A Mongoose Walked into a Narcotics Den...

• Author: Marks, Ed

The American embassy in Sri Lanka, like its counterparts worldwide, has the task of liaison and coordination with local authorities on the subject of narcotics. When I served there from 1986 to 1989, narcotics' use was not a major problem, nor was the country an exporter or a major transit point. Nevertheless, these are relative terms, and the Sri Lankan government was worried that narcotics activity in the country was growing. Both governments were concerned about the increasing evidence that at least one of the Tamil separatist groups was funding its activities by drug smuggling from South Asia to Europe.

Soon after my arrival in Colombo, a young colleague who held the narcotics portfolio (among his other duties) arranged a luncheon with four of his most important contacts in the narcotics area: police, customs, etc. We discussed various aspects of the problem and of our bilateral cooperation in the field. At one point, we discussed inspection and control mechanisms at airports and ports, and especially the virtues of specially trained sniffer dogs. The subject interested me as I had some knowledge of the subject from my days in counterterrorism. We all realized that, useful as they are, dogs have disadvantages: scarcity, cost of procurement and maintenance, difficulty of adaptation to tropical climates, and a negative cultural reaction to them among many Moslems.

I cannot remember exactly who first broached the thought (although I would like to take credit), but suddenly we were discussing the possibility of replacing sniffer dogs in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia with an indigenous animal, to wit, the mongoose. The more we talked, the more the idea seemed worth pursuing. The senior police officer present claimed experience with local mongooses as pets and insisted that they were clever and trainable, and notable for their ability to smell.

The next day I asked my colleague to draft a telegram to the bureau handling narcotics matters in the State Department proposing an experimental project to train mongooses in sniffing narcotics. He appeared surprised, as he had thought our previous day's conversation was simply a lark. He was also obviously a bit embarrassed at the thought of drafting a telegram to the Department on what appeared a rather frivolous subject. I assured him that there really was something to explore here, that nothing was frivolous if properly phrased, and that the bureau in question was flush with money and short of...