COLOMBIA QUAGMIRE?

The Clinton administration is demanding with strong Republican support -
$1.6 billion from Congress to aid the Colombian government in its efforts to
fight so-called narco-insurgents. But this is a misguided approach that
would compound the failure of the decade-long drug war, while immersing the
United States in a messy internal conflict.

The proposed package, if approved, will mark a huge jump in aid to Colombia,
making it the third biggest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt.
More important, it would mark a shift in strategy in the drug war.

Much of the billion or so dollars that the United States has already pumped
into Colombia since 1990 has been devoted to destroying coca crops by aerial
fumigation. This has driven farmers, who have difficulty eking out even a
subsistence-level existence any other way, deeper into guerrilla territory
in the Southeast Andes.

Indeed, in exchange for a share of the drug profits, left-wing groups such
as the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces offer the campesinos not only
protection from government raids and spray planes but also an efficient crop
distribution system - a long-standing need that corrupt officials have never
bothered to address, thereby thwarting legitimate farming.

Thus, even as the drug war raged, almost 40 percent of rural Colombia fell
into guerrilla hands, and four times more Colombian land is under coca
production now than in 1994.

The Clinton administration's proposed aid package intends to break the
chokehold of the guerrillas by training and arming Colombia's military.

The hope is that returning control to a legitimate government will help curb
the illegitimate narco-trade.

But this is a naive hope that ignores the other half of Colombia's gritty
ground reality: The military is a corrupt institution with close links to
the outlawed paramilitary groups that control the drug trade in urban areas.

These groups are responsible for untold numbers of political murders and
widespread human rights abuses. To arm the military won't wipe out the drug
trade so much as hand an exclusive monopoly to paramilitary-backed cartels
in the city.

The hard fact is that drugs have become tightly enmeshed in Colombia's
economic fabric. Colombia's previous president was forced to resign because
of his drug connections.

Drugs are the country's single biggest export and supply more than 80
percent of the cocaine and heroin available in the United States. Throwing
more money into the drug war will only boost Colombia's corrupt institutions
while further polarizing the country.

Short of drug legalization, there is no quick way of staunching the flow of
Colombian narcotics. Extending the North American Free Trade Agreement to
South America, as President Bill Clinton once proposed, wouldn't produce
instant results, but it might help.

Reasonable legislators on both sides of the aisle ought to recognize that
removing tariffs on legal Colombian exports, such as rubber and palm oil,
may in the long run do more to convince Colombians to abandon their illicit
trade than a stepped-up war. They ought to say no to the administration's
request, which promises to embroil the United States deeper in the Colombian
quagmire.