THE COLOMBIAN CONNECTION

How far will we go to wage a "transnational" drug war?

When a civil war has gone on for 35 or 40 years,as all the experts and
news accounts remind us is the case in Colombia, you have to wonder
whether it really should be viewed as an event or as a condition -
even as the increasing vulgarity in popular entertainment, while
arguably deplorable, lamentable and degrading to the larger culture,
is unlikely to disappear anytime soon. If civil conflict in Colombia
approaches being chronic, then, it's hardly out of line to question
whether the U.S. government can fix it with the injection of a few
hundred million more dollars, a few more helicopters, a few more
military and civilian police training missions, a few more lectures on
human rights and - just possibly - a few or a lot of U.S. military
personnel.

To be sure, Colombia's civil war has not been waged at a consistently
high level of intensity for the last 40 years. But if anything, the
ebbs and flows in the conflict's history should give confident policy
makers ensconced in their secure offices and marble hallways in
Washington, D.C. a few moments of caution.

But getting involved more heavily in Colombia's ongoing civil
conflicts, mainly because U.S. policy makers see them as tied more
closely than ever to our generally ineffectual international War on
Drugs, is precisely what the Clinton administration seems to have in
mind. Late in August President Clinton himself said vital American
interests are at stake in Colombia and that it is "very much in our
national security interests to do what we can."

In mid-October Americans got a taste of what he had in mind. Exultant
press conferences were held in Washington and Bogota to announce the
arrest of 30 drug trafficking suspects, including two described as
"kingpins," Alejandro Bernal Madrigal and Fabio Ochoa, who had
previously served a jail term as a leader of the old Medellin cocaine
cartel. "Operation Millennium" was described as the culmination of a
year of undercover work featuring unprecedented cooperation between
U.S. investigators and the Colombian police. Advanced cell phone
tapping methods and interception of Internet communications were touted.

U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno was especially pleased at the ability
of the two governments to minimize national boundaries. "The threat of
the illegal drug trade is pervasive; it knows no boundaries," she said.

"That is why it is so critical that our response was equally
transnational."

U.S officials have been whooping it up for increased transnational
responses for several months. U.S. "drug czar" Gen. Barry McCaffrey
visited Colombia and neighboring countries this summer, stressing that
the guerrilla groups and narcotraffickers have essentially become one
and the same. Provided Colombian President Andres Pastrana doesn't
make concessions to the insurgents or restart peace negotiations
(which could result in losing u.s. support) the United States wants to
increase aid to Colombia sharply.

U.S. security assistance (essentially military aid) to Colombia is at
$289million this year, making Colombia the third-largest recipient of
U.S. military aid, behind only Israel and Egypt. Colombian officials
in August requested an additional $500 million in military aid over
two years. McCaffrey wants to increase spending on the drug war in the
region over the next couple of years until it reaches $1 billion a
year. If anything, some of the most influential congressional
Republicans would like to spend even more.

The argument for stepped-up military and anti-drug trafficking aid is
that it would improve regional stability, give the United States more
leverage to reduce human rights violations, cut down on drug
trafficking, and stabilize an essentially friendly democracy. But Adam
Isaacson the Colombian expert at the liberal Center for International
Policy in Washington (www.cpionline.or/colombia), argues that it would
make every aspect of these problems worse. Winifred Tate of the
Washington Office on Latin America (www.wola.org) agrees.

The drug trade won't be reduced until demand in the United States is
reduced, they say. Stepping up U.S. aid to the government will
increase the resistance (and probably the popular support) of the
major leftist guerrilla group, FARC, which is awash in drug money
these days. While stepped-up aid might include programs designed to
reduce human-rights abuses by government forces, it could also send a
tacit message of toleration of existing abuses. And an unsuccessful or
escalating U.S. involvement in Colombia is more likely to destabilize
the region than to stabilize it.

The persistence of the drug trade is one of Colombia's more enduring
stories. When the Medellin cocaine cartel was dismantled in 1991, the
Cali cartel took over the bulk of the business. When leaders of the
Cali cartel were arrested in 1995, Alan Weisman was in Calamar, in the
eastern Guaviare region, where much coca is grown, researching an
article for the Los Angeles Times Magazine. In Calamar the
townspeople, who depended on the cocaine trade, celebrated noisily.
"Thank the blessed Virgin," shouted one grandmother. "Finally,
something to pop the lid off prices!" "Amen," shouted the bartender,
who proceeded to open bottles of Chivas Regal and announce drinks on
the house.

Somewhere in the Colombian jungles, competing traffickers were no
doubt also celebrating the arrest of a few "kingpins" the month.

The economics of the cocaine trade, as outlined by former Colombian
law-enforcement official Gustavo de Greiff, explain why eradication is
so difficult. A kilo of processed cocaine fetches about $2,000 (U.S.)
in Colombia, but can be sold for $60,000 on the streets in the United
States. U.S. domestic traffickers pay about $20,000 per kilo to
foreign smugglers (whose costs are about $5,500), then work through a
chain of intermediaries so that by the time it reaches users, it
brings in about $60,000 per kilo.

That's a lot of profit for everybody involved. Plenty of people will
take risks (or pay others to take them) for such profits. Others are
more than happy to step forward when the government removes some of
the competition.

Even taking at face value the claims of the drug warriors suggests
that this month's busts will have little influence on the trade. The
arrests were accompanied by seizures of 13 to 15 tons of cocaine (11
tons of which were seized two months previously). But the government
claims that Bernal alone boasted of shipping 30 toms a month to the
United States. That's 360 tons a year, meaning 13 to 15 tons seized is
simply a cost of doing business. And Bernal is just one trafficker.

Then there's the inconvenient fact that the growth in coca and opium
poppy cultivation in Colombia (some claim at least 200,000 acres are
under cultivation) is largely the result of "success" in harassing
growers in neighboring Bolivia and Peru. Colombia used to specialize
in processing raw coca into cocaine powder in jungle labs. Now it has
something of a vertically integrated industry. But if eradication
actually worked, there are numerous other places coca can be grown.

If the drug trade is unlikely to be eradicated, what are the chances
the United Sates can have a positive impact on the survival of
democracy and the promotion of stability in Colombia? The issue is
complicated by a long and often troubled history.

Colombia, colonized by Spain in the 1500s, gained independence with
the victory of Simon Bolivar's army in 1819. Since becoming a separate
state from Venezuela and Ecuador in 1831, it has seen political
struggle, often violent, between liberal and conservative elements for
control of government policy. Civil war in 1861 led to liberal
victory, but conservatives ruled from 1880 t0 1930.

In 1903 the Colombian Senate declined to ratify the Hay-Herran Treaty,
which allowed for the lease of territory for the Panama Canal (Panama
was then part of Colombia). A revolt broke out in Panama; u.s. troops
intervened to prevent Colombian troops from suppressing the uprising
and the U.S. recognized Panama as a separate, independent state.
U.S.-Colombian relations were strained to hostile until 1921. Liberals
regained power in 1930, leading to constitutional revisions that gave
the government more control over private property. The first
leftist-to-Marxist guerrilla groups were formed in the 1930s, but
their power was marginal for years.

Colombia sided with the Allies in World War II and was an original
member of the United Nations. Beginning in 1948 antagonism between
Liberals and Conservatives led to widespread violence (called la
violencia) that persisted through a coup in 1954 and hundreds of
thousands of deaths. In 1957 the Liberals and Conservatives agreed to
share power and offices equally and ruled (with some interruptions
punctuated by violence) as a National Front until 1974. Meanwhile,
armed guerrilla bands, some with roots stretching back to the 1950s
and even the 1930s, controlled much of the rural regions.

The insurgents gained strength in the late 1970s and in 1980 a
guerrilla band occupied the Dominican embassy in Bogota for two
months. After a short-lived truce in 1984, the guerrillas (often
allied with the increasingly powerful narcotraffickers) seized the
Palace of Justice in 1985. During the 1990 presidential campaign three
presidential candidates were assassinated.

As Ethan Nadelmann, the former Princeton political science professor
who now heads the Lindesmith Center of George Soros' Open Society
Institute (www.lindesmith.org), points out, however, through most of
this turmoil Colombians have been remarkably entrepreneurial. Colombia
has oil, precious metals and other minerals and is the world's
principal supplier of emeralds. Coffee is the principal crop,
accounting for 80 percent of export earnings in the mid-1970s - down
to 25 percent in 1995 due to low international prices, pests and
agricultural diversification. Other cash crops include rice, potatoes,
cacao, sugar cane, bananas, tobacco and cotton.

Until very recently, then, Colombia's economy flourished despite
political upheaval. For better or worse, however, smuggling has long
been a part of the economy. During the colonial period, when Spain
permitted trade only with the Spanish crown, smuggling was considered
honorable, and many of today's elite families made their initial
fortunes that way. Lower-class entrepreneurs trafficked in black
market emeralds during this century, and the skills involved were
easily transferred to the drug trade.

With the collapse of the coffee market and a decline in Colombia's oil
industry (exacerbated by the actions of ELN, the other guerrilla
group) and increases in political and drug-trafficking violence,
Colombia's economy has tanked. Gross Domestic Product, which grew by
5.7 percent in 1995, grew by only 0.6 percent in 1998 and fell by 4.8
percent in the first quarter of 1999. Industrial production declined
by 16.2 percent in 1998 and another 20.7 percent through May 1999.
That deterioration in general economic well-being makes the political
situation all the more perilous.

With the ELN controlling much of the oil-rich northeast and the FARC
controlling much of the eastern lowlands, guerrillas now effectively
control about 40 percent of the country, "taxing" ranchers, oil
producers and drug traffickers. In the late 1980s a third force, the
paramilitaries, originally hired to protect ranchers from guerrillas,
emerged The paramilitaries now seem to have ties with the Colombia
army (which tends to look the other way as they slaughter enemies) and
are blamed by human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human
Rights Watch (www.hrw.org/worl-dreport99/americas/colombia3.html) for
about 70 percent of the fatalities in the last several years. Amnesty
International's 1999 report estimates that security forces and
paramilitaries killed about 1,000 civilians in 1998, while guerrillas
killed about 400. Killing by all sides is expected to be higher in
1999. Some 1.5 million people are "internally displaced" and record
numbers of Colombians are leaving the country.

The ability of the United States to understand, let alone control
these volatile elements is further limited by history. Worried about
communist insurgencies from the 1950s until recently, the United
States established close ties with the Colombian military. Many
Colombians believe the United States is deeply implicated in human
rights violations by the Colombian military. The Colombian newspaper
Cambio 16 is especially interested in uncovering alleged plots by the
CIA - and more recently the DEA - to meddle in and control Colombia.
Many Colombians of all social classes have a deep-seated suspicion of
U.S. motives.

Add the terrain, "so tangled," as Alan Weisman put it, "that El
Salvador or Vietnam seem comparatively featureless." The country has
three Andean ridges (cordilleras) with valleys between, covered with
jungle. Much of the eastern part of the country is virtually without
roads and infrastructure, which is one reason alternatives to coca
have seldom proven profitable for peasant farmers; transportation
costs were too high, but the drug traffickers provide
transportation.

The guerrillas have operated in this terrain for 40 years. And as
Mauricio Reina of Fedesarrollo, a Bogota think-tank, told NBC's
Jennifer Rich recently, "Full generations have grown up in this
activity and with this outlook on life. They are in no hurry."

What would be the objectives of a major intervention in Colombia?
There's o tyrant to demonize, though the government, the guerrillas
and the paramilitaries have all done plenty to criticize. Would
military activity get to the drug traffickers and guerrillas, or hit
mainly peasant coca growers? Given the history, the recession and
tangled webs of loyalties, how would intervention promote stability?
Indeed, how would you define stability?

The notion that the United States can provide a quick fix in Colombia
short of calling of the drug war, which complicates every problem and
intensifies every conflict - seems naive at best. And if there's no
quick fix, how long will Americans (not to mention Colombians)
tolerate active intervention?