LACK OF AIR SUPPORT HINDERING DRUG WAR

A key element of the drug war in Colombia is faltering because U.S.
surveillance flights over major cocaine-producing regions have declined by
two-thirds over the past year, according to administration officials.

The near disappearance of U.S. radar planes from Andean skies severely
erodes the ability of U.S. forces to spot smugglers flying low over the
jungle and direct intercept missions by South American warplanes.

In Peru those intercepts proved highly successful, helping drive down
Peruvian coca production by two-thirds between 1995 and 1999, according to
Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

For want of such simple equipment as fire trucks and navigational beacons,
the interdiction effort has barely gotten underway over an area of
southwestern Colombia, which took up the slack from Peru. Colombia doubled
its coca production during the same 1995-99 period to an estimated 520 tons
last year (twice U.S. annual consumption). That burgeoning cocaine trade
finances an anti-government insurgency.

Moreover, in Peru drug traffickers are resurgent because of the decline in
surveillance and interdiction, U.S. and Latin American officials said.

That decline is the result of diplomatic setbacks, friction between
Congress and the Clinton administration, Pentagon infighting and the
competing demands of other military operations, the officials said.

Restoring aerial surveillance is "absolutely critical" to U.S. anti-drug
initiatives in South America, Marine Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm,
commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern Command (SouthCom), recently told
Congress. "I am in urgent need of help on the intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance side," Wilhelm said.

Wilhelm said he had reduced SouthCom to the lowest readiness status for
those functions, meaning that it could not be expected to carry out its
assigned missions.

The $1.6 billion package of counter-narcotics aid for Colombia working its
way though Congress includes only minor provisions to boost surveillance
flights and does nothing to deliver what Wilhelm says he needs most: E-3
AWACS, the Air Force's largest and most sophisticated radar plane. "Those
are the long-reach, long-look airplanes that we need to do the job in the
deep source zone," Wilhelm said.

The nation's 30 AWACS are in such heavy demand elsewhere that none are
permanently assigned to SouthCom and temporary tours have become
increasingly rare since the air campaign in Kosovo last spring.

"We are just way too stretched out between the Balkans, Iraq and North
Korea to commit these assets to drug interdiction in South America," said a
senior Air Force official.

Concerned that the Pentagon underestimates the importance of the drug war,
McCaffrey wrote Defense Secretary William S. Cohen last month warning that
weakened capabilities in Latin America could jeopardize the Colombia
effort. The retired army general asked for a commitment to rebuild
surveillance capacities, according to senior officials.

While declining to discuss the letter, McCaffrey said in an interview that
"our ability to get into the Andean ridge has dwindled to about zero." The
White House drug official said he had made it known throughout the
administration that "I think we have to get going on this, and if we don't,
we face a potential disaster within three or four years."

Surveillance flights are essential "because we can't go in there and fight
this ourselves. The best thing we can give these countries is good
intelligence about the source zones so they can get in there and do it
themselves, but since last May, that has not been possible," a senior
administration official said.

Last May, U.S. military forces and law enforcement agencies abandoned
Howard Air Base in Panama and lost the use of the long runways and
first-class maintenance and supply facilities that for decades had
supported U.S. air operations throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Recognizing its importance to counter-narcotic efforts, the Panamanian
government initially indicated a willingness to let Howard continue
operating after other U.S. installations were closed when the United States
ceded control of the Panama Canal. But early last year, the Panamanians
unexpectedly insisted that U.S. forces leave Howard.

More than 2,000 flights a year had been taking off from Howard on
drug-related missions, including surveillance flights that allowed Peruvian
authorities to target coca fields for eradication and to intercept
airplanes carrying cocaine from production labs to embarkation points for
shipment to the United States.

Just as the United States planned to shift the surveillance strategy from
Peru to Colombia, it found itself obliged to seek a replacement for Howard.
Concluding that no single facility could do the job, Southern Command and
the State Department tried to fill the gap by borrowing space at several
airfields.

In recent months, Customs Service radar planes and Air National Guard F-16s
have flown out of airports on Curacao and Aruba, two islands in the
southern Antilles, to track smugglers crossing the Caribbean in boats or
airplanes.

Surveillance of the cocaine-producing regions in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia
was to be based out of a military airfield in Manta, Ecuador 96 a Pacific
port roughly midway between the coca-growing regions in Colombia and Peru.

"From Manta and only from Manta can we reach down and cover the deep
southern portion of the source zone," said Wilhelm, promoting the Colombia
aid package on Capitol Hill.

But the airfield, which had been a training base for Ecuadorian military
helicopter pilots, lacked even basic maintenance, storage, safety and
navigational facilities and the runway was in disrepair and too short for
big jets such as AWACS.

Republican leaders in Congress last year refused to authorize funding for
initial improvements at Manta, arguing that the Clinton administration had
mishandled the negotiations for Howard and failed to secure a long-term
agreement with Ecuador for use of Manta.

SouthCom found funds to make patchwork repairs on the Manta runway after a
short-term pact was reached last April and it opened last summer. But only
one airplane at a time has been able to use Manta because it lacked a fire
truck and other safety equipment. The surveillance aircraft, all small,
short-range models, operate only in daylight because Manta lacks basic
navigational aids.

"The narcos are smart enough to fly at night and so we have not been able
to accomplish much on that front," said an administration official.

A long-term agreement was reached with Ecuador at the end of last year, and
the Air Force is due to have the safety and navigation equipment in place
by the middle of next month, nearly a year after they were first requested.

Addressing the reluctance to make even a minor investment in Manta, a
senior Air Force official said, "Look, we get asked to do everything, and
when this one came through the door and we had to do it with our own money,
there was a feeling of 'Hey, why shouldn't the Navy or somebody else take
care of it?'82"

The Colombian counter-narcotics package before Congress includes a request
to spend $38 million in fiscal 2001 on reinforcing and lengthening the
runways at Manta so they can handle AWACS and the tankers that allow them
to fly long missions. Even if the work is completed, the aircraft may not
be available.

"At this point the entire fleet of AWACS is committed to missions where
Americans are in harm's way or where there is a high threat of conflict,
and so if any planes go to Manta on a regular basis, someone is going to
have to decide whether it is Iraq or Korea or someplace else that has to
give them up," the senior Air Force official said.

In the meantime, McCaffrey, Wilhelm and others are worried about new
threats in Colombia and the erosion of gains in Peru. For more than a year,
the Peruvian government has been complaining that the lack of U.S.
surveillance has crippled its air interdiction program, according to senior
officials. As a result, the Peruvians say, the powerful deterrent effect of
the "you fly, you die" campaign has worn off and cocaine traffickers are
back in the air.