Drugs!

I knew you wouldn't read any post about my thesis unless I tricked you into it. Got ya!

On Friday, a few lucky interns got to tour the UNODC's drug lab. Although I'm in the counter-terrorism division, the very top floor of our building houses a laboratory where UNODC chemists assist law enforcement officials with determining whether suspected drugs are, in fact, drugs. Example: Developing country X may not be sure if a package it has intercepted is cocaine. The country then sends a sample to UNODC for testing.

The tour was pretty much like every field trip you took in elementary school, but amped up 15 levels. Remember those visits to the aquarium where you got to play with urchins and sea stars in a touch tank? The UNODC drug lab has something similar. Here are just a few of the high-profile items I was allowed to get my hands on: an opium pipe, a block of opium resin, some LSD tablets, dried poppies, hemp seeds, mescaline, and a package of hallucinogenic mushrooms.

While I should have had the time of my life on the drug tour, I nearly had a panic attack halfway through. Unlike some hard-working Fletcherites, I haven't devoted much time to thinking about my thesis since beginning my internship - a decision I'm sure I'll come to deeply regret. As most of Fletcher knows, my main academic and professional interests are in all things drug-related. So, at the very least, I've stayed up narco news even if I haven't actually written a damn thing.

Here's one exciting piece of news: The US recently announced that it's going to try a new anti-drug strategy in Afghanistan that focuses on interdiction and alternative crop development instead of eradication. Based on what the representative from the UNODC office in Afghanistan said when he was in town a few weeks ago, alternative crop development is fairly effective (see smiling child below) - although the US shouldn't count on the strategy to completely eliminate the opium market. What's interesting for me is that the one US official with whom I've talked views the US change of strategy in Afghanistan positively because it's getting closer to the Plan Colombia model. However, Plan Colombia focused heavily on aerial eradication of coca fields and, at least in the early years, military aid. Is this really what the US is doing in Afghanistan?

I decided sometime in the spring that I'd like to focus my thesis on US counternarcotics efforts globally. Maybe comparing Plan Colombia with current efforts in Afghanistan could be one way to go...

A second-hand update from Afghanistan

The workshop on legal reform my office held for a group of Afghan criminal justice officials is winding down. All in all, it was a great experience to a part of. I had a chance to talk extensively with both the UNODC's country officer for Afghanistan and a US Dept. of Justice official working with the Afghan delegation. The UNODC country officer was fairly optimistic regarding the ability of the US to decrease opium production in the country in the long-term. He mentioned that some of USAID's alternative livelihoods programs (they're the programs designed to help poor farmers transition from cultivating poppy to other, non-illict crops) have actually been somewhat effective. Although I'll have to do my own research to figure out if this is the case, he seemed pretty blunt about other challenges Afghanistan is facing. For now, at least, I'll take his word for it.

And here's a fun fact I learned from the DOJ rep - did you know that following the US invasion of Afghanistan, the US left reconstruction of the country's criminal justice system in the hands of Italy? While it may have sounded like a great idea at the time, the results have been, uh, less than sucessful. Only recently did the US get involved with criminal justice system reform (technically, I think Italy still is in charge but now the US has a prominent role in the reform process). Considering that a lot of the recent press on US involvement in Afghanistan hasn't been very positive, maybe conditions are (slowly) improving in the country.

...and back at the office

If you've been following the news on Afghanistan, you'll know that Gen. Stanley McChrystal recently took command of US and NATO forces in the country. According to what I've read, this is an important step for the US but the Obama administration continues to face tremendous challenges in getting Afghanistan's reconstruction effort back on track. They've got their work cut out for them, particularly in terms of establishing rule of law in Afghanistan.

In comes the UNODC. The division in which I work is - at this very moment! - holding a three-day conference with a number of delegates from Afghanistan's criminal justice community. (And yes, yours truly has been able to attend. It made spending hours copying Dari and Pashto conference documents totally worth it.) The conference provides training on a number of technical issues related to rule of law. The most interesting part of the conference was a session on terrorist financing. The session touched on the crime-terror nexus in Afghanistan (opium sales fueling terrorist activities). The delegates seemed pretty open about the fact that Taliban operatives and drug traffickers are one and the same. The general consensus was that combating trafficking would have a major impact on terrorist organizations in the country.

A US Dept. of Justice representative is attending the conference along with the Afghan delegation. The rep seems really committed to strengthening the country's legal system and he talked briefly yesterday about some of the work he's done with Iraq. Although Iraq (obviously) has a different set of challenges than Afghanistan, it sounds as though the Obama administration has some experts with a proven record of success at the helm of the revamped Afghanistan mission.

2009 Space Odessey

I'm now approaching the 48 hour mark here in Vienna. The place is gorgeous - it's like I'm living in a giant music box. The only drawback to Vienna is the Vienna International Centre, a.k.a. the UN complex, a.k.a. the place I'll be working in for the next three and a half months. The VIC, as folks around here call it, looks as though it was built by the Jetsons. What makes the place even worse is that it houses the UN's space initatives, so not only does everything look "futuristic" (as one imagined the future to look in 1975), but every hallway has replicas of the solar system, rockets, and/or posters commemorating "2007 - International Year of the Heliosphere."

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And I got my UN login today! And my first assignment! I'm officially a real unpaid intern. This feels great. I don't really know a whole lot about what my assignment entails, other than that I need to write a proposal to a bunch of donor nations requesting (pleading?) that they donate money to the UNODC's rule of law projects going on in Afghanistan. I also get to meet the heads of the Afghan police force next week, as they'll be coming to UNODC to get training on how to build an effective criminal justice system.