COLOMBIA HEATS UP, AND THERE'S NO 'PLAN B'

The twin pillars used to justify vastly increased U.S. aid to
Colombia have collapsed, yet this nation is sending more military and
economic aid than ever to the world's largest cocaine-producing
country.

And we're doing so without a Plan B for how to end a 38-year civil
war or shut down a drug trade involving tens of thousands of
narco-guerrillas.

In 1999, Colombia became the third-largest recipient of U.S. military
aid. That funding has ballooned to about $800 million a year. The
money was meant to support an ambitious peace plan and to help one of
the hemisphere's oldest democracies wage war on drug-financed
terrorists.

But last month, two things happened:

The peace process collapsed. Angered by a plane hijacking in which a
senator was kidnapped, Colombian President Andres Pastrana called off
a 3-year-old cease-fire and attacked the main guerrilla group, known
by its Spanish initials as FARC.

Plan B for the peace process turns out to be: no Plan B.

Fighting is intensifying amid grim predictions the guerrillas will
widen their terror war in the cities.

The drug war fizzled. Despite heavy U.S.-funded crop-dusting and
counter-drug operations, Colombia's cocaine crop just keeps getting
bigger.

Plan B for the drug war turns out to be: more of Plan B.

Colombia expert Russell Crandall of Davidson College in North
Carolina says the drug war will go on no matter how much of a flop it
is. "The bottom line for Plan Colombia is that it's a waste of
money," he said.

Plan Colombia was Pastrana's ambitious $7.5 billion formula for
defeating the guerrillas on military, social and economic fronts, but
the only real funding it ever got was $1.3 billion from the United
States, the bulk of which went for military helicopters.

Colombia's terror links

Something else happened last week. The Bush administration pulled the
plug - for now - on plans to wrap Colombia into Phase 2 of the
terrorism war. That would have meant even more U.S. money and troops
on top of an extra $600 million already requested.

At least one analyst believes those war plans exist, given the
increasingly global nature of terrorism and the links already made
between Colombian guerrillas, alleged IRA bomb-makers and Paraguayan
gun-runners.

"The Bush administration doesn't want to vocalize its plans or
intentions to become more involved in Colombia," said Brett Schaefer,
a policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation think tank in
Washington, D.C. He said the administration should "be a little more
forthright" about backing Colombia's army.

U.S. military aid is now limited by law to anti-drug warfare, an
effort that involves hundreds of U.S. special operations troops
training counter-drug battalions. The training appears to be paying
off, as the Colombian army, once notoriously disorganized and
demoralized, starts retaking territory in a former guerrilla
stronghold.

The Bush team, meantime, is widening its assistance at the margins,
with stepped-up intelligence sharing, more spare parts and a $98
million train-and-equip proposal to help guard a key oil pipeline.
But the nub of the U.S. policy dilemma - the factor that could
backfire on Bush administration strategists - will be whether public
support for more U.S. military involvement can be sustained as the
fighting intensifies in Colombia.

Eyewatch: Cyber-narcs

Colombia's drug kingpins are part warlord-rebels, part
narco-terrorists and part businessmen. Yet they're also sophisticated
cyber crooks who use fancy electronic means to hide their money, mask
their deals and confound their pursuers.

An international watchdog agency set up by the United Nations said
last week that Colombian and Mexican gangs have colluded on
sophisticated surveillance of the cops watching them, while using
encryption, ship-based computers, stolen cellular phone identity
codes and restricted-access Internet chat rooms to direct the
movement of hundreds of tons of drugs around the world.

They and other narco-terrorists can then launder profits through more
than 2,000 "virtual casinos" online or by using super-fast electronic
cash transfers, the International Narcotics Control Board warned.

The Vienna-based agency said tougher bank rules and more
international law-enforcement teamwork would be required.

http://ebird.dtic.mil/Mar2002/s20020306colombian.htm RETURN TO TOP

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel March 3, 2002

Colombian Drug War Escapes U.S. Notice, But Fuels Its Habit

By Richard Foster

Americans know about the war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban
in Afghanistan, and they are at least vaguely familiar with the
fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East, the
continuing trouble in Northern Ireland and perhaps even the attempt
by Russia to put down a rebellion in the breakaway republic of
Chechnya.

But relatively little attention has been paid to a civil war that has
been going on for 38 years in Colombia, even though it is fueled by
the drug trade and the United States has a billion-dollar investment
in its outcome.

That war took a dramatic turn a week ago, when President Andres
Pastrana sent elite government troops to recapture a
Switzerland-sized tract of jungle territory in southern Colombia that
he had ceded to rebels more than three years earlier as part of a
bold plan - now abandoned - to energize peace negotiations.

An angry Pastrana moved against the rebels two days after they
hijacked a domestic airliner and kidnapped a senior Colombian senator
who was a passenger on the plane. Even as he sent troops into the
southern zone, Pastrana announced the government was breaking off
talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its
Spanish-language acronym FARC.

The FARC rebels poked another stick in the eye of the government only
shortly after its troops were dispatched to the south; Ingrid
Betancourt, a high-profile presidential candidate and a longtime
rebel critic, was taken prisoner with her campaign manager.

The government quickly announced it would not negotiate for
Betancourt's safe return, even though FARC hinted it might trade her
and five members of Congress for captured guerrillas.

The airline hijacking, Betancourt's abduction and the countless
bombings, murders and other atrocities that preceded them, combine to
make a tragedy of Pastrana's last weeks in office. He campaigned for
the presidency in 1998 on a peace platform, and it was with a stated
view to generating a good-faith dialogue with the FARC that he
surrendered that tract of land later that same year.

Those hopes and plans are now a shambles. New elections are scheduled
for May, and Pastrana is constitutionally prohibited from seeking
another term.

Sending in the army was enormously popular with Colombians, who have
failed to see anything good materialize out of the three-year effort
to negotiate a peace with the rebels. A National Consultancy Center
telephone survey taken for a TV station showed 92% of Colombians
supported Pastrana's move. The same poll showed his approval rating
shot up - from a miserable 20% to an only slightly better 33%.
Clearly, Pastrana is among the casualties of the war.

The various combatants in the Colombian war - outlawed militias with
reported ties to the Colombian army, FARC, the smaller National
Liberation Army and other rebel groups - finance their activities at
least in part from drug sales. Colombia, in fact, accounts for nearly
80% of the world's supply of cocaine and most of the heroin sold on
the East Coast of the United States.

According to the Colombian armed forces, more than $500 million a
year from drug sales and kidnap ransom payments is fed into the
coffers of FARC and other rebel groups. The rebellion is also
financed by shakedowns - called "revolutionary taxation" - of
businessmen, farmers and others.

The U.S. financial investment in this struggle is an anti-drug
campaign called "Plan Colombia," under which $1.5 billion has been
allocated to the Colombian government over two years. In the fiscal
year 2003, President Bush is seeking an additional $500 million for
Colombia.

Almost half the $1.5 billion will pay for operations in southern
Colombia; about 100 U.S. advisers will train and equip three new
special anti-drug battalions of the Colombian army. U.S. money also
will be used to buy transport and military helicopters, radars, bases
and other items designed to strengthen the drug interdiction effort.

Last week, the White House rejected, at least temporarily, Defense
Department recommendations that would have formally elevated the war
on drugs in Colombia to the status of the worldwide war on terrorism.
Taking such a step would have set the stage for a greatly expanded
U.S. role in the war against FARC, even though it has not attacked
targets outside Colombia and has no known links to al-Qaida or Osama
bin Laden.

Attempts to restrain the flow of drugs by military means are rarely
successful. In Colombia, critics charge that efforts by the U.S. to
do so have only worsened the war, promoted human-rights violations
and generated other ills.

As long as there is a market for drugs, there will be a supply. But
the White House request for another $500 million to finance the drug
war next fiscal year reflects its growing determination to stamp out,
or at least suppress, the drug traffic by military means.

The war in Colombia, 38 years old, is likely to last many more years.