Drug Abuse
In Latin America, leftist leaders evict US drug warriors
By Sara Miller Llana
Staff writer
The Christian Science Monitor
November 10, 2008
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1110/p01s01-woam.html

In Latin America, leftist leaders evict US drug warriors.
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela push back on US operations.

Mexico City - Bolivia has given US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) officers three
months to leave the country - claiming that
agents were stirring up political strife in the deeply divided nation.

This fall, Ecuadorians voted yes to a new
Constitution that calls for the closure by next
year of one of the most important US operations in its war against drugs.

And for the fourth year in a row, Venezuela was
singled out by President Bush - as was Bolivia
for the first time - for having "failed demonstrably" in antidrug
cooperation.

The US has long had a presence in Latin America
to stem the northward drug flow; Colombia, Peru,
and Bolivia are the world's largest cocaine
producers. The US still boasts strong
partnerships with many countries, such as
Colombia and Mexico. But in others, particularly
those led by leftists who have risen in
collective condemnation of Washington, leaders are
increasingly severing ties.

Their push for more self-determination could
represent an opportunity to improve a strategy
seen by many as a failure, says Kathryn Ledebur,
director of the Andean Information Network in Bolivia.

But Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary
of State for western hemisphere affairs, takes a
dimmer view. Moves like Bolivia's expulsion of
DEA agents could have an impact on US
intelligence-gathering capabilities, he says, but
they also appear to weaken some countries'
commitment to fighting drug production. "Drug
cartels and all the illicit behavior - even the
damage done to the environment by drug production
- is a transnational challenge that requires
international cooperation," he says.

Early this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales,
the nation's first indigenous leader who rose to
power as head of the coca grower's federation,
expelled the DEA, claiming that agents were
stoking divisions in a country already violently
divided over a new Constitution that seeks more
state control over energy resources and more
recognition for the indigenous.

"There were DEA agents who worked to conduct
political espionage and to fund criminal groups
so they could launch attacks on the lives of
authorities, if not the president," Mr. Morales said last week

The DEA calls the claims baseless. "We go after
drug traffickers.. We don't get involved in
things outside our lane," says Garrison Courtney,
spokesperson for the DEA. "These are really silly accusations."

The DEA presence in Venezuela has also been
dramatically reduced in the past 18 months,
according to State Department officials who
characterize the reduction as evidence of
Venezuela's weak support for international antinarcotics effort.

And Ecuador announced it will not renew the
10-year lease at the Manta airbase, one of the
US's most significant operation zones in the
region since 1999. President Rafael Correa, who
promised in his campaign to close the base, calls
it a matter of reciprocity. During a visit to
Italy last year, he joked that if the US wanted
its base, it would have to allow an Ecuadorian base in Miami.

The closure of Manta "will leave a serious gap in
our abilities to monitor antinarcotics operations
in the eastern Pacific," says one administration
official who declined to be identified because he
was not authorized to speak on the record.

Today, an average of 150 US military and
civilians are stationed in Manta, and in 2007,
some 1,100 counternarcotics missions were
launched, says Jose Ruiz, a spokesperson at US
Southern Command (Southcom) in Miami. The Manta
base missions are responsible for 60 percent of
interdictions in the eastern Pacific.

Mr. Ruiz says Southcom will continue to operate
out of El Salvador and Aruba and Curaçao - and
partner with the US Navy and US Coast Guard.

While the closure may be a blow, the US still has
a good working relationship with Ecuador, says
Ruiz. US officials say cooperation in the rest of
the region is also strong, and in some cases,
such as Mexico and Central America, stronger than
in the past. But relations with Venezuela and
Bolivia have deteriorated to new lows.

During civil strife in Bolivia early this fall,
Bolivia expelled US Ambassador Philip Goldberg,
claiming he supported opposition leaders. Mr.
Chavez followed suit by expelling Patrick Duddy,
the US ambassador to Venezuela. Both countries
were then singled out by President Bush for
failure to cooperate in international
antinarcotics efforts, and the US announced it
would revoke trade benefits for Bolivia under the
Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA).

"Relations between Bolivia and the US have been
severed in more ways than people understand,"
says Eduardo Gamarra, a professor at Florida International University.

Some see an effort in Latin America to reassert
national sovereignty. "[The] region as a whole
has greater suspicion of US unilateralism," says
John Lindsay-Poland, codirector of the Fellowship
of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America and
the Caribbean. "It's a blow to the [old US]
approach, and I do think it's an opportunity to take a different tack."

Whether geopolitically that can hold is another
question, he notes. "The cost for asserting
self-determination can be really high," Mr.
Lindsay-Poland says, pointing to the rescinding
of Bolivia's ATPDEA benefits, which could impact thousands of jobs.

Ms. Ledebur agrees there is an opening for fresh
thinking. "The way the war on drugs has been
structured in the Andean region hasn't worked for anyone," she says.

She condemns the conditions placed on US aid,
saying it doesn't address the poverty, for
example, that often drives coca production.

Others say the US is too focused on supply, and
needs to target demand in the US.

But Mr. Gamarra is dubious. "Any approach that
we've used has not worked," he says. "You can
make the argument that ... if only we had
well-funded addiction-treatment programs in the
US ... [but] even that doesn't work. Recidivism
among addicts is very high, treatment is very
expensive. We've gone around and around on this debate."

On Thursday, Morales said that Bolivia can take
over antidrug operations on its own. He recently
announced that Bolivia had met its goal of
eradicating 12,300 acres of illegal coca this
year - the amount required under law. A UN report
from June shows that coca crop cultivation in
Bolivia increased by 5 percent in 2007 - compared
with 27 percent in Colombia, which is among the US's most loyal allies.

The impact of expelling the DEA will be more
heavily felt in transit countries, such as Brazil
and Argentina, as well as Europe, where the
majority of cocaine from Bolivia heads. Less than
2 percent makes it to the US market, according to
a State Department official familiar with
counternarcotic programs in the region.

"It takes away our eyes and ears in country
itself," says Mr. Courtney. But he says through
partnerships with other law enforcement agencies
in the region, they will find their way around
it. "The same thing happened in Venezuela; we work around it," he noted.
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