How much is the U.S. paying for war on drugs? The total 2013 drug control budget: $26 billion. Over $9.4 billion is for domestic enforcement and $2 billion for international enforcement. (Highlights here.)

Here's the 2012 State Department's Bureau of International National Narcotics Strategy Report. Here is the 2013 Inter Agency Drug Budget. And the FY 2013 International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) budget.

Here is the 2013 DEA Budget Justification: $2.4 billion, with its 10,000 employees, 4,249 special agents, and 85 foreign offices in 65 countries. The portion for international enforcement is $408 million.

The DEA doesn't claim the cocaine from its Africa stings is coming to the U.S. Rather, it says:

Even if these drugs do not reach the U.S., the proceeds from these drugs sustain the drug trafficking and terrorist organizations, fuel the next round of drug production, and further corrupt
and destabilize emerging economies and democracies.

The New York Times, link above, today reports:

Even more ominous, according to American officials, was a case in which a militant group called Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb offered three of its operatives to help ship tons of cocaine through North Africa into Europe — all to raise money to finance terrorist attacks. The case ended this past March with conviction and sentencing in federal court in New York.

Well, that's the Oumar Issa case.
The DEA gave the Africans $25,000., sent two informants and who knows how many agents to Africa, to pretend they were going to ship cocaine to Ghana, which the Africans believed they would transport to Spain. The drugs were all make-believe. There were no drugs. There was no FARC involvement. There was no al-Qaida or AQIM involvement. The Africans never even showed the truck they claimed to have purchased with the DEA's money, just a cell phone photo of a truck and a key.

Oumar Issa pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists. His guidelines were 292 to 365 months’ imprisonment, but the statutory maximum was 15 years. The Government asked for 15 years. The Probation Department recommended 60 months. The judge sentenced him to 57 months, even though he applied the terrorism enhancement. Why? According to Probation:

“[t]he defendant impressed upon the undersigned as being more concerned with making money, which CS-1 clearly indicated was the main goal of the offense, than targeting United States interests. In essence, while Issa was convicted of a terrorism-related charge, his conduct appears more analogous to a defendant convicted in a narcotics-trafficking case.”

The Government, in asking for 15 years, had argued:

While it is true, as defense counsel points out, that Issa is not alleged to have been a FARC member or an ideological sympathizer, it is undisputed that Issa agreed to transport a large quantity of narcotics to assist the FARC, knowing full well that the FARC espoused an anti-American agenda and was engaged in terrorist activities.

So the Government got very little from Issa for its efforts. And we got stuck with a big bill for the operation and costs of housing them here for a few years and paying for their prosecution and defense. Issa will be released and sent back to Africa on Feb. 5, 2014, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

In April, 2012, the other two defendants in the Oumar Issa case pleaded guilty to the same offense -- providing material support to terrorists. They plead after the court denied their motion to dismiss attacking jurisdiction, which aptly described the facts:

The alleged plot involved smuggling drugs for a Colombian organization from South America to Africa to Spain. Not a word of English was spoken at any meeting. All the meetings took place in Ghana. None of the participants had ever even been to the United States. The instrumentalities of the plot were European and African – a Mercedes truck, a Malian passport, payment in Euros that were seized. Not a single word was spoken about attacking American targets or bringing drugs to the U.S. market. If Mr. Abdelrahman were guilty of everything the government alleges, at most he should have reasonably anticipated being brought to court in Ghana, Mali or perhaps even Spain or Colombia. There is no way that he could ever have guessed that behind CS-1 and CS-2’s mask of deception lay the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and a chartered jet waiting to whisk him off to New York City. Application of U.S. law in these circumstances is arbitrary and fundamentally unfair.

They were scheduled for sentencing last Thursday and Friday, but the docket doesn't yet reflect their sentences.

The DEA went on to other African sting adventures, like the one involving Russian pilot Konstantin Yuri Yaroshenko and his three codefendants. The DEA kidnapped arrested them in Africa and then brought them to New York for trial. None of the four pleaded guilty, they all went to trial. Two were acquitted and sent home to Africa. Yaroshenko and his co-defendant Chigbo Umeh weren't so fortunate. They'll be serving prison sentences here (which we will pay for) until 2027 and 2036, respectively.

Yet another African sting involved Ali Sesay and Gibrillah Kamara and a third defendant. In this one, the DEA worked with Liberian officials to get the Africans to agree to transport cocaine from South America across Africa so it could be shipped to Holland. The DEA used one of the same informants they used in the Yaroshenko case. The informant told Kamara he wanted to be paid his share of the profits in cocaine, and that he was going to send that cocaine to the U.S. No drugs ever materialized. Nonetheless, the three were charged with conspiring to import hundreds of kilos of cocaine into the U.S., arrested and flown here to stand trial.

Sesay cooperated and got time served and was sent back to Africa. The Government decided to dismiss all charges against the second co-defendant,Jalloh, who also returned to Africa. Kamara ended up pleaded guilty to conspiring to import 200 kilos of cocaine into the U.S., got 20 years and is appealing. (The Government had asked for 292 to 365 months.)

Kamara was a refugee from the war-torn Sierre Leone. He apparently didn't deny that in the past, unrelated to the case he was now charged in, he had arranged for some cocaine to be shipped from South America to Africa which was then sent on to Holland. His lawyer wrote in his sentencing memorandum:

Mr. Kamara’s experience epitomizes the appalling barbarity that civilians endured during that time. He was present when rebels invaded his family home and he witnessed the repeated rape of his wife, his mother, and his 11, 12, and 13 year old sisters. Mr. Kamara’s wife died during the repeated, violent, viciousness assaults, literally raped to death. She and Mr. Kamara had three young children at the time. Mr. Kamara and some of his family were taken hostage by the rebels, escaping only with the intervention of ECOMOG.

....Prior to his extradition on the instant matter, Gibril Kamara had never been to the United States. Before he was solicited by the confidential informant, Mr. Kamara had never been involved in sending, helping send, or even discussing sending narcotics to this country. Mr. Kamara met and spoke of cocaine distribution with the informant, but in the months of discussions and hours of conversation, Mr. Kamara never sought to send or suggested sending cocaine the United States.

Mr. Kamara referred to the distribution of cocaine in West Africa and Holland but never in relation to the U.S. For several years, officials in Liberia, specifically Fumba Sirleaf, the stepsonof the president and the the head of the Liberian national security force, have been paid a great deal of money by the DEA for their assistance in investigating West African drug trafficking. In 2009, they began to target Gibril Kamara. A highly paid DEA informant was introduced to Mr. Kamara through the Liberian officials and Mr. Kamara’s co-defendant Ali Sesay.

More earlier posts on these cases here, here and here and here.

How much of our money is the DEA spending on its most excellent African adventures? And how much are we spending to fly these sting targets from Africa to the U.S., hold them for a year or more in pre-trial detention, fund their defense, try them, incarcerate them for decades (at a cost of $25,000 a year each), and then fly them back when they are deported after their sentences? Considering unless the DEA demands otherwise, the (illusory) drugs are going from South America to Africa to Europe, why is it even the DEA's business to intervene? Or to steer non-U.S. criminal activity into the U.S.?

The DEA: Our new Global Holy Warriors. Is there any DEA mission anywhere in the world Congress will balk at funding? Apparently not.