This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
By Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Stafford, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve
Other nationalities regard Americans as impulsive in their impatience to address problems. A perfect illustration of this has been the effective and sometimes criticized U.S. assistance to Latin American countries in destroying cocaine laboratories. Sometimes perceived as a violation of sovereignty or as coercion, these police and military operations in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia have been effective in the international war on drugs.
Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of State has been sponsoring a program of crop substitution and remuneration for fanners in coca-producing countries to encourage them not to grow coca, the botanical raw material for cocaine. South Americans generally associate this program with the United States, because the United States finances most of it.
The debate continues over which approach (coca plant eradication or cocaine laboratory destruction) is more effective and most proper, given international norms relating to sovereignty and intrusion. Sufficient time has passed for us to judge these two approaches and to draw conclusions that will affect future policy.
Raids on cocaine hydrochloride laboratories are effective. Cocaine traffickers must build these laboratories in such remote places that their rapid reconstruction after a raid is impossible. Once a cocaine-producing laboratory has been destroyed, authorities only have to fly over the ruins once or twice a year to see whether one is being rebuilt on the same site. If it is, local troops simply can raid it again. Rebuilding on a different clandestine site is nearly impossible for the cocaine good, or, at least, for as long as governments are motivated to pay attention. To understand why this is true, one must understand the four cocaine production stages:
- The coca plant’s leaf
- Coca paste: the first extraction of cocaine alkaloid from the leaf
- Cocaine base: actual cocaine without the chemical structure of a salt
- Cocaine hydrochloride: the traditional chemical salt in the form of a white crystalline powder illegally exported from producing countries
The first step of the cocaine-manufacturing process is conducted by persons who are not inherently criminal: the farmers. The remaining four steps, however, are conducted largely by members of international crime syndicates. Because of this, few educated South Americans condone the produc-
This drying table, with its 200-watt heat lamps, is the centerpiece of a Bolivian cocaine laboratory that can produce 250 kilos every two weeks.
producer, because the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and its host- country police counterparts can usually detect construction.
Finally, only a finite number of cocaine laboratories exist in the South American wilderness. When one is destroyed, it may be considered gone for tion and exportation of cocaine, while they may support the right of farmers to grow coca. The coca, after all, is used for coca-flavored soft drinks and candy, medicinal cocaine, and coca tea. Many South Americans chew it in leaf form much as tobacco is chewed in the United States.
NEWLY
COMMISSIONED?
Let us introduce you to membership in your professiorral organization zvith 3 FREE issues of Proceedings.
All newly commissioned officers and warrant officers in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard are eligible.
For information and sign up, contact:
Membership Services U.S. Naval Institute Annapolis, MD 21402 301/268-6110
Made of 100% heavy cotton, this thick tee-shirt is preshrunk for a perfect fit. Great for athletes and non-athletes alike. Comes in S (ZH2), M (ZH1),
L (ZHO), and XL (ZG9). $10.95 (plus shipping).
TO ORDER:
CALL 800-233 USN1
(Call 301-224-3378 within MD) OR
Use the order form in the book section in this issue
The farmer’s attitude is that he is simply raising the crop that makes the most money and is selling to the buyer who pays the best price, just as farmers peddle their produce all over the world. If their product ends up as something illegal after they sell it, then they see it as someone else’s problem.
Realistically, Andean farmers must know what drug syndicate buyers are doing with the crop after they buy it. The traffickers need to convert the heavy, bulky bundles of leaf into small, lightweight containers of coca Paste as quickly as possible so that light aircraft can transport it to remote cocaine hydrochloride labs. (If cocaine traffickers produced cocaine hydrochloride in a populated area, the chances would be too great of nosy neighbors—anxious to collect a reward from the government—detecting and reporting the operation.) Therefore, the manufacturers most often extract the coca paste from the leaf right in the farmer’s village soon after they buy it, usually recruiting villagers as workers.
Antidrug efforts in South America must respect the “nobility of the humble farmers.” Otherwise, these efforts could destroy the popular base for long-awaited and still fragile democracies in coca-producing countries. Cuba, Nicaragua, and Panama are examples of what happens when the United States ignores the farmers. Moreover, the United States would be unreasonable to insist that tenuous democratic governments annihilate themselves by destroying their own political base among the impoverished farmers and their numerous sympathizers.
U.S. Department of State programs aimed at teaching Andean farmers to grow alternative crops, such as maca- damia nuts or peaches, will continue to be futile until they address one fundamental question: To whom will the farmer sell peaches and nuts? His neighbors? And how? From a roadside stand in front of a shanty? “No thanks,” the farmer will say. His neighbors are farmers, too. If they all grow peaches and nuts, then they will all have a surplus of rotten peaches and nuts with no way to get them to the world market. The Andean region has no highway system sufficient for commercial use. It has no trucks, no rail systems, no refrigerated vans, no national business infrastructure, and no telephones. Bolivia and Paraguay have no seaports. Yet the isolated Andean farmer must gain access to the world market in order even to approach his current income from coca. Crop substitution programs are not inherently ineffective; they are premature.
By raising coca, the farmer need not leave his doorstep to keep his children fed. So when his government’s troops come, at the insistence of the United States, and chop down his coca plants, who does he view as his enemy?
The most natural way to reduce coca production is to eliminate the cocaine hydrochloride laboratories that generate the local demand for coca leaf in the very countries that produce it. When a laboratory is destroyed, it ceases to produce cocaine, and, accordingly, no longer consumes its raw material, coca paste. This reduces the demand for leaf, bringing down the price. When the price of coca leaf falls low enough, farmers will choose not to raise it because they will not be able to get a good price for it. All this will occur in a naturally capitalistic, supply-and- demand fashion. Perhaps then, macada- mia nuts and peaches will be able to compete with coca.
There is no shortage of troops to conduct raids on suspected cocaine laboratories. The lack comes in finding suspect locations to raid. This is where intelligence comes in and the Department of Defense finds its niche.
Once in the hands of Drug Enforcement Administration agents, Department of Defense-developed intelligence can be used effectively in ongoing enforcement operations. This is done through existing channels of communication developed over a long time with host-country police counterparts.
Latin Americans are hypersensitive about U.S. armed forces intruding on their sovereignty. Intelligence gathering, on the other hand, is not necessarily intrusive. Neither would be radar intercept and vectoring of host country interceptor aircraft onto smuggling aircraft targets. This, however, would have to be introduced in acceptable ways, avoiding the appearance of steamrolling the issue.
Poverty is often what breeds illicit drug production. Even if it is curtailed, by this or any other means, current coca-producing countries will still need a national infrastructure on which to build alternative access to world markets. Developed nations must unite to alleviate the cause and end the drug problem.
Colonel Stafford has been a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration for 17 years.
One of his assignments was as Assistant Country Attache, U.S. Embassy, La Paz, Bolivia, where he planned and conducted raids on cocaine laboratories with Bolivian military and police units.
THE DUFFLE BAG
Made of 100% nylon, our new duffle is solid black with the USNI pen and sword in gold. Made in USA. $9 9 J
ZU0 ★★★
To order call 1-800-233-USNI iff In MD, 301-224-3378