{"id":2329,"date":"2018-02-22T21:11:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-22T21:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/seac\/?p=2329"},"modified":"2019-01-29T20:12:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T20:12:20","slug":"narco-necro-politics-philippine-drug-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/narco-necro-politics-philippine-drug-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The Narco- and Necro-Politics of the Philippine Drug War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Shannon Bush<\/em><\/p>\n<p>One of the questions from the audience following Vince Rafael\u2019s February 13<sup>th<\/sup> talk, \u201cHumanizing the Inhuman: Photographing the Philippine Drug War,\u201d concerned allegations that Duterte and his inner circle profit from collaboration with Chinese narcotics syndicates, using their position to allow the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/investigates\/special-report\/philippines-drugs-china\/\">importation of methamphetamine into the country<\/a>.\u00a0 Clandestine meth labs operate on ships anchored offshore; the finished product is then transported to land by smaller vessels and transferred to trucks that offload at casinos serving as the first point of distribution.\u00a0 Casinos are exempt from the Philippines\u2019 money-laundering laws, providing protection for owners complicit in drug trafficking and offering a plausible way to account for and process large amounts of cash.\u00a0 Duterte\u2019s demeanor toward China, hospitable even when the countries\u2019 interests conflict, is viewed with suspicion, similar to Trump\u2019s unwillingness to stand up to Russia.<\/p>\n<p>In the mid- to late-1990s, when most methamphetamine being imported into the US was coming in to California, one source of supply for Mexican drug cartels of the chief raw ingredient ephedrine was China where <em>Ephedra sinica<\/em> grows native in the north.\u00a0 Although other varieties grow throughout the world, China\u2019s lax enforcement made harvesting and shipping enormous quantities possible.\u00a0 As addicts in the US quickly learned, pseudoephedrine is a perfectly viable substitute and China\u2019s approximately 80,000 chemical producers are able to supply it as well. Today, China has become the world\u2019s largest producer of pseudoephedrine and is still producing raw ephedrine, with 31.6 tons seized in 2014. Also in 2014, members of the Sinaloa cartel were arrested in a drug raid in Manila in which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2017\/feb\/02\/philippines-meth-corruption-rodrigo-duterte-police\">Chinese affiliates were implicated<\/a>, indicating that the connections between Chinese syndicates (the Triad groups) and Mexican cartels are still in place.\u00a0 The raid came within days of the seizure of three tons of methamphetamine in Guangdong province where 14 local officials were among the 182 arrested.<\/p>\n<p>Students of East and Southeast Asian history are aware of the profits that colonial governments made through the drug trade.\u00a0 The Dutch made a monopoly out of their importation and distribution of opium in Java for almost three-hundred years; by the mid-nineteenth century, the opium monopoly dominated all other revenue farms and concessions.\u00a0 \u201cOpium underwrote a significant portion of Holland\u2019s colonial enterprise (from 15 to 20 percent annually).\u201d <a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a>\u00a0 But it\u2019s not just the direct consequences of addiction that comprise the greatest danger to a society whose governing officials are complicit in the drug trade.\u00a0 In Java an underworld grew up around the opium trade that bred violence, corruption, and ethnic division.\u00a0 At the same time, Dutch colonial officials were more and more willing to turn a blind eye as opium revenue poured in.\u00a0 To those in command, \u201copium revenues reflected general prosperity and \u2026 general prosperity was a reflection of prudent and wise administration.\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Duterte denies all allegations that he has conspired with narcotics syndicates, but multiple arrests of local officials in drug raids prove that government acquiescence exists at some level.\u00a0 Whether or not connections are present at the highest levels of his administration, the damage to society is pervasive and complete.\u00a0 The extreme violence of Duterte\u2019s \u201cwar on drugs\u201d is the most conspicuous manifestation (as Dr. Rafael put it, Duterte\u2019s \u201cnarco- and necro-politics\u201d), but as Adrian Alarilla described in his <a href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/seac\/news\/manila-jaws-hatred\/\">account of a recent trip to Manila<\/a>, the Duterte regime has divided Filipino society by creating an Other that is so reviled that death with impunity is permissible.\u00a0 The <em>Guardian<\/em> article referenced above points out that the vast majority of users are young men working long hours but unable to climb out of poverty.\u00a0 Duterte endows the murders with an overall meaning that obscures the country\u2019s considerable economic inequality and shifts blame to the poorest and most marginalized.\u00a0 That a sizeable portion of the populace needs to believe that it\u2019s somehow protected from falling into the same straits is well illustrated by Adrian\u2019s cab driver\u2019s angry outburst.\u00a0 Duterte is peddling hatred over despair.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> James R. Rush, \u201cSocial Control and Influence in Nineteenth Century Indonesia: Opium Farms and the Chinese of Java,\u201d <em>Indonesia<\/em>, vol. 35, no. 35 (1983), p. 61.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Ibid., pp. 61-62.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Shannon Bush One of the questions from the audience following Vince Rafael\u2019s February 13th talk, \u201cHumanizing the Inhuman: Photographing the Philippine Drug War,\u201d concerned allegations that Duterte and his inner circle profit from collaboration with Chinese narcotics syndicates, using their position to allow the importation of methamphetamine into the country.\u00a0 Clandestine meth labs operate<\/p>\n<div><a class=\"more\" href=\"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/csead\/news\/narco-necro-politics-philippine-drug-war\/\">Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":541,"featured_media":2331,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - 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