European immigration policies has already
spurred illegal migration and human smuggling, progressively
turning Morocco from
an emigration country to Africa's migration passage to Europe.
Therefore, the agricultural cannabis
economy not only significantly regulates employment in the
Rif region,
especially for young farmers, but also emigration flows
to Europe. Driven by poverty, leaving the areas with no or little water and
arable land, as well as villages subject to recurrent checks
by the authorities, many farmers from the Rif
region still have to migrate to other regions of Morocco in need of labour. In this overall context,
cannabis, which can grow on otherwise unproductive land,
and even on non-irrigated land, allows part of the population
to stay in the region by affording them a living.
There is little doubt that cannabis cultivation
has stabilised the economy of a region all but excluded
from national development. However, the Rif remains faced with a fragile ecology, loss of traditional farming
know-how and international pressure demanding elimination
of drug plants in southern countries.
In all likelihood, Morocco will have to reduce cannabis crops in the Rif and
find a viable and sustainable economic alternative, if not
because this crop is illegal and the cause of increasing
international pressure, then at least because the region’s
ecological-economic balance is threatened in the very short
term. An increasing population, along with the divvying
up of land-holdings that this entails, cannot cope with
limited availability of arable land and its rapid and intense
degradation. The complexity of the Riffian context in economic, social and ecological
terms requires that the situation be promptly and reasonably
managed with a view to development. The challenge of cannabis
in the Rif is of sustainable economic development for one
of the country’s poorest regions, where socio-economic stability
is under threat.
From Morocco to South Africa, it is the whole
of Africa that is concerned by the cannabis economy and
the alternative to development that it represents. Clearly
stemming from socio-economic inequalities and underdevelopment,
the cannabis economy raises two significant issues on the
African continent, one ecological and the other legal, that
only appropriate political and economic measures can solve
without large-scale economic crises resulting in major instability.
Coca in South America:
palliative of underdevelopment and political lever
Legal and illegal production
Coca is not the
only “drug plant” cultivated in South America, but it is
the one that gives rise to the most numerous and acute questions
in terms of conflict, given the scope and intensity of the
political demands that it generates or helps channel. Neither
cannabis, which is also produced on a very large scale in
Brazil and Paraguay (and in smaller ways in other South
American countries) nor even the opium poppy, which is grown
in Colombia and Peru, occasion so much controversy and conflict,
or lead to the expression of so many demands.
However, it must
be stressed that, in terms of connections between coca economies
and intra-state conflict, the three Andean countries – Bolivia, Colombia and Peru – although similar in some
ways, currently diverge in two crucial aspects.
Firstly, fairly
large quantities of coca leaves are produced quite legally
in Bolivia and Peru, and their transformation (mostly
into tea) and marketing are channelled through above-board
producer associations and private firms (Bolivia) or a state monopoly (Peru). Despite the existence of
a number of “bridges”, this legal production is historically,
geographically and socially separated from production of
“excess” leaves (so called because they exceed the quotas
fixed by national legislation for licit uses), which government
programmes seek to eradicate. In Colombia, a number of indigenous
groups grow coca, using the leaves for themselves, and their
activities are tolerated by the authorities. It is rarely
referred to, but this traditional production does exist
even if it is nothing compared to the total Colombian output
of coca leaves (bridges also exist here). Supplying cocaine
laboratories, most of the coca grown in Colombia and the “excess” coca grown
in Bolivia and Peru is labelled “illegal” and targeted
for eradication.
Secondly, only Colombia,
by far the leading world producer of coca leaves, is presently
the scene of an armed internal conflict, fuelled to a large
extent by cocaine trafficking. Development of this conflict
may affect illegal agricultural production, not only in
Colombia but also, due to the aforementioned “balloon effect”,
in Bolivia and Peru.
Coca as “frontier crop”
The causes and stakes
of the conflict in Colombia, which will be reviewed below,
refer to a problem common to all three countries: control
of territory and the legal and illegal resources stemming
from it. Peace in all three states has been affected by
the existence of illegal coca production. This latter, however,
has come about specifically in territories where states,
although nominally sovereign, have been and still are effectively
absent.
Furthermore, these
outlying areas, once considered “virgin” (but in fact populated
by indigenous people), on the eastern foothills of the Andes
(and the plains lying beneath them) – the Amazonian slopes
of the Cordillera, where coca has been cultivated for at
least 2,000 years – were termed “agricultural frontiers”
by the governments of the 1970s. Tens of thousands of internal
migrants settled there in the 1980s and 1990s. In Colombia,
these migrants were fleeing the violence raging around land
rights in their home territories caused by absence of agrarian
reform in a context of highly concentrated land ownership
and population growth. They found refuge in the Deep South
Amazonian departments of Caquetá, Guaviare, Putumayo, Vaupés,
and recently Nariño. In Peru, they hoped to escape the ravages
of unemployment and galloping inflation resulting from the
debt crisis, by settling in the Selva Alta (High Forest), where they sometimes fell
victim to the Shining Path. Finally, in Bolivia the debt
crisis and structural adjustment led to closure of tin mines,
the country’s main employer, and to mass migration to the
Tropic of Cochabamba region, a.k.a. Chapare, of former miners
become coca growers. To this date, the endemic poverty that
has characterised many areas of rural Bolivia for decades
continues to fuel migration to the Chapare.
The recent migration
waves to these Amazon pioneer fronts were more or less encouraged
by all three states, for which they acted as “safety valves”.
A “surplus” population could be drained off, which the formal
economy (and informal urban economy) could not (or no longer)
integrate, and which would have most likely ended up by
producing political trouble had it not been evacuated in
this way, at least temporarily. It was a safety valve that
the said states rapidly decided to forget about. The development
infrastructure (roads, electricity, piped water, schools,
dispensaries, etc.) promised by the governments rarely materialised,
and the only practical living to be made in these areas
was and is by growing illegal crops. Most of the time, the
crop of choice has been coca, which is easily transported
as “coca paste”, an intermediary product whose price pays
for the producer’s work and investment.
The pre-existence
of economic underdevelopment in Bolivia and Peru, coupled
with civil war in Colombia, goes a long way to explaining
the expansion of coca cropping since the 1980s – an activity
that prolongs both underdevelopment and armed conflict,
but which is not the cause of either.
The U.S. factor
This is not, however, the diagnosis which has prevailed in Andean governments
and even less so in Washington, where illegal plantations
are viewed as a major factor of Andean instability and a
threat to the national security of Andean states and the
United States. The Andean governments have subordinated
their policies, especially on drugs, but often also in matters
of economics and trade, to the wishes of the United States
for twenty years at least. Such submission may doubtless
be explained by the intransigent, even intimidating stance
adopted by Washington. The United States would now consider
that “a causal link (exists) between instability anywhere
in the (western) hemisphere and a threat to United States
security”, and proclaims itself ready to counter “non-territorialized
threats coming from ‘hostile’ or ‘disruptive’ governments
and regional political players”. American interests do not necessarily
agree with those of all sectors of Andean societies. In
particular, the free trade agreements that the United States
has signed or hopes to sign with Andean countries may become
factors of instability – if, for example, they lead to replacement
of certain national agricultural products (grain, especially)
by subsidised U.S. imports.
Programmes of forcible eradication of coca fields are underway in Colombia and
Peru, while in Bolivia the suppression of “excess coca”
is now effectuated in cooperation with coca growers under
a policy officially known as “rationalization of coca crops”.
The programme with the most immediate conflict potential
is implemented in the south of Colombia, in the context
of Plan Colombia and, after it
came to an end in September 2005, its successor--Plan Patriota.
It has come together with an unprecedented military and
paramilitary offensive aimed at taking back territorial
control from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) guerrilla movement, which has launched a counter-offensive.
While the Colombian military by and large has succeeded in imposing its authority
on areas where guerrillas once made the law, they have not
altogether managed to set up meaningful forms of governance
in them. With the military in place, the remainder of the
state apparatus has failed to make itself felt in these
remote areas. This is one of the bitterest lessons to be
learned from Plan Colombia: while it is not too difficult
to capture a territory once held by insurgents, governing
it is another matter altogether. The latter requires mobilisation
of non-military resources along with strong political will,
two conditions that have been largely lacking here. The
present Plan Patriota offensive is taking the same road.
As a result, as far as the inhabitants of these areas are concerned, the state—which
has historically been absent—is now present but only as
one more armed group, and with no stronger legitimacy than
the others. This same state is also responsible for destruction
of coca plantations (read: the main source of revenue for
the local population) by aerial spraying of herbicides that
also often destroy food crops. Meanwhile, alternative development
programmes, supposed to compensate for the disappearance
of coca fields and its consequences, have turned out
to be altogether insufficient. Aerial spraying, a measure
inspired by the United States and put into effect by U.S.
companies under contract to the Pentagon, de-legitimises
the Colombian state, since “rather than contribute to the strengthening of democracy and
respect for human rights, these [aerial spraying] programs
reflect an authoritarian stance and the undermining of national
sovereignty through the open and unrestricted intervention
of the United States in Colombia’s economic, social and
political affairs”.
The ironical paradox of this situation is that loss of legitimacy and sovereignty
is justified by a proclaimed need to restore good governance,
stability and order. The paradoxical irony is that Plan
Colombia and subsequent programmes have not succeeded in
reducing the overall surface area under coca cultivation—quite
the opposite. This surface area is increasing and plantations
are now dispersed in much of Colombia’s territory, according
to recent data.
Criminalised peasantries get organised: the cocalero movements
Forcible eradication programmes undertaken in Peru and Bolivia have not officially
resorted to use of chemical products with little-known effects.
They have been implemented manually by military units and
paramilitary police trained according to concepts coming
directly from the United States, often with accompanying
finance. Programmes implemented since the 1990s were followed
by a reduction of the surface area under coca in the two
countries (while it was expanding in Colombia), but there
is nothing to suggest any reduction will be sustainable
in the long term. Such uncertainty is largely due to the
fact that reduction has been achieved at the price of multiple violent confrontations
with increasingly well-organised coca growers.
In Bolivia, Aymara and Quechua growers of “legal” and “excess” coca, cashing
in on a long experience of trade-unionism and corporatism
inherited from the 1952 “revolution”, are particularly well
organised and pugnacious. They have shown that they can
resist eradication, by force if necessary, and that they
can express their demands strongly although it may cost
them their freedom and sometimes their lives. In a context of major social, ethnic
and political discontent and grave economic problems in
the poorest country in South America, the Bolivian cocaleros have been able
to build a vast political coalition around themselves--Movement
to Socialism (Movimiento al socialismo, MAS). MAS has won
the general election of January 2006. Its leader, Evo Morales
Aima, an Aymara, the head of the Chapare federation of coca
growers’ unions, became the first Indian president of a
country which had always been governed by white or mixed-race
Creoles, although its population is largely Indian.
The MAS nationalist and pro-Indian political platform combines rejection of
the “American empire” and its neo-liberal policies with
the moulding of a modern indigenous identity. The symbol
of this identity is none other than the coca leaf, cultivation
of which Morales intends to legalise altogether while making
it one of the components of his government’s economic and
political strategy–“development with coca” (desarrollo
con coca). This entails developing the manufacture of
coca-based products, such as coca flour and tea, which could
be exported abroad. The new president is dreaming of reforming
the international drug legislation forbidding the trade
in coca beyond Bolivian borders. In order to prevent coca
leaves from being used to manufacture cocaine inside Bolivia,
Morales wants to give control over agricultural production
to the cocaleros’ sindicatos (unions).
This is a risky strategy since the United States is opposed to the nationalist
options of MAS and adamant against any change in international
drug laws. Moreover, other geo-strategic factors may come
to bear on the Bolivian-U.S. conflict over coca. The nationalisation
of Bolivian oil and gas implemented by Morales in May 2006,
although it affects mainly European and Brazilian firms,
was not welcomed in Washington, and neither is the diplomatic
and economic rapprochement between La Paz, Havana and Caracas
(Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarianist” regime is disliked, to say
the least, in Washington). Morales hopes that Cuba and Venezuela will be the first legal importers
of Bolivian coca products, if he succeeds in legalising
international trade in the “sacred leaf”.
In Peru, the 50,000 coca farmers of the Selva Alta still lag behind their Bolivian
counterparts in matters of organisation, while seeking support
and inspiration from them. Potential for violence exists
especially here because many of these farmers were part
of the rondas campesinas, rural militia set up by
the Peruvian military to fight the Shining Path rebels during
the 1990s. The cocaleros therefore hold a tenacious grudge
against a state that used to enlist their help against its
Maoist enemy, but which now is eradicating their coca fields
and imprisoning their union leaders. The roadblocks and
demonstrations periodically organised to protest against
eradication are occasions for them to remind the government
that they have kept some of the weapons that the state distributed
to their militias.
In Colombia, the cocalero movement that had taken shape in the southern Putumayo
Department in the late 1990s no longer exists—another victim
of a civil war that has been especially cruel with workers’
and peasants’ organisations. The cocaleros could not impede
the hijacking by the FARC of their movement and its demands,
which were expressed especially strongly during mass demonstrations
in 1999, and most of its leaders have now fled the region,
been imprisoned by the authorities or murdered by the paramilitary. At present, coca production in Colombia
is almost entirely supervised (and taxed) by armed groups.
Rapid assessment of twenty-five years of “war on
drugs” in Colombia
Twenty-five years and numerous fruitless eradication and alternative development
programmes later, the total surface area planted with coca
on Colombian pioneer fronts has seemingly never been larger
and farmers living off them never more numerous. Conflict
has not come to an end in Colombia, but redoubled its intensity.
Colombia remains by far the leading world producer of coca
leaves and cocaine. Its internal conflict has become a three-sided
war, of which at least two sides – the rural guerrilla movements and the paramilitary forces combating them – finance
themselves by “taxing” coca (and opium poppy) production
and cocaine trafficking, where they are not purely and simply
their organisers. Drug revenue continues to fuel a historically
widespread corruption among police and armed forces (as
in Bolivia and Peru).
Recent negotiations between paramilitary forces (i.e. the camp most heavily
involved in drug trafficking) and the Uribe government have
resulted in the adoption of a so-called “justice and peace”
law, which seeks to demobilise extreme right-wing militia.
At first sight, this process could mark the beginnings of
transition from war economy to peace economy in regions
of Colombia most affected by the conflict (including those
in the south of the country where most coca is produced).
But the law appears to ratify the de facto political
power that paramilitary warlords have built up in many Colombian
provinces, and to strengthen their economic power, which
is mostly based on concentration of agrarian property and
revenue, along with trafficking (including cocaine) and
predation of natural and state resources. It must therefore
be admitted that this newfound stability – which may not
yet be called “peace” because the guerrillas have not disarmed
– is built upon impunity granted to small authoritarian
regional fiefdoms feeding off an economy based largely on
trafficking and predation.
It is uncertain that such a form of “illegitimate stability” could be politically
durable, as it silences but does nothing to resolve the
claims and problems that are at the heart of the conflict.
Likewise, it is doubtful that the model of “development”
that it promotes – exploitation of trafficking rents and
predation of natural resources in connection with the world
market – is sustainable.
Toward a typology of the connections between drug
production and intra-state conflict
The countries under study may be numbered among (some, indeed, are) the world’s
leading producers of agricultural raw materials (opium,
coca and cannabis) used in the manufacture of the three
families of illegal drugs of natural origin most consumed
worldwide: heroin; cocaine and crack; and marijuana and
hashish. Although very different from one another, all are
among the poorest countries on the planet and hold a large
rural population. Their respective governments are signatories
to the major international agreements and treaties on drugs
and as such are implementing – according to the means at
their disposal – policies combating illegal production in
their territories. In addition, they are beneficiaries of
bilateral and multilateral aid programmes for the training
and equipment of their security forces for anti-drug operations.
These countries therefore belong to a worldwide dual transnational
network working both for and against illegal drugs: the
markets for illegal goods and the military-security complex
involved in their suppression.
However, the countries and regions under consideration may be differentiated
by the armed conflicts they suffer or relative social peace
they enjoy, these situations being diversely affected or
prolonged by the recourse of a proportion of their peasantries
to agricultural production of illegal drugs. It is clear
that, from at least the 1980s, drugs have played crucial
roles in these regions, which are marked by agricultural,
social, economic and even identity crises that have led
to or risk leading to violence or full-blown armed conflict.
But it is also quite clear that this resort to illicit crops has not had the
same effects everywhere. In Afghanistan and Burma, opium,
which became one of the major stakes in civil wars that it initially “only” contributed to support economically, presently
poses the problem of the survival of poor sectors of the
population faced with one of the consequences of peace—the
suppression, at the risk of conflict, of economies that
were largely imposed on them and on which they now have
become dependent. It is the durability of coca cultivation
in Peru and Bolivia, and of cannabis in Morocco, and thus
of the way of life of tens of thousands of families of farmers,
that is at stake in conflicts where degrees of violence
seem to depend at least partially upon the suppression strategies
adopted (forcible and/or concerted eradication and alternative
crops). In West Africa (as probably in the rest of sub-Saharan
Africa), recourse to cannabis has emerged as an effective
response to setbacks essentially to do with land (exhaustion
of forest reserves) and environmental degradation (increased
soil salinity, desertification, erosion due to human activity,
etc.) that threaten a social peace largely bankrolled since
independence by cash cropping for export.
In political, economic and even geopolitical terms, agricultural commodities
like opium, coca and cannabis weigh heavy in the scales
of local negotiation. In the absence of development, the
fragile stability of Afghanistan depends to a large extent
on resources and revenue from opium production.
A similar situation applies for coca in Bolivia, where a conflict between a
new government catering for the interests of the cocaleros
– “rationalisation”, “development with coca” – and the United
States – “eradication” – is a new configuration but one
that remains conflictive. In Peru, the negotiations between
groups of coca growers and the government of Alan García
installed by the May 2006 general election have not made
much headway, although it must be noted that the vote gave
the hitherto criminalised cocaleros more legitimacy and
strength by allowing two of their leaders to become members
of parliament. They are presently promoting the adoption
of a new Peruvian coca policy resembling Bolivia’s. Yet
the outcome of Peru’s socio-political conflict over coca
remains as difficult to forecast as ever.
In Burma, the ruling junta has long given tacit authorisation for production
and marketing of opium by some of the rebel armies with which it has signed fragile and no more than temporary ceasefires. In Morocco,
maintenance of economic and socio-political stability in
the largely Berber region of the Rif is also partly due
to state tolerance of cannabis cultivation there, which
has expanded dramatically in recent years. Finally, in West
Africa, cultivation of cannabis is cushioning the crisis,
but by supporting licit cash cropping for export, which
is experiencing severe problems.
Of course, illicit cash crops are usually far more profitable than local food
crops (rice, wheat, barley, maize, potatoes, beans, yams,
yucca, etc.) or even other possible, licit, cash crops (saffron,
rubber, tea, cocoa, coffee, fruit, palm, citrus, etc.),
and it is tempting to explain that people resort to them
simply due to economic considerations. But illicit cash
crops proliferate above all in contexts of armed conflict
(Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia) or social and political open
or rampant crisis (sub-Saharan Africa, Bolivia, Morocco
and Peru). They are not only and perhaps not mainly the
result of economic problems, but instead thrive in political
contexts marked by the use and consequences of force, and
by complex and often transnational power struggles.
Through the interplay of a range of national and international parties and the
configuration of power relations over territory and the
illegal crops growing on it, and also because of illegal
cropping itself, illegal drug economies have taken on truly
geopolitical dimensions in such politically and territorially different
contexts as those of Central and South-East Asia, Andean
America, North Africa and West Africa. Thus, the multiple
scenarios brought into play by recourse to a drug economy
by parties caught up in these power struggles may lead to
prolongation of conflict, generation of conflict situations
or, contrarily, maintenance of relative social peace—all
depending on context.
Yet the contexts and issues at stake in illegal drug economies in the countries
at hand are not solely geopolitical, and their study requires
taking other factors into account. While it is reasonable
to assume that the emergence and development of illegal
agricultural production on such a scale have been made possible by political-territorial
conflict, it is clear that levels of development and environmental
backgrounds are also determining factors. It follows that
the issue of illegal drugs goes far beyond questions of
security alone, or at least that they should be viewed as
belonging in a wider concept of security that includes,
in addition to the obvious health aspect, food security
and what we call “environmental security”. These aspects
are seldom taken into account, to say the least, in national
and international drug policies.
The present overview would not be complete if it failed to mention the “war
on drugs” initiated by the Nixon administration in the early
1970s, which affects and may even compromise social peace
in the countries concerned. For the last thirty years, U.S.
policy has kept reduction of drug supplies in producer countries
as the main objective of international anti-drug efforts.
Eradication campaigns have been the order of the day across
all five continents, whatever the context and despite counter-productive
consequences and adverse effects.
Thirty years of “war” have accompanied an expansion of surface area planted
in coca bushes and opium poppies and also, judging from
the single example of Morocco, under cannabis cultivation.
And despite a total estimated cost of US $150 billion, it has not only failed to reduce
surface areas dedicated to drug crops and quantities produced,
but also expanded and dispersed illegal agriculture worldwide,
while doing much to contribute to the militarization of
many areas of production.
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