COLOMBIA'S RESULTS

THREE YEARS AGO today, President Clinton signed into law Plan
Colombia, a bold initiative intended to help that Latin American
democracy fight the drug traffickers and insurgents of the left and
right who threatened to destroy the country while supplying most of
the cocaine on U.S. streets. Some members of Congress and human rights
groups protested that the attempt to bolster the Colombian army with
equipment and training while sponsoring the aerial spraying of coca
fields would embroil the United States in a Vietnam-like quagmire. The
critics were wrong. Colombian coca and poppy production has been
reduced substantially: According to a United Nations study, the
acreage has dropped by 38 percent in three years. With the traffickers
and their guerrilla allies on the defensive, violence is down, too.
Homicides have fallen by a quarter and kidnappings by a third this
year compared with last year. Colombia's economy is growing, and its
president, Alvaro Uribe, leads the strongest and most popular
government the country has had in decades. Though Plan Colombia still
hasn't achieved many of its goals, there can be little question that
the $2.7 billion invested by the United States so far has gotten results.

There have been costs besides the spending, some of them little
noticed amid the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At least 17
U.S. military, law enforcement and contract civilian employees have
been killed in Colombia since 1998, including five this year. A number
were involved in aerial surveillance of drug or guerrilla operations
in the countryside; U.S. contract pilots and other personnel are
deeply involved in such activity. Still, the feared quagmire for U.S.
forces has not developed. Instead, the Colombian army, equipped with
U.S. helicopters and provided with extensive training, has grown
steadily in strength and professionalism. Human rights monitors
rightly express concern about the continuing links between military
units and right-wing paramilitary forces that engage in drug
trafficking and commit atrocities against civilians. But reports of
violations by the army itself are down, and Mr. Uribe has made some
progress toward neutralizing the paramilitaries.

Mr. Uribe, in office a little less than a year and more aggressive
than his predecessors, now says he expects to meet Plan Colombia's
target of a 50 percent reduction in coca by the end of this year, one
year ahead of schedule. He has already extradited 64 accused
traffickers to the United States, more than were extradited in the
previous four years, and he has raised taxes in order to extend his
government's authority to areas of the country that have long been
lawless. He has been the Bush administration's strongest Latin
American ally in the war on terrorism and the intervention in Iraq --
and yet, like so many U.S. allies, he has been rewarded with a
combination of neglect and cavalier treatment. The Bush administration
has continued Plan Colombia, requesting about $700 million for next
year. But it has also suspended $5 million in aid and threatened to
freeze $130 million more unless Colombia immediately meets its demand
for a treaty exempting Americans from prosecution by the International
Criminal Court -- even though existing U.S.-Colombia agreements
protect U.S. personnel. "Aid cannot be an aid with petty conditions or
with pressures," Mr. Uribe recently observed. He's right -- and Plan
Colombia ought to have earned an exemption from such pettiness.