OPED: COLOMBIA CONJURES GHOSTS OF VIETNAM

To those old enough to remember how American involvement started in
Vietnam, the commitment of US special forces' "advisers" to help the
beleaguered Colombian army fight drug traffickers and Marxist
guerrillas leaves an ominous sense of deja vu.

The potential mission-creep factor is already sending a chill through
the Pentagon's military hierarchy. As one officer put it yesterday:
"We are understandably wary of becoming ensnared by the initiatives of
politicians who have never had to hump a rifle and a 60lb pack through
a jungle."

The US has pledged an extra ?1bn in military aid to Colombia over the
next two years. Most of it will be spent, ostensibly, on transforming
three battalions of local volunteers into an "elite" counter-drug
force, complete with 63 Black Hawk transport helicopters and Huey gunships.

They will, however, then be used to help assault the
inappropriately-named demilitarised zone held by FARC in the southern
highlands. The largest of several private armies who control huge
tracts of the country, the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia dominates a territory twice the size of Wales, and can field
17,000 well-armed and combat-experienced men and women to defend it.

The FARC neither grows nor processes the coca leaf which represents
the basic ingredient for cocaine. However, it holds administrative
sway over the area which provides two-thirds of the world's supply and
80% of the illegal narcotic entering the US.

In return for stamping out freelance kidnapping and intimidation -
both Colombian participation sports - the organisation levies taxes on
both growers and buyers, netting an average ?300m a year to fund its
war against the government and rival right-wing paramilitaries to the
north.

All attempts to clear the FARC's jungle stronghold have ended in
failure. The guerrillas are better armed and infinitely better
motivated than the reluctant conscripts sent against them. The
civilian population of the region also has no great love for a
government going through the motions of trying to stamp out the coca
trade which is their principal, and often only, income.

Despite all US and United Nations programmes to persuade farmers,
known as cocaleros, to switch crops to something less addictive, coca
leaf remains the most profitable. A grower nets about 60p a kilo for
leaf, twice what he can reap from coffee and three times as much as
from bananas.

Some have even diversified into poppy cultivation, the bottom rung of
the heroin network currently dominated by Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The opium derivative grown in the rarefied atmosphere of the Andes has
a purity which gives it added value on the global market.

The powerful right-wing AUC paramilitary group, which allegedly takes
its orders from senior officers in the Colombian military, pledged
earlier this week to scale back attacks on its left-wing rivals in
return for political recognition.

It not only controls coca fields, but also operates the factories
which turn it into paste as the next stage before its refinement into
"nose candy" for American addicts. There is some evidence to suggest
that it buys immunity by paying kickbacks to the commanding officers
of the units tasked with its elimination.

President Andres Pastrana, who has tried desperately to bring the
warring factions to peace negotiations since he took over the
fragmented country in 1998, hopes to negotiate soon with the
second-largest paramilitary organisation, the ELN.

However, the FARC, which outnumbers the other two groups by more than
three to one, accuses its rivals of "state-sponsored terrorism" and
refuses to deal with them, apart from through the barrel of an assault
rifle. More than 35,000 people have died in the four-sided conflict in
the past 10 years.

The US has sent General Barry McCaffrey, a Gulf War hero, to
mastermind its drugs crusade. His other remit is to ensure that the
money spent on military assistance does not end up boosting Colombian
generals' retirement funds. McCaffrey is blunt about the challenge:
"Colombia is a drug disaster," he said.

His team consists of a small number of Green Berets advisers whose
instructions are to avoid direct combat. They are there simply to
train local troops in jungle warfare techniques. It looks like an
impossible task.

To curtail coca cultivation, the farmers have to be offered a better
alternative. Lacking the funds for that form of bribery, the next best
option is to target the buyers and distribution networks. But that
requires the co-operation of military authorities whose hearts and
wallets have not been won over.

The danger then, despite all protestations to the contrary, is that a
gung-ho administration in the White House might decide to commit US
combat units to do the job the locals cannot handle.