War Correspondence

THE EXTENSION OF DRUG PARANOIA BY OTHER MEANS

Welcome To Colombia, Where The American-Directed Drug Policy Is To Shoot
First And Ask Questions Never.

Last year, the United States agreed to spend $1.3 billion on Plan
Colombia, its latest effort in the War on Drugs. As part of the plan,
America will give the Colombian military 16 Blackhawk, 30 Huey II, and
15 UH-1N helicopters. It will also send some 500 ground troops and 300
contract civilian workers to act as "advisors," as well as 85 Green
Berets to train Colombia's soldiers in anti-drug operations -- mostly
destroying coca fields and fighting narco-traffickers.

Because of its focus on crop eradication, Plan Colombia promises to fail
spectacularly. Eradication efforts typically result in a temporary
decrease in the amount of illegal crops in the targeted area, with
increased production in regions that are not under attack. In 1995, the
United States stepped up its anti-drug campaign in Peru and Bolivia,
spending nearly a billion dollars over the course of five years in
military assistance and "alternative development" programs in an effort
to eradicate coca fields in those two countries. And while land
dedicated to coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia fell from 361,250
acres in 1995 to 122,500 acres by 2000, land under coca fields more than
doubled in Colombia, from fewer than 168,000 acres in 1995 to 340,250
acres in 2000.

Last December crop spraying began in Colombia in the southern provinces
of Caqueta and Putumayo, where about 75% of Colombian coca was grown at
the time. The campaign against coca fields there resulted in a
region-wide doubling of coca leaf prices over the last six months,
encouraging farmers in other regions to discard "legitimate" crops in
favor of coca. And an estimated 10,000 farmers from Putumayo have moved
to the neighboring province of Narino to reestablish themselves in the
coca business. As for the long-term effectiveness of eradication
efforts, the United Nations Drug Control Project (UNDCP) recently
released a report that Peruvian farmers who had abandoned their fields
in the late 1990s are once again returning to coca cultivation in
response to the increased value of the crop.

While Plan Colombia won't have much effect on the flow of illegal drugs,
it is helping the United States get its foot back in the door to South
America, and it gives a great boost to Colombia's military in their
efforts to put down a 40-year- long insurrection by leftist
revolutionaries.

The leftist guerrilla movement in Colombia originally formed in the
1960s as a militant political movement with the stated intent of
toppling the National Front government. The guerrilla's methods of
acquiring capital to support their efforts against the government have
never been pleasant -- extortion, bribery, and kidnapping have long been
standard practices. In the past two decades, the guerrillas have lost
most, if not all, of the political idealism they held in the 1960s, and
the movement is now no different from any other criminal organization.
In addition to the continued extortion, bribery, and kidnappings, the
guerrillas take in enormous amounts of money for providing "protection"
for coca growers and drug traffickers in Colombia.

In the early 1980s, the Colombian military began training and supplying
right-wing paramilitaries to protect banks, businesses, and farmers from
guerrilla strong-arming. The military's support of the paramilitaries
was openly acknowledged for nearly ten years, until the abysmal human
rights record of the paramilitary groups and the para's self- professed
involvement in the drug trade finally forced the Colombian military to
withdraw official recognition of them in 1989. The Colombian government
now claims that it no longer holds any ties to the paramilitary groups,
despite considerable evidence to the contrary. Consequently, the U.S. is
feeding $1.3 billion dollars of aid to a government that supports
paramilitaries who are themselves involved in drug trafficking,
undermining the entire cause of the drug war.

As the military beefs up its forces with U.S.-supplied helicopters and
surveillance equipment, and adds American-trained battalions to its
forces, the guerrillas have, in turn, stepped up their recruitment
efforts among Colombia's native Indians. Boys and girls as young as
twelve are being enticed to join the ranks of the guerrillas with tales
of great profit and adventure -- and, when that doesn't work, they are
simply threatened or coerced. As a result, guerrilla forces have swelled
to 17,000, up 5,000 in the past year. Paramilitary groups, in response,
have stepped up their attacks and have become more ruthless and
indiscriminate in targeting "suspected'' guerrillas or
guerrilla-sympathizers. And as violence escalates in Colombia, it is
crossing the borders into neighboring countries.

In Ecuador, Colombian paramilitary groups pursue and battle Colombian
guerrillas, who are attacking Ecuadorean oil pipelines. Violence has
broken out along Colombia's borders with Peru and Brazil, as Colombian
guerrilla and paramilitary groups clash with the Peruvian and Brazilian
militaries. In southern Venezuela, Colombian guerrillas have begun
kidnapping Venezuelan ranchers and oil workers to generate further
revenue, and Panama is voicing concerns that Colombia's war will soon
threaten her boundaries. Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Panama have all
requested increased U.S. aid to help them contain the violence streaming
over their borders; Ecuador alone has requested $400 million over the
next four years. The Pentagon is already spending $62 million in Ecuador
this year to build an "advance post for combatting narco-trafficking"
(military officials prefer to not call it a "base" -- though living
quarters for 200 American military and civilian contract personnel are
being built there).

Further complicating matters is the election of Hugo Chavez as president
of Venezuela last year. Chavez is disdainful of United States
involvement in the area and has barred U.S. "counternarcotics" flights
over Venezuelan airspace. Chavez is widely believed to sympathize with
and even support the Colombian guerrillas, though he publicly denies it.
He played host to a group of Colombian guerrillas last year, even
allowing one to have time on the speaker's floor of the Venezuelan
Congress to denounce the Colombian government; and Venezuelan military
weapons have been found in the possession of Colombian guerrillas. As
America becomes more heavily involved in Colombia's campaign against the
"narco-guerrillas," the situation threatens to progress into a war
between sovereign nations.

President Clinton presented Plan Colombia last year as "vital to
national security interests" because it is instrumental in protecting
America "from the threat posed by illicit drugs imported from other
nations." "National security interests" and "threats posed by drugs"
were more than sufficient justification for Congress, and the plan
passed with overwhelming support. Though a few dissenting voices over
human rights abuses by Colombia's military came from Democratic
quarters, many Republicans requested that even more than the proposed
$1.3 billion be given Colombia to help fight the War on Drugs. The Bush
administration is gearing up to expand Plan Colombia to encompass
Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and, if Chavez agrees, Venezuela to help keep
the Andean region "safe from drug traffickers."

Public opposition to the plan was a non-issue. Aside from the occasional
newspaper headline, most Americans are unaware of the destruction caused
by drug eradication efforts in South America. (See "Bush's War On
Drugs," ( http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n1017/a01.html ) below.)

Given the repeated incidences of drug-war violence, the documented
futility of crop eradication and the commonsense understanding that
shifting coca crops around the Andes will do nothing to keep cocaine
from flowing into our country, one is left with the question: "Why are
we so strongly committed to fighting the drug war in Colombia?" The
answer to that question lies in the United States' thirst for increased
presence in Latin America for political and economic reasons that are in
no way related to the "dangers" posed to American citizens from imported
narcotics.

After its debacle in Vietnam, the United States found it more difficult
to openly pursue its pro-American (though not necessarily pro-democracy)
agenda in Latin America. The "fight against communism" no longer proved
sufficiently popular to warrant outright military activity and the loss
of Americans' lives on foreign soil. However, by virtue of its control
of the Panama Canal, the United States maintained a military presence in
Panama at Howard Air Force Base -- the United States' southern
headquarters for military operations. Howard provided the United States
with a hub from which to monitor activity -- drug-related and otherwise
- -- throughout Latin America. At the turnover of the canal in December of
1999, the United States was forced to withdraw completely from Panama --
leaving the U.S. military effectively locked out of Latin America, until
Colombia's President Kastana approached President Clinton with his
proposal for Plan Colombia.

United States' involvement will only serve to fuel the flames of
violence within Colombia, a violence for which the country has long been
notorious. The past 200 years of Colombian history have included four
dictatorships, two official civil wars, a military coup, and perpetual
unrest in the countryside. From 1948 to 1958, Colombia was engulfed in
what was universally called "La Violencia,' a period of civil violence
that killed and displaced hundreds of thousands. In the last decade
alone, 35,000 Colombian civilians have been killed in the political
crossfire. The present conflict is merely the latest chapter in this
long tale of political violence -- the continuation of an unofficial
civil war that has raged for nearly 40 years. Throughout its long
history, this civil war has become increasingly complicated as it has
evolved into a triangular conflict between the government, leftist
guerrillas, and right-wing paramilitary "death squads," where
questionable alliances have formed and defining lines between "right"
and "wrong" have become virtually undetectable.

In the end, Plan Colombia will mean spending billions of dollars for
nothing, except more violence, death, and destruction in a
long-suffering land.