The Bush Administration 'Decertifies" Bolivia's Anti-Drug Program

Readers:

This week President Morales is in the U.S. and among his goals is to lay the groundwork for better relations with the Obama administration than he has had with the Bush administration.

There are many thorny issues in the U.S./Bolivia relationship – trade issues, U.S. protection of Bolivia’s indicted ex-President, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, and Bolivia’s close relationship with U.S. antagonist Venezuela. But the toughest issue remains the U.S. War on Drugs in Bolivia, an issue that is likely to dominate the opening moves in the Morales-Obama relationship.

In September, the Bush administration formally “decertified” Bolivia’s anti-coca efforts, triggering among other things the administration’s removal of Bolivia from an important trade preference program, a move that could cost the country at least 20,000 jobs. To many the Bush administration move looked less like a sober assessment of Bolivia’s anti-drug efforts than it did one in a pile of retaliatory moves against Morales for his ouster of the U.S. Ambassador (whom Morales claimed was actively undermining the Bolivian government.

John Walsh, an expert on the U.S. drug war at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), wrote:

The Bush administration’s decision to label Bolivia as a “demonstrable failure” in drug control – and to then use decertification as the pretext for suspending trade preferences – was evidently meant to punish Bolivia for President Morales’ expulsion of the U.S. ambassador. But the decertification boomeranged because it was so obviously unjustified, underscoring longstanding complaints in Latin America that the certification process is hypocritical and decided for political reasons, rather than on the basis of the drug control record.

WOLA, along with another group, the Andean Information Network, recently published an analysis of the Bush administration’s ‘decertification decision, “Decertifying Bolivia: Bush Administration “Fails Demonstrably” to Make its Case.” That analysis was submitted to the U.S. Trade Representative as part of the administration’s public hearing process on its plans to axe Bolivia from the Andean Trade Preferences Act.

Because of the importance of this issue we wanted to bring this analysis to our readers’ attention. Below is a segment from the introduction and a link to the full analysis, which you can also go to directly here.

Jim Shultz


Decertifying Bolivia: Bush Administration “Fails Demonstrably” to Make its Case

An analysis by the Washington Office on Latin America and the Andean Information Network

On September 16, 2008, the Bush administration announced its determination that Bolivia had “failed demonstrably during the previous 12 months” to adhere to its “obligations under international counternarcotics agreements.”1 Ten days later, the Administration announced its intent to make Bolivia ineligible for benefits under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act (ATPDEA), asserting that “Bolivia’s demonstrable failure to cooperate in counternarcotics efforts over the past 12 months indicates that Bolivia is not meeting important criteria” to qualify for the tariff preferences.

The Bush administration’s “decertification” of Bolivia came just days after Bolivia expelled the U.S. ambassador, whom President Evo Morales accused of conspiring against the government.3 Departing Bolivia on September 14, the expelled U.S. ambassador, Philip Goldberg, warned Bolivians that the decision to expel him “could have serious impacts that have not been appropriately weighed.”

In explaining Bolivia’s decertification at a September 16 press briefing, David T. Johnson, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, remarked that the decertification “was not a hasty decision.”5 Asked specifically whether the decertification was “linked to the ambassador being kicked out or any other tit-for-tat,” Assistant Secretary Johnson said that it was not. But these protests deny the obvious – that the decision to decertify Bolivia was a reprisal against the Morales government for having just expelled the U.S. ambassador – not because of Bolivia’s supposed “demonstrable failure” in drug control.

Read the full analysis here.