# 13

Eradication means....everything

The Dutch Elm blight visited America and, once identified, there wasn't a thing any government or International body could do to avert the loss of Dutch Elm trees in the United States.  Some believe that a blight or pest should be unleashed on the globe to target poppy and coca production.

North America

Certified arborist removing infected elm in Saint Paul, Minnesota

The disease was first reported in the United States in 1928, with the beetles believed to have arrived in a shipment of logs from The Netherlands destined for use as veneer in the Ohio furniture industry. Quarantine and sanitation procedures held most cases within 150 miles of metropolitan New York City until 1941 when war demands began to curtail them.^[24] The disease spread from New England westward and southward, almost completely destroying the famous elms in the "Elm City" of New Haven, Connecticut, reaching the Detroit area in 1950,^[25] the Chicago area by 1960, and Minneapolis by 1970. Of the estimated 77 million elms in North America in 1930, over 75% had been lost by 1989.^[26]

Coca eradication is a controversial strategy strongly promoted by the United States government starting in 1961 as part of its "War on Drugs" to eliminate the cultivation of coca, a plant whose leaves are not only traditionally used by indigenous cultures but also, in modern society, in the manufacture of cocaine. The strategy was adopted in place of running educational campaigns against drug usage.^[1] The prohibitionist strategy is being pursued in the coca-growing regions of Colombia (Plan Colombia), Peru, and formerly Bolivia, where it is highly controversial because of its environmental, health and socioeconomic impact. Furthermore, indigenous cultures living in the Altiplano, such as the Aymaras, use the coca leaf (which they dub the "millenary leaf") in many of their cultural traditions, notably for its medicinal qualities in alleviating the feeling of hunger, fatigue and headaches symptomatic of altitude sicknesses. The growers of coca are named Cocaleros and part of the coca production for traditional use is legal in Peru, Bolivia and Chile.

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Geopolitical issues

Given the above-mentioned considerations, many critics of coca eradication believe the fundamental goal of the U.S. government is to constrict the flow of income to the Colombian Marxist rebel movement, FARC, which is heavily funded by the illegal drug trade, rather than combating drugs per se. Few if any such critics have anything favorable to say about the illicit drug trade, but they point out that under the current coca eradication policies, poor campesinos bear the brunt of efforts to combat it, while North American and European chemical companies (which supply chemicals needed in the manufacture of cocaine) and banks (which annually launder hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal revenues) continue to profit from the trade. (Although it should be noted that it is illegal in the United States for banks to hold funds from drug cartels - such as FARC - that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations.)
Article 26 of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, a treaty promulgated with U.S. backing in 1961, states that "The Parties shall so far as possible enforce the uprooting of all coca bushes which grow wild. They shall destroy the coca bushes if illegally cultivated."
The US-based Drug Enforcement Administration, along with local governments, has frequently clashed with cocaleros in attempts to eradicate coca across the Andes. This map shows the Chapare region in Bolivia, which has historically been heavily targeted for coca eradication. Human rights NGOs such as Human Rights Watch have accused the US of human rights abuses in the "coca war".^[8]
Meanwhile, the US-based Stepan Company is authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant^[9] which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca-Cola, Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells to Mallinckrodt, a St. Louis, Missouri pharmaceutical manufacturer that is the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medicinal use.^[10]

Why Eradication Won’t Solve Afghanistan’s Poppy Problem

January 3, 2012

by Azmat Khan

Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium, bringing billions of dollars a year into the country’s economy, fueling the global heroin trade, funding both the Taliban and government-linked warlords, and exacerbating government corruption. But international attempts to suppress opium production have often been ineffective and even counterproductive to “other objectives of peace, state-building and economic reconstruction.”

FRONTLINE talked to Dr. Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a leading expert on drug interdiction efforts and counterinsurgency, to learn more about the widespread effects of opium production in Afghanistan and the outcome of efforts to curb it.

How did Afghanistan become the supplier of 90 percent of the world’s opium?

“If you want to be a political actor in Afghanistan, much … is dependent on being able to distribute some profit to your community. There are two ways to get access to get such access to money: one is to get access to foreign aid; the other is to get profits from opium poppy.”

In the 1980s several important changes took place in the international market and in Afghanistan.

In Afghanistan in the mid-80s, the Soviet Army ended up adopting a “scorched earth” policy [to systematically destroy agricultural resources]. That is because while the Soviets were able to control the cities, they were never able to control the countryside. The insurgency was always [launching] attacks from the rural areas on the cities and generating instability. The Soviets tried military operations in the countryside, which didn’t control the problem, so ultimately, they decided to destroy the agriculture in the countryside with the idea that this would drive the rural population into the cities, which they could control.

The effect was the complete collapse of the agricultural production of Afghanistan: the destruction of orchards, irrigation canals. The only thing the population could grow was opium poppy, which didn’t require [so much] irrigation, fertilizers or transportation, because Pakistani traders would come to the farm and pick up the opium. So this really unleashed the first systematic cultivation of opium poppy at the time.

At the same time, there was a growing demand for opiates in the world. Production from the traditional supplier — the golden triangle of Burma, Laos and Vietnam — was significantly suppressed. None of the agricultural infrastructure was rebuilt in the 1990s, following the Soviet withdrawal and civil war, and this trend continued through the Taliban era.

What effects did opium production have in Afghanistan?

From the mid-80s through the mid 2000s, opium poppy was the main source of livelihood for the population.

Even today, when you have a growing legal GDP, opium poppy production is still very important. It is still, at minimum, around 20 percent of the GDP, and that might be significantly underestimating the actual value of opium poppy because it also has repercussions in other sectors. … It is one of the big sources of economic activity in Afghanistan, along with foreign aid. If foreign aid diminishes significantly post-2014 [when U.S. troops are set to withdraw], it will be a very important driver of economic activity.

But there are other effects beyond economic effects. One of them is that since the mid-80s, political power is heavily associated with access to both foreign aid and opium poppy. If you want to be a political actor in Afghanistan — whether you call that a warlord, power broker or politician — much … is dependent on being able to distribute some profit to your community. There are two ways to get access to get such access to money: one is to get access to foreign aid; the other is to get profits from opium poppy. So political power, at least until the mid-2000s, and in a more covert way since the mid-2000s, has been very strongly associated with access to the drug trade. …