A Peace Deal with Colombia's Marxist Guerrillas Won't Fix Latin America's Cocaine Problem

[Judi Lynn]

A Peace Deal with Colombia's Marxist Guerrillas Won't Fix Latin America's Cocaine Problem
February 4, 2015
By Steven Cohen

At last year's United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos asked the world to imagine his country "without coca," the plant precursor to crystal cocaine. This "dream," which would have been unthinkable a decade ago, is now at least plausible, with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest rebel group, signing a preliminary peace agreement and partnering with the government to implement programs to replace coca crops with other plants.

But coca production has never been the focal point of the Colombian drug trade, and the FARC has only ever played a marginal role in moving cocaine to foreign markets. Colombia's broader drug problem is, and always has been, that drugs are illegal elsewhere, and the global drug war does not seem nearly as close to ending as the FARC's guerrilla insurgency. There's just too much money left on the table.

It was an accident of geography that brought cocaine to Colombia in the first place. Vast territories with little to no state presence and coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans made the country a prime maritime shipping hub. Nestled between traditional growing regions to the south and Central American smuggling routes to the north, Colombia stood—and, thanks to Brazil's rise as a top consumer, remains—at the key crossroads of international supply and demand. Pablo Escobar, who has become as synonymous with cocaine as cocaine has with Colombia, built his empire as a middleman, not a producer.

The right-wing paramilitary groups funded, and in some cases even founded, by Escobar and other drug lords looking to mask their activities under the guise of Cold War counterinsurgency have played a far greater role in international trafficking than the FARC ever has. Indeed, the rebels' initial foray into the drug business was facilitated by the very groups whose mission, ostensibly, was to eliminate them.

More:
http://www.vice.com/read/why-peace-with-colombian-marxist-guerrillas-wont-fix-latin-americas-cocaine-problem-204

[roody]

1. The decriminalization of "drugs" and

an end to the War on drugs would help the situation.