The 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs is the only convention in the history of the United Nations to use the word ‘evil’. In the intervening 60 years, drug production has increased exponentially across the globe. The tectonic plates underneath our attitudes to drugs – in their production and consumption, and their effects  on individuals and societies – are moving. Does the international order still have the firepower to keep fighting this War on Drugs, or is it time for change? Could we cope?

Ed Vulliamy, Peter Hitchens and Pete Maguire will be be discussing if legalisation could be – or should be – the answer. Don’t miss it.

Chair:

Ed Vulliamy is a journalist and author who has worked more than 30 years as a staff international reporter with the Guardian and Observer newspapers of London. He won all major awards in British journalism for his coverage of the Balkan wars between 1991-5, and discovered the gulag of concentration camps operated by the Bosnian Serbs in the Northwest Krajina region of Bosnia. As a result, he became the first reporter to testify at a war crimes tribunal since those at Nuremberg, giving evidence in nine trials at the ICTY in The Hague. He currently specialises in narco-traffic, winning the 2013 Ryszard Kapuski Prize for Literary Reportage for his “Amexica: War Along The Borderline” and was shortlisted for the same prize in 2016 for “The War Is Dead Long Live the War, Bosnia: The Reckoning”. Vulliamy is currently producing a film on the Colombian peace process and writing a book on banks that launder the profits of drug trafficking. His most recent publication is a memoir through music, “When Words Fail: A Life With Music, War and Peace”.

Speakers:

Peter Maguire is the author of Law and War and Facing Death in Cambodia. He is a historian and former war-crimes investigator whose writings have been published in the International Herald Tribune, New York Times, The Independent, Newsday, New York Review of Books and Boston Globe. He has taught law and war theory at Columbia University and Bard College. His book, Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers and The Untold Story of the Marijuana Trade follows one of the most complex smuggling channels in the history of the drugtrade.

Peter Hitchens is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, an occasional broadcaster and the author of several books, including ‘The War We Never Fought’ (2012) an examination of the British establishment’s drawn-out surrender to drugs from 1967 to now. He has been a Fleet Street journalist since 1977, specialising in education, labour affairs, politics, defence and diplomacy before working as a resident correspondent in Moscow (1990-92) and Washington DC (1993-95). He has visited 57 countries, some of which no longer exist, in the course of his work.

At the same time, the controversial leader has shaken up the country’s diplomatic ties, calling for a split from the United States and turning toward China as a new ally. This move presents an obstacle to the United States’ efforts in the South China Sea, unsettling its position as the dominant power in the Pacific.

Will president Duterte be held accountable for the mass killings taking place in the Philippines? How did the disturbing violence currently sweeping the country begin, and what does it teach us about impunity, power and the spread of violence?

Chaired by Paul French, an author and widely published analyst and commentator on Asia, Asian politics and current affairs.

Speakers (full panel announced soon):

Gilberto G.B. Asuque is Deputy Chief of Mission of the Philippine Embassy

Vladimir Hernandez has been working as a journalist for over 15 years in Latin America, covering big stories like the drug war in Mexico, the years of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Kirchner rule in Argentina.

Eric Gutierrez is Christian Aid’s Senior Governance Adviser, and author of the report “Drugs and Illicit Practices: Assessing its impact on governance and development”. He grew up in Manila, where he published on criminal entrepreneurs in illicit economies, and the conflict in the Muslim areas of southern Philippines. His PhD dissertation is entitled “Criminals Without Borders: Agrarian Change and Interdependency in Opium and Coca Producing Territories”, a comparative study of the political economy of illicit drugs in Afghanistan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Bolivia.

Daniel Berehulak (via Skype) is an independent Australian photojournalist and frequent contributor to the New York Times. He won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for his coverage of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa for the New York Time and was a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his coverage of the 2010 Pakistan floods. His photography has also earned three World Press Photo awards and the John Faber award from the Overseas Press Club. Berehulak recently spent one month in the Philippines where he covered Duerte’s drug war, photographing over 40 murder scenes.

Dr Tom Smith is an academic working for the University of Portsmouths team teaching at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell. His PhD focused on the muslim insurgencies in southern Thailand and the Philippines. Since May 2016 Tom has had 5 op-eds for the Guardian published, 2 in the Conversation and the Diplomat Magazine as well as several other international media outlets including the UN Dispatch podcast, all focused on the many complex issues in the Philippines.

Header image by Daniel Berehulak for the New York Times

This screening will be followed by a discussion with journalist Ed Vulliamy and Dan Jolin of Empire Magazine.

After rising through the ranks of her male-dominated profession, idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) receives a top assignment. Recruited by mysterious government official Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), Kate joins a task force for the escalating war against drugs. Led by the intense and shadowy Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), the team travels back-and-forth across the U.S.-Mexican border, using one cartel boss (Bernardo Saracino) to flush out a bigger one (Julio Cesar Cedillo).

Sicario was nominated for 3 BAFTA Film Awards, as well as the Palm d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Ed Vulliamy is a writer for The Guardian and The Observer. In 2013, he won the award for literary reporting named after the Polish writer Ryszard Kapuściński for his book Amexica: War Along the Borderline, a vivid dissection of the violent US-Mexico ‘war on drugs’.

Dan Jolin is Features Editor of Empire magazine, the world’s biggest movie magazine. He has been working in film journalism since 1997.

Directed by: Dennis Villeneuve
Country: United States
Year: 2015
Runtime: 120′
Rating: R

In addition to being the only film with exclusive access to the Ulbricht family, Deep Web features the core architects of the deep web; anarchistic cryptographers who developed the deep web’s tools for the military in the early 1990s; the dissident journalists and whistleblowers who immediately sought refuge in this seemingly secure environment; and the figures behind the rise of Silk Road, which combined the security of the deep web with the anonymity of cryptocurrency.

Directed by: Alex Winter
Produced by: Marc Schiller
Year: 2015
Runtime: 90′
Country: USA

On Friday 4 September, the Frontline Club hosted a screening of Cartel Land, a fearless and revealing documentary that portrays the violent influence of Mexican drug cartels and the vigilante groups fighting to end their reign of terror. The screening was followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Matthew Heineman.

Cartel Land takes place in the border state of Arizona in the USA, and in the Mexican state of Michoácan. The latter has been overrun by a number of cartels, including the brutal Knights Templar, who have taken advantage of high level corruption and an absence of legitimate state presence in order to take control with increasingly violent tactics.

The film follows Dr José Manuel Mireles, who Heineman described as “the single most interesting man I’ve ever been around,” and his newly-formed Autodefensas: a rapidly growing group of armed civilians who are determined to force out the cartels and bring peace back to their towns. Just across the US-Mexico border in Arizona is Tim “Nailer” Foley, who leads a group of armed patriot vigilantes in patrolling the border. While Foley’s original intentions were based on a staunch anti-immigration ideology, his motives expanded to include the defence of the US border against Mexican cartels.

The film was very well received by the audience, with many keen to learn more about Heineman‘s experience of working in the notoriously-violent state of Michoácan. The filmmaker told the audience that he had no experience of working in conflict prior to Cartel Land; his previous film focused on healthcare in the US. While there was a constant threat of witnessing a violent confrontation in Arizona, this never materialised. In contrast, the violence in Mexico was “visceral, it was real”:

“I’m not a war reporter… so it was terrifying. I’d never been in a place where there was gunfire going off, I’d never been in a place where people were being tortured, so I had no idea where this film would lead me.”

The film vividly portrays the extent to which gunfire has become commonplace in cartel-led towns across Mexico. This is not dampened by the presence of the Autodefensas, who are themselves heavily armed. As the movement grows, the corruption, acts of intimidation and misuse of power that they claim to be fighting also begin to appear and spread within their own group.

@mheineman premiered his #sundance #winner #documentary at the @frontlineclub and it was #amazing #london #journali… pic.twitter.com/M5Pcy0GG5o

— Annabelle Azade (@AnnabelleAzade) September 4, 2015

An audience member asked whether Heineman was hopeful that the situation in Michoácan would improve. He responded that, despite the Mexican government implementing new measures of reform and legitimising the Autodefensas as a state force, the situation has worsened. “The violence has continued, kidnappings have continued. The thing that everyone feared all along, revenge and anarchy, has played out.”

Heineman told Frontline Club audience members that while he considers himself an “eternal optimist,” he doesn’t view the situation with hope. Mexican government institutions continue to fail to “provide basic safety and security for their citizens.” Heineman extended this criticism to Mexico as a whole, “especially at the local level… [there is] direct collusion between cartels and local government. We see that all throughout Mexico. But the biggest thing is us, is Americans: we’re funding this war through our consumption of drugs.”

In terms of the filming process on the ground, Heineman explained that he had intended to spend two weeks filming in Mexico, but ended up staying for nine months. As a result, he was able to develop close relationships with many high-level Autodefensas leaders.

“They were risking their lives and dying fighting for what they believed in and we were tagging along with them, so I think there was a level of respect that came with that.”

Heineman recounted one particular incident in which his lengthy commitment to the project resulted in astounding access. As detailed in the opening and closing sequences of the film, Heineman gained accesses to an outdoor operation producing meth, where ‘cookers’ openly admit that profits from the sale of the drugs feed directly into the Autodefensas.

Cartel Land is currently showing in cinemas across the UK. More information can be found on the film’s website.

In this double Sundance winner, Matthew Heineman takes us deep into the world of Mexican drug cartels by embedding himself with two vigilante groups on either side of the US-Mexico border.

In Arizona’s Altar Valley — a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley — Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across the border. Meanwhile, in the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as “El Doctor,” shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years.

Heineman repeatedly places himself in harm’s way, filming the chaos as Mireles’ vigilante group begins taking over towns – in the process adapting many of the violent tactics of the drug lords they’re trying to overpower. A visceral journey into North America’s heart of darkness, Cartel Land is a chilling meditation on the breakdown of order and the borderline where life trumps law.

Director: Matthew Heineman
Country: USA/Mexico
Running time: 98′
Distributed by Dogwoof

On Monday 28 October, the Frontline Club screened The Engineer, a documentary uncovering the extent of gang violence in El Salvador directed by Mathew Charles and Juan Passarelli. The Q&A that followed was chaired by Stephen Jukes, Dean of the Media School at Bournemouth University.

The Engineer portrays the work of Israel Ticas, the only criminologist in El Salvador who unearths mass graves in search of hundreds of missing humans – many teenagers among them – killed during the ongoing gang conflict. When the two biggest gangs MS-13 and 18 Street declared a truce in 2012, the murder rate fell but the number of disappearances has been rising since.

After the screening, Charles and Passarelli provided the audience with personal background information on the total of three months they spent with Ticas, to get an insight into his day-to-day job. When Jukes asked what effect accompanying the engineer to underground sites and to film fragmented bodies had, Charles remembered:

“Once we shot the material we had to put it in a drawer for a while. When you’re there, you’re so focused on making sure you get the right shots but when you’re editing, that’s a different story. . . . I think in retrospect it affected us more than we thought.”

When a member of the audience asked about the role of the police in the conflict and whether they observed cases of corruption, Passarelli said:

“There are rumours that gang members infiltrate the police. . . . Indeed, many police officers didn’t care [about identifying victims]. Ticas does and in a way he’s the only hope for many families.”

A member of the public said she despised the portrayal of blood and violence. “Killing looks like something people become addicted to and that feels hopeless to me.”

Another guest added that even reconstructing scenes of crime is immoral: “I looked at the engineer and I thought he was a monster.”

Charles concluded the debate by referring to a personal strategy behind Ticas’ job:

“The engineer had an eccentric personality and a lot of it was show, but maybe that was his mechanism of coping with it.”

The future of the gang conflict is also set to be influenced by El Salvador’s presidential elections in February 2014. The current President Mauricio Funes (FMLN) is said to have facilitated the truce that has come under increased scrutiny as drug trafficking and other criminal activities continue.

A web version of the documentary with additional footage and information is available here and you can watch the trailer below:

[vimeo clip_id=”73038161″ width=”400″ height=”225″]

Israel Ticas spends more time with corpses than with his own family. His life is in danger, but he continues to unearth secret mass graves to identify the hundreds of missing teenagers lost to El Salvador’s brutal gang conflict. He is the country’s only criminologist, nicknamed “The Engineer” as he combines his forensic skills with his background in system engineering to get the job done.

In 2012 the two biggest gangs (MS-13 and 18 Street) declared a controversial truce. While the murder rate fell dramatically from 14 to 5 a day, this is not the full picture, the statistics fail to account for the rise in the number of disappearances.

In The Engineer, filmmakers Mathew Charles and Juan Passarelli offer a unique insight into the fight against gang murders in El Salvador.

Directed by Mathew Charles and Juan Passarelli
Duration: 93′
Year: 2013

Afghanistan produces around 90 percent of the world’s opium, fueling the global heroin trade, funding fundamentalist groups like the Taliban and bringing billions of dollars a year into the country’s economy.

Award-winning Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi travels deep into the Afghan countryside to reveal the deadly bargain local farmers are being forced to make in order to save their own lives. Opium Brides exposes the dreadful abuse of young Afghan girls by drug traffickers closely allied to the Taliban. Through interviews with local villagers, Quraishi learns that drug smugglers have been paying local farmers to grow opium, which the smugglers then use to produce heroin.

Now that the government has been destroying the farmers’ opium crops through the eradication program, the drug smugglers are returning and giving farmers a choice: Pay back the money, or give one of the family’s young daughters as a “bride”.

Reporter & field Producer: Najibullah Quraishi
Producer: Jamie Doran
Year: 2012
Duration: 52′

Teun Voeten’s CV reads like a guide to some of the world’s most dangerous places.

“For 25 years I’ve been working [as a photojournalist and anthropologist] and seeing pretty nasty things, to put it diplomatically, in Rwanda, Sierra Leon, Liberia, Congo, but this is savagery and depravity that I have not seen.”

Voeten has been photographing the effects of the Mexican drug wars since 2009, when he travelled to Ciudad Juarez, epicentre of the violence which threatens to engulf the country, as well as Culiacan and Michoacan. His book, Narco Estado, presents the arbitrary brutality and disturbing public displays of violence and cruelty that are played out daily in a region where authority and crime have merged, where all are vulnerable, and where there is rarely any justice.

Last night, Voeten presented his work in conversation with Peter Watt, Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Sheffield, and co-author of Drug War Mexico: Politics, Violence and Neoliberalism in the New Narcoeconomy.

Voeten’s photographs are a damning catalogue of how cheap life has become: bloodied, tied hands; police so overworked by 10 murders a day that they are reduced to being blasé about butchered bodies; desolate towns, devastated by the ultra-capitalism and narco-cultura of the cartels; acres of graves, marked only with serial numbers; splattered bloodstains on the wall of a sports stadium, where seven people were killed with Kalashnikovs; and a soldier taking a picture of a body on a blood-washed pavement.

As a war-photographer, Voeten was drawn to this topic as it is the newest form of war, a scary development away from the more traditional forms of warfare, where terror is advertised, where ultra-capitalism exploits every imaginable human misery.

“It asserts the power of each criminal organisation but it creates a climate of terror among the population…. Why?” asked Watt.

“It’s very dark and deep. It’s instrumental and symbolic…. Death is part of dehumanising an enemy but in Mexico it goes one step further: decapitation, body parts put in plastic bags along the highway or throwing out 20 killed people in rush hour. It’s a display to the other cartels and authorities and the population: Don’t mess with us. We’re cabrónisimo.”

And as the gap between the filthy rich and the filthy poor widens, it creates a reservoir of people with no hopes and no dreams – an underclass of people who feel and are excluded. The culture of the cartels – live fast and die young – is, says Voeten, actually a very rational assessment of the situation, because the alternative is only a miserable, impoverished life.

When asked about the role of religion in this traditionally very Catholic country, Voeten said: “This is something I want to find out. It is a very strong Catholic country, but with strong Aztec roots…. You have a very perverted cult, Santa Muerte, which has become very hip among drug criminals and they have started to revere death and gory violence. There’s even a narco saint, Malverde.”

Perhaps the solution is to legalise all drugs?

“No, no, no. I don’t think it’s a good idea to legalise crystal meth or crack cocaine. Some people can use drugs responsibly, but you cannot leave it up to the free market because criminal elements will always exploit addiction.”

Voeten’s book, Narco Estado, can be bought through his website.