KINGPIN'S FALL MAY NOT SLOW DRUG TRADE

The Extradition Of A Colombian Trafficker Strikes Hard, But As A New
Cartel Thrives, Some Question The Lasting Effect.

MIAMI - The extradition of a Colombian drug kingpin to Miami early
Saturday marks a fatal blow for the infamous Cali drug cartel, the
largest and most sophisticated narcotics operation in history.

The demise of the Cali cartel is a major victory for U.S. law
enforcement, experts agree. U.S. counternarcotics agents spent 13
years investigating Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, 65, and his brother
Miguel, 61, who is awaiting extradition. To date, about 100 cartel
members have been convicted and jailed.

The Colombian government has shown unprecedented cooperation in the
extradition of drug traffickers in recent years. This on the heels of
success in U.S.-funded drug crop eradication efforts in Colombia.

But skeptics question the impact on the overall war on drugs, pointing
out that the price of cocaine on American streets remains low, meaning
the supply is high. And the number of American drug users has not
fallen significantly.

"Will the government succeed in further punishing major traffickers?
Yes, I think so, and that is a legitimate and important objective,"
said Eric Sterling, president of the Maryland-based Criminal Justice
Policy Foundation. "But I can't see that these extraditions will have
any deterrent effect on current cocaine producers or exporters."

New players long ago filled the shoes of the Cali cartel.

Principal among these is the North Valley cartel, which operates
cocaine laboratories in the Cauca Valley, a rural area of western
Colombia. Located just north of Cali, the North Valley cartel grew
from the ashes of its more famous predecessor.

Its members enjoy close ties to Colombia's far-right paramilitary
armies responsible for some of the country's worst human rights
atrocities. This alliance created perhaps the most potent union in
Colombia's drug war: a cartel capable of moving enormous loads of
cocaine while financing the nation's most violent terrorists.

In the past year, federal prosecutors have issued a series of
indictments against the North Valley cartel. In May, nine cartel
members were charged with smuggling more than 450 tons of cocaine into
the United States via Mexico since 1990, worth an estimated
$10-billion.

In announcing the indictments, U.S. drug officials called the North
Valley cartel "the most powerful and violent drug trafficking
organization in Colombia," responsible for as much as 60 percent of
the cocaine and heroin hitting American streets.

One of the cartel bosses, Diego Montoya, is listed alongside Osama bin
Laden on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The State
Department is offering a $5-million reward for information leading to
his arrest.

In a separate indictment in Miami this year, Montoya, or "Don Diego"
as he is known, was charged with operating a family cocaine business
with two brothers and a cousin dating back to the mid 1980s.

Montoya, a bulky 230-pound former truck driver from the small town of
Trujillo, started out as a "cook" in a cocaine laboratory in the
valley. He rose up the ranks to become one of the cartel chiefs. He
threw lavish parties at a large ranch home in the valley complete with
private air strip and go-cart track, according to agents.

Early on, he was implicated in one of Colombia's most horrific
massacres, in his hometown of Trujillo in the late 1980s.

A monument on a hill overlooking the town serves as a mass grave for
the 117 villagers, mostly young men, kidnapped and executed over a
period of months by Montoya's associates. The bodies, dismembered by
chain saws, were dumped in the Cauca River.

Despite such atrocities, for many years the North Valley cartel
operated quietly in the shadows of the bigger Medellin and Cali
cartels. Several top cartel bosses were renegade former police
officers. Protection was ensured through wholesale bribery of local
police and prosecutors. Cartel hit men dealt with its enemies.

"They have been very well protected," said FBI special agent Hank
Twehues, who has spent several years investigating the cartel. "Even
more so than Medellin and Cali, they were successful in infiltrating
the police at a certain level."

Between them, the Cali and North Valley cartels succeeded in
penetrating and corrupting all principal government institutions in
the western state of Valle, counterdrug agents say.

The drug trade tainted 80 percent of all commerce and industry in
Cali, a city of more than 2-million inhabitants. The Rodriguez
Orejuela brothers were largely responsible for this, agents say. They
were far more sophisticated than their bloody counterpart in Medellin,
drug lord Pablo Escobar, who preferred to invest in land and cattle.
The brothers specialized in merging their illegal drug assets in a
maze of legitimate corporations, including a national chain of
pharmacies with 8,000 employees.

The brothers were captured by Colombian police in 1995, but managed to
work out a deal with the government by which they were each sentenced
to six years in jail, although additional charges forced them to serve
longer. By that time, they had built a financial empire worth between
$1-billion and $2-billion, counterdrug agents say.

While in jail, they remained highly influential figures in the drug
world. The U.S. Treasury Department continues to busily track their
assets. It has a list of more than 150 companies and 200 individuals
associated with the cartel in Colombia, the United States and Spain.

Only after the arrest of the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers did agents
begin to focus their attention on the North Valley.

In the late 1990s, U.S. Customs agents in New York began to notice
that money wiring services were sending extraordinary sums of money to
Colombia from the Bronx, Queens and Manhattan.

One money wiring business sent $70-million in three years, or
$2-million a month.

After running a cross-check with the census for Colombian-born
residents, they found that each one had to be sending $50,000 a year
to account for the wired cash. The money transmitters were simply
picking Hispanic names out of the New York City phone book to disguise
the wire transfers of drug cash.

The North Valley cartel became the target of the largest multiagency
money laundering task force in the United States, with U.S. and
Colombian agents working closely with prosecutors in New York,
Washington, D.C., and Florida.

Law enforcement pressure gradually began to have an impact. Agents
found several cartel members had investments - as well as relatives -
in Miami. Montoya set up his ex-wife and two sons in a $650,000 luxury
apartment in north Miami Beach. His mother had a separate $674,000
condo in Aventura, according to Twehues.

Two sons attended an expensive private school in Miami. One of the
boys, age 16, drove a $60,000 BMW sports car. The family also had a
$3.5-million, 80-foot yacht docked near the apartment.

The properties were seized and the family forced to leave the
country.

Another cartel boss, Miguel Solano, owned a $3-million mansion in tony
Weston, in Broward County. He also had his own mega-yacht.

Last year the cartel was plunged into a bloody internal war over
suspicions that some members were cooperating with government agents.
Solano was the first to die, murdered outside a nightclub in
Cartagena, a popular tourist city on Colombia's Caribbean coast.

Since then hundreds more have been killed.

Colombian police and prosecutors also began to take action. A number
of corrupt prosecutors in the cartel's pay were fired. And the
government began seizing hundreds of properties of cartel bosses up
and down the valley, including Montoya's ranch. Two senior figures
were arrested - one in Panama, the other in Cuba - in the past six
months.

In an attempt to duck out of sight, Montoya allegedly went as far as
faking his own funeral, complete with coffin, mourners and a priest.

Montoya's two brothers and his cousin were also arrested in Colombia
and are awaiting extradition to Miami. Montoya himself - and archrival
Jaime Varela, alias "Soap" - remain at large in Colombia.

The combination of infighting and law enforcement pressure has greatly
weakened the cartel, agents say. Still, a new generation of North
Valley traffickers is emerging, many of them former lieutenants of the
cartel's bosses.

The cartel continues to export cocaine, but time may be running out
for Montoya and the others. The paramilitaries are themselves engaged
in peace talks with the Colombian government.

Analysts agree that breaking up the alliance between drug traffickers
and paramilitaries could go a long way to pacifying Colombia's
long-running civil conflict.

But it likely won't be the end of the problem. As long as U.S. demand
remains steady, Colombia's illicit drug trade will remain alive,
experts say.

"The latest data on illicit drug prices in the United States show that
the war on drugs is failing," according to a 400-page study published
this week by the Washington Office on Latin America, a group often
critical of U.S. policy in the region.

The study cited official government data from 2003 showing that
cocaine and heroin prices are at, or near, all-time lows.

Government officials say updated figures yet to be released will soon
bring more encouraging news.