WHY THE WAR ON DRUGS ISN’T AN EASY MISSION

From: Ouko joachim omolo
Colleagues Home & Abroad Regional News

BY FR JOACHIM OMOLO OUKO, AJ
NAIROBI-KENYA
WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 2012

It is hardly twenty four hours ago I reported how Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako Tobiko will not be able to implement the recommendations made by the Parliamentary Committee on the controversial issue of the 1.2 tones cocaine haul seized in 2004 that it is back in Parliament again.

That was then, now the MPs are still demanding a full disclosure of investigations into the matter. Ikolomani MP Boni Khalwale is accusing Attorney-General Githu Muigai for keeping a safe distance on the matter when the House was looking for him to answer what he knows on the impounded cocaine.

It is not that Prof Muigai is refusing to answer questions, only that he needs more time to consult the DPP on the queries of how sensitive the issue is and what implication it would entail should they make it public. AG cannot answer the questions on whether names of MPs implicated in the report have a hand or not.

Internal Security Minister George Saitoti had earlier informed the House that MPs Ali Hassan Joho (Kisauni), William Kabogo (Juja), Harun Mwau (Kilome) and Gideon Mbuvi alias Mike Sonko (Makadara) and Mombasa tycoon Ali Punjani are being investigated for alleged drug trafficking.

The names are in a US embassy dossier which former ambassador Michael Ranneberger gave to the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (Kacc) some months ago. Mr Kabogo had a dossier of his own, which he claimed also named Saboti MP Eugene Wamalwa and Kamukunji MP Simon Mbugua. He also said it implicates the wife of “a very senior person in the country”.

Mr Kabogo and Mr Joho did not only deny all links to drug dealing and insisted that those who had mentioned them be investigated for “peddling falsehoods, Mr Joho demanded unsuccessfully that his name be removed from the list until investigations are concluded, saying the allegations against him were scandalous and meant ‘to kill him politically.’

Mr Mbuvi on the other hand described the report “as full of false allegations”, claiming that that three senior police officers who had forced their way into his parliamentary office at Continental House linking him to drug trafficking did that falsely.

US President Barack Obama did not only list Mr Mwau and businesswoman Naima Mohamed Nyakinywa as drug traffickers, slapping harsh economic sanctions against them but also US citizens who do business with Mwau risk going to jail for 30 years or being fined as much as Sh400 million.

Those listed as drug traffickers stand to lose all their property in the US, or any business in which they have an interest. This is because many international financial transfers are processed in the US. The Kingpin Act, signed into law on December 3, 1999, gives the US government power to seize property belonging to people the president believes are drug dealers.

It also gives the government authority to block the property of any person or company “materially assisting in, or providing financial or technological support for or to, or providing goods or services in support of, the international narcotics trafficking activities of a person”. It is the same law that prohibits US citizens from doing business with listed suspects.

Others whose properties have been seized under this law are Manuel Torres Felix (Mexico), Gonzalo Inzunza Inzunza (Mexico), Haji Lal Jan Ishaqzai (Afghanistan), Kamchybek Asanbekovich Kolbayev (Kyrgyzstan) and Javier Antonio Calle Serna (Colombia).

US have to be hard on drug dealers following an urban legend which states that most US banknotes have traces of cocaine on them. This is in fact accurate according to 1994 when the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that in Los Angeles, out of every four banknotes, on average more than three are tainted by cocaine or another illicit drug.

Since 2006, some 22,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in US. Thousands more have been wounded, countless others “disappeared or tortured.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC) estimate that profits derived from narcotics rackets amount to some $600 billion annually and that up to $1.5 trillion dollars in drug money is laundered through seemingly legitimate enterprises.

In most cases drug dealers have a wide connection that is why it is very difficult to fight against it. In Afghanistan for instance, Ahmed Wali Karzi, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, instead of being arrested gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder.

This is despite the fact that the Obama administration has repeatedly vowed to crack down on the drug lords who are believed to permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration.

Even the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico is not safe either. In July 2009 the spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City, Father Hugo Valdemar, told reporters that three bishops in Michoacan have received death threats from drug trafficking gangs.

The bishops were not only to be killed for preaching against the illicit drugs but because one of the churches in Mexico received money from drug traffickers to build the church.

Mexican officials estimate that over 34,000 have been killed in the country due to drug-related violence since 2006. Corrupt officials are allying with criminals to skim drug profits and using the military to murder criminals who might reveal any collusion.

Some churches have benefited from the criminal underworld, receiving hefty donations from members who sit in their pews on Sundays but work as traffickers during the week. That is why most priests are not preaching against the trafficking.

Some priests of course, do not preach against it because they have also been the target of violence. Masses have been interrupted by gunfire, and some priests have been shot dead when they attempt to preach against the trafficking.

It explains why when Pope Benedict XVI at a huge outdoor Mass on Sunday in March this year condemned drug trafficking and corruption in Mexico, urging people to renounce violence in the country where a brutal war between cartels has killed tens of thousands of people, he did that under a tight security.

People for Peace in Africa (PPA)
P O Box 14877
Nairobi
00800, Westlands
Kenya

Tel +254-7350-14559/+254-722-623-578
E-mail- ppa@africaonline.co.ke
omolo.ouko@gmail.com
Website: www.peopleforpeaceafrica.org

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