The Geopolitics of Dope

Over recent months, the level of violence along the U.S.-Mexican border has begun to rise substantially, with some of it spilling into the United States. Last week, the Mexican government began military operations on its side of the border against Mexican gangs engaged in smuggling drugs into the United States. The action apparently pushed some of the gang members north into the United States in a bid for sanctuary. Low-level violence is endemic to the border region. But while not without precedent, movement of organized, armed cadres into the United States on this scale goes beyond what has become accepted practice. The dynamics in the borderland are shifting and must be understood in a broader, geopolitical context. . . .

The United States has been willing to tolerate levels of criminality along the border. The only time when the United States shifted its position was when organized groups in Mexico both established themselves north of the political border and engaged in significant violence. Thus, in 1916, when the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa began operations north of the border, the U.S. Army moved into Mexico to try to destroy his base of operations. This has been the line that, when crossed, motivated the United States to take action, regardless of the economic cost. The current upsurge in violence is now pushing that line.

Marijuana Growing Called Biggest Threat to National Parks
June 18, 2003

Email Print Subscribe News Summary

U.S. officials say illegal marijuana farming is the biggest threat to national parks since their creation over a century ago, the Christian Science Monitor reported June 10.
“This is massive-scale agriculture that is threatening the very mission of the national parks, which is to preserve the natural environment in perpetuity and provide for safe public recreation,” said Bill Tweed, chief naturalist at Sequoia National Park in California. “Growers are killing wildlife, diverting streams, introducing nonnative plants, creating fire and pollution hazards, and bringing the specter of violence. For the moment, we are failing both parts of our mission, and that is tragic.”

For decades, park rangers have discovered small cannabis stands in national parks, but now the operation is on a much larger scale. Illegal marijuana farming has increased significantly in parks with international borders, including Sequoia, Glacier National Park in Montana, and Big Bend National Park in Texas.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said drug farming has moved from remote forests to public national parks. As a result of tighter security on U.S. borders, park rangers, as well as visitors, are running into more armed growers in the wilderness.

“The most visitors used to worry about is running into a grizzly bear. Now there is the specter of violence by a masked [illegal] alien toting an AK-47,” said David Barna, chief spokesman for the National Park Service (NPS).

Park officials said marijuana growers are causing havoc. Besides clearing trees and brush to cultivate marijuana plants, growers often terrace the land, stirring up soil and attracting plants that wouldn’t otherwise take hold. In addition, the diversion of water is hindering the migration of wildlife, and pollution from fertilizer runoff is killing fish.

“The whole trend is that these groups are moving around more and heading to areas which are more populated,” said Laura Mark, an agent for the U.S. Forest Service. “They are going after public land meant for families, where they threaten people and cause untold damage. And they don’t care because they are making more money than most will see in a lifetime.”

National Park Service Overwhelmed by Marijuana Farms
July 31, 2003

Email Print Subscribe News Summary

National parks in the U.S. are being dotted with so many marijuana farms that park rangers are struggling to weed them out, according to the Aug. 4 issue of Time magazine.
In many cases, marijuana plantations are just a few hundred yards from popular tourist areas. As a result, many vacationers are faced with armed combat as Forest Service rangers conduct raids to catch the growers.

One July morning at the Sugar Pine Recreation Area in California’s Tahoe National Forest, for instance, rangers arrested a Mexican laborer keeping watch over a marijuana plantation as campers slept in lakeside tents.

“We’re good at jungle warfare,” said Laura Mark, a Forest Service investigator. “We’re the ninjas of the woods.”

Armed encounters have been commonplace in California’s national parks since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which led to tightened security along U.S. borders. Since it’s more difficult to transport drugs into the United States, Mexican traffickers are growing sprawling marijuana farms in America’s national parks.

“We have a tremendous influx of Mexican growers,” said Ross Butler, a special agent for the federal Bureau of Land Management. “They are sophisticated. They have guns. And we don’t know much about who they are.”

Some marijuana plantations unfold over several hundred acres and have as many as 50,000 plants. According to law-enforcement officials, 420,000 marijuana plants with a street value of $1.5 billion were removed from California’s 18 federal forests last year, a tenfold increase from 1994.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said the marijuana growers are posing a danger to tourists, especially hunters. The growers often mistake innocent tourists for thieves or police.

“If you are a hunter, a fisherman or a backpacker, it can be dangerous,” said Michael Delaney, who oversees marijuana cases for the DEA in Northern California. “There’s a safety factor for everyone who is out there.”

Because of limited resources, park rangers are unable to stop the marijuana growers. Currently, there are only seven drug-enforcement agents available to police the 20 million acres of federal forests in California.

“This is a huge criminal enterprise, and we have so few resources to fight it,” said Mark. “There are more growers than we know about or can deal with. We pick off a couple. The rest get away.”

A longer article about our national parks and dangerous drug growers...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0610/p01s03-usgn.html

COMMANDO STYLE: National park rangers in camouflage gear and bulletproof vests, toting M-16 assault rifles, comb the Sequoia hillsides in search of marijuana. Cannabis growers, fearful of rivals and protective of their valuable crops, are often heavily armed, according to park officials.

Excerpt
'Now there is the specter of violence' Since the late 1990s, marijuana cultivation has escalated dramatically in the more remote public areas such as national forests - many of which permit mining, forestry, grazing, and other activities - and areas under the stewardship of the Bureau of Land Management. Marijuana seizure in California national forests has jumped tenfold, from 45,054 plants in 1994 to 495,000 plants last year.

But since Sept. 11, drug farming has increasingly spread from remote forests to more-public national parks. Tighter security on US borders has raised the incentive for domestic cultivation. That makes for more armed growers - and potential clashes with those traipsing into the wilderness for nature at its most pristine.

As well as growing more common, the enterprise has become more organized. International drug cartels - made up largely of Mexican nationals - seem especially drawn to the bounty. And their harvests can be huge: last year, officials here seized the biggest stash of all, with 34,000 plants in five locations at an estimated street value of $140 million. Complicating the task for law enforcement is the strain on resources. Park budgets have tightened, and many of the available rangers have been shifted to more popular haunts.

"The most [visitors] used to worry about is running into a grizzly bear. Now there is the specter of violence by a masked alien toting an AK-47," says David Barna, chief spokesman for the National Park Service (NPS). He and others say the problem is national, but most pronounced in California, Utah, and Arkansas, and in parks with international borders such as Big Bend in Texas and Glacier in Montana.

Here in California, the biggest problems have been at Sequoia, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area and Point Reyes National Seashore. Officials say the accouterments of cannabis farming - black tubing, drip-irrigation techniques, terraced gardens, booby traps, look-out posts, and weapons - are so similar across the plots that the same organizations are probably at work. "Intelligence gathering ... up and down the state suggests these are the same groups expanding their operations into different areas," says Steve Prokop of Whiskeytown, near Mount Shasta.

Sequoia officials began concerted efforts to comb remote areas in 2001, when a fisherman reported meeting masked operatives toting automatic rifles. Since then, officials have discovered five camps and several acres of marijuana stalks, typically in areas with natural water sources. Last year, officials destroyed eight tons of crops and counted thousands of plants that had already been harvested - and they surmise that many other plots exist undetected. Eight Mexican nationals are due for trial in September.

A heavy toll and an arduous task

For years, drug enforcement in national parks was focused on scouting out methamphetamine labs. Marijuana gardens were few in comparison and were rarely large-scale enterprises, according to Holly Bundock, chief NPS spokeswoman for California.

"We used to find smaller gardens every once in a while, but what is going on now is far more organized," says Al DeLaCruz, chief criminal investigator for Sequoia. "The impact [on] resources is very dramatic in terms of the refuse left behind; the damage to vegetation, soil, and water."

Besides clearing trees and brush to plant marijuana, growers often terrace the land, stirring up soil - and attracting plants that wouldn't otherwise take hold. Officials fear those exotic newcomers and the havoc they could wreak, reminiscent of an influx of star thistle on California ranch land that rendered millions of acres useless.

Honestly, I don’t think we’re going to be able to that really either. If we build a fence we’ll probably stop a lot of peasant worker types from coming over. It would help with the illegal alien problem. But, we’re never going to have an impenetrable border. Huge quantities of contraband make it through border crossing checkpoints everyday hidden in private vehicles or big trucks or secreted on the persons of pedestrian smugglers walking through the checkpoints. A lot of the terrorists who have come before came in legally. Terrorists are still going to be able to make it in legally, and they’ll still be able to sneak across our borders as well, especially if they are well funded. They could come in with fake ID’s or hidden in a load of goods. They could come in by boat in the middle of the night, or by plane, or through a tunnels, or over the fence or through it. Somehow or another if people want in this country bad enough, they’ll figure out a way to do it. I think it is naive to believe we can completely secure our borders such that drugs or terrorists cannot get through. We have thousands and thousands of miles of border. We do billions and billions of dollars worth of trade every year with our neighbors and other nations throughout the world. Our ports are busy, our border crossings are busy with huge amounts of goods and people coming in every day. It’s always going to be possible for undesirable people and contraband to come in.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.