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“Thieves of Time”
(A presentation given on 14 March 2006, by Tony White, former Chief of Supply Reduction and Law Enforcement for the United Nations International Drug Control Programme, at “The 7th International Symposium on Global Drug Policy: Bridging Security and Development”, held at Vienna, Austria).
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Three months ago, here in Vienna, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) hosted a two-day brainstorming session at which invited international experts and members of its own staff were asked to consider where the organisation should go in future as regards alternative development. To assist them they were provided with copies of two reports. One was a global thematic evaluation of alternative development the findings of which had been made known several months earlier. The other came as something of a surprise to the invited experts, for it had been initiated by UNODC’s own internal evaluation unit and yet amounted to a stunning indictment of the organisation’s performance over the years in relation to alternative development.
The invited experts were told that the internal report was only a draft and that a finalised version would be made available to the current session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (the CND). What they were not told was that what they were reading was in fact an abridged version of a much longer original draft which set out in far greater detail a long and abysmal catalogue of failure by UNODC.
The internal report described UNODC’s alternative development efforts in recent years as “amateurish and haphazard” and as “seldom having produced sustainable impacts”. There was little evidence, it said, to show that the rural development components of alternative development had over the years reduced the amount of drug crops cultivated, or, for its part, that forced crop eradication programmes had in the long term reduced the amount of drugs cultivated; indeed such programmes had harmed entire communities indiscriminately and done little to affect the economics of the drug trade. Eradication, it went on, should follow alternative development interventions into socially and economically prepared communities. As currently practised, though, alternative development was merely an adjunct to eradication, first rapidly destroying regional economies in the name of drug control and then trying to rebuild them quickly. The evaluators concluded that there was no evidence anywhere, in any context, that it was possible to rebuild economies quickly.
Ladies and Gentlemen, alternative development projects will of course almost invariably require complementary law enforcement support, both to help maintain security during periods of economic and social transition and prevent criminal elements pressuring local communities into continuing or resuming illicit narcotic crop cultivation. However, one should not be blind to areas of incompatibility between these two elements of drug control.
Alternative development projects are typically long-term ventures, requiring anything from twelve years upward to be brought fully to fruition. Law enforcement projects, by contrast, tend to be much shorter-term affairs, more typically of perhaps two or three years duration. Whilst the priorities of those involved in an alternative development project are unlikely to change materially over the course of its execution, law enforcement priorities can change suddenly, in response to unforeseen events, so that necessary support to an alternative development venture for its full duration may not always be assured. A further significant factor is that though 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 substantial. These differences and many others have not, however, deflected agencies and donors from making alternative development assistance conditional upon the achievement of specified crop eradication targets, a policy that has become known as “carrot and stick”.
UNODC’s internal report is especially significant for having reaffirmed the importance of a particular factor, which is that of sequencing. I, too, believe that the only way in which alternative development can really work is for it to precede forced crop eradication and for viable alternative development arrangements for communities then to be firmly in place before what may have been their only previous viable means of subsistence is removed. When, as in Afghanistan, the equation carries a further factor of ongoing armed conflict, the rational sequence of events extends to become: first, restore security; second, put into place viable alternative development; third, eradicate illicit crops. This equation is, however, an awkward one to square with lofty political agendas, as it offers no “quick fix” solutions from which quick-time gains might be forthcoming. It also casts doubt on the wisdom of carrot and stick conditionality.
The introduction to the latest annual report by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) focuses on alternative development, acknowledging the need for changes in the manner in which it is currently applied. Specifically, the INCB supports the repositioning of alternative development from its traditional application to a more broadly-defined, cross-cutting one based on the creation of alternative livelihoods and extending to urban zones of drug abuse.
The alternative livelihoods approach is an attractive concept, just as has always been the alternative development one, as a concept, but I would ask how an alternative livelihoods strategy would suit the agendas of the quick fix set any better than has the traditional alternative development one? After all, urban environmental and social development programmes may take just as long to fulfil as do rural projects and be just as irreconcilable with draconian law enforcement actions that follow the “War on Drugs” creed.
Time appears to have become something of a recurring theme of late. The INCB report, for example, states: “Bearing in mind the complexity of the global drug situation, a longer time frame is required to achieve both drug control and sustainable development objectives”. Just over a week ago, commenting on the latest opium production picture in Afghanistan, the local UNODC field representative said “It cannot be emphasised enough that counter narcotics is a long-term process, which must be based first of all on an overall development approach, and this takes a long time”. Even the top US military commander in Afghanistan very recently predicted that it would take decades to stop opium poppy cultivation in the country. These statements are scarcely consistent with the “A Drug-free World, We Can Do It!” rhetoric of the 1998 UN General Assembly special session on the global drug problem and cause me to sense a growing move towards procrastination, which we describe in England as being “the thief of time”. At the conclusion of the special session the UN Secretary-General himself said “the clock is ticking”, meaning it had only ten years to run to the dawn of the “Drug-free World” in 2008 and that it was by that time frame that the efficacy of present international drug policies would be judged.
Even if an alternative livelihoods approach were to supersede the present one of alternative development, I am not sure I see how this would move us forward as regards the issue of sequencing. To imagine that destruction and reconstruction can run concurrently to produce a desired result seems to me tantamount to imagining it would have been feasible to launch a Marshall Plan in Europe in 1940. Also, bear in mind that farming communities in Aghanistan already believe themselves to have been “stung” by past pledges of alternative development assistance that were never fulfilled.
The fact that after the special session opium production in Afghanistan plummeted almost to zero level under the Taleban but then resurged dramatically following the movement’s ousting probably stems from many thousands of rural households having built up their personal stockpiles of opium in the period leading up to the eradication campaign, not only because of the campaign but because overproduction in the preceding season had caused opium prices to hit a historical low. As they invariably do, the eradication campaign triggered large-scale movements of rural peoples, mostly towards the border area with Pakistan. When those peoples returned to their homes following the US-led military invasion of the country, the subsequent release onto markets of their personal stores of opium most probably precipitated the massive resurgence of the opium trade in Afghanistan.
If that was indeed the scenario, there appears no clear reason why it should not be repeated in response to the new forced eradication campaign, particularly since we know that viable alternative development arrangements are not yet in place or fully functioning in all poppy-growing areas of Afghanistan. Should the response to the new campaign indeed be another exodus of rural populations, much of which would undoubtedly again be to the already troubled south of the country, the effect of this would surely be to increase resentment towards the Afghan Government, which could in turn have the effect of increasing support for insurgent forces. As I say, the bulk of those who are displaced may again head towards the south, but some may this time also move into urban areas of Afghanistan, sowing the seeds of future problems there.
Sadly, UNODC’s internal report is correct in concluding that alternative development has become a mere adjunct to forced crop eradication. As I have acknowledged, law enforcement support for alternative development projects is important, but we need to be vigilant that the term “law enforcement” in this context does not come to be regarded as simply being synonymous with forced crop eradication and with nothing else. Speaking as one who was a law enforcement officer for thirty years, I have no difficulties when it comes to taking away the source of livelihood of someone when it is something that is quite clearly criminal, such as robbery, fraud or higher level drug trafficking. However, I do have some problems in coming to terms with law enforcement efforts that assist in depriving poor, essentially law-abiding people of their only means of subsistence when the threat posed by what they produce is principally to wealthy, far-off States. It is all too conveniently forgotten that Afghanistan’s drug problem was largely created by the failure of those Sates to curb their own domestic drug use and by their continued adherence to policies that merely have the effect of maintaining the already obscenely high value of illicit drugs at levels no lawful produce or livelihoods can ever match.
I have long been suspicious when it comes to supposed success indicators in respect of alternative development programmes. I vividly recall that at the time of the special session and for some considerable while thereafter UNODC’s predecessor organisation was claiming a number of “success stories” in relation to alternative development most of which were dubious to say the least. In some cases, the reason illicit narcotic crop cultivation had subsided was not because of development aid but because farming communities had been displaced to other areas, leading to displacement of cultivation and often a worsening in the overall regional situation. In others, notably South-east Asia, the action taken in respect of illicit production of one kind of drug had promptly triggered illicit production of another.
All of these points notwithstanding, I continue to believe in alternative development, if only because any help to impoverished peoples must surely be better than no help at all. The world of international drug control is in fact desperately in need of a whole raft of alternatives and yet any proposals for new approaches, such as ICOS’s as regards licensed opium production in Afghanistan, are greeted with kneejerk resentment and dismissal.
As things stand, we must anticipate that in 2008, when the final counting is carried out in respect of the targets set at the 1998 special session, the UN and national governments will choose to remain in their cosy bolt-holes of denial and, as I have indicated, plead for more time. We should not be sympathetic to such a plea. The UN and the international community at large chose to squander the opportunities provided by the 1998 special session and they have chosen to fritter away the years since then; many of you will no doubt recall the CND session of 2003 and the sham that was the supposed mid-term review of progress towards the special session targets.
Some of you will be aware that for several years now I have been predicting that as the year 2008 drew nearer, UNODC would seek to misrepresent the 1998 special session’s targets as relating to processes rather than outcomes. When opening the current session of the CND, just two days ago, the organisation’s executive director, Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, did precisely this. Unlike him, I was actually at the special session and can therefore personally attest to the fact that the “Drug-free World” of 2008 was to be achieved not through bureaucratic processes but by achievement of the drug elimination targets, which were to be the criterion by which all that was to follow would be judged.
Ladies and Gentlemen, time catches up with all of us and the designs of history are always difficult to perceive clearly and accurately when one is living through periods in which they are being woven. If the 1998 special session was a waste of time and the ten years that will have followed it prove to have been likewise, perhaps those - including UNODC, the INCB and the CND - who chose to follow the path of procrastination will in time come to be judged to have been the thieves of time and thereby, albeit inadvertently, yet serve as the catalysts for inevitable changes to international drug policies. Why must those changes eventually take place? Because, quite simply, there will be no alternative.
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