LIMA: Peru's next president faces the tough challenge of stemming cocaine production, with the country set to overtake Colombia as the world's top producer amid rising fears of Mexican-style drug violence.
The issue has been on the periphery of campaigning for Sunday elections to choose a successor to President Alan Garcia, in which four candidates have a chance of making it into a second round run-off.
But it is set to provoke new debate when the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime publishes an annual report mid-2011 that will show Peru as the world's top cocaine producer, according to independent experts and official sources.
"The state has not done what it should have to stop it, and that's why drug trafficking has seen sustained growth through the past decade," sociologist Jaime Antezana of Lima's Catholic University told AFP.
Observers blame the problem on an increase in demand in Europe, Asia and Latin America as well as pressure on Peru due to the success of the US-backed Plan Colombia that shifted drug production elsewhere in the Andes.
Garcia complained last year about the small amount of anti-drug aid Peru received from the United States compared to Colombia.
"I once told President Obama: 'it's your fault (the rising production) because you've put all the money into Colombia,'" Garcia told CNN in Spanish.
Peru's production has risen constantly in recent years, to 302 ton in 2008, the latest figure available, as Colombia's production fell -- from 690 ton a decade ago to 410 in 2009.
Peru overtook Colombia as the world's top producer of coca leaves in 2009, and laundered money from the illegal drug industry represented between 2.5 and 6.3 percent of GDP in 2009, according to an officially-commissioned report.
Meanwhile, score-settling and murders have risen on a small scale in Pacific port cities, which transport most of Peru's cocaine, provoking alarm in the media over the influence of Mexican and Colombian cartels.
"In 2010, there were 11 armed clashes between drug gang hitmen and security forces," Antezana said. "Peru has never seen such figures."
Security forces are still fighting two factions of Peru's leftist Shining Path guerrillas who are competing for control of the cocaine trade. Some 30 deaths were blamed on related clashes in central coca-producing areas in 2010.
The issue has been overshadowed in campaigning by promises to sustain Peru's economic boom or to tackle poverty and crime, apart from broad declarations to "declare war" on drug trafficking.
"The candidates don't know how to or really want to approach the issue, because they'd then have to take partial responsibility for the total failure today," said Hugo Cabieses, an economist specialized in the drug economy.
"Moreover, there's nothing new on the horizon. It's just the same strategy of prohibition, which has had no result up to now. But drug trafficking will make the next government pay for the lack of a coherent strategy."
In a more sinister reading, secret diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks early this year show repeated concern from the United States over suspected links between Peruvian politicians and drug traffickers in the past half-decade.
One cable alleged that a candidate who now leads a regional list of the party of Keiko Fujimori -- the daughter of the country's former strongman Alberto Fujimori -- had received money from drug trafficking in the 2006 campaign, according to local sources.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.