OPED: U.S. IN COLOMBIA: ANTI-DRUG, OR ANTI-INSURGENCY, EFFORTS?

It will be the leftist dream come true, this Plan Colombia to dump $1.3
billion over the next two years in "emergency requests" for anti-drug
efforts in Colombia.

When poor Colombians die from the bullets flying between American military
personnel in-country to support the Colombian army's anti-drug battle with
revolutionary forces, see how long it takes for American soldiers to be
painted as repressive democratic dogs by guerrilla leaders wanting to
capitalize on U.S. involvement.

The "emergency" in Colombia, brewing since the mid-'90s, is actually the
Clinton administration's late-term discovery that ignoring South America
for most of its tenure is coming home to roost as an incredible failure.

Clinton has to do something -- and fast -- to avoid one of his legacies
being the abject failure of the war on drugs in South America. And what
better time to propose a billion-dollar aid package than an election year,
when members of Congress will be hard-pressed to object for fear that their
opponents will label them as soft on the drug war?

What's so terribly wrong with this plan? The fact that, of the $1.3 billion
proposed in emergency funding, $1 billion of it is going to military and
police assistance.

It's not going to crop-substitution programs; not to building roads so that
farmers can get those substituted crops to market; and not to judicial
reform, human-rights protections or initiatives to stop high-tech crimes
like money laundering -- an all-important aspect of the drug trade.

Nope, the United States is going to do a little aerial fumigation to kill
off the coca fields and a lot of training and equipping of a military
embroiled in a civil war.

Never mind that federal law prohibits the U.S. from doing just that.

Section 1004 of the 1991 National Defense Authorization Act allows foreign
military training only for anti-drug efforts. Defense funds cannot legally
be used to train foreign troops for counterinsurgency purposes.

Yet the line between the two is so fuzzed that no one can tell the
difference. Even U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey suggested in July that
differentiating between anti-drug and anti-insurgency efforts is
counterproductive, indicating that the two are interdependent.

The plan proponents, including Kenneth MacKay Jr., the president's special
envoy to the Americas, point to the successes of reducing coca crops in
Peru and Bolivia in the '90s.

"The plan builds on the very successful strategies that were carried out
with Peru and Bolivia that succeeded in reducing the amount of cocaine
produced in those two countries by 55 and 65 percent, respectively, over
the last three years, thus reducing the amount of cheap cocaine making its
way into our country," MacKay wrote in an opinion piece recently submitted
to U.S. newspapers. "Critics who say that the plan will not work must
consider the evidence in Peru and Bolivia."

OK, let's consider Peru and Bolivia. Coca production there declined for two
main reasons:

A series of crop-substitution programs funded by the international community.

A Peruvian-government policy of shooting or forcing down planes suspected
of shipping coca to Colombia, where the processing and smuggling always has
taken place, even for Peruvian- and Bolivian-grown plants. ALL STICK AND NO
CARROT

But the plan didn't dry up coca production in South America. The drug
cartels just moved the entire operation into the southern plains of Colombia.

This package, as the Center for International Policy puts it, is more of
the same: all stick and no carrot. It will do little to stop drug flow
while forcing desperate small-scale growers to move farther into the
jungles while turning to armed groups for help. And for the first time,
U.S.-aided units will be engaging in offensive operations against
guerrillas who are holed up in their oldest, most fiercely defended
strongholds.