U.S. REQUIRES NEW TACTICS IN DRUG WAR

The U.S. spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually combating
the global drug trade. It spends billions more each year fighting
"the war on terror." But we have never really recognized how
intimately connected the two wars are.

The Bush administration warns that terrorist organizations around the
world threaten the health, economy and security of Americans. But the
administration seldom tells us that these terrorists often finance
their evil acts by producing and trafficking illegal drugs.

Therefore, if we are to win the war on terror, we must have a viable
counter-drug strategy. Without such a strategy, Americans will face
even greater security problems in the years to come.

Take Afghanistan. It produces 90 percent of the world's illicit
opium, and in 2004, its opium poppy harvest increased by 64 percent.
Currently, our anti-terrorism plan for Afghanistan consists of
stabilizing a small slice of the country immediately around Kabul and
publicly declaring victory as often as possible while allowing the
countryside to fall into chaos. Our tragically simplistic eradication
approach - if we destroy the drugs and drug crops, then we will
eliminate the drug problem - to controlling drug supplies cannot work
effectively in the Afghan countryside.

Last year, for example, we spent millions to destroy a paltry 13,000
acres of opium. We have refused to challenge or question many drug
lords who helped us oust the Taliban three years ago, even though
their drug empires have now have become the financial engines that
sustain the Taliban and al-Qaida. Our ineffective counter-drug policy
in Afghanistan is increasing the likelihood that terrorists will have
the capacity to hit us hard again. In Afghanistan the threat is now,
and the threat is real: The thriving opium trade fuels the terrorist
groups that threaten Americans.

In the South American Andes, however, a new threat is just emerging.

Colombia is the world's largest producer of coca and of processed
cocaine. The administration's counter-drug plan for Colombia and the
other cocaine-producing nations in the Andes is a State Department
program called the Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI), which will
funnel approximately $730 million into the region next year. The
clear focus in Colombia is eradication, and millions of U.S. dollars
are used to aid the physical destruction of coca plants. Fumigation
efforts have resulted in health problems for the local people and
ecological damage to the Colombian forests, but there has been no
significant decline of cocaine production.

The situation in Colombia poses a threat to our national security
because the FARC, which the U.S. State Department has characterized
as South America's largest and most dangerous terrorist organization,
has thrived in the chaotic environment that swirls in the wake of
military-based eradication efforts.

The FARC is a violent, anti-U.S. Marxist insurgent group with
sovereign control of much of rural Colombia. Its ranks are swelled by
Colombian youth who are angry about U.S. intervention in the region,
and the group is financed and sustained by its involvement in the
booming cocaine trade.

The U.S. continues to discuss increasing its military aid to the
Colombian government and the eradication war while overlooking the
fact that this mission is not failing because it is underfunded. It
is failing because the policy fortifies the dangerous rebel army it
was designed to defeat. If groups like the FARC become more powerful,
like the Taliban or al-Qaida, we could be dealing with a serious
national security threat much closer to home.

Many Americans believe the Bush administration and the Republicans
can handle the war on terror. But the way the administration is
fighting the war on drugs is not making Americans safer. Instead, the
dangers of terrorist attacks are increasing because of a misguided
and counterproductive drug policy that gives our most dangerous
enemies new life. To win the war on terror, we must understand that
we have to win the war on drugs, and policies centered on eradication
and military buildup are not working.

Instead, the U.S. should adopt more of a market solution to the
problem. After all, farmers in Colombia don't grow coca because they
necessarily want to. They do it because it puts food on their tables.
We should use our resources to support foreign producers, paying them
the difference between what they would make selling coca and a
commodity that we would like them to produce.

Currently, U.S. aid for eradication efforts and the Colombian
military dwarfs aid for alternative crop development programs;
enhancing the markets for viable nondrug crops in drug-producing
nations might give poor farmers other ways to feed their families
besides growing drug crops.

A more cooperative approach would ensure that those who plan to kill
Americans would have less drug revenue with which to pay for their
projects and fewer desperate and aggrieved people to recruit to their cause.