Venezuela’s Efforts Against Drug
Trafficking
Based on its proximity to
Colombia, the source of almost 90 percent of cocaine entering the United States[1],
Venezuela has been used by smugglers as a transit point for drugs originating
in Colombia and destined for Europe and the United States. This geographic
position alone behooves the government of Venezuela to be pro-active in the
fight against drug trafficking, an initiative that wasn’t taken seriously under
past administrations. Unfortunately, Washington continues to diminish
Venezuela’s efforts at combatting narco-trafficking and has even put up
roadblocks to its advancement.
2007 International
Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR)
On March 1, 2007, the
U.S. Department of State released its 24th International Narcotics Control
Strategy Report (INCSR) that presumes to rate the efforts of countries in the
areas of international drug trade, chemical control, money laundering and
financial crimes. [2] This report makes
a number of misleading accusations against Venezuela and omits a significant
number of achievements including high level international cooperation that
Venezuela has embarked upon in recent years.
The report comes almost
two years after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Venezuela would
suspend its cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). On August 8, 2005 he stated, "The
DEA was using the fight against drug trafficking as a mask, to support drug
trafficking and to carry
out intelligence in Venezuela against the government… We have detected
intelligence infiltration that threatened national security and defense. Under
those circumstances we decided to make a clean break with those accords."[3]
Venezuela's
International Cooperation
Within this context, the State Department issued
its 2007 INCSR in early March condemning Venezuela for a "lack of
international counternarcotics cooperation".[4] A quick review of the facts however, clearly
shows that the Venezuelan government has a long history of cooperating with
foreign governments and international organizations to combat narco-trafficking
and terrorism.
In November 2001, Venezuela's drug czar was elected to a
one-year term as president of the Organization of American States' Commission
for Drug Abuse Control (CICAD) and participated in hemispheric efforts to
develop its Multilateral Evaluation Mechanism (MEM) to improve counternarcotics
cooperation.[5] Later, in November of 2005, Venezuela hosted the First International
Assembly of Observatories of Drugs with the participation of over forty
countries. During this three-day conference, experts shared their methodology
and technical expertise in combatting narco-trafficking. [6] Moreover, according to the State Department’s own
2003 report[7], Venezuela
has signed or is a party to the following international agreements:
- 1961 UN Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs
- 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances
- 1972 Protocol Amending the Single Convention
- 1988 UN Drug Convention
- UN Convention against Transnational Organized
Crime
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish
Trafficking in Persons
- Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants
- Inter-American Convention
Against Corruption
Venezuela has also signed
a number of important bilateral agreements with the U.S., including a ship-boarding
agreement from 1991 (updated with a new protocol in 1997), a Memorandum of
Understanding concerning cooperation in narcotics, and a customs mutual
assistance agreement.[8] Venezuela is a party
to numerous bilateral and multilateral narcotics control agreements, including
bilateral agreements with 15 other Latin American and Caribbean nations, as
well as one Asian and three European countries.
Cooperation between
Colombia and Venezuela
Counter
to the State Department’s assertion that Venezuelan
"arrests are limited to low-level actors" in September of 2006 the
Venezuelan government captured Colombia's second most wanted narco-trafficker,
Farid Feris Domínguez, and immediately handed him over to Colombian officials.[9] In part this was due to the increase in
cooperation between Venezuela and Colombia in the areas of
counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism.
In 2005 Colombia and Venezuela
signed a pact pledging to create greater cooperation between the two countries’
authorities and to develop more effective enforcement mechanisms to combat drug
trafficking. Since then Venezuela has
caught and turned over many suspects to Colombian authorities, including the
well known FARC rebel leader Gentil Alvis Patino.[10]
Additionally, both
countries have developed a joint operation of manual eradication of coca,
poppy, and marijuana crops in the Perija Mountains along the
Colombian-Venezuelan border. This plan,
known as Operation Sierra, which the United Nations and the Organization of
American States also contributed to, resulted in the eradication of 110
hectares of poppy, 80 hectares of coca plants and 15 hectares of
marijuana. 18 laboratories of coca
based paste and 11 rural camps in which the supplies for the primary processing
of the coca leaves were stored have been completely destroyed.[11]
More recently in December
2006, Venezuela acquired new radar systems, enabling an increase in patrols and
the beefing up of its monitoring along the 1400-mile Venezuelan-Colombian
border. These new radar systems also fill the gap in coastal surveillance that
resulted when the United States discontinued renting its radar equipment to
Venezuela in 2004.[12]
Cooperation between the European Union and
Venezuela
The
European Union has entered into two agreements with Venezuela[13]. The scope of these agreements range from
suppression of trafficking and demand reduction to specific controls on money
laundering and precursor chemicals.[14] In fact, in May 2006 Venezuela’s main opposition
newspaper, El Universal, highlighted
the cooperation between Venezuela and European authorities when detaining a
Venezuelan ship containing drugs:
“A joint operation between the Venezuelan National
Guard and the Spanish and French militaries led to the May 23 interdiction of a
Venezuelan ship carrying more than two tons of cocaine. The operation took
place in international waters off the African coast…According to information
provided, the ship departed from Sucre state and was interdicted at sea after
Venezuelan authorities communicated intelligence on the cargo to French and
Spanish authorities, which allowed the operation to proceed. The ship was
intercepted 300 nautical miles from the coast of Cape Verde on the African
continent. …Venezuelan authorities have detained 624 people for drug
trafficking in 2006. Additionally, they have confiscated more than 18 tons of a
variety of illegal drugs, a number that represents an increase of 34 percent
from 2005.”[15]
U.S. Arms Embargo on Venezuela
On May 15,
2006 the U.S. State Department decided to restrict the sale of weapons to
Venezuela while continuing to accuse Venezuela of "backsliding in the
global war on drugs".[19]
By imposing
an arms embargo which blocks the acquisition of military equipment and parts,
the United States has refused to recognize the right of Venezuela to obtain
necessary systems of defense and internal patrol, many of which are crucial in
the fights against drug-trafficking.
Moreover, the U.S. has
actively interfered with Venezuela's right to purchase military equipment from
other countries by blocking the sale of Spanish patrol boats as well as
Brazilian aircraft to Venezuela in recent years. In the case of the Brazilian aircraft, the president of the Brazilian Aeronautics Company
(Embraer), Mauricio Botelho, stated that “The plane we are talking about is not
an attack plane. Its purpose is law enforcement in missions directed against
drug and arms trafficking.”[20]
The
Brazilian Minister of Foreign Relations, Celso Amorim, also remarked that
Brazil was not in agreement with the US position.[21] Along those same lines, the President of
Spain, José Luis
Rodríguez Zapatero, even defended
the sale of planes and boats to Venezuela and characterized them as helpful to
the war on drugs, "The
sale of aircraft and ships has the objective of patrolling the coasts…,
controlling the sea borders,… against narco-trafficking… and in no way does it
have any offensive nature.”[22] The arms embargo
does not allow any company utilizing U.S. parts to sell equipment to
Venezuela. Currently, of all the
nations with whom the U.S. has imposed an arms ban, Venezuela is the only one
that has not been designated by the U.S. Department of State as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Venezuela’s Advances in
Counter-Narcotics Operations
Despite these roadblocks,
Venezuela is beefing up its efforts to combat drugs domestically and has recently
passed new legislation that sends a clear message to those involved in the
illegal narcotics trade. In 2005, the
Organic Law Against Illicit Traffic and Consumption of drugs and Psychotropic
Substances was passed as well as the Organic Law Against Organized Crime. These
laws stipulate that those who perform human and/or drug trafficking and harbor
drugs and illegal chemical substances will be subject to six to eight years in
prison. The punishment will be increased if the offender is a government
official, a member of the National Guard, a judicial authority, or anyone who
impersonates such individuals.[23]
Similarly, in January 2006, Venezuela made a very
significant advancement by transforming the National Commission Against Illegal Drug Use
(CONACUID) into the National Office of
Anti-Drugs (ONA), handing over the financial, administrative, and functional autonomy to the
institution that would now implement
public policies and strategies of the State against the production,
trafficking, money laundering and consumption of illicit drugs.[24]
Some of Venezuela’s most recent achievements are
highlighted below:
- According
to ONA, 43.2 tons of drugs were seized in Venezuela in 2004, the last full
year of cooperation with the DEA.
In 2005, 77 tons of drugs were seized by Venezuelan authorities;
moreover, 2005
witnessed an increase in the seizures of “ecstasy” at the Simon Bolivar
International Airport of Maiquetia in the State of Vargas and the Santiago
Marino International Airport of the State of Nueva Esparta, totaling
79,260 pills. In 2006 60.3 tons of
drugs were captured.[25]
- In March 2006 Venezuelan authorities used GPS
systems to discover two clandestine runways that were used for
narco-trafficking in the states of Bolivar and Sucre. Both runways
operated between Venezuela, Colombia and the Caribbean Sea and were used
to store drugs[26].
- Currently
(March 2007), Venezuela’s Integrated National Service for Customs and Tax
Administration (SENIAT), is installing unobtrusive X-ray machines at
ports, making it possible to examine an entire container for drugs. This was already being done with
imports, but now enforcement agents can apply the practice to exports as
well. Right now, the ONA is doing a feasibility study for the creation of
a Special Anti-Drug Task Force that would operate in the states bordering
Colombia.[27]
Statistics on
confiscations in Venezuela are public and are available at the website of the
National Office on Anti-Drugs www.ona.gob.ve
Findings of the Report: Politics over Evidence
The 2007 INCSR finds
particular fault with the narco-trafficking enforcement of Venezuela and
Bolivia, two countries whose political
and economic agendas are at odds with the Bush Administration's goals in the
region,
while praising the efforts of close U.S. allies Mexico and Colombia. The praise for Colombia's drug enforcement
seems especially questionable given that Colombia is the world's primary
producer of cocaine and South America's top producer of heroin[28]
in spite of the $4.7 billion that the U.S. has spent in anti-drug efforts in
Colombia since 2000.[29] In fact, cocaine production in Colombia is
on the rise.[30] Moreover, a recent political scandal in
Colombia has linked high-level government officials to paramilitary groups
known for their involvement in drug trafficking.[31] This raises serious questions about the
credibility of the U.S. State Department’s report and whether its findings are
political rather than objective and informational.