Government Doubts Sincerity of U.S. Commitment : Colombia’s Drug War Is Out of Control

A rampage of murder and intimidation by drug bosses who are some of the world’s richest terrorists is raging out of control here.

Cocaine kingpins with a long reach, long memories and unlimited resources mock a counterattack by the bleeding Colombian government. There is little to show for a five-year, $70-million U.S. anti-drug program, and open disbelief among beleaguered Colombian officials at the seriousness of the Reagan Administration’s commitment to its proclaimed war on drugs.

The Colombian justice system is in shreds. Law enforcement exists only as words. The drug traffickers kill with dedication and arrogance. On the busy streets of Colombian cities or on a snow-covered doorstep behind the Iron Curtain, their hired assassins attack with impunity.

Appalled at Carnage

“The entire government and all of its institutions are threatened by the drug Mafia,” presidential counselor Carlos Ossa said the other day.

Appalled at the carnage, at the erosion of democratic institutions and the international black eye that a few thousand super-rich outlaws have caused this poor and proud nation of 28 million, the government of President Virgilio Barco is fighting back.

Barco, a self-assured technocrat who in style more resembles a low-profile corporation executive than a fiery Latin politician, was blind-sided by the virulence of the drug traffickers’ assault when he came to office last August.

At first he was preoccupied with a $1-billion development program to fight poverty, but the traffickers’ offensive against government officials, at the rate of a murder a month, has forced a reordering of Barco’s priorities.

Without disputing the depth of the cocaine crisis, Barco now tells visitors that no government is doing more to confront it.

Reforms Launched

In the first six months of a four-year term, Barco has launched reforms to strengthen the judiciary, police and armed forces. For the first time, Colombia is borrowing U.S. anti-drug techniques, including the use of rewards, plea-bargaining and witness-protection programs.

It is a long way back. Infrequent government victories are usually followed by good guys’ funerals. After 200 kilos of cocaine were found in aircraft tires being shipped to Miami for retreading, traffickers killed Carlos Arturo Luna, security chief of the national airlines.

Fernando Cepeda, a former law school dean who is now minister of government and senior spokesman for the Colombian Cabinet, said: “It is an uneven struggle. The government is severely limited. We are suffering systematic intimidation of judges in a country without the capacity to offer them security. That is overwhelming pressure on a society that tries to adhere to judicial forms.”

Not many lawyers seek judgeships today in Colombia, where 3 million civil and criminal cases are backlogged, threats never stop and protection is nil. Supreme Court Chief Justice Nemesio Camacho resigned last month. Everybody understood.

‘Condemned to Fight Alone’

“The judge, his secretary and his typewriter seem condemned to fight alone,” Supreme Court Justice Jorge Carreno said.

Judges were killed at the rate of more than one a month during the 48-month presidency of Belisario Betancur, which ended last August. Eleven of the 24 Supreme Court justices died in a November, 1985, Marxist guerrilla attack on the Palace of Justice here, which many Colombians believe was launched in connivance with dope traffickers. A 12th justice suffered a fatal heart attack in the aftermath.

Fire destroyed paper work on U.S. extradition requests during the attack.

Supreme Court Justice Hernando Banquero was killed by the traffickers last year. So were three crusading newspapermen. And Jaime Ramirez, the former chief of the anti-drug police, and his deputy, Police Capt. Luis Alfredo Macana, were cut down by a 16-year-old assassin who had received a $100 down payment for a $500 job. The teen-age killer was unusual only in that he was arrested--he crashed his motorbike trying to make his getaway.

Drug Roots Go Deep

“Law enforcement as it is known in the United States does not exist in this country, and neither is there a functioning judicial system,” a foreign narcotics expert said. “The main obstacle is the traffickers’ ability to kill anyone. They don’t need to corrupt. If a cop arrests one of these guys, experience shows that he will be killed. If a judge passes sentence against one of them, he or his family will be assassinated.”

More than 300 policemen were fired last year in the city of Medellin, where drug roots go deep. One of the dismissed officers was a small-town captain who ordered his entire force to protect a weekend fete of 15 traffickers and their 150 bodyguards.

The traffickers can afford to party. They control about 80% of the cocaine that reaches the United States, and they pump about $1 billion a year into the Colombian economy--and much more into discreet offshore bank accounts, according to law enforcement sources. The 15 or so major traffickers, nearly all of them under indictment in the United States and known collectively as “the Medellin Cartel,” are unimaginably rich, the sources say.

“Godfather” Pablo Escobar is worth $1 billion, they say, and the Ochoa brothers, Jorge Luis, Pablo and Juan David, are not far behind. Showing contempt for the current Colombian outcry against the killer traffickers, multimillionaire cocaine boss Carlos Lehder is petitioning for formal recognition of his National Latin Movement as a political party.

A Blunt Message

The traffickers’ message to Colombia is blunt: No one is safe. No place is safe.

Last month, former Justice Minister Enrique Parejo, who had been sent to Budapest as ambassador, was shot and gravely wounded by a Spanish-speaking assailant on the steps of his residence there.

Parejo became justice minister after his predecessor was murdered in 1984. When the government changed in August, Parejo, who had been the key to the extradition of 13 traffickers to the United States, was immediately dispatched to the seeming safety of police-state Hungary.

As Colombia reeled at the audacity of the attack on Parejo, a group calling itself the Hernan Botero Command claimed responsibility. Botero, the first Colombian drug boss to be extradited to the United States, is serving 30 years for laundering $57 million.

“It is no longer a question of threats, but of death notifications,” said Enrique Santos, editor of El Tiempo, Colombia’s largest newspaper.

Extradition Feared

Extradition to the United States, not Colombian justice, is what the traffickers fear most. Twice in recent years they have offered to bring billions of dollars back into the country in exchange for renunciation of an extradition treaty with the United States. When the Supreme Court recently declared the treaty invalid on a technicality, Barco promptly signed it back into law.

The United States has about 100 requests pending, but nearly all the traffickers named in them are still at large. All 13 instances of extradition thus far came under the Betancur government, but two requests are winding their way painfully toward Barco’s desk, and he says he will sign them.

“Everybody is scared to death, and you can’t blame them,” a foreign law enforcement official said. “There’s not a cop in the country brave enough to arrest one of the top traffickers. If the Mafia didn’t kill him, his fellow cops would. There’s not a jail in the country that could hold one of the top guys for the minimum six or seven months it would take to get extradition approved.”

Last March, Honduran Juan Ramon Matta Ballesteros, a first-level trafficker wanted for the 1985 killing of U.S. drug agent Enrique Camarena in Mexico, walked out of a Bogota prison in a uniform belonging to one of 16 guards that his agents had suborned for many times their annual pay. Thirteen days later, he turned up in his native Honduras, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, and surrendered to authorities to answer earlier charges of kidnaping and murder.

Numerous Arrests and Raids

In December, the traffickers reached into the heart of the Colombian Establishment to kill Guillermo Cano, editor of the independent Bogota newspaper El Espectador. In the month that followed, police and the armed forces made 1,862 arrests, raided 10 drug labs, seized 321 kilos of cocaine, 22 airplanes, 4 helicopters, 40 vehicles and 47,600 rounds of ammunition. The numbers were more impressive than their impact.

“Much noise, few bosses,” the news weekly Semana snapped. None of the major traffickers wanted by the United States was caught, although a number of them live more or less openly around Medellin, and nearly all those who were arrested were quickly released for lack of evidence.

“Harassment is no substitute for investigation, arrest and prosecution; that’s not being done,” said the foreign narcotics expert, who asked not to be identified more completely.

Tangible victories are lacking, but President Barco believes the government is winning the psychological war against the drug terrorists in a country where, not long ago, drug bosses sat in Congress and it was fashionable to dismiss cocaine as a problem for the Americans.

As measured by polls, an overwhelming majority of Colombians today count themselves as the traffickers’ enemies.

U.S. Pleased With Effort

“I define ‘humiliation’ as having to travel on a Colombian passport,” said the wife of a prominent writer, who says she has been bodily searched at many of the world’s best airports. Traffickers’ children go to expensive schools in the United States and Western Europe. Back home, only one child in three finishes the fifth grade.

The United States, which has pressed a succession of Colombian governments for action, pronounces itself pleased with the Barco effort.

“Cooperation is high,” Ambassador Charles A. Gillespie said at the fortresslike U.S. Embassy here. “The government is doing as much or more than its predecessor. We are anxious for action on pending extradition requests.”

American officers at the embassy are not allowed to bring their children to Colombia as one of innumerable security precautions.

More Aid Urged

Colombian officials, whose lives are distorted by attempts to ward off the traffickers’ fury, make no secret of their disquiet with the United States. Barco, for one, thinks the Reagan Administration should do more to intercept shipments and to discourage consumption.

Word of Reagan’s reduced request for the anti-drug war in his new budget drew immediate political scorn and editorial ire here.

“Our position is precarious,” Minister of Government Cepeda said. “Some responsible people and groups are beginning to ask why Colombia is taking such risks. Why aren’t other countries acting with similar heroism? Why are we bleeding alone?”

The opposite distinction is equally disturbing.

Presidential Counselor Ossa warned: “If people continue believing that justice is impotent, the danger is a resort to private justice, which the government considers intolerable.”

Colombia’s cocaine warlords know all about private justice. And they have another chilling advantage in their assault on the outgunned officials: Only the traffickers know who will be the next to die.