U.S. Is Losing War on Drugs in Colombia

In the last two years, U.S. anti-narcotics aid to Colombia has tripled. But even as Washington has dispatched dollars and soldiers to the drug war, Colombian cocaine cultivation has soared 50%. And authorities in Colombia and the U.S. project that it will increase by that much again in the next two years.

Colombia--now the world leader in the cultivation of coca, the raw material for cocaine--is producing more potent plants on more acres than ever before, anti-narcotics officials say. Further, heroin production hasn’t shrunk at all, because drug producers increase cultivation as fast as helicopters eradicate established poppy fields.

So while the U.S. commitment to Colombia has climbed, illegal drugs have been a growth industry here. As a result, narcotics are flooding U.S. and European streets--and Colombia’s leftist guerrillas and right-wing private armies are getting stronger, thanks to ties to drug traffickers.

On Tuesday, Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering, America’s highest-ranking career diplomat, is scheduled to visit President Andres Pastrana to ask how this could have happened.

While Pastrana is expected to ask for yet more help, analysts worry that increased U.S. involvement in the drug war could actually be self-defeating, as the record of the recent past might indicate.

“At the end of the day, the United States does not care if we all kill each other,” said Alejo Vargas, vice rector of the National University of Colombia in Bogota. “What matters to them is that we get rid of the drug crops.”

But crop-eradication efforts have become outmoded. For instance, crop substitution programs are still directed at peasant farmers with a few acres of coca, even though intelligence sources believe that most coca is grown on plantations.

Thus, U.S. money becomes an alternative to making needed changes. For example, military security expert Alfredo Rangel noted: “More helicopters and more logistics do not produce results unless they are linked to a change in the way that the [Colombian] army confronts the guerrillas. . . . They do not take the guerrillas seriously as strategists.”

Instead, the army dismisses the rebels as narco-terrorists, in the same way it used to call them bandits, he said. While the army repeats past mistakes, the rebels get richer and more powerful.

Although the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the nation’s oldest and largest rebel force, has for years “taxed” illegal drug production in territory under its control, now the No. 2 insurgent force, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, has entered the business, according to U.S. and Colombian officials. Right-wing private armies, known as self-defense forces, also are increasingly involved in the drug trade, officials say.

“What we are seeing is highly dangerous,” said a Colombian intelligence official.

End to Civil War Might Halt Drug Flow

In the long term, the consensus is that, to stop the flow of narcotics, Colombia must negotiate an end to its long-running civil war. That war has gone on for 35 years, and the rebels are now estimated at 25,000 fighters divided among three guerrilla groups and a number of right-wing private armies. Although the Clinton administration does not assist the Colombian soldiers combating the guerrillas, there are about 200 U.S. troops advising the Colombian government on counternarcotics programs, thus undercutting a major source of revenue for the rebels.

Still, after the collapse of nascent peace negotiations July 30, the only immediate solution that officials are proposing to stem the growth of cocaine and heroin production is more U.S. money and cooperation in the drug war, which is becoming nearly indistinguishable from the civil war.

Aid possibilities for Colombia have grown since late February, when the U.S. State Department certified this country--for the first time in three years--as a fully cooperating partner in the war against drugs. Without certification, the United States was limited to providing only aid directly linked to the war against drugs and some training under a program that is supposed to benefit mainly the U.S. soldiers who participate. Certification allows Washington to offer any aid it wishes.

Further restricting aid, however, another law forbids helping or training any military or police units with poor human rights records. That includes all of the Colombian army except two existing battalions and a third, special anti-narcotics battalion slated to finish training by the end of this year. Thus, most U.S. aid has gone to the Colombian national police.

U.S. aid has soared from $85.7 million in 1997 to $289 million this year. In July, Colombia’s new defense minister asked U.S. authorities for $500 million in anti-narcotics funds next year.

“How long will it be before we hear the old refrain that our credibility and investment to date requires ever-more-deepening involvement?” asked George R. Vickers, executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank.

Indeed, U.S. drug czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey already has proposed an additional $600 million to help Colombia fight drugs.

“The guerrillas are growing at an alarming rate because of drug trafficking,” said Gen. Fernando Tapias, commander of the Colombian armed forces. “We need U.S. intelligence technology and logistics,” such as helicopters and high-speed boats.

He pointed out that the rebels have outmatched the army in arms and communications.

“The head of the FARC has a [satellite] phone,” Tapias said. “I have to climb to the top of a mountain and try to get a radio signal.”

Colombian officials insist that they need more sophisticated equipment to combat illegal drugs.

“We need to increase the area of fumigation and the amount of fumigation,” the Colombian intelligence official said. “We reduced production 75% in the Guaviare [where U.S. civilian pilots conduct intensive aerial spraying of coca plants], but that was offset by growth in Putumayo, Meta and Caqueta,” provinces that are out of range of the fumigation planes.

Indeed, production from those provinces has more than offset reductions in Bolivian and Peruvian coca. In 1996, Colombia produced less than one-third of the Andean coca crop; now it accounts for more than half.

The number of acres under cultivation increased from 150,528 in 1996 to 228,032 in 1998, according to U.S. government reports.

Colombian anti-drug officials say production has shifted from subsistence farmers who grew a few acres of coca in Guaviare to plantations owned by former cattle ranchers who live mainly in Villavicencio, a town in the fertile eastern plains. Nevertheless, the Colombian government’s crop substitution strategy still focuses on small farmers.

Besides the increase in acreage, Colombian law enforcement teams have found that a more potent type of coca is now being grown in Putumayo. “It’s a variety that produces a greater quantity of alkaloids than other species, so it can produce more cocaine,” said another Colombian intelligence official.

Potent New Plant May Raise Production

Colombians are not sure whether the new plant, believed to have been imported from Peru, has spread to other regions. “The increase in this type of illicit crop is pretty recent, and the results are still being studied,” said the second intelligence official.

Nevertheless, in February, a U.S. government report on Colombia predicted that just by growing in existing coca fields, the new plant could increase Colombia’s cocaine production from 165 tons in 1998 to 195 to 250 tons over the next two years. Those calculations do not take into account further possible increases from more efficient laboratories or expansion of coca fields.

And new coca fields appear to be blooming. In addition to the increased planting in the south, U.S. satellites have sighted new crops of illegal drugs farther north, in the San Lucas Mountains and Norte de Santander, near the Venezuelan border. Both areas are under the control of the ELN, which until now has been a minor player in drug crop production.

“We have another significant guerrilla group involved in using cocaine as a revenue source,” said a U.S. official. “Both areas are significant--[more than 2,500 acres] each.”

Besides cocaine, the Colombian intelligence official said he expects to see a significant increase in heroin production if the ELN steps up its participation in the drug trade. The type of mountainous terrain that the ELN controls is more suited to opium poppies than to coca, he said.

“This is going to give them more financial capacity,” said the first intelligence official. “This is dangerous because the ELN works a lot better with the people than the FARC does. We are really going to have a peasant insurrection.

“They have traditionally denied any ties to drug traffickers, but lately, they have been attacked so strongly by the paramilitaries that they are willing to take any financing they can get.”

The paramilitary self-defense forces also are increasingly relying on drug money for financing, U.S. and Colombian officials agree.

Officials believe that their ties with drug traffickers go back to the days when the late Pablo Escobar was head of the Medellin drug cartel earlier this decade. The self-defense forces deny those links, but in the last three months, Colombian officials have found 12 cocaine laboratories in the northern region under paramilitary control, the intelligence official said.

Faced with these three well-armed, well-financed fighting forces, Colombian military officials insist that they need more U.S. help.

“Otherwise,” Tapias said, “what we are doing is barber’s work: just trimming the hair that will grow back.”