| | |  Editorials | Issues | September 2009 
Drugs-Venezuela: More Seizures, but Decertification by US
 Humberto Márquez - Inter Press Service
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September 14, 2009
 |  | In the past few years we have arrested 33 leaders of drug trafficking organisations and deported them to Colombia, the United States or other countries.
- Néstor Reverol |  | | |
Caracas - Seizures of illegal drugs in transit through Venezuela are on the rise, and the country maintains "working cooperation" with the United States in the fight against trafficking. But for all its pains, it has been decertified by the U.S., which refuses to sell it equipment for military and police forces, complains Néstor Reverol, the head of the National Anti-Drug Office (ONA).
The U.S. government will probably not re-certify Venezuela as being in compliance with international drug control agreements in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) on Sept. 15, the Venezuelan official told journalists.
"Or perhaps they won't decertify us, after all, because then (the U.S.) Congress would not be able to fund non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that destabilise this country," Reverol said.
The government of socialist President Hugo Chávez alleges that several NGOs working in the fields of social and political rights are following instructions from Washington aimed at destabilising Venezuela.
According to the government, Venezuela is not a producer or grower of drugs but a transit country, "because we live next door to the largest producer of cocaine (Colombia) and across the street from the main consumer (the United States)," Reverol said.
He hailed as a success the rising amounts of drugs seized: 30.2 tonnes in 2000, 39.4 in 2002, 43.2 in 2004, 60.6 in 2006 and 54.6 tonnes in 2008, of which 33.6 percent was cocaine and the remainder marihuana.
So far this year, 23.4 tonnes of marihuana and 20.7 tonnes of cocaine have been confiscated, added Reverol. A total of 4,491 people have been arrested for drug-related offences, among them nearly 400 foreigners, including 272 Colombians.
Asked by IPS for an estimate of the volume of drugs that actually passes through Venezuela in transit, Reverol declined to give what he called "a ceiling figure," because "those who try to calculate the gap between drugs seized and drugs that get through usually look at the ceiling and pick whatever number they fancy."
According to Reverol, Colombia produced 438 tonnes of cocaine in 2008, of which only 10 percent was exported overland. The rest was shipped by air and sea, via the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, to North America and other destinations, by routes far from Venezuela's borders.
But Mildred Camero, a former head of the ONA, said that an estimated 300 tonnes of drugs a year may be smuggled through Venezuela.
U.S. authorities "have estimated drug trafficking in transit through Venezuela at 250 tonnes a year, and this could be a conservative figure because their reports do not take into account certain information, such as that 70 percent of the consignments seized in Spain last year originated in Venezuela," Camero told the local press.
A U.S. Senate study commissioned by Congress's Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported some alarming figures in July, and as a result there was a call for a review of U.S. policy towards Venezuela.
According to the report, "the estimated flow of cocaine (produced in Colombia) transiting Venezuela toward the United States, West Africa, and Europe increased more than fourfold from about 60 metric tons in 2004 to about 260 metric tons in 2007."
In 2007, U.S. security agencies spotted 178 aircraft originating from Venezuelan airspace which were suspected or confirmed to be transporting drugs, compared with 109 similar flights in 2004, the report said.
Between January and May 2009, six light planes with fake Venezuelan identification markings were found in Honduras, carrying cargoes of drugs or showing evidence of having done so. Two of them were carrying one-and-a-half tonnes of cocaine.
On the other hand, Venezuela has granted the U.S. Coast Guard permission to board vessels flying the Venezuelan flag in international waters, for drug interdiction purposes, and has intercepted ships carrying drug shipments on its own coasts when tipped off or requested to do so by U.S. authorities.
Furthermore, "in the past few years we have arrested 33 leaders of drug trafficking organisations and deported them to Colombia, the United States or other countries," said Reverol, showing that "working cooperation" is continuing with Washington.
This coordination is happening in spite of the 2005 closure by Venezuela of the local office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), housed within the ONA headquarters itself, and the expulsion of DEA officials, accused of spying. The DEA agents' practice of using "controlled deliveries" of drugs in sting operations was another bone of contention.
Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking member on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said in July he was "concerned" at Venezuela's refusal to cooperate with the United States, which he said was due to "corruption in that country's government" and anti-drug agencies.
"The DEA would make what it calls 'controlled drug deliveries' (illegal under Venezuelan law) and then it would not submit any report we could use to dismantle the criminal organisations," Reverol said.
However, two DEA agents still work out of the U.S. embassy in Caracas, and the ONA communicates with them on an ad hoc basis, for processing specific information.
Reverol said that Washington "took away, with no explanation, three radars it had installed in Venezuela, and we had to buy 10 from China; and it vetoed our intended purchase of Super Tucano reconnaissance planes from Brazil because they contained U.S. avionics, and instead we had to buy K-8s from China."
Other equipment "like scanners for the police to use in searching for drugs, or for scanning people and containers at ports and airports, we have had to buy from Europe because the United States won't sell them to us," Reverol said.
Finally, as if anticipating the Sept. 15 INCSR report, he asked "which country, then, isn't cooperating in the fight against drugs?" |
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