Fighting Drugs and Building Peace

The Friedrich Ebert Stiftung has published a report I co-authored with Alexandra Guaqueta on a conference on how to implement counter-narcotics policies in a conflict or post-conflict situation. The conference was co-sponsored by FES, the Center on International Cooperation (NYU), the Fundacion Ideas para la Paz (Bogota), and the Open Society Institute. The conference also benefited from support from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

FES describes the report as follows:

A frequently overlooked feature of the fight against drugs is the linkages between the production of illegal narcotics and the political dynamics in post-conflict countries. Afghanistan and Colombia are cases in point.Post-conflict situations not only attract the cultivation of crops used for the production of illegal drugs. Events in Guinea-Buissau and Haiti illustrate that the same sad logic applies to the international drug mafia’s selection of trading “hot spots”.It is against this background that a debate has ensued on the policy coherence between the international community’s fight against drugs and its parallel efforts to sustain peace in post-conflict countries.

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