COLOMBIA'S TWO-FRONT WAR

Send Lawyers, Guns, And Money

DURING THE 1980s, Latin America was at the forefront of U.S. foreign and
security policy. But as the Cold War ended and local conflicts subsided,
the region slipped onto a strategic back burner. Washington's interest in
it was sparked chiefly by financial opportunities or crises. Now Latin
American battles are once again in the news as civil strife in Colombia
becomes a serious security threat not only to the Andean region but to the
broader hemisphere as well.

The Colombian conflict is deep-rooted and complex, involving two basic
issues (drugs and control of the country) and three warring factions (the
government, left-wing guerrillas, and right-wing paramilitaries). What is
more, it is now boiling over: in addition to battling the government, the
guerrillas kidnap neighboring Venezuelans and Ecuadorians; the
paramilitaries smuggle weapons from bases along the Panamanian border; and
hundreds of citizens from dozens of foreign countries are taken hostage
annually. Despite years of antidrug efforts and the destruction of the
powerful Medellin and Cali cartels, Colombia remains the world's largest
producer and exporter of cocaine and the second-largest supplier of heroin
to the United States.

These problems cannot be solved by Colombians alone. The country needs
international help, particularly American engagement. But foreign
involvement will make a difference only if it comes in the proper form.

The Clinton administration has recently proposed a $ 1.7 billion aid
package, the largest in Colombian history. Of this, $ 1 billion would go
toward improving the Colombian military's capacity to suppress coca
planting -- buying helicopters, spare parts, training, and intelligence
equipment to help the army destroy coca crops and retake guerrilla-held
areas. The other $ 700 million would finance coca substitution programs,
public works in sensitive regions, and improvements in Colombia's judicial
system and human rights protections. The U.S. aid would be part of a
broader three-year, $ 7 billion "Plan Colombia" that includes multilateral
loans and contributions from Europe. The plan is designed to strengthen
Colombian institutions, sponsor regional development of the coca areas, and
help reduce drug production.

Plan Colombia is an important step in the right direction, and most
ordinary citizens have welcomed it. We Colombians understand that the drug
issue is critical, not least because the guerrillas and paramilitary forces
rely on the financial backing of drug traffickers to keep fighting. But we
also know that the conflict involves more than drugs and that, by itself,
Plan Colombia will not answer all our problems.

Those problems are not to be taken lightly. The cost of the drug war has
been staggering. In the last 15 years, 200 bombs (half of them as large as
the one used in Oklahoma City) have blown up in Colombia's cities; an
entire democratic leftist political party was eliminated by right-wing
paramilitaries; 4 presidential candidates, 200 judges and investigators,
half the Supreme Court's justices, 1,200 police officers, 151 journalists,
and more than 300,000 ordinary Colombians have been murdered.

Despite this toll, the international community in general and the United
States in particular must understand that the Colombian government's
conflict with the guerrillas can be solved only through negotiations. If
the current peace talks fail, the country will plunge into all-out war and
Colombians will lose their democracy. Early in the negotiations, the United
States met privately with the main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), but American participation was suspended last
year after FARC killed three human rights activists. The guerrillas have
shown little remorse and exonerated the commanders who the American and
Colombian police believe ordered the killings. But making sure the peace
process moves forward is so important that the United States should get
substantively involved once again and make a negotiated end to the war in
Colombia a central goal of American foreign policy.

The Coca Lords

THE ROOTS OF Colombia's current drug problems lie in the decision by local
smugglers and traffickers to turn the traditional Andean coca crop into a
thriving international business. In 1975, these entrepreneurs were already
producing 70 percent of the world's supply of marijuana. Looking ahead,
they saw better prospects in cocaine. (Two decades later, in much the same
way, they would capitalize on growth opportunities in heroin.) In the
1970s, cocaine was available in the United States and Europe, but it was
expensive and hard to find. Colombian drug interests financed experiments
until they hit on a formula for coca paste: crushed coca leaves mixed with
gasoline, cement, and ether. This recipe produced cocaine chlorohydrate,
which was then dried in the middle of the jungle in ordinary microwave
ovens operated by generators. The resulting cocaine was shipped to U.S.
markets in small planes and sold for up to $ 30,000 per kilogram in New
York and Chicago.

The keys to the scheme's success were that the formula was simple and the
ingredients were readily available. The new method made the traffickers
much richer and gave rise to the drug cartels, which came to specialize in
particular niches of the drug economy: transportation, processing, money
laundering, and distribution. When the cartels realized that regular,
powder cocaine was too expensive to market in poor communities, the drug
lords then invented "crack," and another stage in the business -- and the
world's addictive nightmare -- was born.

The growth of the cartels turned Colombia upside down. In 1978, Colombia's
drug revenue was $ 2 billion. By 1985, that flow had increased to $ 3
billion -- an astronomical figure, given that Colombia's GNP was then only
$ 40 billion. The wealth was grabbed by a few hands and invested in such
safe sectors as urban real estate and huge rural haciendas. (This helped
create the coalition between landowners and drug traffickers that now
finances the paramilitaries.) Drug prices shot up, and the flow of dollars
multiplied, throwing off the exchange rate. Traffickers used their dollars
to buy luxury items and other merchandise abroad and sell them for less
than their value at the duty-free zones that sprang up around Colombia.
Today, for example, one can buy a Japanese stereo in Colombia for less than
in Tokyo. Such unfair competition almost destroyed the legitimate local
Colombian economy. The booming cocaine industry also deformed Colombia's
morals. Riches, no matter how ill-gotten, became the goal of many
Colombians, and respect for civic rights, education, and honest work
declined. The judicial system and other government institutions crumbled
before narcotraffickers determined to carve out a sphere for their illicit
businesses through violence and corruption.

The Colombian state tried to deal with these problems but was simply too
weak. In 1979, for example, Colombia and the United States signed an
extradition treaty that would permit Colombian nationals to be tried in the
United States. Such treaties are hardly unusual, but in Colombia the deal
elicited a declaration of war from its likely targets. With their fortunes,
the drug traffickers organized an armed gang called the Extraditables and
launched a terrorist campaign with the motto, "We prefer a tomb in Colombia
to a jail cell in the United States." To show it meant business, the group
assassinated a Colombian Supreme Court justice. The war then moved on to
journalists, politicians, and police officers. Hit men received $ 2,000 for
each cop they killed. Eventually the drug lords went after Colombia's civil
society as well. They blew up a plane with 109 passengers on board, set off
car bombs in shopping malls, and dynamited the headquarters of the federal
investigative agency. They even financed the passage of a constitutional
amendment by the Colombian Congress prohibiting extradition.

Lawlessness spread uncontrollably not because of a lack of controls or laws
but because the combination of drugs, corruption, and insurgency makes any
type of control ludicrous. Colombia has one of the most sophisticated legal
systems in the hemisphere and every conceivable law in the book, but 70
percent of all crimes remain unsolved, and it ranks among the top three
most corrupt countries in the world according to Transparency International.

In September 1989, the Bush administration declared a new war on drugs,
granting more aid and coordinating a multilateral approach with other
Andean countries. But Colombia was tired of the fight, beaten down by
violence. Within a year, a constituent assembly elected by popular vote
prohibited extradition, taking the heat off the drug kingpins. The
government introduced a plea-bargaining policy that led to the partial
dismantling of the cartels and the arrest of some key drug figures. But
thanks to the weakness of the prison system, the cartel leaders continued
to operate from behind bars. In 1992, the leader of the Medellin cartel,
Pablo Escobar, escaped, and terrorism was unleashed again. But the
government's military and judicial capacity had improved over the years,
and Colombian police were able to gun down Escobar and finish off the
Medellin cartel by the end of 1993.

Although the government has been doing somewhat better recently, even if it
conquers its present troubles Colombia will always have a big problem in
its midst. The country has eliminated the drug cartels, but it has never
understood that the drug trade from the 1970s and 1980s created a new
social class -- an elite that grew rich through drug trafficking, that will
fight to keep its business alive and thriving, and that is quite willing to
use violence, terrorism, and corruption. Such people financed the
guerrillas and paramilitaries. The drug class has spread corruption money
around Congress and other Colombian institutions and financed the campaign
of a former president. Traffickers know their market, and they knew that
they should not work in big cartels. That business acumen has paid off, and
more cocaine than ever is now being imported to the United States,
according to recent reports. The violence produced by traffickers in
Colombia is closely linked to the appetite of consumers in the United
States and Europe -- another good reason why attention must be paid.

Guerrillas In The Mist

IN A PARALLEL set of developments, Colombia became embroiled in a local
variant of the Cold War during the 1960s. Rural guerrillas gained influence
in the country's jungles and mountains. The armed bands were made up of the
remnants of peasant groups that had rebelled against the government in the
previous decade (later gathered into FARC) and newer groups promoted by
Cuba (including the National Liberation Army, or ELN). These guerrillas
caused some harm but never threatened the country's stability.

That began to change in the 1970s, when new urban terrorist groups started
to appear. The best known of these, the M-19, burst onto the scene in 1982
when it took over the Dominican Republic's embassy in Bogota. The group
held 14 senior diplomats hostage, including the papal nuncio and the U.S.
ambassador; after negotiations, they left for Cuba with some of the
hostages and $ 5 million. The M-19 followed up this coup with other
spectacular stunts, including a dramatic 1985 takeover of the Palace of
Justice, during which they kidnapped the entire Colombian Supreme Court and
exchanged heavy fire with the Colombian army. In the end, more than 100
people were left dead, including most of the justices.

In 1989, the government began serious peace talks with the M-19 that
culminated in a peace accord the following year. Several smaller guerrilla
groups also took part, and some 5,000 rebels wound up turning in their
weapons. As part of the deal, the government designated temporary
demilitarized zones in the countryside where the demobilized rebel troops
would be safe from outside harassment to give them a measure of security
during the negotiations. The settlement worked, and today many of these
former guerrillas are prominent politicians and public officials.

But the two largest guerrilla forces -- FARC, which has 12,000 -- 15,000
troops, and the ELN, which has 3,000 -- 5,000 -- refused to demobilize.
Both groups had found independent financing that let them remain in the
field and even grow stronger over time.

The ELN, a Marxist/Christian group led until 1998 by a Spanish Catholic
priest, discovered a profitable niche extorting money from oil companies.
Since 1985, the group has bombed Colombia's main pipeline about 700 times
- -- every week or so, that is -- wasting 1.7 million barrels of oil and
causing serious environmental damage.

Meanwhile, FARC built up a presence in coca-growing areas, where it charged
fees to plantations for "protection."

In the mid-1990s, a disease destroyed almost 30 percent of the coca
plantations in Peru's upper Huallaga Valley. Drug traffickers shifted
their crops to Colombia's jungles, experimenting with the plants and
producing a stronger coca leaf with a higher cocaine yield. As a result,
the area of Colombia used for coca cultivation jumped from 20,000 to
120,000 hectares in five years. FARC took control of the crops and boosted
its income to more than $ 600 million a year, making it possibly the
richest insurgent group in history.

The coca plantations also provided the guerrillas with a social base for
the first time in their 30 years of existence. This became visible in 1996,
when coca growers held mass protests against a crop eradication push by the
army. (In Colombia, most growers are not peasants -- as they are in Peru
and Bolivia -- but hired hands recruited by traffickers from elsewhere in
the country.) Egged on by FARC, more than 100,000 of these workers marched
for several weeks. To end the uprising, the government agreed to limit its
fumigation program to coca plantations smaller than three hectares.

Weak government institutions and guerrilla abuses opened a space for the
emergence of various paramilitary forces. These groups are not formally
linked with the Colombian army but often maintain some ties with it at the
field level. Over the last five years, the paramilitaries have developed a
common antiguerrilla political rhetoric and a centralized operational
command. They are responsible for most of the country's human rights
violations, including the assassinations of thousands of peasants. Given
the paramilitaries' depredations, it is crucial for the long-term health of
Colombian democracy that the army cut even its indirect ties to them. U.S.
aid should also come with human rights considerations and strong monitoring
mechanisms attached.

When President Andres Pastrana was elected in 1998, he quickly launched
peace talks with both FARC and the ELN for the first time in eight years.
Following the same script as in 1990, he offered safe havens to the
guerrillas to make them feel secure enough to start negotiations. The first
block of territory was given to FARC, which received 42,000 square
kilometers -- the size of Switzerland or Kentucky. But the territory was
ceded without many controls, and the move has sparked criticism: this time
around, the guerrillas have used their newfound freedom to arrange
kidnappings, carry out summary executions, and sponsor coca plantations.

Another block of territory was recently granted to the ELN, and this time,
the government tried to correct some of the mistakes it made in dealing
with FARC. The ELN's safe haven takes up only 5,000 square kilometers, a
bit larger than Long Island, and the zone was offered together with
national and international verification mechanisms to prevent any
transgressions. Nevertheless, the agreement with the ELN may still produce
trouble, since the safe haven lies near areas controlled by the
paramilitaries and near important oil pipelines, once the ELN's favorite
target.

In Evil Hour

ANY DISCUSSION of Colombia's current plight has to start with the fact that
the war against drugs and the war against the guerrillas run parallel.
Outright victory in either is impossible over the near term. So the most
sensible course for the government and its foreign partners is a
three-track strategy that strives to tamp down the violence of the civil
war, limit the role and power of drug interests in Colombia's politics and
economics, and lower the demand for drugs abroad.

FARC is both a narcotrafficking operation and an insurgent group seeking
political power.

Its strongholds are also the areas that grow 90 percent of the country's
cocaine.

Colombians have slowly realized that since drug money can finance a
perpetual insurgency, there will be no peace without dealing with the drug
plantations. Nor can the current drug-supply networks be dismantled if the
guerrillas continue to operate unchallenged and control 120,000 hectares of
coca, 12,000 hectares of poppies, and 5,000 hectares of marijuana. Since
all groups in the Colombian conflict have independent financing, they can
shrug off pressure from outsiders if they wish. Moreover, neither the
government nor the rebels have any hope of total victory on the
battlefield. For these reasons if no others, the peace process must be
nurtured until some mutually acceptable outcome can be reached.

Colombians know this, but the country needs the support of the
international community as well, which should play the same sort of role in
Colombia that it has in such places as the Middle East and Northern Ireland.

Foreigners should be ready to step in to pressure and cajole all sides when
the peace process becomes stalemated. Outsiders can assure the rebels, for
example, that nothing will happen to them if they lay down their arms. Most
members of armed groups fear that once they sign a peace accord and give up
their weapons, they will be killed or thrown in jail.

These concerns are entirely legitimate, given that during an earlier
attempt at peace talks with FARC in the late 1980s, an entire FARC-backed
political party was annihilated. More than 3,500 members of that group, the
Union Patriotica, either were murdered or disappeared -- a crime that not
only increased rebel suspicions but lowered the prospects for the eventual
creation of a democratic leftist political party.

Colombia's military also has worries -- chiefly that a settlement will be
bought with concessions at its expense -- that need to be taken into
account. Balancing the need to grant amnesties with the need to prosecute
war crimes will be difficult, but a start would be the formation of a truth
commission like the ones created in South Africa and El Salvador.

The United States could play a more active role in fostering the peace
process through the efforts of a special envoy or presidential
representative, a Richard Holbrooke or Dennis Ross for Colombia. More
American involvement would help bring representatives from the armed
groups, the government, and civil society together for serious talks, in
the manner of the Dayton and Wye accords, on a negotiated end to the
conflict. In the meantime, the international community should use
diplomatic pressure and observer missions to help ensure that all sides
respect international humanitarian law.

I Want A New Drug Policy

IDEALLY, at the same time the United States stepped up its diplomacy, it
would also change its approach to the other half of the Colombian dilemma,
the war on drugs. Current American drug policy emphasizes a unilateral or
bilateral approach; what is really needed is a long-term multilateral
approach that stresses shared goals, increased cooperation, and sensible
compromises.

Between 1989 and 1992, the Colombian government persuaded the United States
to meet with Colombia and other drug-producing nations to develop new
policies to combat drug trafficking. That effort to forge a multilateral
approach died in 1993 when Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori staged an
autogolpe, or self-coup, and Colombians elected President Ernesto Samper
after a campaign dominated by drug money. The Clinton administration then
retreated to the same tired, ineffectual, unilateral certification process
- -- whereby drug-producing nations must demonstrate that they are making
major progress in the fight against drugs or face sanctions -- that has
justly created so much ill will for America in the region. The time has
come to revive the multilateral efforts, and include the European Union to
boot. Few in Colombia believe that outright legalization would end the
problem; just as there is no supply-side panacea, we know that there is no
demand-side one, either. Still, Americans' and Europeans' appetite for
cocaine helps fuel Colombia's misery, and anything that reduces that
appetite helps. The parties on both ends of the equation need to share the
blame and work out common goals on how to tackle consumption, production,
and distribution.

Finally, there is the economy. The Colombian private sector has become less
competitive because of the pressures of the insurgency and the drug war.
Fair treatment for Colombians would include a trade initiative to let
Colombian products enter the U.S. market without tariffs or barriers. This
would not be a handout, just a bit of help that will create a demand for
Colombia's legal exports as great as that for its drugs. Colombian flowers,
shoes, coal, coffee, clothes, and textiles have been slapped with tariffs
and trade barriers because they were often used by drug traffickers to
smuggle drugs. Today Colombia's industries need fairer treatment. The
Central American wars ended with access to the U.S. market for their
products. Colombia deserves no less.

None of these policies will bring a swift end to the problems that bedevil
Colombia and the region. But together, they might reduce the level of
violence, reestablish public order, and lay the groundwork for a negotiated
settlement down the road. Without them, even billions of dollars in aid
will not be enough.

RAFAEL PARDO is President of the Milenio Foundation, based in Bogota. He
was a special adviser for peace negotiations to Colombian President
Virgilio Barco from 1986 to 1990 and Colombia's first civilian Minister of
Defense from 1991 to 1994.