THE MILITARIZATION OF THE DRUG WAR IN LATIN AMERICA

Despite the end of the cold war and the transitions toward more democratic
societies in Latin America, the United States has launched a number of
initiatives that strengthen the power of Latin American security forces,
increase the resources available to them, and expand their role within
society--precisely when struggling civilian elected governments are striving
to keep them in check. Rather than encouraging Latin American militaries to
limit their role to the defense of national borders, Washington has instead
provided the training, resources, and doctrinal justification for
militaries to move into the business of building roads and schools,
offering veterinary and child inoculation services, and protecting the
environment. Of greatest concern, however, is America's insistence that the
region's armed forces -- including the United States military itself -- play
a significant role in domestic counternarcotics operations, a law
enforcement function reserved in most democracies for civilian police.

Although United States international narcotics control efforts have borne
little fruit to date, Congress and the Clinton administration have
dramatically increased security assistance to Latin America in the last two
years in the name of fight-ing the war on drugs. For 1997 (all date
references are to fiscal years, unless otherwise noted), the budget for
international drug control programs was $213 million, double the previous
year's figure. In addition, the administration approved a package of $112
million in military equipment and training for Colombia, Venezuela, Peru,
Mexico, and select Caribbean countries for antinarcotics purposes. Through
the provision of foreign aid, military equipment, and training, American
antinarcotics support for the region's military and police forces,
primarily in the Andean region and Mexico, more than tripled from 1996 to
1997.

While there is little reason to believe that the militarization of the drug
war will produce results in terms of controlling illicit drugs, its impact
could be devastating in countries where the drug war is being waged. In the
Andean region and Mexico, the United States is forging ever closer ties
with abusive police and military forces. In Peru and Colombia, Washington
is providing assistance to intelligence services and militaries that are
the worst human rights violators in the hemisphere. Moreover, through its
drug program, Washington is reinforc-ing a trend in Latin America of ceding
more and more civilian responsibilities to militaries, which themselves
present the greatest threat to democracy in the region. In short, in
country after country in Latin America, the United States war on drugs
undermines efforts to promote human rights, democracy and regional security

Among the 50 or so government agencies involved in drug control efforts,
the United States military is on the front line of the war on drugs in
Latin America. The military's anti-drug plans call for it to provide the
intelligence, strategic planning, resources, and training needed for the
region's security forces to carry out antinarcotics efforts. In addition,
the military is in charge of costly interdiction efforts and participates
in domestic law enforcement attempts to stem the flow of illegal drugs into
the United States. In 1997 alone, the Defense Depart-ment's budget
allocated nearly $1 billion to drug control efforts.

Yet more than eight years after the drug war supplanted the cold war as the
central United States military mission in the hemisphere - and after the
expenditure of billions of dollars, the deployment of thousands of
personnel and much sophisticated equipment, and the provision of massive
assistance to its Latin American allies-the Defense Department has made
little headway against its new foe. While the militarization of anti-drug
operations may have produced occasional tactical victories -- such as the
destruction of cocaine-processing labs, which are quickly replaced by
facilities in more remote locations -- even its most ardent supporters admit
it has done little, if anything, to stanch the flow of cocaine into the
United States.

AIDING SECURITY FORCES

The primary tool for United States forces waging
the drug war abroad is "security assistance," which can include economic
assistance, training, intelligence support, equipment transfer and
maintenance support, and advice. International counternarcotics programs
are one of the few areas of growth in United States foreign assistance, and
an increasing percentage of this aid is earmarked for Latin America.

According to the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement Affairs (the INL, which coordinates all drug-related United
States aid), of the $213 million budgeted for in-country narcotics programs
in 1997, $116.2 mil-lion went directly to Latin America, an increase of
more than 40 percent over 1996. By comparison, the rest of the world-Asia,
Africa, and Europe-was slated to receive only $18.9 million. The remaining
funds were for regional programs, which were primarily oriented toward
Latin America. For 1998, of the $230 million requested for international
drug control programs, INL has earmarked $132.7 million for Latin America.

Traditionally, foreign security assistance has taken the form of Foreign
Military Financing and Economic Support Fund grants under the 1961 Foreign
Assistance Act, but the end of the cold war and concerns about the federal
budget deficit resulted in reduced appropriations for these grants. To fill
the void, Washington has turned to surplus United States weapons stocks,
using the Defense Department's Excess Defense Articles (EDA) program, which
was established in 1976. Although EDA transfers are limited to $10 million
per country per year, congressional investigators have found that the
Defense Department routinely underestimates the original acquisition value
of the equipment on which this limit is based.

At the same time, millions of dollars in military equipment, services, and
training are pumped directly into the region for counternarcotics purposes
by the president through use of his special "drawdown" authority Section
506 of the Foreign Assistance Act gives the president the power to transfer
up to $150 million of excess United States defense articles annually to
meet "unforeseen" emergencies that cannot be met through other aid channels
if he determines that doing so is "in the national interest of the United
States." On September 30, 1996, President Bill Clinton determined it would
be in the United States national interest to draw down up to $112 million
in articles, services, and military education and training from Defense
Department inventories to provide antinarcotics assistance to Peru,
Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and the seven countries of the Eastern
Caribbean Regional Security System (a group established in the early 1980s
to address defense and law enforcement concerns, including drug
trafficking, on a multilateral basis).

. . .AND TRAINING THEM

These various forms of security assistance are
accompanied by training and other forms of sup-port provided directly by
the United States military. A key element are Tactical Analysis Teams
(TATS), which are made up of a small number of United States Special Forces
and military intelligence personnel. The teams pull together intelligence
from human and technical sources to select targets and plan operations to
be carried out by host nation military and police forces and United States
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents. While TATS determine
collection priorities and act as data managers, they do not actually
conduct intelligence collection operations. These activities, like the
counter-drug operations they support, are carried out by the DEA and other
United States and host nation agencies.

After the first two TATS, established in Peru and Bolivia in 1989, proved
successful in the eyes of United States military planners, their number
rapidly expanded. In mid-February 1997, the number stood at 14, with three
countries hosting two teams -- Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil -- and single
teams in eight other countries -- Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras,
Panama, Venezuela, Peru, and Bolivia.

As the TATS evolved, they began to integrate tactical operations into an
overall strategy to attack drug trafficking organizations, with the goal of
establishing evidentiary links between raided cocaine labs and other
components of the organization. "The optimum scenario," according to the
Office of the Department of Defense Coordinator for Drug Enforcement Policy
and Support, "is a 'full court press' on all trafficking organization
members and critical nodes to completely disrupt or destroy their
production and shipping capabilities." The host nation's ability to execute
this highly desired "full court press" is being enhanced by Special Forces
trainers who, as David Isenberg at the Center for Defense Information has
noted, provide in-country instruction in "drug interdiction and
search-and-destroy techniques."

These training teams typically are composed of six Navy Seal and Army Green
Beret officers who spend about three weeks in a country providing
instruction, but they can be as small as a single officer or as large as an
entire platoon (20 to 30 people). A vital part of their instruction, United
States offi-cials stress, is human rights training. However, training is
provided regardless of the human rights record and political will for human
rights-related reforms exhibited by recipient forces. For 1997, SOUTHCOM
(Southern Command, the mil-itary command that is the center of United
States anti-drug efforts) planned 37 training deploy-ments -- 1 to Ecuador, 9
to Venezuela, 6 each to Peru and Bolivia, and 5 to Colombia -- that were to
involve 633 personnel.

In-country training is supplemented by instruction at United States
military facilities. Among the United States-based facilities used for
counternarcotics instruction is the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort
Benning, Georgia, which was rocked by revelations in 1996 that as recently
as 1991 it used manuals advocating torture and murder of political
opponents. The SOA currently offers officers an 11-week course that
provides instruction in planning, leading, and executing drug interdiction
operations, including weapons, infiltration, and surveillance techniques;
patrolling; demolition; and close-quarters combat.

Counternarcotics training, whether conducted in-country or at United States
facilities, is viewed by many Defense Department officials as an important
opportunity to foster closer ties with the region's armed forces, one of
the key goals of the department's post-cold war strategy for the
hemisphere. A case in point is the training currently being provided to
Mexican troops, who were called in to fill the void created in 1996 by the
dismissal of some 800 federal police officers for ethical breaches. Before
the United States began providing counter-drug training to Mexico's
military "essentially we had no relations with them," one Defense
Department official said. "The idea of building mil-itary-to-military
relations is very important." United States officials insist that
corruption among the Mexican police makes a military role in the drug war
necessary. Yet in bringing in the military, the United States may be
setting in motion a trend that will be difficult if not impossible to
reverse: increased Mexican military involvement in domestic political
matters. Mexico's military now commands police forces in two-thirds of the
states, looking for drug traffickers, patrolling Mexico City streets,
directing traffic, and combating petty crime. By encouraging the
militarization of Mexican society in the interest of combating narcotics,
the United States undermines its own long-term goal of a stable, civilian,
democratic regime in Mexico. Nor is there any evidence that the Mexican
military is less susceptible to corrup-tion than the police; it is,
however, less transparent and accountable, making corruption even more
difficult to root out.

Human rights groups point to a number of other problems inherent in United
States military counternarcotics training programs. The jungle
warfare-type training that the United States military is providing to
Latin American security forces is not well suited for drug control efforts,
which should be oriented toward sound investigations and criminal
prosecutions. Moreover, the law enforcement training that does take place
would be more appropriately carried out by United States law enforcement
agencies. It is deeply disturbing that the United States military is
training local forces in surveillance tactics to be used on their own
citizens, given that such practices have been used in the past to
systematically violate basic human rights. Moreover, the United States is
aiding and training troops within whose ranks are some of the worst human
rights violators in the hemisphere without first insisting on fundamental
reforms to ensure significant reductions in human rights violations and
effective prosecution of those responsible.

Also of deep concern, by the early 1990s -- with the authority equipment,
and funding to plan operations, bolster host nation forces, and transport
these personnel to the front -- United States military forces appeared to be
perilously close to a direct combat role in the war against the South
American drug cartels and, at least indirectly, insurgencies.

THE PENTAGON'S MEAT AND POTATOES

The flow of United States military
personnel and equipment to the Andean region has drawn con-siderable
attention, but it is a mere trickle compared to the resources the military
has spent on its congressionally mandated role as the lead United States
agency for the detection and monitoring of air and maritime shipments of
illegal drugs into the United States.

Beginning at $212 million in 1989, the Defense Department's detection and
monitoring budget mushroomed to more than $950 million in 1992, the peak
year for spending on this program. During that same period, the military's
overall spending on counternarcotics jumped from $501.6 million to $1.14
billion. Spending on surveillance grew rapidly, as the General Accounting
Office (GAO) pointed out in a September 1993 report, "despite the lack of
clear-cut objectives." As a result, the eventual cost of the program grew
"out of propor-tion to the benefits it provide[d]."

The military's inventory of radar-equipped ships and aircraft was a major
reason for giving it the lead detection and monitoring role, but it soon
discovered that many of these assets were intrinsically ineffective in
combating the drug-smuggling threat. As the GAO pointed out in a scathing
1993 report, "Sensors designed to detect large supersonic air-craft and
nuclear-powered submarines are less pro-ficient against low-flying planes
and small wooden boats." Agency investigators reported that these problems
were exacerbated by the "absence of intelligence tips" necessary to sort
out smugglers from the considerable legitimate maritime traffic heading
toward the United States. Moreover, drug traffickers quickly adopted new
tactics and routes-as interdiction efforts in the Caribbean intensified,
other United States agencies reported that the bulk of cocaine traffic
entering the United States began coming overland through Mexico. Yet the
military continued to expand air and maritime surveillance.

The military's drug surveillance activities illustrate a critical point
about the war on drugs: performance and effectiveness are not synonymous.
It is a distinction that advocates of further militarization still do not
make, allowing them to declare small, tactical successes "victories" even
though they contribute little, if anything, to the ultimate objective of
the drug war -- reducing domestic drug use. Defense Department officials
frequently cite such indicators as their high level of effort, praise from
their colleagues in law enforcement, and increasing drug seizures and
arrests. But the level of effort is an indication of their commitment to
the mission, not its success. Nor are increased arrests and drug seizures
accurate measures of effective-ness, because they may reflect a rise in
drug trafficking rather than an actual reduction in drug availability.

TARGETING THE SOURCE COUNTRIES

Congress began cutting funds for the
military's detection and monitoring mission in 1993. But it was a decision
by President Clinton late that year that resulted in a drastic reduction in
detection and monitoring funding and another shift in the focus of United
States drug control strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean. Following
a review of the United States counter-drug strategy completed in November
1993, Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 14 (PDD-14), which
shifted the emphasis from interdicting cocaine as it moved through the
transit zones to stopping it at its source in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru.

Despite the steady increase in coca production since the Andean strategy
was launched, the Clinton administration in early 1994 refocused anti-drug
efforts on coca plants, the leaves of which are mixed with chemicals to
make cocaine. Because fewer alternatives exist for growing coca than for
any other link in the drug trafficking chain, argues Robert E. Brown,
deputy director for supply reduction in the Office of National Drug
Control Policy (ONDCP), source country operations should focus more on crop
eradication and substitution programs than on the disruption of processing
and transportation. ONDCP announced last year its intention to eliminate
worldwide coca production within ten years, a laughable proposition at best
and an invitation to direct United States intervention in coca-growing
regions at worst.

Coca substitution programs, under which farm-ers are paid to produce
oranges, bananas, cacao, and other crops instead of coca, are expensive,
and Brown and other United States officials acknowledge that because
Washington is unable to pay the tab, it is encouraging its Latin American
allies, most of whom have other development priorities, to seek assistance
for crop substitution programs from multilateral institutions. The ability
of these institutions to shoulder the burden is also questionable. The
annual budget of the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), for
example, is about $70 million, or roughly half the State Department's
international narcotics funding in 1996. In 1995, UNDCP could provide just
$2.2 million in supplemental funding to Peru, compared to an estimated $15
million provided by Washington.

The Clinton administration's announced shift in strategy touched off a
battle between the Republican-controlled Congress and the Democratic White
House over United States drug control policy that reached a fever pitch in
1996, an election year, and still rages today Republicans attempt to blame
the increasing flow of cocaine into the country on the president's decision
to reduce transit zone interdiction efforts. Clinton administration
officials counter by arguing that Congress cut back funding for
interdiction faster than the White House had originally proposed, while
failing to provide the full funding requested for source country programs.

[Continued in http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v98/n395/a01.html ]

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski
Rechecked-by: Eric Ernst