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

COLOMBIA'S WAR ON DRUGS GETTING HOTTER

U.S. Pumps In $862 Million; Skeptics Wonder If It Will Help

LA GABARRA, Colombia -- Tucked in the wilderness of northern Colombia,
the rustic kitchen contains all the key ingredients.

Bags of cement are stacked in one corner of the wooden hovel, gasoline
drums in another. Nearby lies an ankle-deep pile of glossy green coca
leaves. The caustic aroma of acetone and ammonia permeates the air.

Here, workers prepared ash-blond coca paste, an unrefined rendition of
cocaine, by soaking the leaves in gasoline, solvents and powdered
cement, then straining out the gooey brine and drying it in the sun.

It's a simple recipe -- the drug-industry equivalent of making Minute
Rice -- and peasant alchemists across Colombia have mastered the
technique.

But because of Colombian police, this kitchen has cooked its last kilo.
By the time three government helicopters touch down in a nearby coca
field, the lab's workers are nowhere to be seen. A dozen police
officers with automatic rifles storm the hut, splash it with gasoline,
then set it ablaze.

Yet as the shanty goes up in smoke as part of an offensive against 151
clandestine drug laboratories in the region, no one declares triumph.
Narcotics traffickers will be back to rebuild the labs, authorities
admit. And police acknowledge that they likely will be back to torch
them.

When asked whether the operation will have any long-term impact on the
country's cocaine production, Gen. Ismael Trujillo, chief of Colombia's
anti-narcotics police, stiffens.

"Are we supposed to just cross our arms?" he snaps. "We have to draw
the line somewhere. This has to be a permanent battle. Otherwise the
world will pay the consequences."

Welcome to the war on drugs in Colombia. Or, rather, welcome back.

This tropical drama has been playing out in some form for decades.
It's as if TV executives forgot to cancel Miami Vice in the 1980s and
the story meandered on with new plot twists and a revolving cast of
cops, drug runners and guerrillas.

Even if many Americans have lost interest in the script, analysts say
it's time to tune back in. Because of U.S. tax dollars, the battle is
about to heat up.

On Thursday, President Clinton signed a measure containing a two-year,
$1.3 billion aid package for the Andean region's drug war. Most of the
money -- $862 million -- is earmarked for Colombia.

Touted as a life jacket for the beleaguered Bogota government, the aid
was sold as the last, best hope for closing down South America's drug
pipeline.

If not a tectonic shift in American foreign policy, the plan represents
a massive new commitment. Five years ago, annual U.S. counterdrug aid
for Colombia totaled $30 million.

There's no deep mystery as to why Colombia has popped up on
Washington's radar screen.

Though the bedlam may seem like distant thunder to many Americans,
observers say it has more direct impact on the United States than any
other post-Cold War conflict.

This Andean nation of 37 million people is harvesting bumper crops of
coca leaves and opium poppies, the raw material for heroin. U.S.
officials say Colombia supplies 90 percent of the cocaine and two-
thirds of the heroin sold in the United States.

Even more alarming, experts say, is the mushrooming role of Marxist
guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries in the narcotics trade. Their
drug profits have fueled a savage civil war that has killed tens of
thousands and left much of the Colombian countryside in a state of
anarchy.

"They're in the fight of their lives," Clinton told reporters shortly
before Congress approved the aid package June 30. "I don't think the
average American can imagine what it would be like to live in a country
where a third of the country, on any given day, may be in the hands of
someone that is an enemy, an adversary of the nation state."

A growing wave of Colombians is migrating north to escape the turmoil.
Hundreds of U.S. military advisers have been sent to the South American
country, and five U.S. soldiers have been killed in the war on drugs.

"Clearly, there is a huge, emergency problem in Colombia," says Barry
McCaffrey, who heads the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy and served as the aid package's chief evangelist. "These new
circumstances require a change in strategy, policy and resources."

Last year, the Colombian government put together a white paper called
"Plan Colombia" that outlined a two-pronged approach to the drug war.
It called for a massive army push into rebel-controlled, narcotics-
producing regions as well as an array of rural development programs to
encourage coca and poppy farmers to grow legitimate crops.

U.S. and Colombian officials believe that attacking the guerrillas and
cutting off their drug income will force the rebels to backpedal and
negotiate a peace treaty with the government.

Under the plan, the United States will provide most of the funding for
the military campaign and dozens of attack helicopters.

"The whole idea is that you cannot create peace if you can't stop the
drug traffickers," says a top aide to Colombian President Andres
Pastrana. "But it's going to be difficult, and that's why we are asking
for help."

Clinton administration officials acknowledge that Colombia will require
at least five years of sustained U.S. aid if the plan is to have any
impact.

Pledging that no U.S. troops will be sent into combat, they also have
gone to great lengths to portray the plan only as a counternarcotics
program.

Yet critics claim that some unacceptable boundary is being crossed.

Because much of the U.S. assistance will target guerrillas, they say
the drug war has, in effect, turned into a counterinsurgency campaign.
To many, that sounds uncomfortably close to a Vietnam-style quagmire.

"Exactly what do we believe this aid will accomplish? Is it the first
in a series of blank checks for a war that has no foreseeable endgame?"
asked Rep. Janice Schakowsky, D-Ill., during congressional testimony.

Many experts point out that past south-of-the-border crackdowns had
little impact on the cost and availability of illegal drugs in U.S.
cities. In the drug-producing nations of Bolivia, Peru and Colombia,
they add, the effect has seemed like a frustrating shell game, with
coca crops shifting from one nation to the next but never going away.

"Coca is always going to exist, whether or not it's in Colombia," says
Javier Munera, director of CEUDES, a Bogota research center. "All you
need are three people, some seeds and a few chemicals, and you can grow
it in any tropical forest in the world."

Others have seized the moment to question the whole premise of the drug
war. They call it a misguided jihad, one that's heavy on testosterone
but light on logic.

Drug lords are jailed but quickly replaced by eager understudies, these
critics point out. Smuggling routes are squeezed off, but new ones
emerge. For every drug lab torched in the jungle, two more are apt to
pop up.

And all along, they say, action is mistaken for achievement.

"We need to be very prudent," says Cresencio Arcos, a retired U.S.
diplomat who served in Latin America and is now a member of President
Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. "People do not like the
truth to get in the way, and that can get us into a bundle of
problems."

Bruce Bagely, an international studies professor at the University of Miami,
says there may be another factor behind the current crusade in Colombia: an
indefatigable can-do mentality among America's drug warriors.

"They are given a mission, and it's not their job to say it can't be
done," Bagely says. "It's their job to say, `We can find a way.' "

WARLORDS

Perched on a log in a cow pasture in southern Caqueta state, a
Colombian guerrilla leader named Darwin matter-of-factly explains how
cocaine helps pay for the rebel war effort.

Darwin is a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, the nation's largest Marxist guerrilla group, which controls much
of Caqueta. When farmers sell coca paste to drug makers, who turn it
into the powdered form of cocaine, the rebels collect a tax.

"It's 10 or 15 percent per transaction," says Darwin, as he plays with
his pet squirrel.

"For us, (the drug business) is neither right nor wrong," says the
rebel, who uses a one-word nom de guerre. Coca is "a necessity for the
peasants, because it's the only product that guarantees their
survival."

In truth, cocaine has been a revitalizing elixir for the guerrillas,
one that has helped guarantee their own survival. And that's why
Washington is so worried about Colombia.

By themselves, observers say, the country's guerrillas and drug cartels
constitute serious, though somewhat limited, threats. However, the
marriage of convenience between the two groups has blurred the
distinction between heartfelt revolution and ruthless organized crime.

The merger means that narcotics traffickers in the hinterlands can
surround themselves with battle-tested insurgents for their protection.
It also means that the FARC can finance a wish list of weapons with its
drug profits.

"I've never seen an insurgency quite like the one that we're observing
in Colombia right now," said Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm, chief of the U.S.
Southern Command, in testimony last year before a Senate caucus on
Colombia.

"It is the only self-sustaining insurgency I've ever seen. There is no
Cuba in back of it. There is no Soviet Union in back of it. It is a
delicate merge of criminals and narco-traffickers with insurgents. It's
a one-of-a-kind phenomenon," Wilhelm said.

As a result, the war on drugs is no longer a strictly urban beat
centered on crime families and gangs. In Colombia, it has been kneaded
into a whole-grain civil war that began in the country's mountains and
jungles nearly four decades ago.

The FARC began in 1964 as a traditional communist insurgency. Unlike
other Latin American rebel groups, which folded their tents when the
Cold War ended and East bloc support dried up, Colombia's rebels
soldiered on with a serendipitous boost from the burgeoning drug trade.

By taxing coca and opium poppy growers and charging drug dealers for
operating in guerrilla zones, the FARC earns up to $500 million
annually, according to U.S. officials. A smaller Colombian rebel group,
the National Liberation Army, or ELN, also is deeply involved in the
narcotics trade.

Drug money, along with cash collected through extortion and
kidnappings, has allowed the FARC to grow to 17,000 gunslingers. The
ELN has 5,000 fighters.

Today, vast corridors of the countryside are in the hands of the FARC
and smaller rebel groups. It's unclear whether the Colombian
government will ever manage to take them back.

Still, in Colombia and abroad, there is a growing tendency to dismiss
the FARC as a band of profit-driven hellions who have lost their
political ideals.

"Beyond the accumulation of power, there is no political heart to the
FARC," says Simon Strong, the author of Whitewash, a book about
Colombia's drug industry. "Without a doubt, they are narco-guerrillas."

Others, however, say that the FARC views drug money as just one means
to a revolutionary end.

"The guerrillas didn't start the cartels," says a European diplomat in
Bogota. "They saw (the drug trade) coming, and it's in their area, and
they are making use of it. In warfare, that is a legitimate way of
acting."

Just as some elected leaders pander to voters by talking tough on
drugs, the FARC has learned to exploit the politics of narcotics.

By guarding coca and poppy fields from army sweeps and by shooting
down police spray planes, the rebels have ingratiated themselves with
legions of farmers who depend on the crop.

"It's gotten to the point where the peasants view the police and army
as the enemies, as the ones who take away their livelihoods," says Gen.
Henry Medina, head of the Colombian Army War College in Bogota.

That seems to be the sentiment of Ismael Castro, a 67-year-old farmer
who grows rubber trees, yucca and about six acres of coca in Caqueta
state.

Last year, police crop-dusters swooped down on Castro's farm and doused
his coca plants with killer herbicide. It was so unnerving that the
farmer remembers the exact hour of the air raid.

"It was on a Sunday at 10 a.m.," Castro says, as he pauses amid his
replanted coca bushes and wipes his brow with a straw hat. "It was like
getting robbed."

NARCO-DOLLARS

Guerrillas and farmers aren't the only ones in Colombia who are
addicted to drug profits.

In a rare interview on Colombian television in March, Carlos Castano,
the leader of the nation's largest right-wing paramilitary
organization, admitted that 70 percent of his group's financing comes
from drug trafficking.

"It's very difficult to follow moral standards," he said. "Wars are to
be won -- period."

Paramilitary organizations sprang up in the 1980s to defend cattle
ranchers and narcotics traffickers from guerrilla attacks and rebel
extortion schemes. With their scorched-earth tactics, paramilitaries
have been far more effective than the army in rolling back guerrilla
advances.

The paramilitaries have also been accused of massacring thousands of
the rebels' civilian supporters. At times, they have worked in cahoots
with Colombian police and army officers, sparking fears that the U.S.
aid package could end up bolstering the paramilitaries.

Robin Kirk, who monitors Colombia for Human Rights Watch, says nine of
Colombia's 23 army brigades have been linked to paramilitary activity.

"In other words, military support for paramilitaries remains national
in scope and includes areas where units receiving or scheduled to
receive U.S. military aid operate," Kirk says.

Many analysts believe, however, that drug earnings have turned the
paramilitaries' anti-communism into a sideshow. Some say that much of
the recent fighting between the paramilitaries and the guerrillas has
boiled down to a power struggle over coca- and poppy-producing zones.

William Ledwith, chief of international operations for the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, told a U.S. Senate hearing in February that
some paramilitary units are actually exporting cocaine from Colombia.

"The conflict is primarily about the vertical control over the drug
trade, and if you approach the problem from that perspective, it begins
to make an awful lot more sense," Strong says. "Each side seeks to
control the regions in which it operates -- the roads, the rivers, the
mountain passes and the ports."

The tentacles of the drug trade, however, reach far beyond gun-toting
subversives and into the core of Colombian society.

According to the National Association of Financial Institutions in
Bogota, global drug sales last year pumped an estimated $3.5 billion
into the Colombian economy. That was almost as much as the $3.7 billion
generated by oil exports and more than double the income from coffee
exports.

Fueled in part by narco-dollars, Colombia's economy enjoyed steady
growth through most of the 1980s and '90s. Drug money helped strengthen
the Colombian peso and cushion the economy from hyperinflation and
other shocks that afflicted much of the rest of Latin America.

"During the debt crisis of the 1980s, it was very convenient for
Colombia to have this source of income that no one else had," says
Roberto Steiner, an economist at the University of the Andes in Bogota.

Yet analysts agree that the corrosive effect of drug money has clearly
outweighed any perceived benefits.

Drug lords have used their profits to snap up thousands of rural
properties, creating new concentrations of wealth. To launder their
money, they often import contraband liquor and electronic goods, which
they then sell at cut-rate prices, driving legitimate stores out of
business.

Legions of politicians have succumbed to payoffs from drug lords
desperate to influence their votes on issues such as asset forfeiture
and jail sentences. According to a 1997 study by American University in
Washington, the cartels have spent up to $100 million annually to bribe
Colombian officials.

The most famous case involved former President Ernesto Samper, who won
the 1994 election with the help of $6.1 million from the Cali cartel.
The scandal nearly forced Samper from office.

For President Pastrana, who took office in 1998, the drug trade may be
gumming up his chances to sign a peace treaty with the guerrillas.

Talks with the FARC began 19 months ago but have so far floundered.
Many Colombians admit that the paramilitaries and the guerrillas are so
flush with drug money that the effort to wean them off the warpath has
functioned like a faulty 12-step program with relapses into combat
nearly every week.

"We are doing the best we can and offering the blood of our men," says
Lt. German Arenas, who joined the Colombian marines a decade ago and
has been fighting the rebels ever since. "But drug trafficking is the
strongest ally they can have."

THE PLAN

As a camouflage piranha speedboat zips along the Putumayo River, a U.S.-
trained Colombian navy gunner pulls the trigger of his machine gun in a
test of its firepower. Bullets dance across the water and slice into
the dense shoreline foliage.

The piranha's crew members are the go-to guys in the drug war, dogged
front-liners in the coca heartland. Part of a riverine navy battalion
that was created last year, they track down narcotics traffickers as
well as guerrillas on the rivers and tributaries of southern Colombia.

Powered by two 150-horsepower outboard motors, their boat is equipped
with a .50-caliber machine gun. Named after the flesh-eating fish of
the Amazon, the piranha could seemingly have a feeding frenzy on drug
smugglers.

But too often, the rebels and the traffickers melt away undetected. And
too often, the soldiers feel as though they're the ones being hunted.

"Out here, everyone is aiming at you," says Lt. Col. Jose Munoz, a
battalion commander. "You feel totally exposed, like a duck in the
water."

The combat unit stationed at the Colombian navy base in the river town
of Puerto Leguizamo has just a handful of piranhas to patrol 2,500
miles of jungle waterways. The U.S. aid plan, however, will double the
river patrol program's $12 million budget.

Bolstering the navy is one example of how the U.S. plan represents a
break with past policy. Besides providing a sharp increase in funding
for Colombia's anti-drug effort, the plan shifts the focus from the
police to the army, navy and marines.

In recent years, the police have played the starring role in the drug
war, partly because of the army's dismal human rights record and its
reputation for corruption and battlefield ineptness. But in the wake of
the FARC's rapid growth, U.S. officials believe that the military is
better equipped to take the fight against narcotics to the countryside.

The big-ticket items in the aid package include 60 helicopters and
funding to set up three army counterdrug battalions. There is also
money for spray planes, radar upgrades and an air-interdiction program
to stop clandestine drug flights.

All of this is designed to help the army make an aggressive push into
the southern states of Putumayo and Caqueta, where much of Colombia's
coca is grown. The idea is to clear the area of guerrilla units in
order to allow for expanded aerial eradication and other anti-drug
activities.

But the push into the south is also an effort to undercut the
guerrillas and convince them that their struggle is unwinnable and that
their best bet is to negotiate a peace treaty with the Colombian
government.

The plan, however, has come under attack from hawks and doves alike.

In theory, the program will target only those rebel units involved in
the drug trade. But in the heat of battle, critics say, such
distinctions are impossible to make.

Hard-liners, in turn, are pushing for an all-out counterguerrilla
strategy.

"The first thing we need to do is help Colombia win this civil war,"
said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., during a Senate caucus on drug policy
in Colombia. "You can't have a big chunk of your country under Marxist
revolutionary control and expect to do anything successfully."

According to Adam Isacson, of the Center for International Policy in
Washington, some U.S. administration officials may have reached the
same conclusion.

"Washington may, in fact, be content with this overlap between the drug
war and the (guerrilla) war," Isacson says. "With nearby concerns like
Venezuelan oil and the Panama Canal, many in Washington view
instability in Colombia -- and the country's guerrilla groups in
particular -- as a threat to national security."

In contrast, human rights groups and the guerrillas -- as well as some
Colombian and U.S. politicians -- say the military push will jeopardize
the peace process and possibly lead to dozens of American casualties.

Between 250 and 300 U.S. military personnel -- mainly Army Green Berets
and Navy SEALs -- have been sent to Colombia to train its military.
Last July, a U.S. Army DeHavilland RC-7 spy plane crashed while on an
anti-drug mission in southern Colombia, killing all five Americans
aboard.

When the military push begins in earnest, some observers believe the
FARC will escalate its attacks.

"What this will do is push Colombia into an even worse confrontation,"
FARC spokesman Raul Reyes says in an interview. "It's like putting out
fire with gasoline."

The FARC is widely believed to possess surface-to-air missiles, which
the rebels have not yet used. The missiles could prove to be lethal
weapons against high-tech helicopters that are part of the U.S. aid
package.

"It's not a question of whether or not they have missiles but, rather,
when they will use them," says Alfredo Rangel, a former security
adviser to the Colombian government.

To prevent the military push from backfiring, some say an equally
intense effort to strengthen civilian institutions in the war zone and
to encourage drug farmers to grow legal crops is needed. But just 20
percent of the U.S. aid package is earmarked for economic and social
programs.

Bogota officials are counting on other nations to provide the rest of
the needed funding. So far, they say they have received commitments for
$621 million in loans and donations from Spain, Norway, Japan, the
United Nations and international lending agencies.

Bagely, the University of Miami professor, predicts that U.S. aid will
inexorably swell in the coming years, since not even the most cocksure
of drug warriors claims to have spotted an easy way out of the
Colombian labyrinth.

"This will not decisively change the balance of the war," Gen. Medina
of the Colombian Army War College says of the U.S. aid. "To win the
war, everyone should realize that it's going to cost a lot more than
$1.3 billion."

FAST FACTS ~~~~~~~

~ Colombia is believed to supply 90 percent of the cocaine and
two-thirds of the heroin sold on U.S. streets.

~ Colombia's largest Marxist guerrilla organization is thought to earn
up to $500 million yearly by taxing drug crops and protecting
traffickers.

~ A Colombian paramilitary organization that is battling the rebels
gets 70 percent of its funding from the narcotics trade, according to
the group's leader.

~ Global drug sales pumped almost as much money into the Colombian
economy last year as oil exports, according to the National
Association of Financial Institutions in Bogota.

~ Following the dismantling of Colombia's Medellin and Cali cartels,
dozens of small smuggling rings took over the country's narcotics business.

~ Colombian heroin, which dominates the U.S. market, is now up to 99
percent pure, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
Heroin sold on U.S. streets was once 30 percent to 40 percent pure.