US DRUG POLICY IN COLOMBIA A RECIPE FOR DISASTER

WASHINGTON

FOR MOST PEOPLE, the killing of an American missionary and her baby
daughter last month by trigger-happy, allegedly antidrug cowboys of the
Peruvian Air Force afforded only a tiny peek at a more horrific problem.
And the fact that the killings could occur in the air under the pathetic
supervision of CIA contractors afforded an equally tiny peek at the
increasingly central US role in this murderous, ever-escalating mess.

Representative James McGovern detests the inevitable comparison between the
escalating drug wars in that region of South America and the ruinous civil
wars of the 1980s in Central America. However, he is uniquely suited to
make it, and the facts lead him there inexorably.

As he summarizes the most important points, what you have is an essentially
civil conflict poisoned further by the introduction from outside of a
supposedly larger foreign policy issue, which is followed by the total
militarization of the situation under the control of the United States. It
is a recipe for more and more violence, never a solution, and it soils our
values and reputation.

Twenty years ago, the whopping international concern was said to be
communism. This time around it's drug trafficking. Once again, we just
don't get it.

As a top aide to Representative Joe Moakley in the '80s, McGovern was a
major player in exposing the truth about and then helping end the slaughter
in El Salvador. Fortunately, he is at it again, focusing on battered
Colombia and its sadly familiar cycle of mutual atrocities, deaths by the
tens of thousands, refugees by the hundreds of thousands, the erosion of
civil authority, spreading poverty, lasting environmental damage, and
continuous escalation.

There is a vivid metaphor for this cycle daily to anyone who searches, but
two from just last week will suffice. On his way home to Worcester at the
end of April, McGovern was steered to the basement of St. Mary Star of the
Sea Church in East Boston, where he found nearly 500 refugees from Colombia
(many if not most undocumented) gathered on short notice.

Like the Central Americans who first pricked the enormous conscience of Joe
Moakley, these Colombians have come through hell and are going through
nightmares trying to survive here. Their message, McGovern said, besides
requests for help navigating American life and bureaucracy, was a plea for
his help in stopping the US-controlled military operations in their country
- - at $1.3 billion a year and escalating right along with the fighting, with
the usual negligible impact on the declared enemy, illegal drugs.

Also last week, the House Government Operations Committee inquired into the
spreading war with basic questions about command and control. Under the
standard blanket of secrecy, the members got zilch, even on such simple
questions as how the relatives of Americans injured or killed in the
fighting are notified. The impression from the hearing was that
responsibility for the military operations, with heavy intelligence
community involvement, is impossible to fix.

McGovern was in the country six weeks ago with another gutsy colleague,
Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois. Their work focused on
three parts of Colombia, apt metaphors for the mess we are making.

One is the province of Putumayo, ground zero in the drug wars. This is
where the US Blackhawk helicopters fly and where other US planes fly high
to avoid getting shot at and spray poison on the coca fields below against
the wishes of the governor and all 13 of the province's mayors. On the
ground, increasingly, Colombia's military moves out and drug-running
paramilitary squads move in to kill. The left and right are
indistinguishable to the poor victims of this madness.

The two congressmen were also in the Barrio Kennedy section of Bogota,
named after the president who 40 years ago tried to offer US assistance the
right way. Today it is a massive, growing slum crammed with the refugees of
endless fighting.

They were also in San Jose de Apartado in the north, one of the fledgling
peace communities trying to say no to both sides in the war and under
brutal pressure from each.

The McGovern-Schakowsky way would expand the assault on drug addiction in
this country and emphasize steady eradication of coca on the ground in
Colombia along with economic assistance and an insistence that all ties to
paramilitary goons be broken. This is genuine antidrug toughness. For now,
however, they will lose to the status quo of more US money for poison from
the air, more mass killing on the ground, more escalation and spread of the
fighting to Ecuador and Peru, and no change in operations to supply the
ravenous American drug market. But if the past is a guide, McGovern's
forecast about the status quo will prevail: It will only get more violent.