Colombia Under Siege: Fighting Narco Terrorism

Colombia is set for a blood bath.

Drug traffickers have begun a merciless and brutal retaliation for the government’s crackdown, and the country is braced for many more deaths following a week of mass arrests, potential extraditions and seizures of property belonging to the drug kingpins. In 48 hours, the narcos hit a judge, a senator who was also a leading presidential candidate and a state police chief. In those two days they struck at the heart of three of the country’s most important institutions--the judiciary, the Congress and the police.

Under siege, the narcos now have good reason for violence. The theater has been forever altered. Its audience--an entire country in pain--holds its breath. Gone are the days when Pablo Escobar aspired to a seat in the country’s Congress or Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha appeared on national television giving a tour on horseback of his fabulous mansion. Today, these men flee from one estate to another, surrounded by bodyguards who bristle with weaponry and walkie-talkies as they patrol a 25-mile perimeter around their bosses.

“Instead of kings of the world, they live a miserable life,” said Colombia’s leading news weekly, Semana. “The Joe Kennedy dream is finished for them. Their sons will never be able to clear their names with their millions. They are corralled. The only exit they see is to destabilize the system, create total chaos to force the government to abdicate and offer dialogue, legalization, amnesty, whatever.”

Is this the turning point? Will Colombia finally defeat the Mafia? Can Colombians maintain this renewed will to fight? These are the questions I have heard over and over since the Aug. 18 assassination of Liberal presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan.

There is no single answer.

In Colombia there is widespread skepticism. Since the traffickers killed Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla in 1984, Colombians have been shocked by a series of horrifying murders: an attorney general, a leading newspaper editor, the head of the major leftist political party, a state governor, a Supreme Court justice. With each act, the public has grown more afraid and the government has recommitted itself to the war against narcotics trafficking. But nothing has really changed.

At the same time, the killing of Galan nine days ago has triggered an unprecedented outpouring of public support for the government. “If they want to bring in U.S. Marines, we would say yes,” said Enrique Santos, columnist for El Tiempo, the country’s largest daily newspaper. “If they want to establish a death penalty, we would say yes. If they want to call for indiscriminate extradition, we would say yes. But the government has to act very quickly because this kind of timing doesn’t last forever.”

In any case, Colombia is in a state of war that affects each of its 31 million inhabitants. The number of deaths has surpassed 20,000 since 1986. Lists of victims marked for murder proliferate. Until last week, judges were on strike because they could not find protection from a campaign of terror directed against them. The criminal justice system is paralyzed.

Sectors of the army and police have been penetrated by the narcos. The capacity for corruption by the traffickers and their infinite savagery have no geographical or ideological limits. Their endless wealth can buy anything or anybody: mercenaries--believed to be Israeli and British--to train their private armies; airplane refueling rights from Nicaragua’s government; collaboration with Cuban officials; gracious support from the prime minister of the Bahamas; partnership with Panama’s Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega.

That it is a war, there is no doubt. Neither is there doubt that it is an international war, or that it is an unconventional war. But there is a fundamental mistake in the way this war is defined.

The Colombian case shows clearly that it is not “a war against drug trafficking.” Rather, it is a war of the drug traffickers against every institution, individual or group that dares to threaten or even attempts to threaten their interests. To be more precise--and as incredible as it seems--if we believe reports from Colombian officials, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, Interpol and others involved in the battle, this war is sustained by a force of two: Escobar and Rodriguez.

These men, who head the infamous Medellin Cartel, appear to be responsible for 80% of the cocaine trade to the United States and nearly 100% of the recent assassinations in Colombia.

President Bush, President Virgilio Barco and the entire country of Colombia have declared war against drugs. But I see it as a war by two brilliant thugs who, drunk with the power of money, have come to believe they are untouchable and omnipotent. “Poderoso caballero es Don Dinero,” goes a Spanish proverb--”A powerful gentleman is Mr. Money.”

Any action to stop them has triggered a simple and straightforward response: murder. Throughout a decade they watched their business soar. More ranches, more planes, more cars, more power.

Journalists toured the homes seized from some of the narcos last week and “found themselves shaking their heads over the displays of wealth,” according to one correspondent’s report. But these men didn’t build their own homes, nor do they maintain them, or pilot their own planes or drive their own cars.

How many workers were hired to hang the silk that covers the walls of Rodriguez’s house? How many maids had the pleasure of polishing real gold faucets in the servants’ bathrooms? How many guests admired the naked women on Rodriguez’s imported Italian toilet paper?

Together they constitute the other aspect of Colombia’s war: the “little people” who share in the business that has corrupted a nation. How extensive are their numbers? According to Ethan Nadelmann, a political scientist at Princeton University, behind every 300 Latin American cocaine exporters in 1986 were 220,000 coca farmers, 74,000 processors, 7,400 transporters and 1,333 refiners.

By now, even as the numbers at the top of the pyramid remain the same, its base has grown as the cocaine traffic expands and the country’s economy continues to fall.

The kingpins once reveled in their image as Robin Hoods, building neighborhoods, funding hospitals, providing jobs, sponsoring soccer teams. True, that image has been tarnished as their brutality spreads. But make no mistake--for thousands of Colombians who receive nothing from their government, these men continue to fulfill basic needs.

There is a level of society in Colombia lower than most people in the United States could imagine. It is composed of young men and teen-agers virtually created by poverty. Misery is the only constant in their lives. They know nothing of a moral world, of ethics or values. Daily survival is their only creed. For them, the life of a political candidate, an attorney general or a journalist can mean $1,000 in cash.

Without such desperate people, the Escobars and the Rodriguezes would not have been able to terrorize a nation.

Poor people and drug traffickers form an alliance that no campaign can break. Even if Escobar and Rodriguez are arrested and extradited--a remote possibility at best--the lucrative nature of narcotics and the lure of easy money will continue to enslave thousands.

Realistically, the most that can be hoped for at this point is an end to the savagery and murder propagated by the dementia of the current kingpins. Nab them and perhaps fewer of the country’s leaders will die. But the business will go on unchanged because there is nothing to replace it.

Governments desperate to destroy the drug trade need to recognize they have been fighting on the wrong battlefield. An unconventional war calls for unconventional solutions. One way to start would be to help drug-producing nations turn their economies around.