COCAINE WAR A special report. (Part V of V)

THE HARD QUESTIONS

Narcotics And War Become Intertwined

For the Clinton administration, the unraveling of the situation in Colombia
has created an uncomfortable dilemma. While the United States is determined
to diminish the flow of cocaine and heroin into American cities, especially
with an election looming, it does not want to be pulled into what can only
be a long, bloody and expensive campaign in Latin America's longest running
guerrilla war.

"The situation on the ground in Colombia is increasingly complicated, but
our policy is very straightforward," Brian E. Sheridan, the Defense
Department coordinator for drug enforcement policy and support, said
recently in testimony to a Congressional panel. "We are working with the
Colombian government on counternarcotics programs. We are not in the
counterinsurgency business."

But to Colombian military officers in the field, there is no such
distinction. "To me, they are one and the same thing," Lieutenant Arenas
said, clearly puzzled that anyone would suggest there is any difference
between drug traffickers and guerrillas.

And while the Clinton administration is talking only of a two-year program,
focused on the delivery of the helicopters and a training program for
pilots, top Colombian military officials lay out a six-year campaign. They
envision being able to break the F.A.R.C.'s control of coca-growing areas
in the south in two years, after which the Colombian Armed Forces would
focus on the Guaviare region in the country's heartland for two years and
then northern areas dominated by paramilitary groups.

American officials contend that the only way the government can regain
control of Putumayo and Caqueta provinces is through a coordinated effort
in which the Armed Forces clean out guerrilla concentrations and are
followed by police units that fumigate coca fields by air.

But very little in the battlefield record of the Colombian Army and Air
Force inspires confidence in that kind of plan. Throughout the 1990's, the
United States funneled most of its aid and training to the Colombian
National Police because American officials regarded the Armed Forces as a
bloated, corrupt and largely defensive force.

The American approach is also likely to exacerbate a longstanding debate
about the most effective way to reduce drug cultivation. While aerial
spraying is traditionally favored by the United States, many in Colombia
argue that crop substitution programs similar to those that proved
successful in Bolivia and Peru are more effective ways to wean peasant
farmers from drug crops.

The aid package now before the United States Congress includes a hefty
increase in financing for such "alternative development" programs, to $127
million over the next two years from $5 million in the last budget. But the
experience of the National Plan for Alternative Development, the Colombian
government's crop substitution agency, makes clear that coordinating aerial
spraying and crop substitution programs requires a precision that has
eluded American and Colombian experts.

Human rights groups see another, equally troubling problem in the White
House aid package. They point to a long history of cooperation between some
Colombian military units and Mr. Castano's right-wing death squads, or
paramilitaries.

According to the Colombian prosecutor's office, the death squads killed
nearly 1,000 people in more than 125 massacres in 1999. Recent reports by
Human Rights Watch and the United Nations and investigations by Colombian
prosecutors have singled out specific Colombian military units and
commanders as having provided support to the death squads or having failed
to heed calls for help from villages under attack.

To curb such abuses, Congress passed the Leahy Amendment in 1997,
prohibiting the United States from providing assistance to any Colombian
military unit that violates human rights. As a result, some Colombian
battalions have been disqualified from receiving American aid, new units
have been formed, and instruction in human rights has become a required
part of Colombian military training. But critics of the Clinton
administration's aid package insist not only that those restrictions be
strengthened, but that new oversight mechanisms be included.

"The government paints a rosy picture, but the reality is that army
officers who commit atrocities are almost never prosecuted," Senator Leahy,
the author of the amendment, said recently.

"Links between the army and paramilitaries are widespread, and human rights
investigators have had to flee the country."

R. Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and
law enforcement affairs, denied that paramilitary groups would receive more
favorable treatment than their enemies on the left. "We are pressing the
Colombian government to live up to the promise that they will go after the
paras, and we will continue to do that," he said, referring to the
paramilitary troops.

American policy, however, is to "go after the drugs wherever they are," Mr.
Beers added. "We will start by going after the largest concentrations of
those drugs, and right now that is in the south. So it's not that they are
getting a free ride because they are paras. It's because the paras have
fewer forces in the south than the F.A.R.C. at this time. That said, the
paras are increasing their presence in the south, and are becoming a more
significant problem there."

Even without the aid package, the United States' commitment in Colombia is
already growing. The Colombian battalions patrol the rivers of southern
Colombia in American-made Pirana vessels, and last year, a Riverine War
School opened in Puerto Leguizamo with some classes by visiting American
instructors.

"We've had your Coast Guard come in to show how to board vessels, your Army
and Marines to teach combat on land and water, the Miami police to
demonstrate detention methods," Lieutenant Arenas said enthusiastically.
Many of the Americans leave equipment and supplies behind as gifts, a
gesture that is deeply appreciated by troops who are short of everything
from boots and maps to two-way radios.

At any given moment, 80 to 220 American military officials are working in
Colombia, according to the United States Embassy in Bogota. The largest
concentrations are at Tolemaida in the center of the country, and Tres
Esquinas in the southwest, where the first of three counternarcotics
battalions was trained last year and two more battalions are scheduled to
be formed this year.

All told, American aid to Colombia has grown by 3,500 percent since 1993,
General McCaffrey said. That makes Colombia the largest recipient of
American aid outside the Middle East even without the new flows of
equipment and training under discussion.

Washington clearly hopes that this large one-time injection of new aid will
prove sufficient for the Colombian government to regain the upper hand. But
Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, a former minister of the interior and ambassador to
the United States, was speaking for many Colombians, and some Americans,
when he recently suggested that a pair of fundamental questions remain.

"Is the elimination of narcotics trafficking the key to achieving peace, or
is the achievement of peace necessary to the elimination of narcotics?" he
asked. "That is a dilemma that has to be analyzed and contemplated."

Back to Chapter One: COCAINE WAR, http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n527/a10.html