THE COLOMBIAN CONUNDRUM

American Foreign Drug Policy And South American Civil War Collide.
What Is The United States Getting Itself Into?

A FARM LIES DEEP in the Putumayo province of Colombia, a large region near
the Peruvian border. A muddy river runs through the property as it continues
its haphazard journey as a tributary of the Amazon. The farmer's thatched
hut provides a quaint welcome mat to the sights beyond the hill that divides
his vast plantation from the garden where his children play in pristine
innocence. Beyond that hill lies a devilish gem: coca, the Andean shrub from
which cocaine is extracted.

Imagine: it is July 23, 1999. A fighter plane donning an American flag on
its tail thunders overhead. Just as it prepares to drop a mix of chemicals
aimed at "destroying coca production where it starts," according to the
proposed Andean Region Act of 2000, two rockets are fired from a distant
hill in the south. The plane is shot down, killing Captains Jose A. Santiago
and Jennifer J. Odem, Chief Warrant Officer Thomas G. Moore, and Privates T.
Bruce Cluff and Ray E. Krueger.

The Senate resolution "expressing its profound appreciation for the service"
of these brave men and women in uniform offered no question, no doubt, no
skepticism of the efficacy of a policy that kills American servicemen and
women every year. What Congress fails to realize is that the drug war in
Colombia has evolved into an American military action with ill-conceived
responses to local political realities reminiscent of the "police action" in
that infamous sliver of Southeast Asian real estate, South Vietnam.

Colombia's Civil War

To say that Colombia's political arena is merely unstable would be an
understatement. President Andrés Pastrana leads a democratically elected
government in Bógota, but his base of support is tenuous. After the
election, the center-right president-elect dedicated his administration to
"re-establishing national unity, recovering the dignity of the republic,
obtaining peace, and improving the economy," according to an interview with
Business Day.

However, conflict between the administration, right-wing paramilitary
groups, and leftist guerrillas damaged the credibility of that idealistic
promise. With a 1999 head count of 5000, the United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia (USDF Colombia), an umbrella organization for reactionary
paramilitary groups, battles the Colombian left in the jungles and on the
city streets.

In early January, paramilitary forces massacred 140 citizens in the southern
provinces surrounding Putumayo. Reacting to a slow response from the
Pastrana administration, the respected Colombia newspaper El Tiempo accused
the government of complicity with the militants. President Pastrana
responded with a military house-cleaning, firing two high-ranking generals
in February that had supported USDF Colombia with arms and intelligence.

Compounding the internal and external divisions emphasized by the USDF
Colombia, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have plunged the
country into a devastating civil war that has caused "almost 300,000
Colombians to flee their homes in the last year [and] an additional 350,000
to flee the country," according to a report from the United Nations High
Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR). The FARC is, according to a State
Department briefing, the "largest, best-trained, and best-equipped guerrilla
organization in Colombia." Established in 1966 as the military wing of the
Colombian Communist Party, the 17,000-member group has a history of
terrorism aimed at overthrowing the Bógota government in power.

FARC strongholds, the provinces Caqueta and Putumayo, produce nearly all of
Colombia's coca. One can assume that the rockets that shot down the small
American fighter plane last July came from a FARC military outpost.

The drug war, therefore, is inextricably entangled with Colombia's civil
war. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the director of American drug policy, noted in
the Economist that "some right-wing paramilitaries own and operate
cocaine-producing laboratories, whereas the FARC…taxes and protects the
industry, earning it perhaps $500 million a year."

In this manner, the divergent political and military groups are not only
competing for dominance in Bógota, but also in the drug trade itself. If the
United States hopes to deal with the Colombian "drug disaster," foreign
policy should not only treat the issue as one of drug trafficking; rather,
any policy must account for the political reality of the civil war. Fighting
the FARC may empower the USDF Colombia at the expense of an already weak
administration in Bógota. Strengthening the drug-eradication efforts of the
Colombian police may advance dictatorship in Colombia, angering both the
right and left opposition to the Pastrana administration.

The Bolivian Model

Drug warriors in the State Department have been emboldened by their recent
success reducing coca cultivation in Bolivia and Peru, "formerly the world's
two principal coca producers," according to a State Department report.
According to official estimates, coca cultivation in these two South
American states has fallen by 22% and 56%, respectively.

Bolivian President Hugo Banzer's "Plan Dignity" provides the model for what
the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) hopes will solve the
Colombia conundrum, as evidenced by General McCaffrey's January 8 statement
praising Banzer's "outstanding efforts" at coca eradication. "Plan Dignity"
supposedly combines the traditional Bolivian policy offering farmers $2,500
per hectare of coca they destroy, with the threat of police force against
illegal traffickers and growers.

Granted, from the distant American perspective, President Banzer's policy
seems flawless: not only is coca production down, but trafficking is minimal
and what production remains has been quarantined in the Chapare region of
central Bolivia. However, "Plan Dignity" is a curse veiled by the beauty and
complacence of distance.

Increased force from La Paz has enraged determined Chapare residents,
resulting in frequent violent battles. Some 13 peasants and six members of
the armed police forces have been killed in confrontations over the past
year, with dozens more wounded. Though some disagree as to the extent of
government-led violence, that the newly empowered police are using extreme
force on farmers with government sponsorship is beyond doubt.

Also, the plan has degenerated into a slash-and-burn advance throughout the
country. George Ann Potter, the Senior Research Fellow at the Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, notes that "eradication entails the entry of the
combined armed forces into coca growing areas where they forcibly destroy
everything in their path-including staple food stuffs and exotic crops like
palm trees and citrus."

Finally, a little-publicized clause of the "Dignity Plan" expects that the
emigration of 5,000-15,000 peasant families from the Chapare region will be
inevitable. Their destination: unknown. In an effort to exert direct control
over a small region that the United States has identified as the source of
its drug problems, the Banzer administration is willing to kill and deport
those in its path.

The result of these weaknesses has been the steady erosion of government
credibility among vast numbers of Bolivia's peasant population. Still, the
United States attributes the reduction in coca cultivation to Banzer's
"political will to implement a combination of counter-drug law-enforcement
and alternative-development initiatives" and hopes to see similar progress
in Colombia, according to a February 1999 report from the Drug Czar's
office.

Why would this model, ineffective to its very core in Bolivia, be any more
effective in Colombia? Why would a policy that has enraged peasant
opposition be practical in a country where the rural peasants represent the
guerrilla movement posing the most dangerous challenge to the government?
America's willingness to transplant the Bolivian model suggests its
ignorance of the Colombian quagmire as a drug conflict superimposed upon a
deep-seated civil war.

The Clinton Plan An alliance of the Clinton administration and Republican
hawks in Congress still believes that "Plan Colombia," the daughter of
Bolivia's plan, can emerge victorious in Pastrana's efforts at destroying
coca in Putumayo and Caqueta. To this end, Clinton announced an
unprecedented $1.6 billion aid package, including 63 American-made Black
Hawk helicopters, according to Newsweek. Paling in comparison to President
Johnson's first 1965 escalation of the Vietnam War, President Clinton wants
"to make eradication possible by the end of the year."

This amounts to simply more of the same. Granted, more is an understatement,
but no significant change in outlook is on the horizon. The enemy remains
the farms themselves; the ally remains the often brutal and unpopular
regimes in power. The means remain military; the cost remains the body
count, American and Colombian.

We are inching toward a "point of no return." Though not the focus of the
Clinton press release, the American materiél on the way to Colombia would be
accompanied by advisers for the purposes of training and general assistance.
Even this is nothing new. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials
have been there for years. Clinton wants to substantially increase the
American presence to "show our commitment to the Colombian effort." Shadows
of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, whose administrations increased
America's "advisory" role in Vietnam from 50 to 500 in less than three
years, lurk once again in Washington.

Hope for Colombia Unlike in Vietnam, we have viable alternatives. The United
States must reassess the fundamental orientation of its international drug
policy in two ways. Specifically in Colombia, we must recognize that victory
in the War on Drugs can only come after peace in the Colombian Civil War.
Arguing that additional funds alone will repair a disastrously failing U.S.
foreign policy in Colombia disregards ample evidence and flagrantly brushes
aside relevant historical lessons to the contrary. Democracy must be
institutionalized; human rights abuses must end.

Again, this is dependent upon peace. If, as the United Nations has observed,
a slowing or halt in forceful eradication of coca is the prerequisite for
peace talks between the FARC and the Pastrana government, U.S. long-term
interests will be served in acquiescing to this plan. American opposition to
this short term-olive branch stems from an ill-conceived notion that our
drug problem is fundamentally a supply-side issue, assigning culpability to
the farmers themselves. It has become axiomatic that an increase in the
prevalence of drugs in the United States results in strengthening efforts to
eradicate drugs at the source.

That axiom is wrong. Logically, the drug trade would barely subsist without
American and European demand for drugs and their supply of chemicals,
firearms, and money-laundering facilities. Yet we cling to our misguided
beliefs. Why? Our failure at stifling demand and squashing the illicit drug
trade at home has forced us to look outward. In other words, eradication at
all costs in Latin America refocuses our attention away from our own
culpability in the drug war.

American foreign policy in Colombia risks degeneration into a Vietnamesque
quagmire: lying to Congress, deploying troops, and achieving little success.
Charging the gates with ruthless tenacity, hawkish barbarians are forcing
this country into the abyss of the American drug war in Colombia. Once we
charge through, the gate may lock behind us.

Index for the Harvard Political Review's series:

"Smoke and Mirrors - America's Drug War"

The Thirty Years' War - (Part 1 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a03.html

Editorial: From The Editor - (Part 2 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a02.html

The Experts Speak Out - (Part 3 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a05.html

Keep It Real - (Part 4 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a04.html

The Colombian Conundrum - (Part 5 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1084/a06.html

Demystifying the Dutch - (Part 6 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a03.html

Paralyzed by Politics - (Part 7 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a01.html

An Unfortunate Hypocrisy - (Part 8 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a02.html

Throwing Away the Key - (Part 9 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a04.html

Beyond Good and Evil - (Part 10 of a 10 part series)
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1085/a05.html