Index for "The Drug Quagmire" series:

Colombia's War On Drugs Getting Hotter
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a05.html

Escobar's Drug Cartel Put Colombian Cocaine On Map
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a06.html

Mules Ferry Drugs Across Borders In Game Of Chance
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n993/a01.html

US Aid Package For Colombia
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a01.html

Colombia Rolling In Cocaine Crop
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a10.html

Despite Risks, US-Backed Crop-Dusters On A Mission
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a09.html

Drug War Options
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1004/a03.html

Officials Urge Farmers To Try Alternative To Coca
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n1023.a10.html

ESCOBAR'S DRUG CARTEL PUT COLOMBIAN COCAINE ON MAP

MEDELLIN, Colombia --- In the early days of Colombia's cocaine boom,
Pablo Escobar was coca's Johnny Appleseed.

A crafty entrepreneur, Escobar turned Colombia into a major
cocaine-producing country and helped spread the cultivation of coca,
the plant used to make the drug.

Many viewed his death in a 1993 shootout with police as a huge victory
in the war against narcotics. Soon, however, other drug lords took
Escobar's place.

As time passed, the country's narcotics industry continued to
evolve.

Today, dozens of "baby cartels" that use state-of-the art technologies
control the Colombian trade, which has expanded into heroin.

It is widely believed that these groups export even more cocaine than
their predecessors. The country's potential cocaine production, based
on CIA estimates of Colombia's coca crop, jumped from 230 metric tons
in 1995 to 520 metric tons last year.

"The narcotics industry is highly dynamic," Patrick Clawson and
Rensselaer Lee write in their book The Andean Cocaine Industry. "Drug
dealers are risk-takers, so they will risk new techniques. ... Over
the long run, they adapt to any new circumstances."

Until the rise of Escobar's Medellin cartel in the mid-1970s,
Colombia's drug production consisted mainly of growing marijuana.

To make cocaine hydrochloride, the white powder sold on U.S. streets,
Escobar and his cartel at first imported most of their coca leaves and
paste from Bolivia and Peru. But to ensure a steady supply of raw
material, they began handing out coca seedlings to Colombian peasants
and encouraged them to grow the crop.

Rather than sending narcotics in small packages, the cartel pioneered
the technique of exporting multiton drug shipments on aircraft and
boats to dealers in Mexico and the United States.

Medellin's flamboyant "cocaine cowboys" spent millions of dollars on
luxury homes, private jets, cattle ranches and power boats. At one of
his country estates, Escobar established his own zoo that featured
elephants and a herd of zebras.

About the only thing that the drug dealers feared was extradition to
the United States, where they faced the possibility of long prison
sentences. In an attempt to bully the Colombian government into
softening extradition and other laws against drug trafficking, the
cartel unleashed a campaign of car bombings and assassinations.

Thousands of police officers, government officials and innocent
bystanders were killed. Among the victims were an attorney general, a
Supreme Court judge and a presidential candidate. The terror began to
drop off in 1993, when Escobar died in a rooftop gunbattle in Medellin.

A rival cartel based in Cali quickly took over Colombia's cocaine
trade. Most of the organization's leaders were arrested a few years
later.

Soon, however, a so-called "third wave" of traffickers took the place
of the big cartels.

"If the president of Xerox steps down, obviously someone is going to
replace him. This is no different," says a U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agent in the Colombian capital of Bogota. "How we
consider it a victory is that it sends a message to other traffickers
that if you break the law, you can get arrested and extradited to the
United States."

Today, authorities say, Colombia's narcotics business is divided among
dozens of rings made up of 10 to 50 members each. The organizations
often join forces to coordinate major drug shipments.

Colombia's first-generation drug barons were often working-class
social climbers who flaunted their wealth and could be easily
identified. But the young Turks of today's trade are more
sophisticated, authorities say. Many have college degrees.

To avoid detection, they often eschew bodyguards, drive used cars and
communicate through Internet chat rooms, cloned cellular telephones or
state-of-the-art devices that translate their messages into code.
Authorities don't even know the names of some of the
ringleaders.

"You have people out there doing research and development for the
cartels. They have better ways of communicating and better
technology," says the DEA agent in Bogota.

"Before, everyone knew who the leaders of the Cali cartel were, so it
was very easy to collect information on them," the agent says. "Now,
with all the different organizations, it's very hard to get the
intelligence."

Even so, authors Clawson and Lee maintain that it's better to have
"mom-and-pop" trafficking groups than a small circle of kingpins who
can more easily move huge drug loads, bankroll political campaigns and
sponsor terrorism.

Bruce Bagely, an international studies professor at the University of
Miami, says the dismantling of the Medellin and Cali cartels should be
recognized as major victories, because their demise stymied the
emergence of a state dominated by drug organizations.

But he adds: "It should not obscure the underlying reality of the
ongoing explosion of drug cultivation and trafficking in Colombia over
the second half of the 1990s."

Some critics argue, however, that the crackdowns on the drug trade
have actually made matters worse.

Targeting Colombia's marijuana smugglers in the 1970s, for example,
hastened the switch to cocaine, which is more profitable, less bulky
and easier to hide, writes Dirk Chase Eldredge in his book Ending the
War on Drugs.

In turn, going after cocaine and heroin smugglers led to greater
purity of product, since less dilution means less bulk and a reduced
chance of getting caught.

According to the DEA, heroin sold on U.S. streets was once 30 percent
to 40 percent pure. But Colombian heroin, which dominates the U.S.
market, is now up to 99 percent pure.

"It's more potent and more deadly than ever before," says DEA
administrator Donnie Marshall.

Anti-drug operations have also winnowed out inefficient trafficking
rings and spurred the survivors to upgrade production techniques and
develop new markets, experts say.

"Dealers with weak and inept organizations are weeded out and replaced
by those who operate more efficiently," Eldredge writes. "This natural
selection process helps explain the continued success of the cartels
in spite of ever-increasing manpower and money expended against them."

For every advance by law enforcement officials, Eldredge says, drug
traffickers seem to leapfrog ahead with their own improvements.

For example, with prices flat and demand for cocaine leveling off in
the United States, Colombian traffickers expanded into the heroin
trade, which is far more profitable. They also made an aggressive push
to sell cocaine in Europe and former East bloc nations.

When Colombian officials began confiscating imported precursor
chemicals required to make cocaine, drug organizations started
recycling the materials. They introduced a new strain of coca with a
higher drug content and began using vacuum-packing facilities and
microwaves to remove moisture and extend the drug's shelf life.

What's more, Bagely says, major drug busts often have had little
effect on the supply of narcotics on the streets, because traffickers
have stockpiled huge amounts to make up for the losses.

To casual observers, however, the absence of a larger-than-life
character like Pablo Escobar can make it appear as if the drug crisis
in Colombia is on the wane.

"It may look like the narcos are no longer all that powerful," says
Ricardo Vargas of Andean Action, a research center that specializes in
South American drug issues.

"But in terms of their political and economic penetration," he says,
"things are just as bad or worse."