HELICOPTERS, ADVISERS AND DRUGS

Latin America

COLOMBIA suffers from an epidemic of political violence, an economy just
barely recovered from near collapse and an international reputation as the
world supplier of cocaine and heroin. The Latin American country is
desperately in need of help. But one wonders how much good will follow from
President Bill Clinton's pep talk and $1.3 billion in military aid.

Military aid -- ostensibly to eliminate cocaine production -- is not what
Colombia needs. Rather than cure the country's ills, it could intensify them.

Although the Medellin and Cali drug cartels have been crushed, consortiums
of smaller traffickers have taken their place. In June, Congress approved a
military aid package designed to attack these producers. However, drugs are
only one facet of Colombia's problems, which include a legacy of government
corruption and a 36-year insurgency by Marxist guerrillas.

The past corruption helped push the once-solid economy into a morass of
unemployment, high interest rates and bankrupt businesses. As the
insurgency has grown, so have the ranks of right-wing paramilitaries
believed to be in collusion with factions in the military. The result is a
brutal civil war. The guerrillas and the paramilitaries engage in
intimidation by terrorism with an epidemic of murder, kidnapping and bombing.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana was elected two years ago pledging to
make peace and eliminate corruption. Despite such concessions as giving a
guerrilla group autonomy over a California-sized chunk of the country, his
efforts have failed. The United States wants to support Mr. Pastrana, who
made a highly visible trip to Washington to lobby for the aid package.
Congressional Republicans favored the package because they have been
pressing for increased efforts in the perennial war on drugs. President
Clinton resisted military aid, until it seemed that Al Gore might need
inoculation against a charge of being soft on drug traffickers.

So American political motivations produced a two-year plan to provide
Colombia with 60 military transport helicopters and advisers to train
Colombian troops for action against the drug traffickers. The United States
says the military aid is aimed against the traffickers, not the guerrillas.
But the guerrillas are deeply involved in the drug trade, in part by taxing
traffickers.

Critics, including former Costa Rican president and Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Oscar Arias, say the aid will only intensify and prolong the
fighting. Already, attacks by guerrillas and the paramilitaries have increased.

The United States should know better than to dump a huge amount of military
money into a country without a clear, obtainable goal and a set of
standards for determining if the objective is met. In this case, neither
the goal nor the standards have been spelled out.

Drug producers are resourceful when it comes to meeting demand, whatever
the obstacles. And when was the last time a military operation successfully
crushed a guerrilla insurgency? El Salvador? Vietnam?

The United States needs to develop a comprehensive drug strategy that
includes Colombia, Peru, Panama and Mexico. Otherwise, efforts to suppress
it in one place just help it pop up elsewhere. The United States should
also work with Mr. Pastrana on a plan to rebuild Colombia's economic and
political infrastructures. Judges and prosecutors risk their lives daily to
fight the cartels, and they certainly do need support. Finally, the United
States must deal effectively with its own role in the problem by driving
down demand for the drugs on U.S. streets.