Pubdate: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 Source: Financial Times (UK) Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 2004 Contact: http://www.ft.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/154 Author: Raymond Colitt Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?172 (Peruvian Aircraft Shooting) BRAZIL'S PEACEFUL PRESIDENT DECLARES WAR ON TRAFFICKERS Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidency with the election slogan "Love and Peace". But after 18 months in office his pacificist leanings are being tested by the growing menace of drug trafficking. An influx of cocaine and other narcotics is blamed for many of the 370,000 deaths by violence in Brazil during the 1990s. Drugs have financed arms purchases and intensified turf wars between gangs in Rio de Janeiro and other cities. Now, amid rising public anger at the level of urban violence, Mr Lula da Silva is to authorise Brazil's air force to shoot down any unidentified aircraft suspected of smuggling narcotics. The move is one of several announced by the government in recent months that signal an increasing militarisation of efforts to prevent the entry of drugs from Colombia and Peru. In the Sao Luiz cemetery, surrounded by the sprawling favelas of southern Sao Paulo, the tombstones tell the same shocking story. Two-thirds of the 150,000 men buried here were aged between 13 and 25. Eighty per cent are reckoned to have been killed in urban violence linked to drug and arms dealing. "The government is beginning to realise there is a link between regional and local insecurity - what happens in Colombia matters in the streets of Rio," says Rubem Cesar Fernandes, executive director of VivaRio, a community group. Brazil for some time has been a transit country for drugs from Colombia. Yet with controls tightening elsewhere, drugs have instead flooded into Brazil's cities in recent years. The number of cocaine users trebled in the 1990s. In addition, says Giovanni Quaglia, Brazilian head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, drug consumption in developed countries is "reaching a level of saturation. Brazil is an attractive market." The US government estimates Brazil is now the second-largest single-country market for cocaine in the world. Hence Mr Lula da Silva's new tough approach. Last month the government ordered the creation of an elite police force to combat drug trafficking and quell urban violence. By the end of the year it is to total 2,000 troops. In addition, the army will relocate a brigade of 3,000 troops from Rio de Janeiro to help patrol rivers and roads along the borders with Colombia and Venezuela. Last month, the Senate passed legislation that will allow the armed forces to take on police tasks in the fight against drugs. The bill "represents the armed forces' substantial increase in support, in agreement with the wishes of Brazilian society, in combating international crime", the defence ministry said. The measures are not universally applauded. The government's response, says Mr Fernandes, remains diffuse and inflexible. "The police are like the Catholic church in the Middle Ages: extremely hierarchical and bureaucratic." One risk, other critics say, is that a "war on drugs" could undermine prevention measures. "Brazil should not follow the American model of repression and threats, which has proven to be ineffective," argues Denis Mizne, head of Sou da Paz, a peace advocacy group. He says Brazil's "inadequate" drug prevention effort - mainly educational - should be led by the health and justice ministries, not a public security ministry run by a military official. The US has so far poured $2.8bn (UKP1.5bn) into Plan Colombia, its counter-narcotics and military aid programme in the Americas and is considering an increase in aid. But the results have been mixed. The US claims success in eradicating significant areas of drug cultivation in Colombia. Yet critics say the overall export volume has not been reduced significantly. New coca plantations as well as increasing productivity have offset eradication. In 2001, Peru and Colombia abandoned the practice of shooting down suspicious aircraft after an incident in which the Peruvian air force, with the help of US intelligence, mistakenly shot down an aircraft carrying American missionaries. Colombia resumed the policy last year. Brazil says it is taking measures to prevent such tragedies. Only suspicious aircraft lacking proper registration and an official flight path which failed to respond to radio and visual contact as well as warning shots would be fired at. Nevertheless, even the authorities admit there are limits to how successful the new approach is likely to be. "Technically, we can track and shoot down the planes but we don't always have the resources," says Getulio Bezerra, head of the Federal Police's organised crime division. "You will never be able to end drug trafficking through repression. No country has and neither will we." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake