Mayhem in Colombia

It is hard to think of any country anywhere that spells more trouble for
the United States than Colombia, which produces most of the heroin and
cocaine that Americans voraciously consume. Yet few countries are harder
for the United States to deal with.

The problem is not simply that some Colombians are corrupt (The
president's cartel dealings led Washington to "decertify'' his country as
an antidrug partner.) The problem is that even when a branch of the
government the Colombian police earns its spurs, the rest of the
government, including the military, cannot cope with large and expanding
threats to public order, to control of the national territory and to the
rule of law. A strong government the United States could at least address
and hold accountable. A weak government slides away.

What is going on in Colombia is a peculiar, sprawling crisis. Its players
include officers and branches of the government, the drug cartels, the
guerrillas they hire and pay off, other guerrillas whose priority is
political power and assorted paramilitary bands that are either in conflict
or in cahoots with the above. Recently, the government has been pressing a
quest for political accommodation with the guerrillas who have been in
rebellion against the stale for more than 30 years. Success in that effort
could produce great rewards on the front against drugs and throughout
Colombian society. The nature and flux of the Colombian situation have
complicated the usual American attempt to locate an interlocutor, friendly
or otherwise. President Ernesto Samper is kept at a distance for his
personal corruption although the antidrug agenda he has nonetheless
pursued has just earned him a meeting with the top Clinton antidrug of
ficial. The police are in, to a point. The military are out.

In Washington, the Colombia question is more than a little political. The
Republican right suggests funneling more aid to the army and helping some
paramilitaries. But the army is not reliable, and to pump up paramilitaries
that are out of official control and notorious for human rights violations
is a nonstarter. American law requires the U.S. government to take up the
decertification question again next March, it is a case of attempting very
delicate political surgery with a very blunt legal instrument.

If the flow of drugs did not impart urgency, the United States might
better 'concentrate on helping Colombia accomplish the great national
reconciliation that its fractured society requires. But there is the drug
urgency. Arnerican policies and programs are inevitably the second or third
line of defense. Colombia's own political process is necessarily the first.

THE WASHINGTON POST