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LOOKED at in one way, these are good times for America's drug warriors, at least with regard to cocaine. Traditionally, some 70% of the white powder has come from Colombia. The $3 billion in aid that the United States has spent there since 2000 under Plan Colombia has produced what American officials present as some spectacular numbers especially since Alvaro Uribe became president two years later and allowed large-scale aerial eradication of drug crops. At the last count by the United Nations, in 2003, land under coca in Colombia was down to 86,300 hectares (213,200 acres) from a peak of 163,300 hectares in 2000. In 2004, contractors working for the United States sprayed herbicide on 136,555 hectares of coca, a similar amount to the previous year. That points to a further decline in cocaine production last year, according to John Walters, who heads the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). In 2004, almost 150 tonnes of cocaine were seized in the country, a third more than in 2003, while 1,900 cocaine labs were destroyed, 40% more than in 2002. Mr Uribe has extradited 166 Colombians to face drug charges--and probably a life behind bars--in the United States. They include Gilberto Rodrguez Orejuela, who as head of the Cali drug mob ruled the trade a decade ago. American officials say that they have squeezed the drug revenues of the FARC guerrillas and their right-wing opponents, the AUC. We're moving in one direction. The bad guys are losing and the people in Colombia are winning, says Mr Walters. Those who see it otherwise want this thing to fail. Yet to many people across and beyond Latin America, the Andean drug trade seems as effective and dangerous as ever. The most telling evidence is the price of cocaine. According to the Washington Office on Latin America, an NGO, the ONDCP's own figures, released to Congress but not yet to the public, show that in the United States a gram of cocaine wholesaled for $38 in 2003, down from $48 in 2000 and from $100 in 1986, with no fall in purity. In Britain, cocaine is cheaper than ever: in 2003 it retailed for about 46 per gram ($75), down from 57 ten years ago, according to the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit, a consultancy. Prices have fallen even as world demand has risen: consumption is broadly flat in North America, according to the UN, but rising in Europe. It is rising, too, in Brazil, Mexico and Central America, mainly because smuggling gangs are being paid in product. An Evolving TradeWhat is the explanation? Bigger-than-anticipated stocks along the supply chain mean that there is a lag between a fall in output and its effect on prices, say American officials. Just wait to see the effect of Plan Colombia, they say. But others argue that the headline figures for hectares sprayed do not tell the full story. An alternative explanation is that coca has spread to new areas, some undetected, and that yields and productivity are rising. According to the UN, Plan Colombia produced a modest displacement of coca to other countries: by 2003, cultivation was up slightly in Bolivia but stable in Peru. Even so, land under coca in both these countries was far below its peak of a decade ago. Overall, the UN calculated that the total potential output of Andean cocaine was 655 tonnes in 2003a big fall from a peak of 950 tonnes in 1996. Yet in both Peru and Bolivia, the drug warriors now face troubling new trends. In Peru, the second-biggest producer, coca is spreading to new areas, such as San Gabn, close to the border with Bolivia, and Putumayo, across the river from Colombia. Between them, these may account for up to 10,000 hectares of new coca. Local-market prices for coca leaves are rising. In the distorted economics of an illegal business, that is a sure sign that repression is failing to restrict effective demand. In December 2004, the price of a kilo of coca leaves on the illegal market had risen to $5 from a low of 50 cents, according to the Peruvian government's anti-drug agency, DEVIDA. This will lure farmers into planting more coca, says Nils Ericsson, DEVIDA's director. At current prices, a hectare of coca yields an annual income of up to $7,500, compared with $600 from coffee or $1,000 from cocoa. Peru's cocaine industry is vertically integrating. A decade ago, small aircraft ferried semi-processed coca paste for refining in Colombia. Now, Peru's output of refined cocaine is soaring. Last year, for the first time, police seized more powder than paste. They have destroyed more than 1,700 cocaine laboratories in the past two years. This switch to refining is being pushed by Mexican drug groups which, according to prosecutors, were helped by Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's jailed former spy chief. For the Mexican gangs, buying finished cocaine is cheaper and involves less risk, says Fernando Rospigliosi, a former interior minister. Much of the refined product is now going straight to Mexico or Spain on cargo ships, concealed in Peru's booming legal exports. In November, 700 kilos were found stuffed inside frozen giant squid. Other shipments have been found in planks of wood, carrots, guano and even votive candles. Peru's government says it wants to eradicate all but 10,000 hectares of coca, which are reserved for traditional use, by the end of 2006. But there are signs that the drug trade is once again spreading its trail of corruption to the security forces. According to testimony from some of those arrested for the shipment of stuffed squid, the deal was planned at a club for army officers and the drugs packed at a naval base near the northern port of Paita. Peru does not allow chemical spraying of coca. Instead, it has mixed manual eradication with schemes to encourage farmers to pull the crop up and plant legal alternatives. This approach suffered a setback last year when angry coca farmers expelled UN agronomists from Monzn, one of the main coca valleys. The United States' draft budget for next year includes a cut of $18m in aid for alternative development in Peru. That puts more onus on forcible eradicationa challenge for a weak and unpopular government. A Setback In BoliviaPolitical fragility has complicated the drug war in Bolivia, too. An aggressive American-backed campaign of manual eradication in the late 1990s wiped out most of the country's illegal coca. But this contributed to a slowdown in the economy and discontent, which culminated in the overthrow of Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada, a pro-American president, in 2003. Since then, the United States has adopted a softer approach. In October, Carlos Mesa, the new president, reached an agreement with the coca growers of the Chapare, allowing them for the first time to keep 3,200 hectares of coca legally in return for eradicating the rest. Governments have refused to allow eradication in the Yungas, the main area of legal cultivation, where illegal coca is reported to be expanding. Curiously, Ecuador has never grown much coca. But it has become a transport and service hub for the drug industry. Since it adopted the dollar as its currency in 2000, Ecuador has become even more convenient for laundering drug profits (though most of this still happens in the United States and Europe). Around a third of Colombia's cocaine is now reckoned to be exported through Ecuador, mainly through the port of Guayaquil. Seizures of drugs in outbound shipping from Ecuador's ports fell to just 4 tonnes last year, from 12 tonnes in 2003. Nobody believes that is because less is being exported. Mexico, too, is feeling the ripple effect of the drug trade as never before. A surge in drug-related violence along the northern border with the United States has included the kidnapping and killing of several American citizens. That prompted America's State Department last month to issue a travel warning. Exaggerated, said Mexico's government, which recently sent several hundred troops to the border state of Tamaulipas to try to restore confidence. Behind the violence lie turf wars. A decade or so ago, three or four big Mexican smuggling syndicates became equal partners with Colombians in the supply route to the western United States. The government of President Vicente Fox has made much bigger efforts than its predecessors to tackle these syndicates, clean up the security forces and collaborate with American drug fighters. Several notorious drug barons, such as Benjamn Arellano Flix, have been jailed. One consequence is to transfer the drug business and its feuds to prisons. Lawyers relay orders from jailed bosses. In January, the army took over a maximum-security prison near Mexico City after the murder of the brother of a fugitive drug boss sparked a riot. The government has since sent several inmates to other jails. Six warders were murdered at another prison, this one at Matamoros in Tamaulipas. As in Colombia a decade ago, the weakening of the big syndicates in Mexico has merely resulted in them being replaced by scores of smaller, nimbler outfits, which are harder to detect. As always, the drug business appears to be one step ahead of its pursuers. |
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