U.S. TOO NARROWLY FOCUSED ON DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA

Narcos, Paramilitaries Have Prospered

There is no question about the need for the United States to help Colombia
and its neighbors to deal more effectively with the violence and human
tragedy created by the country's three simultaneous wars against illegal
drug trafficking and paramilitary and insurgent organizations. However the
United States must not make the same mistakes in Colombia that were made in
Vietnam. American forces never lost a battle, but it was the Vietcong and
North Vietnamese allies who emerged victorious.

As in Vietnam, broad strategic concerns have played little part in the
debates as to what to do with the billions of dollars already allocated --
and being proposed -- to support Colombia in its present crisis. The United
States has tended to ignore fundamental strategic requirements and approach
broad Colombian socio-political and security problems with narrow
operational military solutions on a piecemeal, situation-by-situation
basis. If the lessons of Vietnam teach anything, they teach the need to go
back to the strategic basics.

In Colombia, the United States has focused its money, training and
attention almost entirely on the counter-drug campaign. It has seen the
Colombian crisis in limited terms: the number of hectares of coca
eradicated and the number of kilos of coca that have been detected and
destroyed.

On the other hand, the narco, insurgent and paramilitary actors are
conducting their own broad campaigns throughout the country to corrupt,
intimidate and undermine the vital institutional pillars of a legitimate
regime and to challenge government control of the state.

Though the United States and Colombia have achieved a series of tactical
``successes'' in the coca fields, the laboratories and on the streets, the
corrupt players remain strong and become ever more wealthy. And, Colombia
continues to deteriorate and becomes ever more fragile.

In addition, there is a spillover issue: The threads that allow narcos,
insurgents and paramilitaries to conduct their three wars against the state
- -- and prosper -- are freedom of movement and action. These two factors
have allowed them to establish supporting infrastructure -- remote base
areas, sanctuaries, sources of supply and supply routes within Colombia and
beyond its borders.

As a consequence, narcos and other corruption factions inspire violence and
instability not only in Colombia, but in Panama, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru,
Brazil and northward into the Caribbean and Mexico. Thus the Colombian
problem is a wide-ranging hemispheric problem. The drug issue is only one
piece of a larger puzzle.

Civilian and military leaders must broaden their perspectives and realize
that putting money, equipment and personnel into this complex situation
without doing the fundamentals will result in disjointed and ineffective
responses to the problems addressed.

Sooner or later, the Colombian government and its allies must assert
themselves and deal with the country's strategic-level security issues on a
hemispheric basis. Otherwise, the narco, insurgent or paramilitary group
with the best organization and greatest resolve will achieve the level of
control that it seeks.

This is a zero-sum game in which there can be only one winner. The United
States, Colombia and the global community must look beyond the drug war and
develop a cooperative, holistic, and long-term policy and strategy to deal
with the entire crisis.

The United States must accept the fact that no reduction in drug
trafficking is likely until the Colombian government expands its military
capabilities and its political will to regain control of territory from the
insurgents and paramilitaries, and becomes capable of dealing with the
illegal narco-traffickers on the basis of law.

In addition, human-rights abuses will continue until Colombian military and
police forces are professionalized, understanding that they cannot deny
citizens civil liberties in order to maintain public order and enforce laws.

Last, the United States must accept the fact that none of this will happen
until Colombia improves the quality of democratic governance and mobilizes
its people to honestly confront all of its internal wars.

Max Manwaring, a retired U.S. Army colonel, is a professor of military
strategy at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.