Militarization
GWU Panel Event: The Humanitarian Crisis in Colombia
Washington Office on Latin America Book Launch Reception
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update--December 2
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update--November 25
Latin America: Mexico Ex-President Fox Lashes Out at President Calderon Over Drug War
European Pressure: Turkey Must Fight Drug War, or Else
EDITOR'S NOTE: Kalif Mathieu is an intern at StoptheDrugWar.org. His bio is in our "staff" section.
I traveled to the city of Istanbul last week to stay for a few days with my school program of Peace and Conflict Resolution. Istanbul (and Turkey as a whole) is the perfect conduit for heroin being produced in the middle-east to reach Western European markets. Heroin and other drugs are commodities like anything else, and travel through the same general trade routes as other goods. Turkey is so strategically placed that according to Le Monde diplomatique in 1995 âAn estimated 80% of the heroin on the European market is being processed in Turkish laboratories." (La Dépêche Internationale des Drogues 1995, Nr. 48)
So you might ask, âwhatâs so special about heroin traveling through Turkey? Itâs just like any other trade between the middle-east and Europe.â The troublesome point is who controls the trafficking through the country and receives the profits of the trade. This happens to be the PKK, or Kurdistan Workerâs Party, a militant organization with a 30-year history of fighting the Turkish government to establish a separate Kurdish state. âAccording to Interpol [â¦] the PKK was orchestrating 80 % of the European drug marketâ back in 1992, and â[o]ther sources similarly indicate that the PKK controlled between 60 % to 70 %â in 1994 reported the Turkish Daily News.
The state of Turkey has been increasing its process of Westernization recently in its desire to join the EU, and this has meant adopting a Western policy on drugs. Turkey has been very successful recently in increasing its police and border control effectiveness and eliminating corruption. The Turkish Daily News gave some convincing numbers: âAccording to the deputy customs undersecretary, there was a 400 percent increase in drug-operation success in the period between 2002 and 2006, when compared to the 1999-2002 period.â
However, even though Turkey has been, in recent years, dealing more and more forcefully with both the PKK militants and the drug trade, has this actually reduced the trafficking of drugs and the profits of the PKK? In the Turkish Daily News: â[t]he annual revenue made by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has increased to 400-500 million euros, a top Turkish general said late Tuesday.â If the PKKâs revenue has increased, then it is logical to assume Turkeyâs military campaign against them may not be considered a huge success. Not only that, but â200-250 million euros of [the PKKâs] revenue comes from drugs [â¦] Gen. Ergin Saygun, deputy chief of General Staff said.â That makes drug trafficking 50% of the organizationâs income!
The Turkish state has had a history of valuing the effectiveness of force. It was born from war, and the constitution has a controversial but often-utilized article that allows the Turkish army to organize a coup to eliminate the possibility of having a religious party in power. What is the point of these so-called âhard-lineâ approaches to dealing with the nationâs problems if they are rather ineffective? Very little of course. The trouble comes from what the state could say to its citizens, to the international community, if it negotiated with the violent PKK or began to take the drug trade into the light by moving it towards legalization and either private or state control? If Turkey tried to clean up its smuggling and black market in such a way the majority of Europe, if not the greater âglobal community,â would probably condemn the entire nation of betraying humanity and literally becoming evil. The reaction of many Turkish citizens would be perhaps lighter, but of a similar nature if the state sat down to negotiations with the âterroristâ PKK. These are strong influences on the Turkish state, and severely limit its options. Therefore it seems Turkey doesnât have much of a choice but to pursue the same policy of force it has pursued for more than 30 years, whether it benefit the people or not.
Heading Down Mexico Way
The cartelâs supply chain is embedded in the huge legal bilateral trade between the United States and Mexico. Remember that Mexico exports $198 billion to the United States and â according to the Mexican Economy Ministry â $1.6 billion to Japan and $1.7 billion to China, its next biggest markets. Mexico is just behind Canada as a U.S. trading partner and is a huge market running both ways. Disrupting the drug trade cannot be done without disrupting this other trade. With that much trade going on, you are not going to find the drugs. It isnât going to happen. Police action, or action within each countryâs legal procedures and protections, will not succeed. The cartelsâ ability to evade, corrupt and absorb the losses is simply too great. Another solution is to allow easy access to the drug market for other producers, flooding the market, reducing the cost and eliminating the economic incentive and technical advantage of the cartel. That would mean legalizing drugs. That is simply not going to happen in the United States. It is a political impossibility. This leaves the option of treating the issue as a military rather than police action. That would mean attacking the cartels as if they were a military force rather than a criminal group. It would mean that procedural rules would not be in place, and that the cartels would be treated as an enemy army. Leaving aside the complexities of U.S.-Mexican relations, cartels flourish by being hard to distinguish from the general population. This strategy not only would turn the cartels into a guerrilla force, it would treat northern Mexico as hostile occupied territory. Donât even think of that possibility, absent a draft under which college-age Americans from upper-middle-class families would be sent to patrol Mexico â and be killed and wounded. The United States does not need a Gaza Strip on its southern border, so this wonât happen. The current efforts by the Mexican government might impede the various gangs, but they wonât break the cartel system. The supply chain along the border is simply too diffuse and too plastic. It shifts too easily under pressure. The border canât be sealed, and the level of economic activity shields smuggling too well. Farmers in Mexico canât be persuaded to stop growing illegal drugs for the same reason that Bolivians and Afghans canât. Market demand is too high and alternatives too bleak. The Mexican supply chain is too robust â and too profitable â to break easily. The likely course is a multigenerational pattern of instability along the border. More important, there will be a substantial transfer of wealth from the United States to Mexico in return for an intrinsically low-cost consumable product â drugs. This will be one of the sources of capital that will build the Mexican economy, which today is 14th largest in the world. The accumulation of drug money is and will continue finding its way into the Mexican economy, creating a pool of investment capital. The children and grandchildren of the Zetas will be running banks, running for president, building art museums and telling amusing anecdotes about how grandpa made his money running blow into Nuevo Laredo. It will also destabilize the U.S. Southwest while grandpa makes his pile. As is frequently the case, it is a problem for which there are no good solutions, or for which the solution is one without real support.This is the situation the Bush administration wants to throw $1.4 billion at in the next couple of years. Maybe it and Congress should be reading Strategic Forecasting analyses, too.
Plan Colombia: Ten Years Later
Latin America: Mexico Drug War Update
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