Drug addiction is a serious problem in every country however, the United States are particularly affected and every decade seems to have its stream of biases related to drug usage and trafficking. Drugs are mainly an issue of health, and many powerful countries have been justifying their involvement in reducing the availability of narcotics from foreign sources with the intended result of reducing domestic levels of drug addiction. If before the 1990s narcotics trade and terrorism were treated as two separate and distinct threats within security discourse, after 9/11 focus has been put on the interconnection between them. As a matter of fact, drug dealing constitutes a tough internal policy issue, which eventually is bound to international trade and relations. In the US the war on drugs is in fact highly militarized and the prohibition systems made the narcotics trade one of the most lucrative businesses in the world, second only to the weapons sector.
The American war on drugs policy was initiated in the 1970s by the Nixon administration. The then US President labelled illicit substance abuse as “public enemy number one” and addressed Türkiye as the first country to impose a production policy, namely a total ban on opium production with massive eradication programs. Yet, this policy was successful in Türkiye but moved opium production to other countries in Asia. Always concentrated on the fight against communism and the Soviet Union, in the 1970s the United States interfered in the Soviet-occupied Afghanistan and started financing the Mujahedeens, describing them as freedom fighters. Moreover, an intense narcotic smuggling network developed thanks to the covert operations of the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Nobody claimed anything at the intelligence level as the overall goal was getting rid of the Soviets. Yet, no attention was put on the needs of the country nor on cooperation to build a democratic and resilient government. On the other side, crime organizations in the Middle East, as well as the ones targeted as terrorists – the Taliban and al-Qaida, – have become major players in the production and shipment of illegal drugs. Additionally, there is evidence that opium production was high under, and because of, the US-influenced government of Afghanistan. Once the Americans left Afghanistan in the XX century, opium production decreased and then, after 2001, increased again. Nonetheless, it was the US Foreign Office that spread the idea of the Taliban promoting opium production to finance terrorism. Availed of false information, the United States promoted and praised their actions in Afghanistan in front of public opinion. Consequently, 9/11 became just one of the many American scapegoats in foreign policies, shifting the operation’s objective from communist containment to Islamic spread prevention. In October 2009, the New York Times published an article by Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti, and James Risen who officially reported US allegations, in which a collaboration between the CIA and intelligence service provided by Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the first ‘democratically’ elected Afghan President, were fuelling drug trades even in the 2000s. After the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, international focus has shifted to other issues, like human rights, but the outcome of the American involvement in the drug market of Afghanistan drastically signed the country, which has been suffering hard for years.
However, Mexican and Columbian cartels remain problematic for the US government, which have always been identified ‘drug countries’. Today’s issue among the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is the Fentanyl-related death rise. Mexico is becoming a major transit and production point for the drug, especially because of Mexican traffickers role in the US distribution. Nevertheless, Fentanyl and methamphetamine precursors, opioid additives, and synthetic opioids are manufactured and distributed by China-based chemical companies, many of which openly advertise on the internet. The primary distributors of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues in North America are the Sinaloa Cartel based in Sinaloa, Mexico, and the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generaciónbased in Jalisco, Mexico. These two transnational criminal organizations have a significant presence in Mexico and maintain distribution hubs in various cities across the United States too. Although the US are trying to stop this production and its smuggling, doubts do arise as many allegation cases engaged the CIA in operations in South America. For instance, the CIA collaborated with drug traffickers bringing cocaine and marijuana into the United States and used its share of the profits to finance the Contra rebels attempting to overthrow Nicaragua’s Leftist Sandinista government. Moreover, the connection between this drug and the US foreign interest is still to be computed. Still, statistics summed between 2017 and 2021 said that 86 percent of fentanyl traffickers were American citizens and the relations between the US and China are too cold to negotiate a cooperation on the drug production prohibition. China-based chemical companies have often attempted to evade law enforcement, i.e. through false return labels and cryptocurrency transactions to conceal their identities and location. China exhibits limited interest in cracking down on the flow of precursor agents from China to Mexico and leaves the Mexican government to deal with this conflict with the US. Eventually, this situation may be only an economic and health threat, excluding geopolitical plots. Anyways, propaganda on that can advance extreme foreign policies build up for the American electoral season. Several Republican candidates admitted they would use military force against Mexican cartels in response to the trafficking of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids, like Trump’s cry back in 2016. Therefore, in case the US declare the Mexican cartel’s terrorist organizations anything could happen.
In conclusion, drug revenues can increase corruption and undermine the political stability of the legitimate government, as for Afghanistan, and it has proven to affect in particular weak and poor countries in the South. Drugs may be not responsible for the commencement of the conflict but there is evidence that they could cause an escalation and lengthen its duration. As the United States are the most powerful nation, or they were in the past, they should not get involved in these matters as they should be a model for underdeveloped countries and not invest in their decline, contributing to a spiral of war.
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations
References
http://www.review.upeace.org/index.cfm?opcion=0&ejemplar=17&entrada=86
