COLOMBIA'S DRUGS WAR

POLICY, WHICH POLICY?

BOGOTA - IT MAY or may not work elsewhere. In Colombia, the United States'
drugs policy is a shambles. Last year Colombia, near to a presidential
election, regained the seal of approval that the Americans had for two
years withdrawn. The war on drugs has been vigorous, the propaganda more
so, aerial spraying has gone ahead--and the area planted to coca and
poppies has risen by a quarter, say the Americans, from the 80,000 hectares
(300 square miles) they put it at a year ago. A drug-smuggling ring has
been uncovered within the air force. The American ambassador last week
described Colombia's anti-drugs effort as lacking force, intelligence and
strategy. Yet it is widely thought--even his famously critical predecessor
thinks so--that Colombia deserves, and will again get, full certification.

Confused? You are not alone. American policy in Colombia is not determined
only by the United States' DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration. The
CIA, the Pentagon and hardline Republicans all have their own agendas. And,
say agents of the DEA, its interests are being trampled on.

Colombia is home to a large left-wing guerrilla force, the FARC (and a
lesser one, the ELN). The Americans badly want the FARC defeated,
supposedly because it plays a big part in the drugs trade. So they pile up
invective and military hardware against it, in the guise of anti-drugs
support. A recent $290m aid package includes the equipping of the Colombian
helicopter fleet with 20mm cannons, supposedly for use in crop eradication.
Previous military aid was listed in Washington as "category 4", for
operations not involving hostilities. The 1998 package went through as
category 2, for military operations short of war.

Strangely, no such hardware is being aimed at these guerrillas' bitter
foes, the right-wing paramilitary groups. Yet they and the traffickers they
protect are far deeper into drugs--and the DEA knows it. But repeated
paramilitary atrocities draw only a political rap on the knuckles when
things get out of hand. The United States is blind neither to drugs nor to
atrocities. But those who commit such crimes--they include, under both
heads, some of the official armed forces--are fighting the Marxist
guerrillas, and the paramilitaries (not the army) are seen as the only
people remotely capable of containing these.

So the paramilitaries operate with relative impunity in northern Colombia,
along with the big drug-traffickers. In the south, pre-eminently FARC
country, President Andres Pastrana has won a degree of American approval
for his attempt to negotiate peace with the guerrillas. But the essential
American line, set mainly by the Pentagon and the CIA, is to prepare for
war. And not against drugs, say DEA men.

Against this backdrop of fudged priorities, conspiracy theorists fear
worse. The paramilitaries' leader, Carlos Castano, is--and deservedly
so--much feared. But it was his brother Fidel who in the early 1990s first
won for the pair's then fledgling paramilitary force its reputation for
ferocity. Fidel was also a prominent drug-trafficker, a close ally of Pablo
Escobar, leader of the Medellin mob, who was shot dead in 1993. Supposedly,
Fidel died in 1994. But now, says one DEA source, the DEA privately
believes him to be alive and well and back at his old trade, if ever he
left it. DEA informants have him active over the past four years, most
recently establishing links with the Russian mafia.

It sounds like fiction, and it may be. But if the DEA privately thinks one
of its worst enemies alive, why is it obliged publicly to think the
opposite? Low minds point to Manuel Noriega's heyday--the days of American
suport for him--in Panama. He was deep in drugs, and in league with
Escobar, but he was also useful to the CIA, and indeed for a time to the
DEA, since he came down hard on rival drug traffickers. Could a similar
politics-over-drugs approach be driving American policy towards the
Castanos, be they one or two?

That sounds far-fetched. But is it more so than the notion that the United
States spends millions of dollars on its policy against drugs, yet cannot
spot the most obvious target? Some Colombians think it possible--and there
is solid evidence that the United States does indeed wink at the
drug-running of the only forces that look effective against the insurgency
of the far left.

Meanwhile, the orthodox anti-drug war rolls on. Aerial spraying of coca and
poppy plantations continues--an ineffective way of getting rid of crops
(and a risky one if their FARC protectors choose to shoot back) but quite
good at angering the peasants whose livelihood is thus endangered.
Supposedly it is to be supplemented by help for them to switch to
alternative crops. The FARC too talks of this, though it is not about to
say no to the coca growers until, if ever, it happens. And the profits of
the trade, at all levels, flow on through Colombian society, buying weapons
and support for all sides of the vicious civil war; and, no doubt, though
there is seldom any proof, buying policemen, judges and politicians too.