Colombia at Risk

In a daring challenge to its powerful drug lords, Colombia has extradited a kingpin to the United States to face prosecution on heroin smuggling charges. The last time the Bogota government allowed such extraditions the drug cartel bosses and their gangsters answered with mayhem across the country. But President Andres Pastrana has done the right and brave thing in turning over Jaime Orlando Lara, described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency as the leader of Colombia’s heroin cartel.

Lara was indicted in a Manhattan federal court Monday and was ordered held without bail. He will be arraigned today. U.S. authorities now stand in debt to Pastrana as his government braces for an expected bloody response. Two weeks ago a car bomb killed eight people in Bogota, a clear message to the government to spare Lara.

In the 1980s Washington and Bogota had an extradition treaty that curtailed the growing strength of the cartels. Notorious Colombian criminals like Carlos Lehder were tried and convicted in U.S. courts. Between 1988 and 1993, however, the top drug traffickers and their gunmen blocked any further extradition with an intimidating campaign of terror.

Thousands of policemen were shot down on the streets. Bombings shook several Colombian cities, and two presidential candidates were assassinated.

Kidnappings were rampant--Pastrana himself was a victim--and the country became hostage to the cartels’ demand that the extradition treaty be discarded, a demand fulfilled in 1991 when the Colombian Constitutional Assembly, under heavy threats, complied.

The treaty was restored in 1997, but since 1990 no Colombian national had been extradited until Lara walked into the Manhattan courtroom this week.

Washington has now requested the extradition of about 50 more drug traffickers, among them 31 kingpins captured during Operation Millennium last month.

Colombia has asked the United States for economic and military assistance to fight drug dealers, leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitaries, all at a time of serious economic crisis. The Clinton administration, which claims to support Pastrana, has so far failed to deliver. The Colombian president is taking high risks. Washington should reciprocate with aid. This is a bilateral crisis.