Ivan Briscoe

It’s obvious in any number of ways that conflict and crime are related – we have reams of evidence to show it. Knowing how armed groups earn their money, or how that revenue affects their motivations, is now part and parcel of dealing with conflict – call it political economy. But it’s still awkward to leave the confines of a law enforcement agenda and adopt a different approach to crime, whether this is as a peacebuilder or mediator, or from the point of view of public health, or the state of democracy. We are haunted by the language and imagery of crime in a way that has been surpassed for some of the old tropes of conflict. In fact, it is incredibly difficult even to write about crime without using the words which are unavoidably coupled with it: threat, insecurity, and fear.

This is worth mentioning because it bears down directly on two questions which have been bothering and teasing me in recent weeks. They relate directly to the stubborn badness of crime, and thus the way it resists entering the agenda of peace and conflict – where sides can be changed, deals made, and armed groups can be remoulded into political parties.

First off, we know there is an incredibly powerful argument to be made on behalf of a progressive decriminalization of (at least some part of) the drugs trade. Saying the war on drugs has not won is now a cliché: a quick look at Mexico and Mali makes the case for ever firmer eradication seem incredibly antiquated. We know that efforts at control and repression have multiple effects that can really no longer be called “unintended” or “collateral.” (Here’s a book review that I wrote recently for the World Peace Foundation, which makes the point: https://sites.tufts.edu/reinventingpeace/2013/01/17/a-harvest-of-pleasure-and-pain-a-review-of-africa-and-the-war-on-drugs/ ).

Yet in acknowledging the damage done by the relentless displacement effects of the war on drugs (how else did Andean cocaine end up in the Sahel?), we have to be careful not to wish in any way to exonerate or rehabilitate many of those involved in the drugs trade – the corrupt politicians and police officers, certain Islamist radicals, killers for hire and the international brokers. Producers and consumers of drugs receive sympathy: in general, the former are poor, and the latter are in some form of need (if only a need for pleasure). But how can a concerted, rational opposition to global drug policy be articulated that does not in some ways relax or condone the behaviour of groups or individuals that have committed crimes, often horrendous? (Try this Mexican site if you don’t believe me: http://www.blogdelnarco.com/).

Now, it could be argued that with decriminalization/legalization, the illicit drugs trade will disappear – and that these criminal actors will simply vanish for lack of employment, or be righteously pursued as they move to other rackets. But how much of the campaign to decriminalize drugs should then be about strengthening the police for this cleansing process during the “day after”? Could a kind of restitution to civilian life be planned – as in a kind if peace process? And how much more difficult would this be for criminal actors who have never expressed a political conviction beyond material self-interest? How, in short, do we make and build a separate case for the ‘guilty parties’ of transnational crime as opposed to the ‘unjust’ nature of the war on drugs?

I suspect the issues that emerge from this question will be very difficult to resolve. And it leads on to a second question, which emerges very vividly in the case of Colombia (lest we forget, one of the poster children of the World Development Report 2011). All sorts of figures on violent crime have successfully been reduced in Colombia following former President Álvaro Uribe’s counter-insurgent offensive and peace with the paramilitaries. At the same time, this ‘peace’ has given rise to numerous illiberal political settlements in peripheral parts of the country, which are now opening up at amazing speed for natural resource exploitation. A chilling book released last year, written by Iván Cepeda and Javier Giraldo on the “emerald czar” of Colombia, Víctor Carranza (see http://www.arcoiris.com.co/2012/06/carranza-segun-el-padre-javier-giraldo/ , showed in some detail what goes into making a regional overlord with an extensive background in narco-paramilitary activity, and unquestioned control nowadays over his local economy, politics and security.

In terms of numbers alone, we should congratulate Carranza on the fact that various factional wars in his resource-rich regions have ended (he certainly thinks he deserves praise). Violence, numerical violence, has dropped. But how do we include in any computation of welfare gains and losses the silence of local civil society, or the suffering of those who will never see redress for crimes committed in the past? Should we insist there will be some putative inter-generational payback (i.e. violence will eventually return to Carranza’s fiefdom)? Alternatively, is he the agent of historical necessity? How else can we negotiate this ethical labyrinth, so typical of politico-criminal orders where violence is best controlled by those who mete it out?