US SIDESTEPS ITS DRUG PROBLEM WITH $1.3BN MILITARY FIX IN COLOMBIA

Washington diary Julian Borger

In Latin America last week is likely to be remembered as the week that
the United States held its nose and plunged cheque-book first into
Colombia's civil war under the emotive banner of an anti-drug crusade.

The Senate voted to spend about $1 billion on mostly military
assistance to the Colombian army. After talks with the even more
gung-ho House of Representatives, this was raised to $1.3bn, making
Colombia the third-biggest recipient of US aid in the world, after
Israel and Egypt.

The idea behind this open-ended commitment is to throw huge quantities
of US military hardware and know-how into a short, sharp fix for the
drug epidemic, theoretically enabling the Colombian army to clean out
the vast coca plantations grown under the patronage and protection of
insurgent armed forces controlling large areas of the country.

All this sounds strikingly familiar. It is not the first time the
generals have claimed to need just a few more helicopter gunships,
another consignment of money, another handful of US advisers. The word
"quagmire" has begun to surface in the corridors of Congress and in
newspapers. Yet the aid package passed in an instinctively
isolationist Congress with only a modest handful of dissenters.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Plan Colombia (as this vast
subsidy is grandly titled) is the faith it reflects in military
solutions to intractable and complex social problems. The memories of
Vietnam have clearly faded, as have the phantoms of Nicaragua and El
Salvador. And it is not only in Washington that this belief reigns
supreme. Next month the European Union states are due to chip in to
Plan Colombia at the behest of the Colombian president, Andrés
Pastrana, and are expected to match or better the US donation.

So what are Plan Colombia's chances of reducing the number of drug
addicts in the US or Europe, or making Colombia a less murderous
place? Outside the offices of the US anti-drug czar, General Barry
McCaffrey, and his European counterparts, the overwhelming consensus
seems to be that it will do very little good, and probably a lot of
harm. A recent study by the Rand Corporation, a US-based thinktank,
concluded that each dollar spent on the treatment of addicts in the
drug markets of Washington, London or Paris was as effective in
containing the hard drug epidemic as $10 spent chasing the
narco-traffickers in the jungle.

The outgoing Colombian police chief, General Rosso José
Serrano, a respected veteran who knows more than most about fighting
drug lords, said before he retired this month: "We'd rather see drug
consumption drop than get any of this aid." If demand for drugs could
be curtailed, Serrano said, Colombia "could go back to what it once
was, a place that grew coffee, where people worked hard and sweated
for a paycheck".

However, an attempt by Senator Paul Wellstone to divert $225m of the
military aid bill to domestic substance abuse programmes was easily
defeated last week by 89 votes to 11.

The new money, equipment and trainers are supposed to help the army
spray more herbicide from the air on the drug plantations, but it will
inevitably poison all crops, including those non-drug staples that the
farmers have been encouraged to grow by foreign aid programmes.
Fumigation will also poison water, food and soil. Coca tends to be a
resistant plant, and is sometimes the last crop standing after
repeated spraying. The victims are likely to become willing guerrilla
fighters or refugees. Ecuador has reportedly been warned to expect a
flood of 25,000 Colombian refugees.

There is also the question of who the new model Colombian army would
be fighting. In Washington the enemy is portrayed as
"narco-terrorists", but it is no secret that the primary targets will
be the Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the lesser
known National Liberation Army (ELN) . Both are leftwing groups that
control large zones of the countryside after temporary peace deals
with President Pastrana. They tax all businesses in their region, so
thrive on the cocaine producers, but they remain distinct from the
industry that helps sustain them.

Farc, the largest of the two groups with 17,000 guerrillas under arms,
has been demanding fundamental land reform and income redistribution
that is unacceptable to the political groups in Bogotá. Going
to war with Farc will leave a heavy body count, but it is unlikely to
do more than inconvenience the drug barons, who have shown their
ability to shift production as circumstances dictate.

Much of Colombia's cocaine is produced under the patronage of
rightwing paramilitary groups sponsored by large landowners and the
army, who are responsible for three-quarters of the country's human
rights violations (according to US and Colombian estimates). Yet it is
a safe bet that these paramilitaries will not be on the receiving end
of any of the new US military hardware.

The logic behind Plan Colombia is to be found in Washington more than
in the coca fields of the Farc-run Putemayo region. In a US election
year no one wants to be labelled soft on drugs. Addiction treatment
centres can be portrayed as mere pandering to drug fiends, and do not
embody the right kind of political machismo.

The other driving force is cold cash and order books. The hottest
debate behind the scenes in Congress has been whether to send 60 Huey
helicopters, made by Textron, or 30 more expensive Black Hawk
gunships, made by Sikorski. Lobbyists for both firms competed hard on
Capitol Hill, as well they might as the helicopters will account for
about $400 million of the total bill. This is likely to be the last
issue settled in talks on Plan Colombia between the Senate and the
House of Representatives.

Whichever chopper is chosen, the result will almost certainly be
escalation. A $1.3bn cheque buys a lot of fuel to add to the flames.
It is unlikely to put them out. To do that, it may be necessary to
spend some more money a little closer to home.