THE DRUG WAR GOING NOWHERE FAST

Washington's crusade against terrorism is pushing the drug war to the
sidelines and causing a sharp reduction in resources and financial
assistance available to many Latin American countries for whom anti-drug
initiatives were the primary source of U.S. aid.

Some members of Congress and former anti-drug officials fear that the
problem is becoming worse as the administration's interest wanes-- even as
President Bush has declared governmental corruption in Latin America a
major enemy.

There have been several critical changes in the White House's war on drugs.
At the end of September, Bush signed legislation that effectively eased the
criteria by which the United States identifies nations as friends or foes
in the international drug war. For more than a decade Washington threatened
sanctions against those it placed on the wrong side. The change is
appreciated in Latin America.

The State Department's budget for international anti-drug efforts, other
than Plan Colombia, has been reduced by 45 percent from its 2001 level. And
even though Plan Colombia's proposed funding is going up by 7 percent, its
focus has been diffused to deal with terrorism as well as drugs-amounting
to another budget cut.

Much the same is true at the Pentagon, where senior officials have gladly
refashioned counter drug activities they were not thrilled about in the
first place into the service of the anti-terrorism war. Not surprisingly,
the job of assistant secretary overseeing those programs has been vacant
since Bush was sworn in 21 months ago.

For decades, drugs have been a growing threat to Latin America. After the
Cold War ended, anti-drug programs became a meal ticket for the region's
governments in the form of U.S. assistance to Latin America. Millions of
dollars poured into the region to control illicit drug crops, intercept
drug shipments or arrest drug traffickers before they could derail
struggling democracies.

Now, with such efforts slowed and the demand for illicit drugs increasing
in the United States and throughout the region, some here are worried that
drug corruption will be an even greater threat to smaller countries in the
region trying to make both democracy and their economies work. A case in
point is Guatemala, where officials just disbanded the country's anti-drug
agency because it was so plagued by corruption.

Guatemala's Attorney General Carlos de Leon, in Washington this week
pitching for financial support to keep the anti-drug offensive going,
acknowledged that corruption is a problem in that Central American nation.

But, he said, if Washington and Latin America they focus on combating
terrorism and assume that other evils automatically will be reduced in the
process, they "are not taking the right approach." Had Washington been more
engaged in anti-drug efforts in Guatemala, he reasoned, corruption in the
counter-narcotics agency may have been less.

There is a growing feeling among some in Congress that U.S. drug policy is
adrift, and regrettably, they say, there have been no interagency
discussions to evaluate changes in old anti-drug programs or to come up
with new ones.

John P. Walters is the new drug czar in town. His predecessor, Barry
McCaffrey, was an armored division field commander during the Persian Gulf
War who later became familiar with and to Latin America as the general in
charge of the U.S. Southern Command. He was chosen by President Clinton in
part to appease conservatives.

Walters, with no such war medals or regional experience, has conservative
appeal of a different type. He was an aide to the first U.S. drug czar,
William J. Bennett, when Bush's father was president. Bennett, a leading
conservative thinker, was also secretary of education and approached the
anti-drug fight more as a moral issue.

Walters is a cabinet level official (the last to be confirmed, by the way)
who is in the best position to put the fight back in the spotlight. Since
taking office less than a year ago, he has taken particular pride in
changing the government's message to young people and replaced an old,
ineffective ad campaign against drugs with a powerful one that connects
drug use to murder and terrorism abroad.

That connection is welcome, but not enough. It is true that there are links
between terrorism and illegal drugs, but each is an issue on its own. If
the drug problem seems less urgent in Washington now, it is only because it
has been pushed aside, into the shadows. The problem is that it can grow
there, and may be even more menacing once it is-inevitably-back in the light.