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DEA to Open Office in Nairobi

The DEA will be continuing its Most Excellent African Adventures plan in 2011 and beyond.

Next up: It will open an office in Nairobi, Kenya. Why? Because, like with Liberia and Ghana, it wants to stop drugs from going from South America to Africa and then Europe. From the State Departments 2011 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report:

The principal U.S. counternarcotics objective in Kenya is to interdict the flow of narcotics to the United States. A related objective is to limit the corrosive effects of narcotics-related corruption in law enforcement, the judiciary, and political institutions. ....In support of this effort, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is in the process of opening a country office in Nairobi. Personnel from the DEA Pretoria Country Office offered support to the Government of Kenya in counter-narcotics over the course of FY 2010.

For information about all our drug enforcement efforts around the world, the full report is here. How much is this costing us? The State Department's 2011 international drug control budget runs 221 pages and is available here. Total: $2,136 million. [More...]

For Africa (where drugs go from South America and then to Europe, not the U.S.): $17 million for Liberia in 2011. Compared to $4 million in 2009 and $9 million in 2010. What do we get for this increase? Drug stings where the participants have no intention of bringing drugs to the U.S. (except when the DEA informants announce they are going to send their share to the U.S. so the DEA can manufacture jurisdiction in U.S. courts and we can spend even more money detaining the suspects, prosecuting them, paying for defense lawyers and if convicted, their decades of incarceration.)

For Mexico and Central and South America:

  • Mexico: $292 million
  • Colombia: $204 million
  • Peru: $37 million
  • Bolivia: $40 million
  • Haiti: $19 million

Then there is:

  • Inter-regional Aviation Support:$60.4 million
  • International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA): $36.7 million:
  • Program Development and Support: $28.5 million

How about reducing drug demand? Total allotted: $12.5 million.

The DEA's 2012 budget justification is here. Amount for international enforcement: $420 million. (For domestic enforcement, it's 1,604,981 million. Total: $2 billion.)

Is the DEA getting ready to rule the world? From its 2012 budget justification:

With the largest foreign presence of any federal law enforcement agency, DEA’s role in a world of globalization is becoming increasingly important to representing U.S. interests. The successes of DEA’s foreign operations are based on its ability to maintain a presence in all parts of the world. In order to fulfill its mission overseas, DEA personnel must be strategically assigned to various parts of the world in order to provide an operational focus that ensures the conduct of long-term bilateral investigations.

Also consider, neither the State Department nor DEA's budget numbers include the amounts for drug war funding by the Justice Department (2012 drug budget here), FBI, or Homeland Security. Or the Defense Department. More hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to the White House, the 2012 budget for domestic law enforcement exceeds $9.5 billion. For interdiction from foreign countries, the Defense Department and Homeland Security get $3.9 billion. And State, Justice and DOD together get $2 billion for international drug enforcement.

No wonder we have no money for health insurance, education, social security and Medicare. We've given the War on Drugs abroad its own stimulus package.

Update: Here's a cable from the US Embassy in Kenya released by Wikileaks saying it's time to turn up the drug heat in Kenya. Another one is here.

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  • Display: Sort:
    We have no business interfering in the internal of (none / 0) (#2)
    by BTAL on Sun Apr 24, 2011 at 08:49:43 PM EST
    Libya....  

    Today's news reports of:

    • Thai-Cambodia warfare
    • Syrian genocide on mourners
    • Continued Saudi backed action in Bahrain

    Which of those deserves "humanitarian kinetic" actions?

    please, the topic is (none / 0) (#3)
    by Jeralyn on Sun Apr 24, 2011 at 09:39:20 PM EST
    the war on drugs. Use an open thread to discuss other topics.

    Parent