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International Cooperation Brings Success in War on Drugs

2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report

By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington – Steadily increasing cooperation among nations led to “significant successes” in reducing international drug trafficking and criminal activity in 2005, the U.S. State Department declared in releasing the 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) March 1.

Assistant Secretary of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Anne Patterson announced the findings at a State Department briefing.

“The progress we can point to in this year’s INCSR reflects the work of many countries to consolidate the gains against drugs and crime, with many brave people throughout the world taking great personal risk,” she said.

ANDEAN NATIONS

The elimination of more than 170,000 hectares of coca crops – the source of cocaine – in Colombia was among the achievements cited in the report. Reducing coca cultivation has been one of the uppermost goals of U.S. countertrafficking efforts.

Crop eradication in Colombia has worked in tandem with Plan Colombia, a U.S.-backed effort to assist the nation in controlling drug trafficking, crime and corruption. Patterson, who served as ambassador to Colombia from 2000 to 2003 when the program was taking hold, said it has led to “enormous progress” in strengthening institutions in Colombia, reducing crime and improving the nation’s overall stability.

Also in the Andean region, Patterson said Bolivia has made similar progress compared to where it was 10 years ago. Still, the report finds that Bolivian coca cultivation has been creeping up for the last four years, by 8 percent in 2005 alone.  The trend is described as “disquieting” in the report itself, but Patterson said she does not find it surprising.

“Eradication is messy,” Patterson told reporters “because people don’t want to have their crop eradicated, so we can’t underestimate the difficulty of this.”

She said counternarcotics efforts are a key component in the bilateral relations between the United States and Bolivia.

AFGHANISTAN

Eradication of opium gum production in Afghanistan is another challenge not to be underestimated, Patterson said. Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world’s production of the source crop for heroin, and members of an international coalition have been striving to reduce production since the fall of the Taliban in 2002.

Patterson cited the 30-year history of war, civil conflict and upheaval in the Central Asian state that has created an unstable atmosphere in which drug cultivation and trafficking have been able to flourish. (See related article.)

The United States and its partners have a long-term strategy for reducing the opium poppy production, Patterson said. “It’s going to be multiyear, and going to take a long time to show results, but we think over time it will show results.”

As a sign of progress, Patterson pointed to an upcoming eradication campaign in the southern Helmand province that will involve a joint effort on the part of a variety of Afghan ministries for the first time. 

The security of Afghanistan and its democratic institutions are at stake in the effort to win the drug war in Afghanistan, Patterson said, as well as the need to stop the flow of cheap heroin into other nations, notably those in Western Europe.

EXTRADITION AND INTERDICTION

Progress in institution building and quashing corruption has yielded growing numbers of criminal extraditions, according to the INSCR.  Colombia extradited 134 people to the United States for prosecution in 2005, and Mexico 41. Afghanistan also permitted the extradition of one of its citizens to a foreign country for prosecution on drug charges in 2005.

Interdiction of drug contraband is also cited as an area of progress in 2005. The amount of cocaine seized in the Western Hemisphere in 2005 exceeded all records, with 228 metric tons of cocaine taken in Colombia alone.  Almost 330 metric tons -- with an estimated street value of $33 billion -- were seized by nations throughout the region in 2005.

BACKGROUND

U.S. law requires the State Department to prepare the INCSR annually -- a country-by-country survey that describes efforts to attack all aspects of the international drug trade, chemical control, money laundering and financial crimes. INCSR 2006 is the 23rd edition of the report.

These findings will inform a decision President Bush will make later in the year, another action required by law. Based on the INSCR information, the president will decide whether nations that have been identified as major illicit drug producing and/or drug-transit countries are taking adequate strides to address their problems in keeping with U.N. conventions.

The following nations are identified as illicit drug producing and/or drug-transit countries in the 2006 INSCR: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela.

The full text of the two-volume 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report is available on the Department of State Web site.

Additional information on the reports findings on Afghanistan, Burma, the Caribbean, China, Russia, North Korea, Mexico and Central America is also available.