Making a federal case out of an obscure leaf

Kari Huus Reporter • Profile • E-mail

When federal drug enforcement agents announced last summer that they had arrested scores of suspects in an “international narcotics-trafficking organization” with operations in New York and Seattle, they hailed it as the first major crackdown on khat — a plant grown in the Horn of Africa and chewed like tobacco for its stimulant buzz.

But more than nine months later, prosecutors in Seattle have dismissed charges against all but a handful of defendants, and the few expected to go to trial next month are considered to have a good chance of avoiding jail. The New York case, meantime, is teetering on a fine legal argument over whether khat is a powerful illicit stimulant or something more akin to a double espresso.

The dual cases have rocked close-knit Somali communities in the United States, raising fears among the mostly Muslim immigrants that the defendants could be deported back to the violence and chaos they fled. They also are concerned that the lives of those left behind will be complicated by the government’s implications that the khat trade is somehow linked to terrorist networks in northeastern Africa.

The government’s zeal in pursuing khat smugglers also has raised questions about its priorities. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration led the 18-month-long investigation that spanned three continents, involved a dozen federal, state and local agencies and required thousands of hours of wiretapping. Dozens of court-appointed attorneys have represented defendants who could not afford lawyers.

‘An extremely expensive fight’
“There’s no question that it is an extremely expensive fight,” said Eric Sterling, president of the nonprofit Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. “My understanding of the use of khat is that it should be a very low priority for federal law enforcement. … I think these cases are largely a waste of very precious federal criminal justice resources.”

The crackdown, which was dubbed “Operation Somali Express,” by the DEA, went public with the unsealing of federal indictments on July 26. Prosecutors in the Southern District Court of New York charged 44 people with a range of khat-related crimes — including money laundering and conspiracy to import and distribute the leaves. In Seattle, 18 defendants were charged with conspiring to import and distribute the substance.

“Operation Somalia Express struck at the heart of a significant trafficking organization that was sending drugs to the United States,” DEA special agent Rodney Benson in Seattle said in a press release announcing the indictments. “This drug has the same dangerous and damaging effects as other drugs and some of the huge profits from the khat trade were being returned overseas.”

But many experts challenge that assertion, noting that khat has been used in social and religious settings in Somalia and surrounding countries for centuries and is legal in the majority of Western countries.

The World Health Organization has studied khat repeatedly over the years, most recently in 2006 when it assessed its health impact as quite modest. It also has concluded that it does not merit international control.

“No one except the U.S. government asserts khat is particularly addictive,” said Bob Burrows, a professor of Middle East politics at the University of Washington, who spent eight years in Yemen, another khat-chewing society. “Another thing is there is no hallucinating. Khat gives a sense of well being. It’s a very social thing.”

Major federal resources
Operation Somalia Express was large, even in the context of the war on drugs.

The DEA, which received the lion's share of the $13.8 billion budget for U.S. drug control efforts in fiscal 2007, declined to estimate the cost of the operation. But when asked if this was a major law enforcement effort, DEA special agent Erin Mulvey replied, “Absolutely. …It was one of the largest concerted efforts among DEA and (other enforcement) agencies.”

In addition to yielding 62 suspects, the operation resulted in the seizure of 5 tons of khat —roughly $2 million worth of the plant, according to the DEA — in the New York case.

Information from that probe prompted a sting in Seattle, where the federal Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force, working with a dozen other agencies, seized another 1,000 pounds of khat.

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