editorial comment No, we cannot give up. Only losers give up....."We have to win this" etc etc etc etc........

Coca cultivation is expanding in Bolivia and Peru, where weak states and a flawed U.S. drugs policy have produced social unrest and instability.

Coca, Drugs and Social Protest in Bolivia and Peru,* the latest report from the International Crisis Group, examines the increasing importance of the two countries as centres of cocaine production in the Andes, and how the policies emphasised in Bolivia and Peru in pursuit of the U.S.-led war on drugs are aggravating social tensions with potentially explosive results.

"The way the war on drugs is currently pursued is not proving effective, undermines regional governments' stability, and worsens the perception pushed by opposition groups that they are submissive to Washington", says Markus Schultze-Kraft, Crisis Group's Andes Project Director.

Anti-drug, law enforcement and alternative development efforts in Bolivia and Peru over the last twenty years have not achieved a lasting reduction of illicit coca crops. Since large-scale eradication campaigns in the second half of the 1990s, coca cultivation has again gained momentum in both countries, spurred by a combination of the expanded markets in South America and Europe, and increasing links between local and international drug trafficking networks.

The legal and traditional use of coca in Peru and Bolivia stands in stark contrast to the growing organisational ability of the illicit coca industry, and there is no doubt that a large part of the coca leaf grown in both countries is sold for processing into cocaine. Porous borders, corruption and much less intensive interdiction efforts compared to Colombia make it relatively easy for local and international networks to move their products.

The extremely weak governments and state institutions face a dilemma, caught between a desire to please their international allies and donors, and pressure from social movements and populist opposition movements within their countries, which often represent farmers who rely on the legal and illegal cultivation of coca crops. This has led to mounting social protest and even sporadic outbursts of violence in Bolivia and Peru in the recent years.

The lack of clarity as to the extent of permitted coca crops for traditional purposes and the lack of viable economic alternatives for local farmers are the major obstacles to all attempts to cut production. Efforts at forced eradication should not leave farmers without alternatives, as experience has shown they will then return to planting coca. U.S. drug control assistance should shift its emphasis from eradication to a rural development policy aimed at promoting poverty reduction, land reform, infrastructure enhancement, and alternative/rural development.

"Bolivia, Peru and their allies must show they take farmers' concerns seriously or risk losing ground to drug traffickers and radical political elements which capitalise on popular unrest", says Alain Deletroz, Crisis Group's Latin America Program Director.


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Contacts: Andrew Stroehlein (Brussels) +32 (0) 485 555 946
Jennifer Leonard (Washington) +1 202 785 1601
To contact Crisis Group media please click here
*Read the full Crisis Group report on our website: http://www.crisisgroup.org

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