DEMAND DEFIES DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA

WASHINGTON - With the delicacy of someone seasoned by much experience
near the summit of government, Donald Rumsfeld has indicated strong
skepticism about a policy from which this country may reap a bumper
crop of regrets. Asked about the $1.6-billion --- so far undertaking
to help fight the drug war in Colombia, Rumsfeld said he had not
formulated an opinion. However, he embroidered his agnosticism with
thoughts antithetical to the program for which George W. Bush, during
the campaign, indicated support.

In his confirmation hearing, Rumsfeld, the next secretary of defense,
said combating illicit drugs is "overwhelmingly a demand problem,"
and added: "If demand persists, it's going to get what it wants. And
if it isn't from Colombia, it's going to be from someplace else."

Indeed. In authorizing the aid for Colombia, Congress demanded,
delusionally, the elimination of all of Colombia's coca and opium
poppy cultivation by 2005. That would almost certainly mean a
commensurate increase in cultivation in Colombia's neighbors. One
reason Colombia is the source of nearly 90 percent of the world's
cocaine and a growing portion of heroin is that U.S. pressure on coca
and poppy production in countries contiguous to Colombia, especially
Peru and Bolivia, drove production into Colombia, where coca
production has increased 140 percent in five, years.

Now pressure on Colombia is pushing production into Colombia's
neighbors. The New York Times reports that cocaine processing labs
have recently been found in Ecuador's Amazon region. This is evidence
that local peasants, who have crossed the border in recent years to
work in the cocaine business, are "returning with the drug expertise
they have acquired in Colombia."

Regarding the use of the U.S. military in policing this region, it is
depressing to have to say something that should be obvious, but here
goes: The military's task is to deter war and, should deterrence
fail, to swiftly and successfully inflict lethal violence on enemies.
It is difficult enough filling an all-volunteer military with
motivated warriors without blurring the distinction between military
service and police work.

The $1.6-billion for Colombia will mostly pay for helicopters that
Colombia's military will use to attack drug factories and 17,000
Marxist guerrillas, who are the world's most affluent insurgents.
They use drug trafficking, taxes on coca production, extortion and
ransoms to wage a war now in its fourth decade. The guerrillas also
are opposed by right-wing paramilitary forces that are increasingly
involved in drug trafficking.

Colombia has a "peace process" with a familiar asymmetry: Colombia's
government wants to tame the guerrillas with a peace agreement; the
guerrillas want to topple the government. Colombia's government is
creating a second demilitarized zone in the country, this one for the
second-largest guerrilla group to use as a haven during peace talks.
But the Washington Post reports that since the first such haven was
created two years ago for the largest guerrilla group, that group has
used it "to increase drug cultivation, stage military offensives,
train new recruits and hold more than 450 soldiers and police
officers captive in open-air pens."

Kidnapping has become industrialized in Colombia, and assassins can
be hired for "a few pesos" according to Brian Michael Jenkins.
Writing in the National Interest quarterly, Jenkins, an analyst of
political violence and international crime, says Colombia's 30,000
murders unrelated to war translate into 100 deaths per 100,000
Colombians.

Colombia, Jenkins says, is a combination success story and tragedy.
The unemployment rate is 20 percent, and will go higher if defoliants
and other anti-drug efforts put small growers and processors out of
business. But Colombia has Latin America's fourth-largest economy and
one of its highest literacy rates. It has 40 flourishing universities
and has never defaulted on its debts. Yet a Gallup poll reveals that
40 percent of Colombians have considered emigrating and 60 percent
know someone who has emigrated in the last two years.

Colombia's drug-related agonies are largely traceable to U.S. cities.
Although one-third of Colombia's cocaine goes to Europe, America's
annual $50-billion demand is a powerful suction. Here is the
arithmetic of futility: About one-third of cocaine destined for the
United States is interdicted, yet the street price has been halved in
the last decade of fighting the drug war on the supply side.

George Will is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group.