By Robert Allen

A sprawling village, home to about 3,000 people, Chimayó is the spiritual centre of the Río Grande in the upland desert of northern New Mexico, USA. Every Easter thousands of pilgrims trek by foot to the edge of Chimayó where they rest at a Christian sanctuary (El Santuario) to pray. It's a procession rooted in the earthly pagan history of the village.

On a Saturday morning in May 1999, a new date was etched into the spiritual history of Chimayó. The villagers - despairing that their village had the most drug dealers and users in the county, Río Arriba, with the most drug overdose deaths per capita in the US and increasing numbers of drug-related killings - came together on an interfaith procession to pray for the end of the violence from drugs and alcohol. Catholic, Tewa, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, Aztec, Pentacostal and Protestant marched along the highway to the Santuario, 450 people with a collective voice that screamed, needing to be heard.

Yet the local, state and federal authorities didn't hear the scream, didn't seem to care and didn't appear to want to do anything about the drug culture in Chimayó - the drug-related robberies, the deaths, the murders, the fear. Then, out of the wide blue sky beyond the desert - four months after the procession, on September 29, 1999, an army of 150 officers - local, state, Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI - raided the homes of five drug dealers. Some say it changed Chimayó forever. Some say it was a watershed for drug-culture USA.

Chellis Glendinning, author of the award-winning Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy, lives in Chimayó, with its diverse mountain mix of Spanish, Mexican native, local Pueblo Indian, Lebanese, French, Greek and Anglo-American. "I fit right into this north New Mexico Chicano world," she writes. "Or at least I do now that I have navigated the inevitable hurdles and the hoops thrust into my face during my first decade [she moved to Chimayó in 1993]. Not the least of these hurdles has been the drug world - the trafficking, shooting up, syringes along the riverbank, bulgaries, throat-slittings, police presence, and prison culture associated with the abuse of chiva [the street slang for heroin]."

Glendinning fits right in because she counts as her friends in Chimayó chile farmers, community organizers and state troopers among bank robbers, ex-cons and drug dealers. "I have learned to open my heart to a wisdom that does not flee from suffering, breakdown, or error," she writes. "Rather the wisdom of this place knows these aspects of life as inseparable from job, triumph, and communion."

She argues that such wisdom is needed, especially when it comes to dealing with the complexities of the global heroin trade and its impact on the land-based communities who are forced to grow opium, the raw source of heroin, and the rural and urban communities and individuals who are affected by its consumption and abuse.

The author had become involved in the "passions of living" in Chimayó, and then, "as an afterthought" she was inspired to write about what she had seen. Because of her approach to the subject, her consequent book, Chiva: A Village Takes on the Global Heroin Trade, courted controversy before it hit the bookstores.

Glendinning's approach was to take the local (the victimisation of the users and the exploitation of the growers) and place them in the context of globalisation. The heroin trade, Glendinning quickly realised, was not a social sideshow on the periphery of society. She writes: "Through a daunting history of collusion between traffickers, business and banking institutions, governments and military dating back to the British Empire, the illicit drug trade has come to be essential to the accumulation of capital that fuels the expansion and plunder we call corporate globalization."

What makes the book instantly political and deeply personal is the way that Glendinning experienced the impact of the global heroin trade in Chimayó. "Chiva," she says, "is the story of the global heroin trade woven into the tale of my love affair with a former drug dealer - all in the service of the telling of the uprising my village undertook to rout out our heroin epidemic."

That uprising started in earnest with the procession in 1999 to the Santuario and has continued with a program Glendinning insists is community-led, "local people rising up using resources, ideas, values, strengths, and means that are peculiar to their place and history".

If the story of the community response to the drug epidemic in Chimayó is controversial, this is because, she argues, of the entrenchment of drug epidemics in society. "Like that of any imperial system, [it] always has the effect of fragmenting community into opposing predicaments, survival strategies, and factions. What we've done in New Mexico occurred by a convergence of domestic 'drug war' advocates, legalization activists, prohibitionists, police, federal drug agents, a right-wing governor, 12-step recovery professionals, department of health officials, behavioural health workers, drug addicts, former dealers, tea-tottlers, Aztecs, Catholics, aetheists, mothers of children killed by drug violence, you-name-it. My job was to reflect what the community did and its many perspectives."

Chellis Glendinning was able to do this job because she has a history of life in political movements. From an early age she was taken to civil rights demos. Born in 1947, with antecedents in Europe, and brought up in Cleveland, Ohio, she embraced the anti-Vietnam, anti-nuclear and feminist movements of the 1960s, went to Berkeley, San Francisco, and, over the next 20 years in the Bay Area, became involved in the natural foods, holistic medicine, ecology, indigenous rights and no-global movements. Her books reflect that experience - Waking Up in the Nuclear Age (1987) focused on the psychological effects of the nuclear arms race around the time she completed a degree in psychology in the mid-1980s. She moved on to write When Technology Wounds (1990 - "a study of people made sick from exposure to dangerous technologies"), My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization (1994 - "an overview of how modern society emerged from the domestication process begun in the Neolithic and how addiction is embedded in the resulting nature/human split") and Off the Map (1999, 2002 - "about the friction edge between land-based cultures and empire, with a sub-theme of the practice of child abuse within dominating societies"). As a writer and thinker she has been influenced by Lewis Mumford, Paul Shepard, Emiliano Zapata, A.A. Milne, Che Guevara, Susan Griffin, Subcomandante Marcos, Samuel Hahnemann, Eduardo Galeano, Suzan Harjo, Jeannette Armstrong, Michael Ruppert, Kirkpatrick Sale, E.F. Schumacher and Frantz Fanon among many others. "I've been indelibly marked by all the movements I've been part of," she says, while acknowledging the influence of the Chicano culture of northern New Mexico.

"When I first moved to Chimayó, I asked a local farmer his take on the state of the world. We were riding horses across the badlands at the time, and he took enough of a moment to contemplate that a tumbleweed bounced by in the wind. Then he answered, 'The down-to-earth people are finishing.' People, I think, tend to get fired up to insist on change when our hearts are touched with realization of the most basic insights and goals.

"My friend, the Chicano activist and poet Arnoldo Garcia, says that culture is not adjunct to a political movement; it IS a political movement. Storytelling, song, poetry - these are the essential ways humans communicate meaning. They are the ways we teach and learn - and survive. It is only since imperial systems have made society monstrous, fragmented, and complex that sociological, economic, political, psychological, etc language has become necessary to describe what's going on. We are challenged as we protest and as we restore to be aware that we are creating culture - and to make sure the effort reflects the vision we wish now and ultimately to inhabit."

So Chellis Glendinning gradually found herself writing about the New Mexico community that she lived among. "This book is nothing if it is not for my community," she says. "My hope is to reflect back to the people of northern New Mexico a slice of history in order to encourage us to continue our beating out the encroaching forces of narco-trafficantes, government, and corporations through drug epidemics.

"I wish to hold up Chimayó and northern New Mexico as a model for other communities who wish to stage an uprising against drug epidemics. Or against any insidious penetrations. And I wish to alert us all to the global nature of the heroin trade. I have come to believe that the purveyors of illicit narcotics are as ambitious - and ruthless - in their dream of world domination as are Wal-Mart, Citibank, or Exxon. Right now the illicit drug business takes up a whopping eight percent of the global economy. That's more than automotive, tourism, textiles, and legal pharmaceuticals!"

In the face of this seemingly overwhelming giant, the people of Chimayó adopted an adversarial stance, that of David versus Goliath, but the real accomplishment has been their autonomous unity, which Glendinning is quick to acknowledge. "I am awed by what a group of courageous folk were able to accomplish - from turning the tables on fear and terror, to beating the dealers out of town, to inventing methods for drug recovery and launching healthy venues for youth - all in ways that spring from and enhance local traditional culture. We have a long way to go - and more battles to mount as global corporations have discovered us - but we've made a worthy launch.

"The model of Chimayó does not require that people come to New Mexico to grasp what we are doing. It's reclamation in the face of colonization. At heart it's anarchistic creativity and courage, followed by vision and sustained effort to build a different kind of world from what's been foisted upon us.

"If the humble down-home folks of Chimayó, New Mexico, can do what we did - and what we continue to attempt - why not anyone?"

BLUE: What is your background?

CHELLIS: I am a European American, born in 1947. My people hark back to Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Holland, and France. I have lived my life in political movements, starting in 1955 when my mother became involved in the US civil rights movement and moving through the anti-Vietnam, feminist, natural foods, holistic medicine, ecology, anti-nuclear, indigenous rights, and no-global movements. From each of these I learned a unique thread of how imperial social systems are unsustainable and dysfunctional, and finally I have been able to glimpse the whole harsh vision. I also found myself fascinated by the interplay between personal experience and the machinations of political/economic systems. In 1984 I earned a Ph.D in psychology. All the work I've done with that degree has been aimed toward an understanding of the ways in which "personal is political" and toward the healing of individuals harmed in this sad world of ours. I am a writer and a psychotherapist.

BLUE: Where do you live?

CHELLIS: I live in a village in the northern New Mexico upland desert named Chimayó. Until recently this place had the good fortune to be isolated from the dominant society and survived by farming, hunting, fishing, gathering, and local lateral trade. The people here are Chicano - which to us means a mountain mix of Spanish, Mexican native, local Pueblo Indian, Lebanese, French, and Greek.

BLUE: How did you get involved in this kind of research and tell us about your other books?

CHELLIS: My new book is called Chiva: A Village Takes on the Global Heroin Trade, and it's about what we are doing in northern New Mexico to combat a heroin epidemic that became entrenched here after the Vietnam War. By 1996 Chimayó had become the village with the most dealers and users in the county, Río Arriba, with the most drug overdose deaths per capita in the United States. I don't typically approach a subject like this as an intellectual exercise. Rather I become involved in the passions of living - and then, as an afterthought, I have the inspiration to write about what I've seen.

My last book is Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy (1999, 2002). It's about the friction edge between land-based cultures and empire, with a sub-theme of the practice of child abuse within dominating societies. I also wrote a book called My Name Is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization (1994), an overview of how modern society emerged from the domestication process begun in the Neolithic and how addiction is embedded in the resulting nature/human split. When Technology Wounds came out in 1990. It is a study of people made sick from exposure to dangerous technologies. And Waking Up in the Nuclear Age, vintage 1987, concerns the psychological effects of the nuclear arms race and a process for healing.

BLUE: What are your influences?

CHELLIS: As a writer and thinker I've been influenced by Lewis Mumford, Paul Shepard, Emiliano Zapata, A.A. Milne, Che Guevara, Susan Griffin, Subcomandante Marcos, Samuel Hahnemann, Eduardo Galeano, Suzan Harjo, Jeannette Armstrong, Michael Ruppert, Kirkpatrick Sale, E.F. Schumacher, Frantz Fanon. It's impossible to name everyone, and I'm pretty much picking fellow writers. I've been indelibly marked by all the movements I've been part of, by the Chicano culture of northern New Mexico, most recently by my Mexican immigrant friends who have crossed the border to work in the US.

BLUE: Can you describe Chiva's primary message?

CHELLIS: Chiva is a book about community empowerment in the face of the most vile intertwining of greed, government complicity, and corporate development one can imagine.

BLUE: Who is it aimed at?

CHELLIS: The way of land-based community is the primacy of sovereignty, and so this book is nothing if it is not for my community. My hope is to reflect back to the people of northern New Mexico a slice of history in order to encourage us to continue our beating out the encroaching forces of narco-trafficantes, government, and corporations through drug epidemics.

Second, I wish to hold up Chimayó and northern New Mexico as a model for other communities who wish to stage an uprising against drug epidemics. Or against any insidious penetrations. And I wish to alert us all to the global nature of the heroin trade. I have come to believe that the purveyors of illicit narcotics are as ambitious - and ruthless - in their dream of world domination as are Wal-Mart, Citibank, or Exxon. Right now the illicit drug business takes up a whopping eight percent of the global economy. That's more than automotive, tourism, textiles, and legal pharmaceuticals!

BLUE: Do you think it will influence the way people think about their lives?

CHELLIS: If the humble down-home folks of Chimayó, New Mexico, can do what we did - and what we continue to attempt - why not anyone?

BLUE: How important is language? We ask this because the lexicon of words used by people actively involved in struggle is changing.

CHELLIS: Language is second-nature to us. It's an extension of everything we are. Because I live in a place where people use simple words like "heart" and "sky" and "river" - and do so in a mix of Spanish, Mexican, Tewa, and English - I admit I am not up on what are the latest words for global systems or the ambitions of anti-globalization movements. What can I say? When I first moved to Chimayó, I asked a local farmer his take on the state of the world. We were riding horses across the badlands at the time, and he took enough of a moment to contemplate that a tumbleweed bounced by in the wind. Then he answered, "The down-to-earth people are finishing." Upon hearing such a brief and eloquent expression - and with the words so marvellously off in the translation - I thought, My God! Why write a book?! People, I think, tend to get fired up to insist on change when our hearts are touched with realization of the most basic insights and goals.

BLUE: What is the role of imagination, of storytelling, of song and ballad?

CHELLIS: My friend, the Chicano activist and poet Arnoldo Garcia, says that culture is not adjunct to a political movement; it IS a political movement. Storytelling, song, poetry - these are the essential ways humans communicate meaning. They are the ways we teach and learn - and survive. It is only since imperial systems have made society monstrous, fragmented, and complex that sociological, economic, political, psychological, etc language has become necessary to describe what's going on. We are challenged as we protest and as we restore to be aware that we are creating culture - and to make sure the effort reflects the vision we wish now and ultimately to inhabit.

BLUE: Chiva tells the story of a drug that has pervaded all our lives all over the planet but you manage to weave three subplots into the story to tell it from both a local and a global perspective. Tell us a little bit about these subplots and why you came up with this particular structure?

CHELLIS: The intertwining of stories in Chiva reflects how I experience. From moment to moment I traverse between realities - the grand political, the immediate communal, and the deeply personal. And so Chiva is the story of the global heroin trade woven into the tale of my love affair with a former drug dealer - all in the service of the telling of the uprising my village undertook to rout out our heroin epidemic. "Chiva," by the way, is street slang in Spanish for heroin.

BLUE: The sub-title of the book is A Village Takes On The Global Heroin Trade. This is not your publisher's hype, this is exactly what it did. How much of an achievement do you think this is?

CHELLIS: I am awed by what a group of courageous folk were able to accomplish - from turning the tables on fear and terror, to beating the dealers out of town, to inventing methods for drug recovery and launching healthy venues for youth - all in ways that spring from and enhance local traditional culture. We have a long way to go - and more battles to mount as global corporations have discovered us - but we've made a worthy launch. I also have to brag - and I don't want to appear too Herculean, we did this by the seat of our pants - we beat out eleven cell towers that were contracted to adorn all eleven schools in the district.

BLUE: What are the repercussions not just for the village of Chimayó but for other places that can use the New Mexico model?

CHELLIS: The model of Chimayó does not require that people come to New Mexico to grasp what we are doing. It's a model of local people rising up using resources, ideas, values, strengths, and means that are peculiar to their place and history. It's reclamation in the face of colonization. At heart it's anarchistic creativity and courage, followed by vision and sustained effort to build a different kind of world from what's been foisted upon us.

BLUE: Some of those who have praised the book seem to believe it will be controversial. Why do you think they say this and do you think it will be controversial, and if so, why?

CHELLIS: Oh goodness. Well, the entrenchment of drug epidemics, like that of any imperial system, always has the effect of fragmenting community into opposing predicaments, survival strategies, and factions. At this end stage of empire, I'd say few simple answers exist. What we've done in New Mexico occurred by a convergence of domestic "drug war" advocates, legalization activists, prohibitionists, police, federal drug agents, a right-wing governor, 12-step recovery professionals, department of health officials, behavioural health workers, drug addicts, former dealers, tea-tottlers, Aztecs, Catholics, aetheists, mothers of children killed by drug violence, you-name-it. My job was to reflect what the community did and its many perspectives.

For instance, we had a major drug bust in Chimayó and it was a really good thing for us - I mean REALLY GOOD - but many people in our community do not favor militaristic suppression or "drug war" tactics. And certainly the left doesn't.

Also in the book, mirroring the thoughts of many local folks, I do not take a no-holds-barred approach to legalization. I rather explore some of its strengths and weaknesses. Many people here express opposition to legalization; most of my political cronies elsewhere favor it. On this particular issue, I have come to think that legalization needs to be spelled out. For instance, medical legalization would be different from the kind of public legalization the alcohol industry garnered after Prohibition. And what would an overall plan for shifting to a global legalization look like? Surely it would be hairy in terms of taking the drug industry from its current purveyors, yes? So Chiva might be controversial in that it's not a clear-cut rant for or against certain positions, although it IS the tale of a community that rose up to put a stop death and despair.

BLUE: Once heroin gets a grip on a community it starts in motion a downward spiral of despair. The response of the people of Chimayó to somehow slow the spiral and then reverse its motion seems remarkable yet the true achievement is the setting up of rehabilitation schemes that involve the entire community. Did this surprise you as it was happening given what had happened before and your own personal experience?

CHELLIS: I was surprised to see that traditional people here were coming up with the same ideas I was only imagining - and they were willing to dedicate their lives to making these ideas manifest.

BLUE: The story of heroin is also the story of colonization, as you put it, 'of generations of tribal and land-based peoples in India, Turkey, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan, the Andes and Mexico'. Likewise the healing is the story of decolonization and a return to a communal land-based culture. You only give a few examples in the book but they are enough to show that change is happening among native peoples who have been forced to grow opium and among those who become addicted to heroin. What does this tell you?

CHELLIS: It tells me that something VERY INTERESTING is going on. I cite examples from Mexico, Bolivia, Colombia, China, and Thailand of native peoples rising up against the drug trade and inventing means for recovery that spring from their own traditions - just like we are doing here.

BLUE: You write: the heroin trade is not a sideshow. Through a daunting history of collusion between traffickers, business and banking institutions, governments and military dating back to the British Empire, the illicit drug trade has come to be essential to the accumulation of capital that fuels the expansion and plunder we call corporate globalization. And you cite the works of McCoy (The Politics of Heroin), Scott (Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia and Indochina) and Ruppert (Crossing the Rubicon) as evidence that this has been part of the strategy all along. So does it not worry you that corporate capitalism will not allow people-power to destroy its hegemony?

CHELLIS: The illicit drug trade seems also to have become essential to the quelling of rebellion. I think that's one important way we need to think about it. Does it worry me that corporate capitalism tends to win? I look at the long history of uprising against it, and I feel sad for the lack of successes. A man named Andrew Schmookler wrote a book in the 1980s called The Parable of the Tribes in which he explores the perhaps self-evident idea that if there is one group that is playing power-over, then that group always wins. An untenable dynamic is set up in which the oppressed may have to play power-over too, just in order to protect themselves. There is no doubt we've got a bad thing going here. But do I worry? No. I rely on the American activist Mother Jones' wisdom: Don't Mourn, Organize! More and more people are thinking that massive non-violent civil disobedience may be the means to confront power-over politics while maintaining our essential morals and humanity.

BLUE: The Dragon is an important symbol here. It has associations of several kinds with opium and with heroin. You see that the 'very qualities of wildness and freedom encapsulated by the Dragon have come to be feared and denigrated'. You write: 'The result is a battle: between human and nature, intellect and feeling, refined and gross, righteous and enemy - and in the world of illicit substances, with Archangel Michael brandishing His sword for law and order against the fiery antagonist'. The problem is, the antagonist is clearly not the people, it is something else, a beast of unspeakable power. Is it time perhaps to change the metaphor and put the Dragon back on its lofty pedestal?

CHELLIS: The reason I used Dragon as the central symbol in the book is its two-level meaning. In Western society the Dragon is feared, denigrated, and fought. It represents all that which lies outside the boundaries of the civilized world. All that is repressed. I'm not opposed to coming up with other symbols to inspire courage and determination. But if you go beyond the us/them battle mentality set up in the Western psyche, back to the original meaning of the Dragon, you encounter a creature who represents the Whole. The Dragon is unity of spirit, wildness of being, freedom, sacredness of being. It's not really about policemen fighting drug dealers. It's about Life. In that sense, I find the Dragon a most worthy guide.

BLUE: Given that successive US governments have been playing the heroin game with two hands, one above the table and one underneath it, would it be your feeling, now that you understand the history and the distinction between the local and the global, that change in US policy is likely, that CIA funding will cease, that the financial institutions will stay away from dirty money and that a real war on drugs trafficking will happen? Or would that be a naive notion?

CHELLIS: I like your vision. Let's imagine a real transition from global drug addiction, participated in by local communities and international institutions alike. I could see such an effort launched hand-in-hand with a turn back to local sovereign cultures in which people's urge to the guidance of the unseen world is made manifest through the ingeniousness of locally-produced means and local traditions.

BLUE: And finally tell us a little bit about New Society Publishers? They claim that their books provide positive solutions for people who want to make a difference. Is this why you choose them?

CHELLIS: Judith and Chris Plant and all the folks at New Society Publishers are dedicated, intelligent folks. Their library ranges from hard-nosed critiques of the oil industry and US policy in Iraq, to books on natural building and organic foods, to manuals on group process and community organizing. I picked them because of all this, and also because they are such roaring fun to be around. Plus, they involve their authors in every single decision - even small things like the copy on the publicity postcards and the style of the dingbats. Check out their website.

Other interviews with Chellis Glendinning: In The Wake Kaxe - note this is a Real Player clip. Biographical material on Chellis Glendinning Operation Containment: Operation Containment is an intensive, multinational, law enforcement initiative that was congressionally mandated in 2002 and is led by Drug Enforcement Administration. It involves Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, United States, and the United Kingdom. Operation Containment objectives. Implement a coordinated post-Taliban heroin counternarcotics strategy to reduce the production of opium through the prevention of poppy cultivation and destruction of known opium stockpiles and heroin laboratories. Diminish the availability of heroin and morphine base in countries surrounding Afghanistan and along the Balkan and Silk Road trafficking routes. Deny safe havens to criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking, drug related terrorist activities, and money laundering. To deprive these organizations of their financial basis for their activities. Engage in proactive enforcement and intelligence gathering operations targeting the command and control structure of heroin trafficking organizations operating in Afghanistan and the greater Southwest and Central Asian region. Continue implementing administrative, diplomatic, and investigative measures needed to reduce the flow of Afghan heroin into world markets and prevent Afghanistan from becoming a major heroin supplier to the United States. In order to accomplish these goals DEA has enhanced the staffing levels of the Kabul CO to seven special agents, three intelligence analysts, and two support personnel. The intelligence analysts will be assigned to the following locations: the CFC-A Intelligence Fusion Center in Kabul, the CJTF-76 at Bagram Air Base, and the other government agency fusion center on the Embassy compound. Further office enhancements have already taken place with increased special agent positions at the Ankara, Turkey CO, Istanbul, Turkey RO, London, England CO, and Moscow, Russia CO. An IA and Admin position is also in place in the Ankara, Turkey CO. DEA also plans to enhance the special agent staffing levels at the Tashkent, Uzbekistan CO and Brussels, Belgium CO. In addition, DEA plans to open up a new DEA Country Office in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic. In a response to a request by the Administration and the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, DEA detailed its Assistant Administrator for Intelligence to serve as the Counter Narcotics Coordinator (CNC) in Afghanistan. The CNC has been in Kabul since mid-August 2004, and is responsible for overseeing all U.S. Government counternarcotics programs in Afghanistan. In May of 2003, DEA established a SIU in Tashkent, Uzbekistan - a country critical to containing the threat of Afghan opium. The Kabul CO’s primary counterpart in Afghanistan is the Counter Narcotics Police - Afghanistan (CNP-A). DEA has established the National Interdiction Unit (NIU), which are CNP-A officers who have been selected to work narcotic enforcement operations with the Kabul CO and later assisting the FAST program agents. DEA will advise, train, and mentor these NIU officers. On October 28, 2004, the first class of CNP-A NIU, graduated from their six-week training program. The class of 28 graduating officers included 2 women. On December 16, 2004, the second NIU class of 24 officers, including two women, graduated and is operationally deployed. It is expected that by April of 2005 100 NIU officers will have completed their training and will work directly with Kabul CO and FAST program agents. On September 28 and 29, 2004, the DEA Ankara, Turkey CO and the Turkish National Police co-hosted delegates from the above 18 partner countries. This action oriented conference resulted in proactive initiatives designed to counter the threat from Afghanistan opiates within the region. Four initiatives were developed in order to accomplish the above-mentioned goals. Collective identification and targeting of five major Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs). Promotion of international money laundering investigations against regional DTOs. Participants agreed to develop a target list of DTOs actively involved in the illicit distribution of acetic anhydride (AA) and other precursor chemicals. In addition, they agreed on the collective identification of Heroin Chemists operating in the region. All agreed on increased sharing of investigative leads and intelligence since DTOs operate across national boundaries. Participants agreed to forward these leads and intelligence to the Regional Drug Intelligence Initiative in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Leads and intelligence will also be shared with the Intelligence Fusion Centers in Kabul, Afghanistan comprised of various government agencies. In FY 2004, Operation Containment resulted in the seizures of 14.9 metric tons of heroin, 7.7 metric tons of morphine base, 5.9 metric tons of opium gum, 77 metric tons of cannabis, approximately 3.6 tons of precursor chemicals, 498 arrests, and the seizure of 11 heroin labs, and led to the dismantlement or disruption of major distribution and transportation organizations involved in the Southwest Asian heroin drug trade. In the first quarter FY 2005, Operation Containment resulted in the seizure of 2.4 metric tons of heroin, 985 kilograms of morphine base, 3.0 metric tons of opium gum, 152.9 tons of cannabis, and 195 arrests. SOURCE: International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, March 2005 | Back | Index | High Plains Films 2006 entry deadlines |