WHAT AFTER PLAN COLOMBIA?

A first glance at the Bush administration's Andean Regional Initiative
unveiled Wednesday suggests a welcome decrease in military assistance to
Colombia, in favor of "softer" solutions to drug trafficking, such as the
crop substitution and economic development efforts suggested by critics.

Look at the figures and the fine print a little closer, though, and you
will find less of a change than meets the eye. In some respects, the Bush
initiative may in fact contribute to the spread of the Colombian conflict
to neighboring countries.

The $1.3 billion Plan Colombia, approved by Congress last year and running
until the end of 2001, prescribed mostly military cures to the festering
narcotics problem. After some criticism about the imbalance, some funds
were added for "softer" programs.

But while the social programs have yet to get off the ground, the formation
of new anti-drug military units and crop fumigation campaigns are off and
flying. And though it's too early to judge the impact of Plan Colombia, a
UN report released this week indicates coca cultivation increased last year
by 60 percent and the acreage under cultivation is much larger than
originally thought. Those are not good omens.

About 46 percent of Bush's $1.1 billion Andean Regional Initiative, which
will kick in in 2002 after Plan Colombia funding runs out, goes to
implement judicial and government reform and anti-poverty programs, and
efforts to induce coca farmers to switch to legal crops.

Some of the money also will go to the neighboring countries of Peru,
Bolivia, Brazil, Panama and Venezuela. This shift seems like an
acknowledgment that despite all the war metaphors, the fight against drugs
is going to take more than bullets and helicopters, and that the problem is
bigger than just Colombia.

But there are also some serious questions about the Bush initiative. While
Plan Colombia was a two-year supplemental appropriation, Bush's funding
proposals are neatly folded into the regular annual appropriation process.

Does that signal the beginning of a prolonged U.S. military involvement in
the region?

And although soft programs do get a boost, all the countries involved,
except Colombia, also would get whopping hikes in American military aid.
Indeed, an analysis by the Center for International Policy in Washington,
D.C. shows that the decrease in weapons aid to Colombia is offset almost
dollar-for-dollar by increases in military aid to surrounding nations.

With the Colombian conflict threatening to spread to other countries, isn't
more American military aid like sprinkling gasoline on a fire?

It's too late to turn back Plan Colombia. The third U.S.-sponsored,
anti-drug battalion graduates this week, and 16 Blackhawk helicopters will
arrive in Colombia this summer.

But it's not too late to rethink what comes afterward. The U.S. needs to
back away from this potential military quagmire and concentrate on far more
real solutions to the drug problem -- starting with controlling demand here
at home.