Narcoterrorism

Origins of Narcoterrorism

During the tumultuous 1960s, the United States and many other Western countries saw attitudes toward recreational drugs change significantly, and use of illegal drugs increased steadily in the industrialized world. Drug sales are believed to generate $30 billion dollars in revenue in the United States alone; this figure does not include profits from money laundering and other services necessary for drug trafficking. Countries that are the source of most illegal drugs are often extremely poor, their governments weak, and the civil and social structures chaotic. In such conditions, drug traffickers have been able to attain tremendous power and influence.

Political activism and rebellions also increased during the 1960s, with some student and revolutionary movements giving rise to terrorist groups still operating today. During the Cold War (1947–1991), terrorist groups, particularly those that advocated communism, often received funds in secret from various state sponsors. During the 1980s, however, state sponsorship of terrorism began to decline, and, with the fall of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe during the early 1990s, this source of funds for terrorists dried up almost completely. In a world dominated by a sole superpower and becoming ever more interconnected via globalization, the international community found cooperation (e.g., passing economic sanctions) against terrorist-sponsoring states easier.

Terrorist groups turned to other sources of revenue—kidnappings, hostage taking, bank robbery, and drug trafficking. Drug trafficking is quite possibly the most profitable and reliable of these revenue sources, and terrorist groups throughout the world engage in it.

The Narcoguerrilla

Narcoterrorism was first recognized in Latin America; the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym, FARC) provides a typical example.

[Page 252]Coca, the main ingredient of cocaine, is indigenous to Colombia. As cocaine consumption increased worldwide during the 1970s, coca became a major cash crop for many Colombian peasants, one whose profit margin was vastly superior to every other. This decade also saw the rise of the FARC. The group's goal—to inspire a Marxist revolt among the Colombian peasantry—is political and originated independent of drug trafficking. As with any guerrilla army or rebel group, however, one of the FARC's goals was to drive government armed forces from its areas of operation. The FARC had had some success in the remote Colombian countryside.

When the FARC was firmly in control of remote areas and effectively replacing government authority, it began to traffic in drugs. Initially, this may have grown out of its assertion of control: the FARC exacts “taxes,” or extortion payments, from every landowner or business in the areas it controls—coca-growing peasants were no different from coffee-growing peasants, and coca traffickers no different from coffee exporters. The revenues the FARC received from drug traffickers and growers were considerably higher than those realized from legal industries, however. The guerrillas quickly moved from taxing the traffickers to offering to protect coca markets, labs, and airstrips from government attack. For the narcoguerrilla, the illegal nature of both the drug trade and the rebellion were complementary; untrammeled by national or international law, guerrillas can openly offer traffickers their services, and traffickers are happy to pay richly for that protection.

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