VIETNAM REDUX DEFOLIATION PLAN PUTS COLOMBIA AT RISK OF A BROADER WAR

Last year Congress approved a controversial $1.3 billion aid package to
Colombia to help fight its illegal drug industry.

The deal came despite warnings that the U.S. is getting much too involved
in Colombia for its own good.

Congress and the Clinton administration ignored warnings that escalating
the drug war could start a real war that will destabilize Colombia and its
neighbors.

The U.S. money will buy training for Colombian soldiers and police, plus a
fleet of helicopters with which they will attack the drug cartels.

They will also go after the anti-government rebels and paramilitaries who
profit from the drug trade.

The containment strategy has until now involved tracking drug-carrying
cartel aircraft and raiding remote jungle cocoa processing laboratories
where the leaves are refined into cocaine.

The new effort will target the fields where coca is grown. Aerial tankers
have begun spraying chemical defoliants on coca plantations, which are
carved from Colombia's vast mountain jungles.

In all wars, civilians get caught in the middle. The first defoliation was
done last month in the Indian village of Santa Rosa del Guamuez

Colombian government aircraft sprayed herbicide over coca patches. They
also destroyed the local residents' corn crop, their pastures and nearby
patches of jungle.

Chemicals also fell in the ponds where the Cofan and Paez tribes raise fish.

The government defends its decision to spray, saying its herbicide is no
worse for the environment than the fertilizer and pesticides that the coca
growers use to produce their illegal crop. A few million Vietnamese who had
their country defoliated would argue the point.

The villagers whose crops have been destroyed are justifiably worried. Not
just about hunger, but about getting sick.

With Colombia planning to spray the entire state of Putumayo, there is a
huge potential for unprecedented human and environmental disasters.

As for the rebels and drug dealers, they say they will start shooting at
the aerial sprayers.

The warnings about the dangers of escalating Colombia's drug war are
starting to ring true.