Drug War: A Quietly Escalating Failure
Doyle, Kate
Clinton will have to confront the very logic that drives drug-control strategy in this country: that the solution to domestic drug abuse lies not at home, but elsewhere. This is the logic that...
...Those countries with active guerrilla movements, such as Colombia and Peru, tended to invest their resources in counterinsurgency programs before counterdrug activities...
...role in Central America during the 1980s-was always a military one...
...Military-aid packages were part of a broader strategy that included programs 30NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30REPORT ON US POLICY in economic support, alternative development, crop substitution, public awareness, and "administration of justice...
...In a report last September produced jointly by the Senate Judiciary Committee and International Narcotics Control Caucus, the authors bluntly stated their findings on Bush's counternarcotics strategy: "Regrettably, America's drug epidemic is worse today than three years ago...
...Like the classic LIC or counterinsurgency scenarios that played out in Central America, and in Vietnam before that, these strategies, too, were doomed...
...1 3 Until President Alberto Fujimori's autogolpe in April, 1992, the United States also provided aid to the Peruvian armed forces-almost $16 million in foreign military sales between fiscal years 1989 and 1992 alone, including guns, ammunition, night-vision equipment and spare parts for aircraft.14 The materiel was delivered despite the military's known links to drug traffickers, and its subordination of all activities to the war against Sendero...
...Six U.S...
...As the windows of the presidential palace shake from the impact of a nearby bomb explosion, Peru's beleaguered President Alberto Fujimori places a secure call to the commander-in-chief of the United States...
...AID eradication funds in Peru increased, reaching an all-time high in 1991 when $58 million was granted for the destruction of coca plants through the Andean Initiative...
...While Honduran officers flew fighter jets on sorties to identify aircraft, joint command centers at Howard Air Force Base in Panama and the Tegucigalpa airport monitored traffic patterns from below...
...attempts to move away from ongoing counternarcotics programs will prompt swift reaction from the countries concerned...
...It is an expression of just how far the United States has come in realizing its vision of a "war on drugs" in Latin America...
...This is the logic that produced a war...
...Pressure on the Bolivian government was so intense that some Reagan Administration officials privately expressed fears of a coup...
...He must reinvent it...
...At bottom, the narcotics-control strategy touted by the Reagan and Bush administrations remained obsessed with paramilitary solutions...
...The arms are given to the government in order that it may use them in the antinarcotics struggle...but this is not a requirement of the United States...
...agencies involved in the drug war recognized early on that Andean counternarcotics activities actually encouraged peasant support for local guerrillas...
...The important thing is, are we right or wrong...
...In an attempt to fight an enemy it saw as evil and destabilizing, the United States funnelled massive amounts of antidrug aid, training and equipment to already repressive Latin American security forces...
...in the Panamanian banks...
...Marine Corps "Low Intensity Conflict War Game," designed and tested by the Wargaming and Assessment Center of the Marine Command and Staff College...
...In February, 1990, the United States signed the "Cartagena Agreement" with Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, and proclaimed the Andean Initiative, pledging an extraordinary $2.2 billion in military, law enforcement and economic assistance over five years in the service of the antidrug campaign...
...As a declassified Pentagon briefing on the document explained (quoting a CIA intelligence estimate), "powerful trafficking organizations can corrupt and undermine political, social, and security institutions within democratic nations...
...A massive interdiction "blitzkrieg," Operation Blast Furnace aimed to take the Bolivian narcotics industry by storm, focusing four Left: U.S...
...It was a doctrine invented to counter threats to U.S...
...security interests from the Third World, drawing on older counterinsurgency models dating back to the Kennedy era...
...In Reagan's final year in office, the Administration allocated $439 million for DOD drugVOL XXVI, No 5 MAY 199333 VOL XXVI, No 5 MAY 1993 33REPORT ON US POLICY related activities...
...In an attempt to address internal institutional weaknesses in the target countries-fragile legal systems, corruption, shaky infrastructures-the United States funded a series of "nation-building" efforts, including programs that addressed the administration of justice, bilateral law enforcement and civic action...
...In their quest for more aggressive strategies, public officials demanded military support for the drug war in the form of equipment loans, training, and the provision of intelligence...
...2. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and International Narcotics Control Caucus, "The President's Drug Strategy: Has It Worked...
...The more difficult task is finding humane and effective alternatives...
...Tactical analysis teams, or TATs, run jointly by Southcom, U.S...
...More significant, these actions coincide with a broader policy shift emerging from Washington...
...between political and economic subversions, terrorism and guerrilla warfare, and the illegal traffic in drugs and arms underpin the entire revolutionary thrust...
...Whether or not the interdiction side of the agreement is continued under Clinton, those nations will expect the economic pledge of the Andean Initiative to be honored...
...He will have to challenge the conceptual underpinnings of a policy which determined that the solution to domestic drug abuse lay not at home, but elsewhere: in coca fields high up on the Andean Ridge...
...It is a war that has been quietly escalating for 12 years...
...Right: Bolivian women sell coca leaves to bus passengers...
...Ambassador to Colombia Thomas MacNamara said in mid-1991, "I don't see the utilization of the arms against the guerrillas as a deviation...
...These countries in Latin America tend to see drugs as a U.S...
...Indeed, the real question for nations in the hemisphere was how such operations affected internal perceptions about sovereignty...
...resent day U.S...
...Congress, in particular, will resist attempts to dismantle the strategy it worked so hard to create...
...Its effects are felt by the populations of all nations in the Western Hemisphere...
...Technology Gleans Data on Drug Corridor," Washington Post, June 26, 1992...
...By then, Southcom was overseeing some 500 soldiers working on the ground in counterdrug intelligence, detection, surveillance and training missions throughout Latin America...
...here are signs that the new Administration seeks to scale back the international "war on drugs...
...While subsequent drug-control campaigns in Latin America avoided the high profile of the 1986 exercise, the guiding principle underlying Blast Furnace-an organized attack by joint paramilitary forces on the drug trade at its point of origin (or transit)-would be 32 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 32 NACILA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON US POLICY Ironically, U.S...
...the president answered...
...antidrug operations in the hemisphere that followed...
...In addition, a shift in policy would affect anti-drug operations underway in every corner of the hemisphere, operations which the United States helped install after years of hard negotiations...
...At the height of the Vietnam war, Lyndon B. Johnson was asked how long the United States was prepared to fight...
...VOL XXVI, No 5 MAY 1993 29REPORT ON US POLICY Many military-aid packages were conditioned on such "measures of effectiveness" as seizure figures or the number of coca labs destroyed...
...6 Massive interdiction programs, such as the South Florida Task Force and Operation Bahamas, Turks and Caicos (known as "OpBAT"), targeted smugglers bringing narcotics up through the archipelago off the coast of Florida...
...The Newest War," Newsweek, January 6, 1992...
...LIC strategies aimed, in theory, to protect regional stability through a sophisticated mix of political, economic and military actions...
...antidrug" weapons, equipment and facilities to fight guerrillas...
...While the Defense Department was never the primary architect of U.S...
...8. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and Committee on the Judiciary hearings, "International Terrorism, Insurgency, and Drug Trafficking: Present Trends in Terrorist Activity," May 14, 1985, p. 142...
...When asked by one congressional delegation how such operations would advance the drug war, army officials promised to destroy any cocaine labs found during the missions...
...The scenario does not come from the latest Tom Clancy novel...
...Pentagon planners are also determined to continue, arguing that increased resolve and is in Massachusetts...
...That war is now underway throughout the Americas, extending from the urban centers of the United States to Argentina's Patagonia at the southern tip of the hemisphere...
...1. Declassified statement of General George A. Joulwan in closed hearings, House Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Investigations (November 6, 1991), p. 3. All U.S...
...taxpayers' dollars...
...House Committee on Government Operations, Report 101-991, "United States Anti-Narcotics Activities in the Andean Region," November 30, 1990, p. 91...
...And U.S...
...Tambs got ahead of the evidence," admitted one State Department official...
...anti-drug helicopters fly over Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley near the site of a U.S...
...Following a spectacular raid by Colombian security forces on a jungle cocaine lab on March 10, 1984, U.S...
...Colonel Michael H. Abbott, U.S...
...Now...
...Right: Sendero Luminoso guerrillas in the Upper Huallaga Valley...
...Who knows how long, how much...
...Clinton has reiterated his position since coming to office, and most drug-policy experts echo his views...
...September 1992), p. i. 3. Examples include the Central Intelligence Agency's Counter Narcotics Center, opened in April, 1989, and the U.S...
...In an attempt to lure indigenous populations away from lucrative coca crops, the United States established elaborate development schemes that generally proved inadequate and poorly managed...
...The American Embassy in Mexico City was helping fund and direct a program to eradicate marijuana and poppy plants...
...Agency for International Development, "Final Report on the Evaluation of AID Project No...
...527-0244: Development of the Alto Huallaga Area" (Lima, Peru: Econsult, S.A., January 1987), p. 30 17...
...1 5 Ironically, U.S...
...Overwhelming evidence indicates that Peruvian and Colombian security forces have used U.S...
...Merrill Collett, "The Myth of the Narco-Guerrillas," The Nation August 13/20, 1988...
...counternarcotics operations...
...It is the logic that produced a war...
...emphasis on crop eradication, questioning the safety and efficacy of available herbicides...
...6 Observations like these did not prompt a reassessment of the strategies...
...Operation Support Sovereignty was one of dozens of joint counternarcotics missions unfolding throughout Latin America during the final months of the Bush Administration...
...But the plan backfired...
...NSDD 221 directed U.S...
...The reality on the ground, however-as evidenced by the U.S...
...funds to support counterinsurgency operations throughout the countryside...
...6. U.S...
...It is precisely in this murky, gray, ill defined political military area," said one representative, "where the boundaries preoccupation with sovereignty by recasting the drug trade as a dangerous and destabilizing force, of concern to all legitimate governments...
...Counterdrug planners, working under the aegis of the Vice President's office and the State Department, did not restrict their activities to the Caribbean...
...Those programs, however, were installed only after host Latin American nations protested the repressive emphasis of the U.S...
...Others opposed the U.S...
...This time, Ecuador, Drugs and money change hai Venezuela and Mexico drug epidemic shows no sign Venezuela and Mexico joined them...
...These operations represented the military face of a much larger program...
...White House Gutting Drug-War Machine," Arkansas Democrat Gazette, February 13, 1993...
...While public interest may diminish as Clinton turns to other matters, an enormous and well-entrenched bureaucracy remains to carry on the fight...
...Even in those agencies less invested in narcotics control, the war has VOL XXVI, No 5 MAY 199329 Kate Doyle is an analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington, DC, a non-profit research institute and library that makes declassified government documents on U.S...
...military personnel, but they were not barred from using surrogates...
...agencies involved in the drug war recognized early on that Andean counternarcotics activities actually encouraged peasant support for local guerrillas...
...Under Clinton, Drug Policy Office's Hot Streak Melts Down," Washington Post, February 10, 1993...
...On April 8, 1986, Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 221, explicitly calling narcotics trafficking "a threat to United States national security...
...government documents cited in this article may be found in the holdings of the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C...
...Powerful land-based radar systems and spy planes made the airspace between Cuba and the northern coast of Honduras hum with surveillance technology...
...The Reagan Administration responded to these fears by forcing a dramatic shift in the drug-war debate...
...Army-Air Force Center for Low-Intensity Conflict, "Anr Annotated Bibliography on Military Involvement in Counterdrug Operations, 1980-1990," CLIC Papers (September 1991), p. 3. 7. Betac Corporation, "Department of Defense Counterdrug Baseline Report," Draft (July 21, 1989), pp...
...Less well-known is that the Defense Department has ferried Costa Rican forces in military aircraft for classified counternarcotics missions...
...Information Agency's "Drug Unit," created in 1990...
...I can assure you that when I assumed command of United States Southern Command a year ago, I had very little understanding of the size and scale of the narcotrafficking criminal element...
...As president, he issued his own National Security Directive (NSD 18) in August, 1989, calling for enhanced Pentagon support for international drug-control efforts...
...war on drugs, and many were conditioned on such "measures of effectiveness" as seizure figures or the number of coca labs destroyed...
...Drug diplomacy between the United States and the rest of Latin America became caught in a perpetual dance around the subject...
...In a 1987 report on the U.S.-Peruvian program, the Agency for International Development (AID) admitted that eradication efforts "seem to have facilitated the rapid establishment of Sendero in the rural area...
...Nor did it disturb them that their ally in this instance-the Honduran military-had itself been linked to drug trafficking on more than one occasion...
...Depending on how the White House chooses to define the "new world order," the Administration could still find a role for the military to play in the region's most troubled nations-Colombia, Peru and Bolivia...
...And of all the foreign-policy crises demanding the attention of the new U.S...
...As former U.S...
...The Reagan and Bush administrations remained obsessed with paramilitary solutions...
...In Colombia, troops have drawn openly on U.S...
...In February, 1992, two years after the first Cartagena summit, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and the United States reconvened in San Antonio, Texas, to discuss the future of the drug war...
...Once again, Bush's answer to such dilemmas was escalation, with an increasing emphasis placed on military involvement...
...In June, the two countries signed a letter of agreement to create a Honduran antidrug strike force, with funding from the State Department, and discussions were underway for the permanent establishment of a joint counternarcotics information center...
...Following the February 1990 Cartagena drug summit-attended by the presidents of the United States, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia-President Bush promised $1.1 billion over five years in economic aid to the Andean nations as part of a package intended to lure them away from coca cultivation and trafficking...
...low-intensity conflict strategies, however, have always relied on the trickle-up theory of foreign policy...
...Bush spent triple that amount, $1.2 billion, in his last year...
...Under Pentagon rules of engagement, the action was strictly prohibited for U.S...
...Army Involvement in Counterdrug Operations: A Matter of Politics or National Security...
...a conflict that has involved thousands of soldiers and police, hundreds of tons of weapons and equipment, and billions of U.S...
...Army War College,"U.S...
...Secretary of State Warren Christopher has requested INM's reorganization, and its functions will merge with other missions, including terrorism and crime...
...2 ' With an extensive record of failure behind them, policymakers have an opportunity to reject the punitive, wasteful and destabilizing policies of the past...
...In the United States, it means abandoning the logic of enforcement that has driven counterdrug policies for so long...
...On the contrary, U.S...
...Drug War: A Quietly Escalating Failure The author thanks Thomas C. Carroll for his assistance on this article...
...He will, first of all, have to take on several bureaucracies at home which have seen their budgets and staffs soar thanks to 12 years of "tough" narcotics-control strategies: the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Customs, the Coast Guard, the State Department and the Department of Defense (DOD...
...As the drug war accelerated, an initially reluctant Pentagon gradually increased its involvement, with DOD antidrug funds totalling $54.8 million for 1985, up from the $1 million in fiscal year 1981.7 But if early attempts to organize a war on drugs revealed opportunities for escalation, they also defined the limits of such a war...
...In January, 1989, Reagan left office with a supplyside antidrug program firmly in place in Latin America, with Mexico and the Andean nations the major recipients of U.S...
...As one Pentagon planning document explained, "In the long term, stabilization of [Latin American nations] may be the only far-reaching and effective means of limiting the overseas production of drugs which are currently flooding the United States...
...The result was a messy and named "Condor," aimed at destroying cocaine labs and airstrips in the jungles of Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley...
...If Clinton is truly committed to changing U.S...
...While they do not concur on a solution, analysts agree that the drug war to date has been a resounding failure...
...recognizable in most of the major U.S...
...We're trying to convince them that the narcos are walking all over their sovereignty, using their air space, their territorial waters and their land...
...that is, if certain goals were achieved on the ground (in interdiction, crop eradication, destruction of labs, training of lawyers), the "host nation" would eventually be able to take over those programs, and thus gain legitimacy and stability...
...Military and the War on Drugs in the Andes (Washington, D.C.: WOLA, October 1991), pp...
...counternarcotics policy, operations like these strongly resembled the Pentagon's "low-intensity conflict" (LIC) doctrine, developed during the 1980s to combat insurgency in the hemisphere...
...Quoted in Washington Office on Latin America, Clear and Present Dangers: The U.S...
...in Bolivia, domestic and regional critics assailed President Paz Estenssoro for having allowed a foreign military presence on the country's sovereign territory...
...Judging from statements made by Bill Clinton's team before and after the November 1992 presidential election, the new Administration is considering a different kind of counternarcotics policy for the coming years...
...Ambassador to BogotA Lewis Tambs began broadcasting allegations of nefarious links between VOL XXVI...
...With antidrug operations fuelling political instability, Peru and Colombia felt justified in asking for increased assistance...
...52-53...
...president-Iraq, Somalia, Angola, and the former Yugoslavia-the war on drugs is fought on battlegrounds closest to home...
...Further south, the DEA was assisting Peruvian police forces in a series of interdiction operations codebor, and did not always concur about the dangers posed by trafficking...
...The directive challenged Latin America's months of coordinated enforcement activities on the central coca-growing regions...
...Despite this debacle, Washington refused to reevaluate its drug policy...
...drug policy in Latin America is rooted in the early months of the Reagan Administration, when Congress and the White House pushed drug-control efforts past the confines of civilian law enforcement and into the international arena...
...spawned a virtual cottage industry of drug-related working groups, divisions, sections and sub-sections...
...No 5 MAY 199331 VOL XXVI, NO 5 MAY 1993 31REPORT ON US POLICY Colombian drug traffickers and guerrilla groups...
...agencies to design, fund and coordinate counternarcotics operations on a global level...
...With increased military assistance to the Andes, Bush provided new opportunities for governments to wage counterinsurgency campaigns in the region...
...among the airstrips sprinkled across Mexico's vast territory...
...Capitol Hill rang with cries against the "drug barons," these "lords of doom and despair...
...And they'll eventually take over [the] government or exert influence, like in Colombia...
...Judging from Clinton's initial appointments, such as economist Richard Feinberg to the top NSC position for Latin America, U.S.-Latin American trade issues may begin to take precedence over the security concerns that have defined relations in the hemisphere for over a decade...
...However, the astonishing scope of today's war on drugs limits opportunities for change...
...Southern Command, "Operational Concept: Counterdrug," Draft (October 1987) 13...
...unsuccessful engagement, which left the target countries resentful and the flow of drugs unchanged...
...3 Within Latin America, U.S...
...4. "U.S...
...On May 6, 1992, United States Southern Command (Southcom) was three weeks into "Operation Support Sovereignty," a secret antidrug operation with the government of Honduras...
...The aid could then be used to underwrite counterinsurgency missions...
...4 On that day, using information supplied by DOD intelligence analysts, Honduran F-5 pilots shot down a cocaine-laden Cessna over the Caribbean Sea...
...In the United States, availability of cocaine remained static throughout the assault...
...On paper, antidrug measures promulgated by Reagan and Bush in Latin America aspired to the same blend of political and punitive ingredients that LIC strategists had envisioned...
...1 2 U.S...
...In Latin America, that means giving up supply-side interdiction strategies and building new alliances through democratic trade and development...
...George Bush took the strategy and multiplied it dramatically...
...Vice President Bush immediately asked the Pentagon to join the DEA, CIA and State Department in the Administration's largest antidrug operation to date, "Blast Furnace...
...Despite its intellectual origins, this brainchild of military planners was not designed to achieve peaceful solutions by force alone...
...Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984), p. 339...
...The State Department was also assisting with funds for "drug awareness" seminars aimed, according to a cable from the American Embassy, "at sensitizing the press...to the growing consumption problem in Honduras...
...ince the escalation of the drug war in 1986, counternarcotics activities in Latin America have been disturbingly reminiscent of the Reagan policies in Central America during the 1980s...
...Due to the intensive counternarcotics operations that had taken place between the summits, the drug trade had slowly dispersed over wider territories...
...Finally, and most daunting, Clinton will have to confront the very logic that drives drug-control strategy in this country...
...Southern Command November 6, 1991 Picture this: financed by Colombian drug cartels, Sendero Luminoso, Latin America's most violent guerrilla force, gains control of Peru's cocagrowing Upper Huallaga Valley and much of the country's agricultural regions, and launches daily attacks on Lima, the Peruvian capital...
...Government experts on drug control, like the promoters of LIC, chose to treat the deep domestic problems that underlay drug trafficking in the region as a security challenge first and foremost, to the exclusion of other vital factors such as trade, development, health and education policies...
...Nevertheless, Washington has been more than willing to overlook the misuse of U.S...
...drug policy, he must do more than simply reform it...
...The problem lay not in the policy's nuances, but in the premise behind it...
...drug enforcers immediately raised the alarm with a flurry of reports, hearings and internal briefings about this new twist...
...Even tiny Belize shut down a U.S.-funded spraying program in 1983 due to "political sensitivities," when it became an issue in national elections...
...funds, even signalling its approval of the counterinsurgency campaigns...
...The news shocked those already obsessed by the prospect of Communists overrunning the region...
...law enforcement and State Department personnel, collated information in the U.S...
...The U.S...
...In 1985, testifying before a joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees, DEA head David Westrate announced that "the terrorist/insurgent link" would henceforth be a matter of "serious concern to the Drug Enforcement Administration...
...problem," said one participant to the Washington Post...
...9 In fact, Ambassador Tambs' claims were never documented, and even then, voices within the Administration disputed the "narco-guerrilla" phenomenon...
...March 30, 1988...
...5 And a psychological operations team from Southcom had even been sent to help drum up concern among Hondurans about local drug abuse...
...Latin American nations targeted for counternarcotics efforts were suspicious about the ultimate intentions of their powerful neighLeft: Peruvian drug detectives carry sacks of semi-processed cocaine to an incinerator in the Police School outside Lima...
...Coast Guard and naval units launched Operation Wagonwheel near Colombian shores, trolling the seas for suspicious vessels...
...5. Cable from the American Embassy in Tegucigalpa, 08871 (June 17, 1992...
...9. House Committee on Government Operations hearings, "Initiatives in Drug Interdiction (Part I)," March 15, 1985, pp...
...It appeared in a 1991 U.S...
...Both Mexico and the State Department have publicly acknowledged that U.S military personnel gather drug-related intelligence in Mexico City...
...Instead, Blast Furnace became a model for future U.S...
...Congressional members were less circumspect...
...foreign policy available to the public...
...base being built to train the Peruvian army in anti-guerrilla operations...
...3-27...
...But the White House saw that relationship as a devil's bargain between two forces of subversion, and acted accordingly...
...embassies of 10 countries to pass on to local antidrug police forces.' 7 Even nations which traditionally shunned contact with Southcom, such as Mexico and Costa Rica, pitched in.18 In fact, Bush Administration officials were able to claim one measure of "success" in the war on drugs without fear of contradiction: the participation of more Latin American nations...
...A network of ground-based military radars covered the region, monitoring international air traffic from source nations in South America up into the transit zones of the Caribbean Basin and Central America...
...resources can guarantee of abating...
...It was clear that a marriage of convenience existed between guerrillas and drug traffickers: insurgents in both Colombia and Peru operated in areas where the drug runners ranareas, not surprisingly, where a government presence was negligible-and often levied a tax on traffickers for the right to stomp leaves, transport chemicals, or land planes...
...General George A. Joulwan Commander-in-Chief, U.S...
...Defense Security Assistance Agency, "FMS Case ListingPeru for the Period FY 1989-1992 to Date" (as of August 5, 1992...
...His voice is firm as he makes his request: "We must have military assistance to stabilize the country," he breathes...
...Coca leaves are widely chewed or drunk as tea in the Andes...
...In this war, there can be no retreat," wrote Senator Joseph Biden in a recent report...
...2 If Clinton is determined to change the policy, he has a fight ahead of him...
...When Clinton's first budget cuts in early 1993 slashed the Office of National Drug Control Policy (the "drug czar's" headquarters) by 80%, Chief of Staff Thomas McLarty told the press, "President Clinton believes that resources to fight the drug problem should go to education, to treatment and to enforcement at the state and local level...
...victory...
...During the campaign, for example, Clinton/Gore headquarters called the Bush approach a "phony war on drugs," promising that a Clinton presidency would focus less on federal enforcement strategies and more on community-based treatment and education programs...
...military-civic action teams built roads in Bolivia's remote jungles, Navy SEALs trained Ecuadoran marine officers in riverine tactics, and in Mexico, the DEA coached a federal police unit in "quick reaction" interdiction techniques...
...Antidrug operations elsewhere in the hemisphere were likewise augmented...
...9 On a list of 29 priority issues, the National Security Council (NSC) has dropped the war on drugs from one of the top three to number 29, according to news reports.2 0 In addition, the State Department will no n sC 5' longer manage drug-control programs overseas from its independent affiliate, the Bureau of International Narcotics Matters (INM...
...Today, while the level of commitment varies, most countries in the hemisphere conduct joint antidrug operations with the United States...
...It is huge, it is pervasive, it has unlimited resources, and its tentacles reach into every country in Latin America...
...army Blackhawk helicopters and some 170 military troops were transported to the heart of the country to assist Bolivian police units in destroying cocaine-production laboratories...
Vol. 26 • May 1993 • No. 5
