Quo Vadis Alternative Development?

My answer is – downhill.

Can poverty have borders? Be divided into sectors? So that one sector gets preferred treatment just because it grows illicit crops, and the other that does not grow is ignored?

 Alternative Development’s champions think so. Alternative Development (AD) proposes that finding alternative sources of income for people cultivating illicit narcotic drugs will work. It differentiates between those who cultivate and those who do not- even if both are poor.  It has till now not recognized the reality that many traditional illicit cultivators grow, for instance, opium for their own consumption, and it is impossible to treat them (at least in a free country) for they don’t want to be treated. Income is not the only matter of concern that requires an alternative. Do the crusaders of AD think that usage will vanish once opium cultivation goes? They are wrong if they think so.

Then there are an another lot , who have got rich because of cultivating opium, and are not going to give it up by producing rice or fruit or handicrafts instead. I shall stick with the analogy of opium cultivation only for that is what I have experience with.

Despite employing renowned consultants, analysts, researcher and pots of money AD crusaders have not been able to stop illicit crop cultivation which has been leaping ahead of the hopes of AD dreamers. And the world of illicit crops is ina worst state than before. In Afghanistan 7.5 bln dollars have been spent on enforcement and several hundred millions on AD, which rides on the back of enforcement. Yet, opium poppy cultivation keeps surprising every one by its next year’s increase.

 AD, without any scientific analysis of its past performance, has been pushed, for close to three decades, as the only cure for illicit cultivation of narcotics crops the world over. Yet there is hardly any success that its staunchest supporters – UNODC, GTZ, TNI, US and UK chiefly- have to show. They go on trumpeting about Thailand’s Doi Tung success, which is such a minor project, but with tons of money, that an NGO runs it.

AD’s crusaders want time before they can show success! As if thirty years is not enough. And during this time illicit cultivation has grown everywhere, intruded into new areas and has become commercial.

Its assumptions are faulty. It has not accounted for change. It is assumed that illicit cultivators are poor and will remain poor, and that the regions they live in are backward. Thus the condescending promoters of AD feel that these unfortunate folk have to be shown some other way of life that is somewhat as lucrative, and not illegal according to the UN Conventions. A very big oversight is that they largely ignore the fact that there are many opiate users. And despite treatment for a few, over 70%  of them will relapse.What about these people? If in an ideal state, which can never ever be, there is no opium grown what will happen to these habitual dependents, ,who according to WDR 2014 are supposed to number 16. 37 million?

What about the poor folk next door who do not cultivate illicit crops? No development for them? Can poverty be parceled off into areas that require precedence and those that don’t?

And what about the rich cultivators? Will AD apply to them?

What AD’s campaigners never speak about is that AD depends a lot on eradication for thei imagined and hoped for success. After illicit crops are threatened with eradication they come along with their philosophy- the Shining Path of Alternative Development.

While promoting the virtues of AD its supporters ignore the users. Unless opium, cannabis or coca is provided for the millions of traditional users illicit crops will continue to be cultivated willy nilly. More than 3 million depend on opiates produced from the Afghanistan poppy fields. If by some miracle all these fields vanish, what will happen to these? The sternest of enforcement and the optimism of AD apologists has not worked yet. And never will.

Unless, opium etc is given to the traditional users cultivation will continue, and be used as a cover for commercial excess too. No power on earth, whether AD or Enforcement propelled, has been able to stop it yet.

In a self conscious one sided vindication for AD brought out by the UNODC in 2005 called Alternative Development: A Global Thematic Evaluation- Final Synthesis Report (2005) and financed by the German Government nothing but good things are said about AD. There has been no objective discussion on AD yet. In several countries, especially in India, people are questioning it, or frankly do not beleive in it at all.

AD’s advocates ignore the most important point that has been reiterated by one UN resolution after another. Alternative Development is only meant as a support to eradication. The latest UN Resolution 68/196 that was adopted by the General Assembly on 18^th December, 2013 is very clear on this issue. On the very first page of this Resolution is this exhortation largely ignored by AD's votaries: “Bearing in mind the content of article 14 of the 1988 Convention, regarding measures to eradicate illicit cultivation of narcotic plants and cooperation to increase the effectiveness of those efforts.” Such oft repeated injunctions have also been excluded from the UNODC’s own extensive apologia about AD called Alternative Development: A global Thematic Evaluation- Final Synthesis Report- 2005

Consider Thailand, where AD started in 1988, and which has been held up as the example of success of Alternative Development. There never was much of a problem of vast tracts of opium being cultivated in Thailand. It was a minor cultivating country. Thailand was getting its opium from Burma and Laos. Still is. Yet, Thailand is Exhibit A to Z showing success in AD. But see these figures:

In 1986 before AD started in Thailand there were 2408 hectares under illicit cultivation of opium poppy. In 1988 there were 2811. In 1990, two years after the start of AD in Thailand, there were 1782 hectares of illicit opium poppy cultivation.  For the same years 1718, 1740 and 2395 were eradicated. This obviously was the stick that was responsible for the decrease in illicit cultivation. The AD carrot just made a big show. The numbers are highlighted in the UNODC tables below:

Now, please see the next two tables figures from the World Drug Report of 2014. The first one is about the extent of illicit cultivation. 

The second one is about eradication. . : 

From 2003 to 2014 the WDR states “Owing to continuing low cultivation, figures ...Thailand ‘was’ included in the category ‘Other Countries’.” 

This is not the case with eradication, which still continues to figure in the eradication table every year. In 2013 the WDR states that 264 hectares were eradicated. 

After 26 years of AD in Thailand, which did not have much cultivation to begin with, eradication is still a policy that is rigorously followed, and which is still not successful- for illicit cultivation continues! And opium also continues to be smuggled from Burma and Laos, AND addicts have moved to synthetics in alarming percentages, which continue to rise. 

Addiction in Thailand has worsened. Not for opium. Its use has undoubtedly declined, not because of the success of AD or eradication, but because they have switched to more lethal synthetics. Some die hard adherents continue to get opium from Burma or Laos. Why risk listening to speeches or enforcement when they can more easily get the substance from next door!

India, which is my country, has not made any distinction between illicit growing areas and contiguous or distant poor ones. 

Development was uniform albeit slow but it is getting to the remotest corners of the country. In what used to be an extremely remote place- Anjaw and Lohit Districts of Arunachal Pradesh, bordering Burma and China, development has made life better for many people. Education has covered all. Young men and women are in all kinds of jobs aviation, academics, bureaucratic, business, engineering, entreprenurial, armed forces, politics, scientists, trade and technical. That means in all walks of life. Yet, the families of some of the very people who have benefited from development, have become large scale commercial level illicit opium poppy cultivators. Bang goes the theory of alternative development as a panacea.

There are many poor cultivators still in India's many traditonal illicit opium cultivating regions. Infact most of them are poor. But they produce mainly for their own use and barter the surplus for cereals or clothes or utensils. And the area under cultivation is immense. More than 16000 hectares in just two of the 16 districts that are beleived to be producing illicit opium poppy. These two district- Lohit and Anjaw in Arunachal Pradesh exceed the total size of the 27 villages in the Doi Tung AD Project area, where less than 1500 hectares were claimed to have been cultivated before the start of improvement in that area in 1988.

Unless, the need of the users is taken into account illicit crops cultivation will continue. If it is stopped in one place it will emerge in another.

In November 2014 I challenged this idea of AD at a training meeting in Jodhpur India. The speaker before me was Ms. Ramrada Ninnad of the Mae Fah Luang Foundation- the NGO that was and is responsible for Doi Tung. After I had said that the Thai project was too minor to be a guiding light for other nations she came up with an improbable statistic saying that at the beginning of the project Thailand had 16000 hectares under illicit opium poppy cultivation! The UNODC had put it at precisely 240.8 hectares in 1986 as can be seen from the first table above.  And these figures are what the Thai Government had supplied to UNODC.

 If one has to cook figures to justify a project it only means that there is something drastically wrong with the project and its justification.   

   

And from the Southeast Asia Opium Survey 2014 a surprising detail is noticed. On pg. 11 the average dry opium yield for Thailand is shown to be 15.6 kgs per hectare. As against 6 kgs per hectare in 1988 when the Thai AD Project started in Doi Tung. (WDR 1999 pg. 21) !!  This only indicates that cultivating techniques have vastly improved. Such inconvenient statistics and information are deliberately ignored.

In UNODC’s apologia “Alternative Development: A Global Thematic Evaluation- Final Synthesis report- 2005” it is claimed that the average wage increased seven times. But, in the Doi Tung table, reproduced below from the 2005 report, it is seen that their professions remain almost the same, and they remained wherever they were. Incidentally, Doi Tung is the only AD linked project that the AD brigade talks about. It had one another advantage. The Royal Guest House is there. It must have been embarrassing to have visitors noticing poppy fields in the vicinity. Thus, to make virtue out of necessity, Patronage poured in money.

Quite different from India’s experience.  All round development  for many of the  people in the illicit cultivating areas meant that they left their homes for all kinds of non manual professions all over the country and their incomes increased just as much, and yet their families continued to produce opium- some of them on a commercial scale. In this evaluation no contrary opinion was asked for or given. It is a production of yes men and women, though in the end (pg. 16) they do acknowledge briefly that enforcement is necessary: “Interdiction should play a key support role in illicit crop reduction by: Extending the rule of law.  Creating an environment for economic and political development.  Lowering farm-gate prices for illicit crops to make alternatives more attractive.” The last one has been impossible till now despite billions having been spent in Afghanistan alone!

A frank discussion on all aspects of AD is overdue. I do not suppose it will be ever held, so deeply entrenched is the reluctance of the votaries of AD to join a debate. Maybe, just maybe, during UNGASS 2016 on Narcotics this could be possible. 

Transparency is lacking. Many questions about the couple of well known AD projects need to be answered before it can be universally accepted. Such as:

How much was the size of the opium cultivation in the Doi Tung project area before the start of the AD plan there in 1988? 

How many hectares of illict opium poppy were being cultivated in Thailand in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s? Are these figures different from those published by UNODC and its predecessor UNDP?

How many opium addicts were there in Doi Tung?

How many of them were subjected to their right month treatment? 

Was this treatment voluntary?

How many relapsed?

How many are addicted now, and to what substances?

How much money has been spent on the entire project by the government and the NGO looking after it? 

Every year the addiction figures increase, as the UNODC released World Drug Reports, based on statistics sent by member countries, show. 

Yet, no one seems to be worried to really question why every attempt to curtail drug use is going awry. 

I conclude with a quotation from Professor Julia Buxton’s resoundingly persuasive paper The Great Disconnect questioning the whole concept of AD. Accusing the UNODC and others on the same side as it of “profound institutional sclerosis” she asks how can alternative development be successful if the end goal is prohibition. She says that drug policy and the drug policy reform pay too much attention to raw opium poppy and coca leaf rather than synthetics such as MDMA and ATS that are manufactured in the Global North. This underlines the bias in the international drug control model and the risk of further problematic interventions that exacerbate rather that alleviate poverty, and insecurity traditional drug cultivating regions. Why not have AD for synthetic producers too?

Illegal opium poppy cultivation in Sainj Valley, Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh, India>

The OTHER view of International Drug Day- what lies beneath the cover up

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World Drug Day- - Why have drug policies failed?


June 26 is the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1987. Today United Nation’s Offices of Drug and Crime (UNODC), in the developing world mainly, will be encouraging celebrations to mark World Drug Day. There will be sponsored speeches, sponsored processions waving sponsored placards, shouting sponsored slogans. What is there to wave and shout? Cultivation, trafficking, processing of synthetic substitutes and abuse of narcotics is higher than ever before. Increasing millions of drug users have limited access to treatment services, a basic violation of the right to health or life and the traffickers are more pushy.

On this day the UNODC invites a select audience (in the west no one bothers) to congratulate itself on a job done well. There are more drug users now than earlier. Evidence from UNODC’s own statistics disprove this:

Cannabis users:
147.4 million (1998) and 160 million (2008) an increase of 8.5%
Cocaine users:
13.4 million (1998) and 17 million (2008) an increase of 27%
Opiates users:
12.9 million (1998) and 17.35 million (2008) an increase of 34.5%

Then there are more than 100 mln synthetic drugs users that keep increasing every day. This day is a reminder that despite global strategies and policies, there are a growing number of drug users and traffickers.

The reason for this vast gap between hopes and performance is that the UN willfully blinds itself to reality couching its actions behind approvals by false prophets, puppet experts and committees that do what financially powerful countries want them to do.

Here is an example of how they deceive themselves. Antonio Costa, the former head of UNODC, in the 2008 World Drug Report’s Preface boasted that in 1909 there were more than 43000 (41,600 were produced in China- Source: Report of the International Opium Commission, Vol. I, 1909) tons of opium were produced and a hundred years later just about 8000, attributing this success to UNODC’s efforts. The truth is that it was the Government of the People’s Republic of China that cut the production to almost 5% by 1952. At that time China was not even a member of the UN, and yet with tongue firmly in cheek the UNODC takes credit. Consequently, in the 50s cultivation of illicit opium increased dramatically in the so called Golden Triangle.

The UNODC has a long history of misinterpreting facts, ignoring facts and shaping its policies on that of the US. It obliged the US by sending a docile team in March, 2001 that certified, after visiting one small corner of Achin in Nangarhar, that the brutal Taleban they had not cultivated opium in the Afghanistan under their control. The US wanted this certification to justify building a pipe line to carry gas from Turkmenistan through West Afghanistan. The real reason for this fall in production was that there was severe drought and the opium crop suffered proportionately. Only 180 tons or so was produced. About 8 mln suffered from hunger in 2000-1, but this reason was ignored. India’s own satellite surveys had shown that sowing of opium was as usual (Frontline 14-27, September, 2002). You play with the devil and every one suffers. Banking on this fake goodwill a Taleban delegation was taken to the US to meet leaders of the UN and the US.
The US started supporting narcotics trafficking in SE Asia from the 50s when CIA sponsored the Sea Supply Corporation and in the 60s Air America. They ferried narcotics, arms and cash for insurgents. It did not matter who they were financing as long as they were anti-communists. In The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia Alfred McCoy gives many disturbing facts and figures proving this unethical support. The same tactic was repeated in France when the CIA financed the Corsicans to bash French communists later exposed as The French Connection but glamourised in an American friendly film of the same name. Pierre Chouvy’s excellent expose of this nexus can be read in his gripping book called Opium: Uncovering the Politics of Opium. In Latin America the Contras were encouraged by the CIA to finance their hideous activities from cocaine.

In 1971 Nixon declared a War on Drugs, and soon this slogan was adopted by the UN, which provided the cloak for the US dagger. After Nixon’s grand declaration the US increased its support to narcotics trafficking as long as communists were being targeted. In SE Asia there was massive increase in opium cultivation that was tolerated by the US while as late as 2000-2 drug users were being killed in Thailand and small opium farmers in the Kachin State of Myanmar. A fact ignored by the UNODC while congratulating Thailand and Burma for a job well done. In Afghanistan of the 80s poppy cultivation was encouraged by the CIA, which was instrumental in getting most of the 80 or so DEA agents ejected from Pakistan so that the Mujahideen and the Taleban could drug finance their war against the Najibullah government of Afghanistan. In Nicaragua the US supported the Contras in their narcotics trafficking in the 80s. This is the double speak that comes naturally to the US. And the UNODC never opposed it.
The Special Session on Narcotics, which the UN had organized (UNGASS) in 1998, had claimed that the War on Drugs would be over successfully by 2015. The session in 2008 was more sober and refrained from making any predictions though it still used suspect data to express optimism.

This myopia of the UNODC is nothing new. Their War on Drugs started from 1961 when a group of so called experts articulated their fears in the Single Convention of the UN and proposed terrible punishments. These experts had declared that by 1985 there would be no coca chewing and no cannabis use (Article 49 (2) e & f) amongst many other similar laughable hopes. Coca chewing was a hasty senseless ban, and cannabis use has increased manifold. This and the other two Conventions with similar flaws the UNODC resists changing. In India, 1985 saw the emergence of the draconian NDPS Act, with the inception of which the legal use of morphine for pain alleviation came down the following year from 1 mg to .3 mg per head. As the risks of taking narcotics were high so were the prices, so was adulteration, so was needle sharing and thus so was HIV Aids.

The themes of the past ten World Drug Days have been health of the drug user ignoring the equally important trafficking component of the original idea. After all about 300 mln of the world’s 7 bln are addicted to some drug or the other. Yet health is far from UNODC’s actions. They have not yet been able to support decriminalization of drug users. Such a move will improve the health of millions of drug users the world over. This stubbornness of the UNODC towards change has forced several countries to make their own path with much more success in containing drug abuse and trafficking. UNODC still echoes only what the US thinks.. war, war, war. Despite UNODC’s insistence on health being their most urgent concern it took them more than 15 years to take the first hesitant steps in 2005 to encourage harm reduction programmes for drug users. Harm reduction means reducing the risks to the health of drug users by giving them unadulterated substitutes, access to clean needles and syringes, services for sexually transmitted infections, hepatitis and tuberculosis, pain and distress management, psycho social support and employment opportunities. As the US had objected to it, the UNODC too did not adopt it for long. After pressure from more progressive countries could not be ignored they began endorsing it tentatively.


India too has suffered from UNODC’s obtuse adherence to the Conventions. In 1971 or so a onetime exemption was given to the Government to provide subsidized opium for registered users. At that time there were about 300,000 or so. In 1999 less than a hundred were left. But the actual number of opiate users in 1999 was about 2 mln. It was suggested to the UNODC then that another exemption could be given so that all these users could be identified and given subsidized opium. This move would have helped in their rehabilitation as well as prevented diversion from licit cultivation. The UNODC disagreed. India now has 3 mln opiates and several thousands of illicit opium cultivation in 7 states, and India’s narcotics establishment does not have the will to go against a mere paper even though its own people are suffering and being exploited. Many other countries ignore the inconvenience of being signatories and go ahead and do what they think is best for their people. E.g. Portugal, Brazil, Netherlands etc et al.

On the 2nd of June an appeal to end the War on Drugs (WOD), organized by the Global Commission on Drugs and prepared by the prominent Trans National Institute of Amsterdam some twenty former heads of state and foreign policy chiefs of the UN, EU, US, Brazil, Mexico, Switzerland etc and the serving PM of Greece criticized WOD as a complete failure and favoured decriminalization and regulation of drugs. Users of narcotics should be offered education and treatment, rather than being incarcerated, they advised. And countries which insist on continuing a "law enforcement" approach to drug crime should focus resources on taking down high-level traffickers, rather than arresting street dealers. A positive sign even though some of these leaders did not express themselves as strenuously when they were in power. A surprise inclusion was a former Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Anan during whose tenure UNGASS 1998 reaffirmed its faith in WOD. The US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said the report was misguided. Head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov said "The aim of the report is to distract attention and not to allow the international community to consolidate efforts in the fight against a drug threat". Conveniently forgetting that 50 years of doing just that has only worsened the mess. For the sake of the well being of 300 mln drug users it is to be hoped that people in power do not wait till after retirement to speak what they feel.

The world’s narcotics bureaucracy still insists that this is the only way! Now though less is heard of the term WOD the policy prevails. The UNODC adopted the philosophy of the War on Drugs as well as the phrase. For the US Government it was only a hypocritical slogan as they continued to collaborate with insurgents and drug gangs to drug finance their wars against communism. This cooperation with drug traffickers covered Asia, Europe and Latin America and spanned 4 decades.


In India basic rights for drug users is still missing. Complete absence of justice. The national health policy also has ignored the drug users. 10 mln drug users and half a million serious drug users require medical help fast, but many of them are in jail, hardly enough rehab centres and no one bothers. In 2003 I had met a heroin using male model from Tarn Taran. He told me that 20% of all the youth in the border villages of Punjab are addicted. Today more than 50% of the youth in all the villages from Pathankot to Abohar are taking Afghan heroin despite arrest rates having shot up by 35%.

The reason for the drugs to mushroom has been the US’s failure to contain its own drug users and traffickers and its support to drug trafficking all over the world to serve its immediate political ends, and the UNODC’s inability to oppose it.
The war on drugs slogan dutifully adopted by the UNODC in the 80s meant actually war on only the drug users. Not on the traffickers, who are conspicuously absent from every World Drug Day themes. Everywhere, India included, most of the people incarcerated, harassed and prosecuted have been and are drug users. Many countries are trying to humanize their laws but they have incurred the skepticism and wrath of the Western Block.

US, the country that introduced WOD to the UN, has a drug problem that is out of control despite total war on drug users. About 21,000 dead of drug over dose in 2008. 21 mln addicts several of the injecting users being as young as 12 years. Yet it presumes to dictate to the world how it ought to tackle their problem. The UNODC has no Country Office to help them, as it does in every developing nation. WOD meant incessant attacks on the weakest in their society. In California, with 170,000 prisoners (40% for minor drug crimes and most of them Black) more money is spent on incarceration than on education. In a May 2011 TNI essay “Education or Incarceration” Tom Reifer, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of San Diego wrote “With only 5% of the world’s population, the US now has 25% of the world’s prisoners; ..... One indication of fiscal priorities is that the average starting salaries of California correctional officers are higher than those of Assistant Professors at the University of California....” This is the pillar of democracy that guides the UN by the collar. Mainly because it is its largest funder. $3.9 bln in 2008. Of the $470 mln budget of the UNODC the US with about $90 mln is the single largest contributor.

The many experienced people who have worked, uninfluenced, for a long time with all kinds of narcotics problems, say that the most sensible policy is to treat drug abuse as an ailment and to completely decriminalize it. 50 years of severity has only served to worsen all statistics. Several countries from Europe and Latin America have bucked the pressure, cynicism, scorn and opposition of the US, UK and the UNODC. They have liberalized their laws for drug users. Switzerland in 1991 and Portugal in 2001 and Netherlands, Mexico, Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina too have all made laws easier for drug users. Portugal’s has been a carefully recorded change. They found that the drug abuse has come down and police is making bigger cases against traffickers. Bolivian President Evo Morales fed up with the obtuseness of the UNODC to continue with the ban on coca chewing brought a wad last year to a Conference in Vienna on drugs and chewed it to show that in his country it was a traditional pick me up with no after effects. Their high altitude miners chew it every day. He has threatened to pull out of the UN if this ban is not lifted. Hardly anyone is as outspoken as Morales. I have not heard of any specialized drug organisstions or dissenting countries aggressively pursue a review of all the three Conventions, which ought to be upper most in all agendas.

With casuistry, misrepresentation and fudging of facts being the weapons of the UNODC can there be any progress?

There is an impressive array of experience, good sense, and talent providing good guidance towards a future course of action to contain the drugs problem. All seem to accept the fact that the UNODC is indispensable. Instead of combining their energies to reform the world’s largest NGO they keep taking pot shots at it without making a dent. They are like dhows armed with bows and arrows attacking a battle ship. They should instead take charge of the steering wheel. Reform is a word that is anathema to the UN system. The UN system lacks confidence to such an extent that they fear that even a mild reform is “thin edge of the wedge” and will bring their house down. That is why in the past two years a loose coalition of countries led by the US and branding themselves as “Friends of the Convention” has come up to articulate their fears of reform. This motley collection has more money than sense, and thus a darling of UNODC.

Why does the UN shy away from reform, which is long overdue? In the past 50 years there has been change everywhere but not in the UNODC.

Indispensible it is but certainly not infallible. The UNODC is a useful organisation to coordinate world’s actions in controlling drug use. It is the only arrangement that can bring together about 190 countries to discuss common drug issues. That it has not been successful in its main goal is because it is not transparent, democratic and impervious to the clout of its large donors. It has cynically ignored those well meaning countries that have made a successful path of their own, refusing to learn from them.

The movement against UNODC’s policies has also its ample share of nuts, who say that Enforcement is responsible for drug wars and gang warfare (Report by specialists and doctors from the University of British Columbia wrote in The International Journal of Drug Policy March, 2011), and some who say that addiction to drugs is a matter of right (Harm Reduction Conference, Liverpool 2010) etc! The foolish war on drugs has spawned a similar moronic reaction. The UNODC is also the only International organisation that has the capacity to have ascendancy over this kind of extremism, but because it has so many frailties it is unable to do so. Typically of such one sided shoddy research is the fact that no one from enforcement participated. Such demented thinking harms attempts to reform as these Liliputian Quixotes are easily brushed aside and discredit the entire movement.

It ought to be realized that the well entrenched narcotics establishment as well as the UNODC cannot be dislodged. It has to be rebuilt.