DECLARING WAR ON DRUGS

WITH war in Iraq and reconstruction in Afghanistan, the Bush
administration is preparing to escalate its military intervention on
another continent. Recent visits by the US Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers to Colombia suggest that President
Bush is planning an increasing role for US forces in defeating
Colombia's Marxist insurgents and drug lords.

The US is describing drugs from Colombia as "weapons of mass
destruction", and has warned that instability there could create "safe
havens" for "international terrorist organisations". Drugs are the
civilian equivalent of weapons of mass destruction. Like WMD, drugs
kill people in large numbers, the only difference being that, whereas
WMD obliterate its victims in an instant, drugs claim human lives
through a slow process of torture. The visit by Rumsfeld, which
followed that of General Myers by barely a week, was aimed in part at
reassuring country's right-wing president, Alvaro Uribe, of
Washington's support in the wake of the Bush administration's cut-off
of military aid to Colombia last month.

While the US and Colombian governments point to various signs of
success in their anti-drug campaign, there is no evidence so that the
effort has had a major effect on reducing the amount of cocaine
flowing out of the Latin American country. This time, the US should go
all the way to destroy the drug trade at its roots by sending the
military into rebel-held areas where the coca is cultivated with impunity.

Only when there is a significant decline in the amount of cocaine and
other psychotropic drugs available in the global markets, can the US
intervention be considered effective.

It is now three years since then-president Clinton initiated Plan
Colombia, approving $1.3 billion in military aid aimed at countering
drug trafficking from the country, the main source of cocaine for the
US market.

The US military assistance has since risen to more than $3
billion.

Under Uribe's rule, Colombia has become a key state for US
intervention throughout the region.

Both Myers and Rumsfeld stressed during their visits the regional
implications of the Colombian civil war. Colombia is currently the
third-largest recipient of US military aid, trailing behind only
Israel and Egypt.