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A Game of Consequences
Presented by Tony White,
Former Chief of Supply Reduction and Law Enforcement for the United Nations International Drug Control Programme
Ladies and Gentlemen,
If I may begin by introducing myself, I was a police officer in London for thirty years before going on to serve from 1997 to 2000 as Chief of Supply Reduction and Law Enforcement for the former United Nations International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP).
When I joined UNDCP, one of the responsibilities that I assumed was for alternative development, which was an entirely new subject to me and in which I still do not claim to be an expert. For those who do not already know, let me explain that there are essentially four strands to supply reduction in a drugs context, which are interdiction by law enforcement, alternative development, precursor chemical control and anti-money laundering. I am only focussing on the first two of these in this presentation.
The connection between alternative development and drug law enforcement within a supply reduction framework seems to be clear enough if one considers that alternative development projects will usually require law enforcement support, to protect communities and thwart any efforts on the part of criminal elements to intimidate them into continuing or resuming illicit narcotic crop cultivation. We take it as self-evident that the longer term interests of indigenous rural communities will be better served by development of sustainable lawful economies than by continuation with unlawful ones, so those unlawful ones need to be disrupted and undermined as much as possible through complementary enforcement efforts.
So far, so good, but there are aspects of the alternative development/law enforcement connection that I have personally always found a little problematical. For example, alternative development projects are usually long-term, requiring periods as long as twelve to fifteen years to fully bear fruit. Law enforcement projects, on the other hand, tend to be shorter-term affairs, often in order to provide the maximum return politically for those who sponsor them. Moreover, law enforcement priorities can change very quickly, so that necessary support to an alternative development venture for its full duration may not always be guaranteed. Also, whilst global or regional commodity price and other economic changes may not have a significant effect on law enforcement efforts, their negative impact on alternative development projects may be both unforeseeable and substantial.
Law enforcement, by its very nature, operates in conditions of potential confrontation, sometimes to the extent that those who enforce the law may not only comprise the more traditional agencies, like police, customs and border guard, but will extend to covert intelligence, militia and even military forces, perhaps even including those of assisting or occupying foreign entities. It is an unfortunate fact that geographic zones of major conflict and those of major illicit narcotic crop cultivation often coincide, as in Afghanistan and Colombia.
Alternative development and repressive manual illicit crop eradication campaigns are often forced to run side by side with one another within the framework of what are termed “carrot and stick” policies. I would be interested in how alternative development efforts in Afghanistan might be affected, for better or for worse, were “Plan Colombia”-style approaches such as massive-scale aerial chemical spraying to be applied. As a traditional law enforcement type, I have to say that I would have the greatest difficulty in regarding a pilot of a chemical spraying aircraft as a counterpart, particularly if I were to consider the kinds of profits likely to be reaped by the contracted company for whom he is working.
Going further down the road of hypothesis, I wonder how alternative development in Afghanistan would sit alongside any application within this country of a “biological warfare” approach to narcotic crop elimination. By this I am referring to the “killer fungi” mycoherbicides that were developed in the United States and Uzbekistan some years ago and still lie ready for deployment. In 2000, it was revealed that the later-discredited former executive director of UNDCP had been party to a secret plan to enable these mycoherbicides to be dropped upon the poppy fields of Afghanistan. Just three years ago, the present executive director of the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime permitted the scientist who had developed the United States’ killer fungi programme to visit his organisation’s Vienna headquarters and address staff on this work. During that presentation, the individual concerned, who was travelling as a member of an official US delegation, openly advocated the use of mycoherbicides in Afghanistan.
Naturally, there is also the eternal problem of comparative commodity prices. Whilst fully acknowledging the scale of Afghanistan’s drug problem, we cannot lose sight of the fact that this problem does not have its roots here but in developed consumer States, an increasing number of which are, ironically, now cultivating their own opium poppy. The drug control policies of those States have always been aimed at or have had the effect of driving street prices of illicit substances upward. This merely endows those substances with ridiculously high values that then filter decreasingly but inexorably back along the distribution chain, all the way to the producer countries, increasing levels of public corruption, strengthening criminal networks, undermining local commerce and the rule of law and helping establish local illicit drug markets, with ensuing implications for public health. Demand for illicit drugs in developed consumer States, allied to the effects of their current drug policies, creates for the illicit drug trade a power of price elasticity and profitability that can very rarely be matched by lawful commodities, which I presume presents another difficulty for alternative development programmes.
One natural law to which none of us is exempt is the Law of Unintended Consequences, and it has long seemed to me that the global drug problem, like most things in life, amounts to a game of consequences. We free up trade and travel and thereby free up drug trafficking; we free up financial markets and thereby free up money laundering; we stifle opium production in South-east Asia and thereby trigger a methylamphetamine epidemic there; and in Western Europe we seek to suppress importation of cannabis from South-west Asia and North Africa and thereby ignite a massive surge in domestic cultivation of far more potent cannabis.
There is little we can do to avoid consequences, since they arise naturally from our own choices, decisions and actions, so that even for the most just of causes, victory comes at a cost. Even doing nothing has its consequences. One thing we can do, however, is to try to learn from the consequences of our mistakes, which is something that the international drug policy framework institutions stubbornly still refuse to do. When I first worked in drug law enforcement, which stretches back to the 1960s, the equation that ensured that drugs and organised crime were linked was “Maximum return for minimum outlay with negligible risk”. Today, nearly forty years later, that equation is unchanged.
Still, it is not too late. In 1998, at a UN General Assembly special session on the global drug problem, every UN Member State pledged itself to achieving a “Drug-free World” by 2008, which is now little more than two years away. In 2008, however, faced with humiliation over the failure of that foolhardy pledge, all UN Member States have the chance to review its consequences and this time approach the global drug situation honestly, openly and reasoningly, applying innovative, problem- solving thinking. At the moment, that kind of thinking is the preserve of bodies such as ICOS, as I hope you will agree has been demonstrated admirably at this event. Nobody is suggesting that any organisation within the international drug framework is not working honestly and devotedly; it is just that when people are in a hole, they can easily lose sight of the fact that the sensible thing to do is to stop digging.
I thank you for your attention.
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