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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:32 pm
Time: 10:32 pm
Results for united nations office of drugs and crime
2 results foundAuthor: Mansfield, David Title: Bombing Heroin Labs in Afghanistan: The Latest Act in the Theatre of Counternarcotics Summary: The US Department of Defence (DoD) has relented. After 16 years of refusing to bend to the pressure of those driving the counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan and destroy the 'labs' where opium is processed, DoD finally issued the authorities that allowed these buildings to be destroyed. On the first night of the campaign on 19 November 2017, 10 buildings were leveled. It was claimed that each was a drugs lab funding the Taliban. With the onset of this campaign, those working or residing in these labs were no longer viewed as civilians involved in a criminal activity but as enemy combatants and subject to lethal force. These labs and those operating them now represent in the words of General Nicholson, Commander of both US Forces in Afghanistan (USFOR-A) and the North Atlantic Council Organization (NATO) Resolute Support Mission, the 'Taliban’s narcotics financing'. To justify this dramatic change in policy the script used to describe the insurgency has been radically rewritten. Under the most recent rewrite the Taliban are robbed of any political ambition and are described as engaging in violence to protect their criminal activities; they are according to General Nicholson a 'narco insurgency'. The beginnings of this narrative can be traced back to the spring of 2017 when the opium crop was approaching harvest. By the summer, when most policy makers and analysts would have been fully aware that 2017 would see an exponential rise in opium poppy cultivation, the Taliban stood accused of having monopoly control over heroin processing and exports. It is perhaps no coincidence that the air strikes began only four days after the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) officially announced that cultivation had risen by 120,000 hectares over the course of only one growing season, and that an unprecedented 328,000 hectares of opium poppy had been grown in Afghanistan in 2017. This was a rate of growth and a level of total cultivation that sat uncomfortably with USFOR-A’s assertion that the Afghan government controlled two thirds of the population and that the insurgency had not made any major inroads into territory over the course of the previous year. The air campaign against drugs labs has been accompanied by further hyperbole and additions to the 'narco insurgency' script, including estimates the losses inflicted on drug traffickers and the Taliban, running in the tens of millions of dollars. Drawing on high resolution imagery and field research conducted ten days after the initial air strikes of 19 November 2017, this paper examines the efficacy of this new campaign and the logic that underpins it. The paper questions the contribution that the destruction of drugs labs will make to either 'the war on terror' or 'the war on drugs' and casts doubt on its value for money and its effect, particularly given the potential for civilian casualties and - contrary to official estimates - its negligible effect on the drugs trade and Taliban financing. The paper is written by Dr David Mansfield who has been conducting research in rural Afghanistan for over 20 years. He is a Senior Fellow at LSE and the author of 'A State Built in Sand: How Opium undermined Afghanistan’. Details: London, U.K.: The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2018. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 17, 2018 at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/Assets/Documents/Heroin-Labs-in-Afghanistan-Mansfield.pdf Year: 2018 Country: Afghanistan URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/united-states/Assets/Documents/Heroin-Labs-in-Afghanistan-Mansfield.pdf Shelf Number: 153859 Keywords: Afghanistan Counternarcotics Drug Cultivation Drug Traffickers Heroin Lab Opium Opium Poppy Cultivation The War on Drugs The War on Terror United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime |
Author: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Title: Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia: Monitereo de Cultivos de Coca 2017 (Case Monitoring Survey of the Plurinational State of Bolivia: Coca Cultivation 2017) Summary: In 2017, coca cultivation in Bolivia increased by six per cent compared to 2016, according to the latest Coca Cultivation Survey presented today in La Paz by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the government of Bolivia. In this period, the area under cultivation increased by 1,400 hectares (ha), from 23,100 ha in 2016 to 24,500 ha. According to the Survey, the regions of Yungas of La Paz, the Tropic of Cochabamba and the North of La Paz represented 65, 34 and one per cent, respectively, of the areas under cultivation in the country. The use of satellite images and field monitoring revealed an increase in coca bush cultivation in two of the three main producing regions: in the Yungas of La Paz cultivation increased from 15,700 to 15,900 ha, while an increase from 7,200 to 8,400 ha was also identified in the Tropic of Cochabamba. In the Northern region of La Paz, the cultivated area decreased from 240 to 220 ha. The highest increase in coca cultivation in the Yungas of La Paz was detected in the Sud Yungas province, with 158 additional hectares, reaching 10,692 ha in 2017. Likewise, the Chapare province of the Tropic of Cochabamba registered an increase of 536 ha of coca crops, from 3,708 ha in 2016 to 4,244 ha in 2017. The government of Bolivia reported an increase in rationalization and eradication activities, from 6,577 to 7,237 ha. Around 78 per cent of these activities were carried out in the Tropic of Cochabamba, 18 per cent in the Yungas and the North of La Paz and four per cent in the departments of Santa Cruz and Beni. The potential production of coca leaf in the country was estimated at a maximum of 44,200 metric tons (mt) and a minimum of 35,500 mt. This calculation is based on studies carried out by the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) in 1993, by UNODC in 2005 and by CONALTID (National Council to Combat Illicit Drug Trafficking of the Plurinational State of Bolivia) in 2010. The Survey also detected the presence of coca crops in six of the 22 nationally protected areas. In these areas, a total of 253 ha of coca crops were identified. The national park most affected by the cultivation of coca was Carrasco, followed by Cotapata, Isiboro Sécure and Amboró. These figures reflect the main findings of the latest Coca Crop Monitoring Survey in Bolivia, carried out within the framework of UNODC's Programme to Support the Implementation of Bolivia's Action Plan on the Strategy of Anti-Narcotics and Reduction of Coca Crop Surplus, which is financed by the European Union and Denmark. According to government data, the amount of coca leaf sold in the two authorized markets (Villa Fátima in the department of La Paz and Sacaba in the department of Cochabamba) was 22,967 mt in 2017. Around 91 per cent of coca leaves were commercialized in Villa Fátima, while the remaining nine per cent in Sacaba. The weighted average price of coca leaves in these authorized markets increased by 16 per cent, from US$ 8.1 per kilogram in 2016 to US$ 9.4 per kilogram in 2017. The government also reported that seizures of coca leaves increased by five per cent and those of cocaine base increased by 13 per cent, from 353 to 370 mt and from 12.2 to 13.7 mt, respectively. Meanwhile, cocaine hydrochloride seizures decreased by 78 per cent, from 17.8 to 3.9 mt. In March 2017, Bolivia passed the General Law of Coca (Law 906). This increased the area where coca can be legally produced from 12,000 to 22,000 ha, differentiating the cultivation in Authorized and Unauthorized Zones. The UNODC Representative in Bolivia, Thierry Rostan, also highlighted some recommendations to improve the control of coca crops: - conclude the geographical delimitation of Authorized Zones for the production of coca leaves according to the General Law of Coca (Law 906) and its Regulations to prevent illicit cultivation; - increase control measures to prevent the expansion of cultivation in Unauthorized Zones such as those around the borders of Ayopaya province of the department of Cochabamba and the provinces of Sud Yungas and Inquisivi in the department of La Paz; and - strengthen the processes of rationalization and eradication, social control and impact mitigation, and to promote integral development in coca producing areas to curb surplus production of coca crops. Details: La Paz, Bolivia: United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, 2017. 98p. Source: Internet Resource (in Spanish): Accessed January 14, 2019 at: https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Bolivia/Bolivia_Informe_Monitoreo_Coca_2017_final.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Bolivia URL: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2018/August/unodc-bolivia_-the-2017-coca-cultivation-survey-reveals-an-increase-in-coca-crops.html Shelf Number: 154152 Keywords: Action Plan on the Strategy of Anti-Narcotics and Bolivia Coca Crops Coca Cultivation Coca Cultivation Survey Coca Seizures Eradication Field Monitoring General Law of Coca Satellite Images United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime |