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- Convenors:
-
Margarita Dimova
(School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London)
Neil Carrier (University of Bristol)
Axel Klein (University of Swansea)
Gernot Klantschnig (University of Bristol)
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- Location:
- C4.08
- Start time:
- 27 June, 2013 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
Africa is rapidly emerging as a new locus of the global drug trade and a key target of the 'war on drugs'. This panel will address issues of consumption and transhipment of traditional and modern drugs from political, cultural and public health perspectives.
Long Abstract:
Over the past two decades, Africa has emerged as a new locus of drug trafficking and consumption on the transnational crimescape, making it a key new target of the 'war on drugs'. Linkages with organised crime groups from South America, the Far East and Europe, have enhanced the capacity of African traffickers to challenge state-based security agencies. At the same time, literal interpretation of anti-drug policies, dominated by imported models and mediated by UN agencies, has resulted in repression of domestic drug consumption, but little control over transit activity.
Presenting research in East, West and southern Africa, this panel will address the continent's role both as a transhipment zone and an expanding market for heroin and cocaine, while drawing out contrasts and commonalities with other drugs including khat and the ubiquitous cannabis. It will examine the social organisation of informal and criminal networks that incorporate African countries into transnational economies, as well as local entrepreneurship, national and international institutions of policing and control. These interactions will be reviewed in the light of foreign-inspired policies to curb the drug trade throughout the continent, and in the broader context of the global war on drugs. The actual role of drugs in African society, both traditional and modern will also be scrutinised. The panel will explore the social and cultural parameters of drug consumption, the ways in which African states attempt to control those trading and consuming drugs, as well as the progress of policy-making endeavours vis-à-vis medical support for drug users.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper shows how the recent concern with drugs in Africa has impacted on long-established debates about cannabis in Africa and argues that the growing international attention has strengthened repressive state responses, in spite of a tendency to liberalise cannabis policies in major donor countries.
Paper long abstract:
Cannabis is undoubtedly Africa's most important illegal drug. There is no other drug that is so widely consumed, traded and cultivated, as well as targeted by state authorities. Cannabis farming and trade generate significant numbers of livelihoods in various African countries, while its use is firmly embedded in many subcultures and mainstream cultures of consumption across the continent. Indeed, it has a long history of use on the continent. It is a much discussed and controversial substance too, and policy makers frequently condemn it as a 'problem drug' that causes insanity, instability and widespread social problems.
Despite its importance, cannabis has been largely ignored in recent discussions on Africa's strengthened position in the drug trade, as it is sidelined by the focus on the continent as a transshipment point for cocaine and heroin, and it is frequently conflated with dangerous drugs more generally. By drawing on evidence from Nigeria, Kenya and southern Africa, this paper shows how the recent concern with drugs in Africa has impacted on long-established African debates about cannabis and argues that the growing international attention has strengthened repressive state responses, in spite of a tendency to liberalise cannabis policies in major donor countries.
Paper short abstract:
Based on five months of fieldwork in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, this paper examines the role of marijuana as both a livelihood strategy and an integral part of the region’s war economy. By doing so, this paper seeks to contribute new insight to current resource war debates.
Paper long abstract:
Current international attention towards Congo's resource wealth, which has focused largely and detrimentally on a few key mineral resources notably coltan, gold, and cassiterite, has not only narrowed the resource war debate, it has severely undermined the role of other forms of natural resource wealth - with serious implications for peace in the region. A series of failed policy prescriptions aimed at the mineral trade has done little to reduce violence in the region and as some argue have actually increased violence against civilians while worsening local livelihoods. Such evidence, together with recent calls for scholarship linking a wider repertoire of natural resources and violent conflict, beyond minerals, demonstrate a growing need for more nuanced theoretical and empirically grounded work. Yet despite increasing support for expanding the resource wars thesis, studies examining how different resources variously impact violence remain largely absent. This paper begins to fill this gap by exploring one of the most poorly understand and theoretically understudied forms of natural resource wealth, the trade in marijuana. Based on five months of qualitative fieldwork in eastern DRC's South Kivu Province, this paper examines the role of marijuana as a livelihood strategy for a diverse set of actors including civilians and armed actors, and as an integral part of the region's war economy as both a tool of warfare as well as a means of war. By doing so this paper seeks to shed new light on contemporary resource wars debates and contribute practical solutions for ending violence in the region.
Paper short abstract:
Guinea-Bissau is often called Africa's first narco-state, being the most important transit point for Latin American drugs on their way to Europe. Is this title well-deserved and why? And what consequences it can have on local, national and international level?
Paper long abstract:
For a long time the phenomenon of narcobusiness was treated as a local problem - limited to the country of drugs origin, but recent years have brought a change in this matter. The unidirectional model, in which narcobusiness is treated as a pathology of the country of origin, has been replaced by the multidirectional model which emphasizes the interaction between a country of origin and a country of destination, as well as the consequences of drug trade for the international environment. Caught in the middle of this interaction are the countries like Guinea-Bissau, transit points for drug traffickers. Being one of the poorest countries in the world, Guinea-Bissau is considered to be the most important transit point for drugs being sent to Europe by Latin American, mostly Colombian, cartels. As a result, Guinea-Bissau is often called "a collapsed narco-state" or "Africa's first narco-state", leading among other countries of Lusophone Africa on the rankings of dysfunctional states, such as Failed States Index, prepared by US-based think tank, The Fund for Peace.
The paper will be divided into two parts. The first will be an attempt to search for the causes of Guinea-Bissau's state dysfunctionality in a matter of narcobusiness: are these only geographical circumstances (especially Bijagos islands) or rather susceptibility to corruption and lack of efficiently functioning authority? The second part will focus on the consequences of this growing drug trade on national, regional and international/global level, such as an increasing number of drug addicts among Bissau-Guinean society or a security threat to other West African states.
Paper short abstract:
drug control is often equated with crime control when it often has the contrary effect; this is rarely realised by policy makers? The interests pursued are often confused between the pressures of donors, implementors and beneficiaries to the detriment of host societies.
Paper long abstract:
Drug trafficking has been identified as one of the major threats to European Union security. The African Union has also identified the drug trafficking as a major source of insecurity. Consequently a range of activities have been initiated particularly in West Africa designed to enhance law enforcement and judicial capacity on fighting organised crime groups and reducing trafficking. Examples of such cooperation include the Praia plan, and support for various UNODC implemented activities (GCP, GIABA) to enhance port and airport security.
The actions are based on assumptions that remain untested, including if the security/development nexus can be tackled by drug supply interdiction; whether the role of crime organised groups is understood in the same way by European and African LEAs and policy makers; and if actions against drugs are automatically effective as a way of combating organised crime.
The paper draws on interviews with law enforcement agents and policy makers in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Cap Verde and a survey of policy documents and grey literature.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will discuss the dynamics of heroin markets in Kenya vis-à-vis containment efforts by state-mandated actors, international agencies and local communities. By analysing how formal institutions address the drug trade, I will challenge Weberian conceptualisations of the African state.
Paper long abstract:
The past few decades have witnessed the emergence of a booming heroin market in Eastern Africa, resulting from longstanding maritime intercontinental routes of transshipment. Kenya, in specific, is now battling mounting addiction levels, highly evident in its coastal province. In light of these recent developments, this paper will address the dynamics of the Kenyan heroin trade vis-à-vis containment efforts on the part of state-mandated actors, international agencies and local communities. I will discuss the work of the police and the anti-narcotics unit, as well as their agents' operations at the intersection of the legal and illegal. By questioning the ability of formal institutions to gauge the magnitude and subsequently - to control the heroin trade in Kenya, this paper will challenge Weberian conceptualisations of the African state. At the same time, I will also analyse the role of community-based responses to the nefarious effects of the distribution of heroin. In peripheral areas such as the Kenyan coast, which is also marked by a strong secessionist discourse, it is important to be able to understand the interfaces between the transnational drug syndicates responsible for popularising heroin use and the highly localised undertakings to combat these initiatives. Analysing data outcomes from extended ethnographic fieldwork in Nairobi and along the Kenyan coast, I will aim to answer two pivotal questions. Where and how do state organs of policing and control interfere in the heroin trade? How do they mould the image and role of the Kenyan state in everyday socio-political practices?
Paper short abstract:
In Sierra Leone’s War on Drugs different ideas of security collide, overlap and interact: Cocaine trafficking fuels global terrorism; cannabis threatens people’s productivity and the country’s food security and development. Research shows that cannabis cultivation adds to food security and living conditions
Paper long abstract:
For international organisations involved in the 'War on Drugs' and dealing with the supposedly intertwined issues of 'security' and 'development' the smuggling of drugs to Europe via West Africa is a global problem with serious local impact. For them, primarily, cocaine trafficking poses a threat to public health and security in Europe, fuelling global terrorism, while also destabilizing the countries of transshipment. Curbing the transport routes is therefore their main interest. And as they cannot trust local law enforcer, they try to ensure success in taking the lead in operations against cocaine.
In Sierra Leone, cocaine transshipment is seen as a minor problem, yet repressive drug politics find a fertile ground in the war against cannabis - at least on paper. The production and consumption of cannabis is claimed to be detrimental to food security, threatening national productivity and development, increasing acts of violence, mental problems and corruption. Research shows however that only the cultivation and trade of cannabis enables farmers and petty traders to cultivate food crop, send their children to school and increase their standard of living. Around trading networks political loyalties develop, while situational blows against drug traffickers might also increase political legitimacy.
Paper short abstract:
Tanzania’s 'war on drugs' and harm reduction efforts exist in tandem with translocal securitzation concerns and efforts. This paper examines how local actors negotiate and address drug-related concerns and needs as they work within the constraints of translocal regulations, policies, and programs.
Paper long abstract:
This case study of the Tanzanian 'War on Drugs' is situated within a larger discourse about the trafficking of things and people in translocal discussions about border control and securitization. It examines the implementation of translocal anti-trafficking policies and programs and juxtaposes them with drug users and harm reduction activists' negotiated activities and attempts to manage multiple needs of the drug using, specifically heroin using, community. Harm reduction activities, initiated with HIV prevention funding from the U.S and France, unfolded under the oversight of the Tanzanian interministerial Drug Control Commission. Paradoxically, the Drug Control Commission is charged with both anti-trafficking activities and developing a national harm reduction policy. Two female Tanzania celebrities' stories bookend the initial and most recent efforts in harm reduction efforts. Amina Chifupa, as an MP, forged the national discussion on anti-trafficking beginning in 2006. In 2007, the Tanzanian government asked the CDC for funds to provide outreach to heroin injectors. During late 2012, the singer Ray C.'s heroin overdose and recovery in methadone treatment, strewn across the tabloids and national media, again escalated national concern about the ongoing heroin problem and the security of youth, neighborhoods, and communities. At the international level, policies regarding drug transit countries provided space for DOD to insert its securitization activities and heightened local anxiety over reporting requirements that govern country level funding eligibility. This paper is based on over 120 interviews, three surveys, participant observation, and newspaper and archival research conducted during quarterly and semi-annual research trips since 2003.