WRONG DRUG WAR STRATEGY

Sylvester Salcedo never met Patrick Dorismond, the latest unarmed black man
shot to death by a New York City cop.

Dorismond, we are told, was an accidental victim of the city's war on drugs.

His death comes as the U.S. Senate is about to consider a drug-war bill
that, if passed, could create thousands of Patrick Dorismonds all over Latin
America.

Operation Condor is the lofty name the Giuliani administration has given its
new anti-drug offensive begun in January. It evokes visions of "Miami Vice"
and sophisticated stings, but it turns out to be just another excuse to stop
and frisk or arrest New Yorkers on suspicion of selling nickel bags of
marijuana.

There are probably a lot of cops who believe they can put a dent in the drug
trade with these low-level busts, Salcedo says. He felt the same way back in
the early 1980s, when he went to work with Joint Task Force 6, a special
Department of Defense intelligence unit assigned to cooperate with federal
agencies fighting drug traffickers in Latin America.

For nearly 20 years, both as a reservist and active-duty service member,
Salcedo served as a naval attache in a half-dozen countries, including
Colombia.

In each country he toured, he grew familiar with both the druglords and the
desperate poverty that created their low-level soldiers.

When he was not on active duty, Salcedo, a Filipino-American born in
Minnesota, taught Spanish in public schools in Boston's inner city.

"That allowed me to see the drug trade from both ends," he says. "In Boston,
a lot of my students got caught up in it. I began to realize our
interdiction and eradication efforts down there had no effect up here."

A year ago, just before he retired, Salcedo got a medal from the President
for his efforts. Several months later, he learned that the Clinton
administration was proposing an astronomical increase in foreign aid for
Colombia to fight the drug war.

The $1.3 billion package would make Colombia the third-highest recipient of
U.S. foreign aid in the world, after Israel and Egypt.

Most of the money would go to finance 60 U.S. helicopters so the Colombian
military can fight "narcoguerrillas" in the jungles and mountains of
southern Colombia.

Colombia, of course, has had two bloody conflicts raging for a long time.
The oldest and biggest is the civil war in the countryside, where 10 million
of 11 million peasants live below the poverty level. That war pits left-wing
guerrillas against the government and dates to the 1960s. It has spawned
scores of right-wing paramilitary groups, created South America's worst
human-rights record and uprooted nearly 2 million people.

The other war is against the cocaine and heroin trade, a conflict less than
two decades old that gets far more attention in this country.

The guerrillas keep getting stronger. They control or threaten nearly half
of Colombia's townships. After the dismantling of the Medellin and Cali drug
cartels, the major guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, has filled the vacuum — resorting to drugs to finance its
military needs.

To combat this, Salcedo says, our government chooses the military solution —
crackdowns, arrests, crop eradication, more weapons — rather than promoting
economic development. In the same way, right here at home, our cities
respond by locking up low-level drug users and dealers, instead of trying to
treat their addiction to drugs.

These massive crackdowns help feed the military and police machines we have
created, Salcedo said, "and they keep more and more blacks, Hispanics and
poor people in jail."

To make his point that this is no way to fight a war on drugs, Salcedo
returned his medal. So far, Clinton has not responded, but the Senate might
vote on the plan this week.