This is part two of an article which was started last week.
Bernard Headley, Contributor
PROPERLY understood, narco-terrorism refers to an unholy alliance between drugs and terrorist groups. The term applies, therefore, only to situations of direct or indirect involvement in drug trafficking by insurgent or revolutionary groups for the purpose of financing their "revolutionary" ventures. By that definition, narco-terrorism is the economic arm to a political project.
The misconception comes when we describe as narco-terrorist the purely criminal behaviour of individuals involved in narcotics trafficking, such as the trademark terrorist-like killings committed by Colombian and Jamaican drug rings. Theirs is a style of murder that leaves no witnesses. However brutal and horrifying killings of this type are, though, devoid of any larger ideological or political content, they are still nothing more than the dirty, horrible work of what are essentially criminal gangs.
DRUG TRAFFICKING AND INSURGENCY
Traditional criminal organisations, several of them with peripheral ties in Jamaica, have for decades dominated the international heroin and cocaine drug trades. But since the 1980s a number of insurgent and revolutionary groups have, through various drug-related activities, successfully cut in on the traditional criminal organisations' drug turf. These activities, all undertaken for economic purposes, have included:
Extortion of money from low-level narcotics producers (such as peasants who grow opium poppies or coca leaves)
Providing protection to refining and trafficking organisations
Direct involvement in illegal drug production and distribution, and
Outright control over drug-producing regions
It is in these activities that the most direct links between drugs and terrorism exist. Moreover, it is from these insurgent linkages that narco-terrorism got its name. The insurgent or terrorist groups got involved in narcotics trafficking for one simple reason: the enormous profits of the drug business.
Other than those terrorist groups whose activities have been supported by a few rich Arab-oil states, or rich Arabs like Osama bin Laden, almost all rural insurgents, urban terrorists and liberation movements depended in the past on inexpedient means to fund and sustain their operations: on things like bank robberies, ransom kidnapping, industrial thefts and donations of money and food. But no bank robbery or kidnapping could compare with the quick infusions of cash generated by illegal drugs, particularly cocaine.
Notably important to the emergence of narco-terrorism has been the tendency for both insurgency and drug production to be co-located. Both have existed side by side for some time now in the "Golden Triangle" (Burma, Laos and Thailand), the "Golden Crescent" (Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan), and the Andes Mountains (Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador). This co-location, furthermore, has tended to be concentrated in rural sections of so-called "liberated zones," where Government control is weak and unable to effectively manage the activities of either the terrorists or the traffickers.
A glance at narco-terrorism as it emerged in South America is instructive. We'll look briefly at the history and purposes of three narco-terrorist organisations - the FARC, the M-19 and Sendero Luminoso. In a third and final piece I'll try to unravel what implications flow therefrom for Jamaica. Here, again, I'm leaning heavily on the work of political scientist-criminologist, James Inciardi, of the University of Delaware.
THE FARC
FARC, the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia, though slimmed down since its glory days of the 1970s and 1980s, is a pro-Marxist revolutionary group which at one time numbered as many as 7,000 members and supporters divided into several dozen guerrilla fronts. Half of the movement's present structure operates in the regions of Colombia's marijuana and cocaine industries. With its formation in 1966 as an armed branch of the pro-Soviet Communist Party, FARC's aim was establishment of a "people's Government."
The Colombian regime, FARC argued, reflected the interests of North American imperialists. To change the political arrangements, FARC adopted guerrilla attacks on the nerve centres of the country. In its early years, FARC had little impact on the Colombian political scene, having limited its activities to symbolic occupation of some remote rural villages. In the mid-1970s, however, FARC went into the ransom kidnapping business. As its income grew, so too did its ambitions.
FARC's entry into the drug trade came in the early 1980s. With payments received in the form of cash or armaments, its narco-terrorism has focused on four areas:
Regular collection of protection money from marijuana and coca growers in its operating territories
Overseeing drug trafficking in certain areas, with collections based on specific quotas
Providing major Medellin traffickers (the Carlos Ledhers and the Escobars) with guaranteed access to clandestine airfields, and
Direct involvement in coca growing and refining
MOVIMIENTO 19 DE ABRIL (M-19)
Colombia's M-19 is another Marxist-inspired insurgent-terrorist group that, though also weakened as a fighting force, after sustained American-backed counter-attacks, was well-known all over South America in the 1980s and early 1990s. Its origins are in the National Popular Alliance (NPA), a minor political party that had been successful enough in the 1960s to be represented in the Colombian Parliament.
In the disputed Presidential election of April 19, 1970, however, the NPA suffered serious losses. To the more extreme in the Party the only solution appeared to be armed struggle to achieve its political ends. Named after the date of the disputed election, the M-19 (Movimiento 19 de Abril or 19th of April Movement) officially announced its birth in 1974 by raiding the Simon Bolivar museum outside Bogota, making off with the sword and spurs of the man who is revered as "the Liberator" of Latin America.
"After its rather theatrical entrance to the world of insurgent-guerrilla movements, the M-19 followed the normal terrorist course of bank robberies, raids on military armouries, kidnappings and killings. Yet it has always had a touch of flamboyance about its activities, giving it considerable publicity." In 1979, the M-19 tunnelled into a Bogota arsenal to steal armaments; in 1980 it kidnapped all of the guests, including an American Ambassador, attending a cocktail party at the Dominican Republic embassy in Bogota; and in 1981 it kidnapped and executed a missionary from the United States.
Originally an urban guerrilla group, the M-19's shift to rural insurgency occurred during the early 1980s. Its involvement in narco-terrorism came shortly thereafter, with activities similar to those of the FARC. In September 1985, M-19 guerrillas seized Colombia's Palace of Justice and murdered 11 Supreme Court justices. M-19 operatives would go on in succeeding years to add trafficking in cocaine to its insurgent activities, profits from which would enable them to equip some 10,000 new rebels.
What the group lacked, however, were sufficient personnel to train these new recruits. Not to worry: they used drug monies to recruit experienced mercenaries from the Miami area to serve as trainers for M-19's future skirmishes with the Colombian military. Recruited "sicarios," or gunmen, by major drug traffickers were trained in M-19 camps. After assassinating their targets (typically those judges, prosecutors, and journalists who dare to oppose the drug cartel barons), the sicarios would be sent back to Miami before embarking on their next assignment.
Sendero Luminoso
Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, emerged from a tangled web of Peruvian Maoist politics in 1970. The movement suffered its greatest setback under the Alberto Fujimori regime, especially with the capture of its spiritual leader, Abimael Guzman. But it is still very much alive and kicking.
Noting the striking class differences in his society, Guzman had concluded that as Peru approached the 21st century, it was still a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. Moreover, the Government embodied a fascist structure masquerading as a democracy. Only by making revolutionaries out of Peruvian peasants could social reform be realised, Guzman contended.
"Sendero Luminoso first came to widespread public attention after a full decade of dogmatic self-examination and rigorously selective recruitment. The violence against the State began in July 1980, and by the end of the year some 240 incidents had been recorded, including the destruction of local tax records, bombings of Government offices and sabotage of electricity pylons." By 1981, the rate of incidents increased and had expanded to such activities as the raiding of banks, mines, and police posts. Kidnapping was added the following year. Sendero's most spectacular action took place early in 1982, when 159 guerrillas attacked the Ayacucho jail and set some 300 prisoners free.
In 1987, direct evidence of a Sendero Luminoso/cocaine link came to light; its most lucrative arrangement being extortion of protection money from coca growers and cocaine traffickers. The practice continues today. In areas controlled by the rebel group, growers are expected to turn over a share of their profits, and traffickers are charged upwards of 5,000 U. S. dollars in "departure fees" for each planeload of coca paste shipped out of the area. Sendero has repeatedly opposed coca eradication projects, not only to protect its stake in drug profiteering, but also for the sake of gaining local peasant support.
I have tried to sketch here the broad contours of the three major groups that have literally defined the term "narco-terrorism," paying special attention to each group's history and purpose. My objective is to raise for critical discussion the question: What in any of what's described here resembles, or is conceivably connected to, Jamaican drug trafficking?
More next week.
