Been there, done that

Late last month in Colombia, growers of the country’s top cash crops – coca, marijuana and opium poppy – held a summit of sorts in Popayan, a city with picturesque Spanish colonial architecture and numerous Catholic churches.

Their goal: to petition their government to stop the forceful eradication of their crops and instead do it gradually, giving the growers time to shift to legal crops.

Instead of arresting the members of the National Coordinator of Coca, Marijuana and Poppy Growers of Colombia or Coccam, which was formed in 2015, the government is seriously considering the proposal, which is endorsed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, the group formed in 1964 that has hammered out a peace deal with the government. Drug money has financed the insurgency.

Bogota had promised to provide funding for the crop substitution, aware that some 64,000 peasant families are directly dependent on the illegal drug trade. Rather than exterminating the drug growers, the government is regarding the problem as one of poverty and livelihood opportunities.

* * * Skeptics wonder if the earnings from Colombia’s other major cash crop, coffee, can match the massive profits from marijuana, poppy and especially coca, which is used in that country mainly for the production of cocaine.

Last year when I visited Cartagena de Indias, Colombia’s tourism mecca, locals pointed out to me the homes of the country’s rich and famous in the Old Quarter, a UNESCO World Heritage Site where real estate prices are prohibitive. One house, beside a medieval convent converted into a fivestar hotel, belonged to Colombia’s national treasure, the late magic realism writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

An hour’s boat ride from the Cartagena wharf is La Isla Grande, the luxurious island getaway of the late Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar, subject of President Duterte’s favorite Netflix series, Narcos.

Outside the Old Quarter is a new development dotted with high-rise apartments and offices. Locals told me that many of the priciest units were owned by drug cartel members.

In a developing country, that kind of money can be irresistible. While Escobar was eventually killed by USbacked Colombian forces under then president Cesar Gaviria, there are impoverished Colombians who may be inspired by the fact that at the height of his influence, the “King of Cocaine” was worth a staggering $30 billion (with inflation, this was about $55 billion in 2016).

* * * Gaviria, as we know, is the guy who wrote that recent provocative op-ed in the New York Times. For observing that President Duterte is committing the same mistakes he made in Colombia’s war on drugs, Gaviria has been called an “idiot” by Dirty Rody.

Administration officials are correct in saying that there are differences in the drug problems of the two countries. But there are also similarities, and lessons that can be learned. Gaviria has been there, done that. Bogota also resorted to a brutal crackdown on drug personalities that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Colombians, most of them from poor communities.

Duterte may want to look at who’s making money from the marijuana farms in the Cordilleras. FARC is not the only rebel group getting funding from illegal drugs.

The Colombian government is sustaining its tough fight against the drug traffickers – the cartels that send the processed cocaine, opium and marijuana overseas, mostly to the United States.

But the farmers are a different story. Under a proposed program, those who voluntarily destroy their illegal crops will get a one-time subsidy from the government, loans, a monthly stipend equivalent to about $350 plus technical assistance for crop substitution. This was approved by the government with FARC as part of the peace deal.

The peace is fragile and the cartels are reportedly muscling in on coca production as FARC and its peasant sympathizers begin destroying the coca plantations. So the peace deal may not end the drug problem in the world’s largest producer of cocaine.

* * * Throwing drug users in jail with heavier offenders only worsens the problem of criminality, Gaviria wrote.

A similar theme runs through one of Du30’s two favorite books, Ioan Grillo’s Gangster Warlords. Grillo’s account of the drug war in several Latin American countries shows how detention facilities become recruitment areas, training grounds and command centers for crime. Gang influence spreads to the social mainstream once the inmates are freed, leading to deadly violence and criminality.

For a veteran of Colombia’s drug war, what’s a better approach to the problem?

The huge profits must be stripped from drug trafficking, Gaviria suggested. People especially in poor communities, who often serve as the worker ants of the cartels, need decent livelihood opportunities. Drug abuse must be considered a health problem. And gross violations of human rights in waging even a war with good intentions breed resentment. Social injustice can fuel insurgencies.

Gaviria stressed that the drug problem has been around for a long time, with supply feeding the strong demand. The battle can only be sustained, to contain the violence, stop the corruption that drug money engenders, and treat the illness that is drug abuse.

A key message in the article is that while notorious drug traffickers have been killed in law enforcement operations, mass extermination of suspects can only create more problems.

How do you strip the profits from the drug trade? There’s no chance of legalizing cocaine or even medical marijuana in the foreseeable future in this country. But the government can prevent drug traffickers and their relatives from enjoying the fruits of crime.

The government can pin down drug dealers for money laundering and tax evasion. Instead of fighting with the Anti-Money Laundering Council, Du30 must press his congressional allies to expand the coverage of the AntiMoney Laundering Act (AMLA).

Tax evasion remains excluded from AMLA. The country will be blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force if tax evasion and casinos remain excluded from AMLA by June this year.

Also excluded from AMLA coverage are cybercrime, illegal gambling (other than jueteng and masiao), falsification of documents, violations of banking and insurance laws, violations of the Data Privacy Act and Access Devices Act such as cloning of credit cards, and violations of the Strategic Trade Management Act such as financing of weapons of mass destruction.

As long as drug dealers can enjoy the massive profits from the drug trade, the industry will flourish. This crime pays. Enormously.