War on drugs / Guerre contre la drogue | www.geopium.org

Drug Trafficking

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2007 / The Encyclopedia of the Cold War.

The Cold War played a direct and prominent role in the production and trafficking of illicit drugs. Indeed, the financing of many anti-Communist covert operations, such as those led by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), resorted to the drug economy of various proxy states in which drug trafficking was often condoned and even encouraged. Specific historical cases illustrate how the anti-Communist agenda of the CIA played a decisive role in spurring the global illicit drug trade. These include the French Connection and the role of the Corsican mafia against Communists both in France and in Southeast Asia (Laos and Vietnam), the propping up of the defeated Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) in northern Burma, the Islamic Mujahideen resistance in Afghanistan, and the Contras in Nicaragua.

De la géopolitique des drogues illicites

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy & Laurent Laniel / 2004 / Hérodote.

Introduction du numéro 112 d'Hérodote consacré à la "géopolitique des drogues illicites".

Drugs and war destabilise Thai-Myanmar border region

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2002 / Jane's Intelligence Review.

The upsurge in methamphetamine use in Thailand is significantly increasing and contributing to regional conflict as the Thai military takes on the producers and smugglers. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy reports.

Southeast Asia’s Thriving Drug Trade

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2011 / World Politics Review.

From the early 1950s until 1990, when Afghanistan’s opium production surpassed that of Myanmar, most of the world’s illicit opium originated in mainland Southeast Asia. This is partly because the region’s rugged hills and mountains, heavy monsoon rains and lack of transport infrastructures have long protected rebel armies and illegal opium poppy cultivation from the writ of central governments and anti-drug agencies. Myanmar’s turbulent political history and internal wars since its independence in 1948 also contributed significantly to Asia’s long reign as the global leader in illicit opium production, as the opium economy and the war economy clearly nurtured one another.

Introduction (dossier drogue et politique)

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy & Guillermo Aureano / 2001 / Cemoti.

Ce dossier est le fruit de réflexions engagées au Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI) dans le cadre d'un séminaire animé par Semih Vaner. Les réunions se sont déroulées d'octobre 1999 à décembre 2000, lorsqu'une journée d'étude a réuni la plupart des participants, qui ont ainsi pu communiquer les résultats de leurs recherches à un public plus large. C'est le vaste thème des relations entre drogue et politique qui constituait la problématique centrale de ces discussions. Si le terme «drogue » désigne de prime abord un produit, nos travaux ont plutôt porté sur les enjeux de pouvoir qui conditionnent actuellement la production, le commerce et la consommation de ce type de substances illicites. Autrement dit, nous nous sommes attachés plus à examiner les dimensions politiques de la drogue elle même que les activités proprement économiques qui caractérisent sa production ou sa diffusion, qu'elles relèvent de l'agriculture, du trafic ou de l'usage.

Opium. Uncovering the politics of the poppy

Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy / 2010 /Harvard University Press.

The book sets out to expose the politics of opium. In particular it explores the world’s two major regions for illicit production of opium and heroin – the Golden Triangle of Burma, Laos and Thailand and the Golden Crescent of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. These remote mountainous regions of Southeast and Southwest Asia produce more than 90 per cent of the world’s illicit opium. The book reveals how, when and why illicit opium production emerged and what sustains it. The text exposes the real drivers of the modern day trade in opium and shows why a century of international effort, and forty years of a US-led war on drugs, have failed to eradicate it.