Post Civil War Drug Cultivation
Mason found that after a war ends in a negotiated settlement or a government victory a time of lawlessness will exist, and the government’s army will be weak from fighting (Mason et al. 2007). There is no research on whether drug cultivation would continue to increase, as it does during a civil war, during the time of lawlessness after a civil war. It would be significant if an upward trend in drug cultivation continues because that would potentially enable a rebel group to recover after a civil war and, once war is feasible again, resume the battle (Collier et al. 2009). This argument is reasonable under the condition that the drug is illegal. Snyder’s research found that governments have been able to profit from illicit drugs (e.g. Burma) by changing their position on the legality of the drug and building institutions to help in the “extraction” of the resource, thus “transforming narcotics from a honey pot for hinterland rebels into the main pillar of the national economy [Burma]” (Snyder 2004, 20). There is a trade off though, in that the country will become a pariah state, possibly losing loans, aid, membership in intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations, and possibly face economic embargos (Snyder 2004; Peceny, Durnan 2006).