IN THE WAR ON DRUGS, COLOMBIANS DIE, AMERICANS ARE PARDONED

The big stir Bill Clinton's last-minute presidential pardons caused in
the U.S. was nothing compared to the disbelief and indignation they
sparked among Colombians. Most disturbing was the news that one
Clinton pardon went to Harvey Weinig, who was serving an 11-year
sentence for his part in laundering $19 million for the Cali drug cartel.

The editorial pages in the Colombian press expressed unanimous
contempt for the Weinig pardon.

An op-ed in El Tiempo, the country's leading daily, was titled "The
Morality of the Strongest." Gustavo De Greiff, a former Colombian
attorney general, labeled Mr. Clinton's action "monstrous." The pardon
was especially egregious in light of the Clinton administration's own
severe condemnation of the Colombian government's "surrender policy"
toward the Cali cartel in the mid-1990s. That policy allowed those
drug kingpins who agreed to surrender a reduced prison sentence.

On a trip that week to Boyaca, about three hours to the north of
Bogota, I expected to discuss the country's civil conflict or economic
situation, but was instead peppered with questions about the
motivations behind, and the significance of, the pardon.

Poor judgment aside, many Colombians saw the pardon as hard proof of
what they have often alleged: The U.S. is waging a hypocritical war on
drugs that places the burden of violence on Colombia.

The Clinton administration badly mismanaged the U.S. antinarcotics
policy over the past eight years.

By intensifying the Andean component of the war on drugs during the
1990s, the administration gradually shifted the hard work and
responsibilities of the effort to reduce U.S. drug use onto Colombia.
Because Colombia's largest left-wing guerrilla movement relies on the
revenues from the drug war to finance its own war, the U.S. policy
also exacerbated Colombia's civil war. The change of administration is
a good time for the U.S. executive office to reconsider the U.S.
drug-war strategy in Colombia.

For more than a decade the U.S. has required that successive Colombian
governments demonstrate unconditional cooperation in the attack on the
supply side of the cocaine business.

The Colombians have implemented most requests, including the
ill-conceived idea that supply could be contained by an aerial
defoliation program and a search-and-destroy strategy targeted at drug
laboratories in the Andean jungle.

Even so, any suspicion that Colombia has not been cooperating fully in
these efforts has met a harsh U.S. response.

One example of this, which has particular relevance to the Weinig
pardon, occurred following the election of Colombian president Ernesto
Samper in 1994. After it became clear that Mr. Samper's campaign had
received contributions from the Cali cartel, the U.S. government
adopted a set of policies intended to push him from office.

Mr. Samper earned the informal tag in Washington circles of
"narco-president," and a reputation as a person who couldn't be
trusted to implement the tenets of U.S. anti-drug policy despite the
fact that bullets from a drug trafficker-financed assassination
attempt were still lodged in his body. In 1996 Washington stripped Mr.
Samper of his visa to enter the U.S., making him only the second head
of state to receive this dubious distinction. In 1996-97 the U.S.
government "decertified" Colombia for not "cooperating" in the fight
against the Cali cartel, a diplomatic slap in the face normally
reserved for rogue states such as Afghanistan and Myanmar.

It's no secret that drug money has infiltrated many state institutions
throughout the world and Mr. Samper's government was no exception.

According to the evidence, his campaign did receive drug money. But
the U.S. attack on him was widely viewed as an attack on the country
and paradoxically strengthened his domestic poll numbers, as
Colombians rallied in solidarity. Moreover, the decertification
decision served to weaken the Colombian state at the very time when
both guerrilla and paramilitary groups were gaining leverage due to
increased involvement in the drug trade.

The rise in armed activity in Colombia today can be traced to this
period.

Furthermore, despite Mr. Samper's misdeeds, there was a crackdown on
the Cali cartel during his administration. In 1995 all of the cartel's
kingpins were either killed or apprehended and this cost the lives of
many Colombian police officers. General Rosso Jose Serrano, the
commander of the Colombian National Police and one of the most highly
regarded law-enforcement officials, stated that his retirement in 2000
was largely driven by the pain he suffered from attending so many
funerals for his officers slain while fighting the drug war.

During Mr. Clinton's visit to Colombia last August he embraced several
widows of these police officers.

Many Colombians took this event to signify that the U.S. had finally
come to realize the tremendous cost it was transferring onto Colombian
society. Yet that optimism was quickly shattered by the news of the
Weinig pardon. The U.S. had, in effect, blessed a collaborator of the
very same cartel that Colombians had fought so hard to destroy.

Key to the Clinton policy, which Mr. Bush has inherited, is a $1.3
billion U.S. commitment to Plan Colombia, Colombian President Andres
Pastrana's program to regain control of the country from the
underworld. The U.S. funds that go to the military must be used,
almost exclusively, to try to stop cocaine production.

Yet, there are clear difficulties with the U.S. assumption that it can
defeat drug use by attacking coca growers.

First, even if the U. S. eventually declares victory in the war on
drugs in Colombia, drug production will most likely just shift to
other countries, perhaps to nations that are far less willing to
cooperate. Second, the recent proliferation of synthetic drugs,
produced at home, is clear evidence that U.S. demand drives supply.

If controlling narcotics supplies is important to the U.S. it must
pursue counternarcotics goals aggressively on its own turf. The
continuation of the efforts to wipe out coca production in Colombia is
turning peasants into pawns of the rebel movement, increasing the
value of the product and destabilizing a fragile democracy. Rather
than pouring more than $1 billion into a cynical strategy apparently
designed mainly for U.S. political advantages, the Bush administration
would do well to learn from the failure of the Clinton administration.
Narcotics prevention begins at home.