War profiteers "don't want war to end"

The following article about Salvatore Mancuso, a demobililized paramilitary commander and former leader of the AUC, illustrates how transnational criminal enterprises not only rely on shady characters such as smugglers, traffickers, and dealers (STDs) but also on the complicity of legitimate actors including governments, politicians, military personnel, foreign contractors, and multinational corporations.

ITAGUI, Colombia, August 14 (Reuters) -- Colombia's cocaine trade is much bigger than the government says and will continue to grow on stronger European and Asian demand unless a coherent anti-drugs plan is adopted, a jailed warlord said.

Salvatore Mancuso, once feared throughout northern Colombia for his cocaine-financed paramilitary war against leftist rebels, says Colombia is not serious about cracking down on the drug trade that fuels the four-decade-old insurgency.

Vested interests -- from politicians and military officers who collude with drug smugglers, to contractors connected to a multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-narcotics program, to companies that sell chemicals used to process cocaine -- don't want the war to end, he said. "As long as there is a conflict in Colombia, all this will flourish," Mancuso told Reuters on Monday at a maximum security prison in the mountains outside Medellin.

The ex-leader of the 2,500-member Northern Bloc militia said he ordered a study that shows Colombia produces 960 tonnes of cocaine a year, more than 50 percent above official estimates, and the trade will remain strong as the U.S. cocaine market holds steady and demand grows fast in Europe and China.

Mancuso said he is trying to persuade the U.S. government to listen to his plan for ending the drug trade in this Andean country, but has had little luck so far. He said the U.S.-backed program of fumigating coca plants used to make cocaine is haphazard and that sprayed areas are often retaken by the rebels and replanted. "First we need all-out coca eradication. Second a coherent plan for security and a state presence in these rural areas," Mancuso said. "Then there has to be social and economic development for each community." This would include construction of roads allowing farmers get their legal crops to market. Click here to here the full text.

Photograph courtesy of AFP