MEANWHILE, BACK IN COLOMBIA

It is unavoidable, but still unfortunate, that the recent terrorist
attacks will push examination of U.S. policy toward Colombia further
down the list of congressional priorities.

On Sept. 11, precisely the day of the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, Secretary of State Colin Powell was
scheduled to visit Bogota for consultations with President Andres
Pastrana and an update on the progress of the U.S. government's $1.3
billion Plan Colombia, designed to fight production of narcotics
there.

Powell's visit was supposed to be a prelude to consideration by
Congress of the Bush administration's request for an additional $882
million to fund the new Andean Initiative aid package for Colombia
and its neighbors.

Had Powell had the chance to evaluate the progress of Plan Colombia,
he would have found little encouraging news. If anything, the urgent
request for more money suggests that the American strategy is
foundering--a case of putting good money after bad.

The other option, which Congress and the administration ought to
take, is to step back from the Colombian quagmire and spend the
proposed American aid here on drug rehabilitation, treatment and
prevention programs.

Investing on the consumption side of the narcotics equation is a
long-term proposition. Drug addiction is not the kind of disease
susceptible to one-shot cures.

Yet treatment is far more likely to impact the American drug problem
than airdropping bundles of dollars over Colombia, a country where
drug trafficking, corrupt politics and violence have merged into a
whirlwind no outsiders or money can hope to manage, let alone control.

Pastrana was elected in 1998 on the promise that he would negotiate a
peace with the two guerrilla armies. But his dramatic gestures--most
notably ceding to the guerrillas a chunk of land the size of
Switzerland--have yielded little. If anything, it seems the
guerrillas have used this land to regroup their military forces and
narcotrafficking operations.

Meanwhile, political assassinations, kidnappings and massacres
continue unabated, carried out mostly by paramilitary units with the
complicity of the Colombian army. Pastrana hasn't made a dent on this
problem either.

Prior to Powell's visit, the U.S. formally added Colombia's largest
paramilitary group to the official list of "terrorist organizations."
But that is not likely to have any impact on those groups, which
finance themselves by kidnapping and protection of drug producers.

And a program to spray herbicides over coca crops--the centerpiece of
the U.S. effort--has not done much, if anything, to reduce drug
production. Widespread fumigation in the southern province of
Putumayo has just shifted coca plantations to other areas and raised
alarm over the impact of such large-scale spraying on people, legal
crops and animals.

In a moment of candor, Peter Rodman, assistant defense secretary for
international affairs, summed up the misgivings some U.S. officials
have about Plan Colombia and its sequel. "Are we getting deeper into
a conflict or not? What is at stake?" he asked. "I think we as a
country are not quite sure where we are heading."

As the Bush administration launches worldwide anti-terrorist
initiatives, it may not seem like the most opportune time to scale
back or rethink our involvement in Colombia. But it is. With the
growing squeeze on federal spending and so many pressing security
concerns on the national agenda, this is the right time to abort a
policy in Colombia that has yielded little and promises more of the
same.