Anti-Drug Crusade Marks Successes, New Graduates

After surviving months of grueling training by U.S. Green Berets, about 700 Colombian soldiers graduated Thursday to join one of the most successful crusades against cocaine cultivation in history.

Since December, when the intensive fumigation supported by U.S.-backed Plan Colombia began, nearly a quarter of this country’s known coca crops has been wiped out. More than 200 drug labs have been destroyed. And the military and police have suffered only a handful of casualties.

The record stands in marked contrast to the effect of Plan Colombia in the United States: Despite five months of the most concentrated aerial eradication campaign ever unleashed in the war on drugs, cocaine remains cheap and readily available, from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles.

Cocaine prices “have not gone up since Plan Colombia began,” Donnie R. Marshall, the outgoing chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, said after a news conference here Wednesday. “There are many that think the cocaine market is saturated.”

But that reality did not dampen the enthusiasm for the plan’s anti-drug strategy among those at Thursday’s graduation ceremony, which took place on a military base plunked in the middle of southern Colombia, home to more than half the country’s coca.

Under cloudy skies and withering humidity, the newly minted soldiers lined up in long rows in front of a bandstand packed with brass: Gen. Peter Pace, head of the U.S. Southern Command; Gen. Charles Holland, head of the U.S. Special Operations Command; the U.S. ambassador, Anne W. Patterson; and Colombia’s top military commanders.

Vietnam-era Huey helicopters roared overhead as Gen. Fernando Tapias, head of Colombia’s armed forces, handed out shiny medals on green camouflage trays, promising that the battalion would help bring an end to the violence of the drug war.

“We are guaranteeing that with these new units, Colombia can return in the near future to a safe country, a calm country, a country that can return to its pursuit of progress,” Tapias said. The U.S. trainers “share with us a faith in a cause, a cause to forever eradicate narco-trafficking in Colombia.”

Along with two other elite anti-drug battalions already in operation, the new soldiers form the heart of U.S. efforts to halve in two years the flow of drugs from Colombia, source of nine of every 10 grams of cocaine sold in America.

Accounting for nearly a quarter of the $1.3 billion the U.S. has pledged to the effort, the three battalions are supposed to clear leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary forces from the cocaine regions that provide much of their income. After an area is secured, Colombian police enter to fumigate the crops.

With Thursday’s graduation, Plan Colombia’s pieces are nearly in place, lacking only the arrival later this year of about 14 Black Hawk helicopters that will vastly improve the mobility of the anti-drug battalions.

Even without the helicopters, the battalions already have an impressive record of success.

Their most significant contributions came from December through February, when they helped Colombian police fumigate 84,000 of the country’s estimated 326,000 acres of coca. The battalions also destroyed more than 200 drug labs while losing three men.

They also have a sterling human rights record, with no verified abuse complaints, according to rights groups and the military. That’s no small feat given the Colombian military’s historically cavalier attitude toward the issue.

A setback came in February, when a police pilot was shot by leftist guerrillas and forced to land his helicopter during an eradication operation. The pilot was rescued with the help of U.S. civilians working for DynCorp, a State Department contractor that supports fumigation efforts.

The battalions didn’t first clear the zone because evidence suggested that the guerrillas weren’t a significant threat, a source said. But police officials have privately complained that they weren’t given enough protection before their spraying mission began.

Whatever the reality, the incident showed the tension that exists between the military and police, who traditionally have taken the lead in the fight against narcotics.

“I wish the Colombian military well,” said a police official who requested anonymity. “But I resent being ordered around by those who know little about fighting drugs.”

Still, Pace praised the battalions, saying the soldiers were among the most professional and best equipped in the Colombian army. He also disagreed with the notion that cocaine prices are the best measure of Plan Colombia’s success, pointing instead to the goal of a more democratic Colombia.

“It takes time to have a visible impact on such a wide-ranging organization such as the narco-traffickers,” the U.S. general said.

But the lack of any impact on drug prices in the United States brought sharp criticism from Plan Colombia opponents, who have long insisted that a U.S. strategy focused on restricting supply is doomed to fail.

Lisa Haugaard, legislative coordinator for the Latin American Working Group, said the plan has done little to ensure that the rural poor who depend on coca for their livelihood don’t simply move their crops elsewhere.

“What really needs to be looked at is not whether they eliminated huge tracts, which I have no doubt they did, but whether they have provided the alternative to make sure the coca doesn’t walk away,” Haugaard said. “They haven’t done that.”

Others have objected to the focus on cocaine: With all their resources dedicated to the push into southern Colombia, police have yet this year to fumigate poppy crops, which form the base for most of the heroin seized in the U.S.

And local leaders in southern Colombia have complained that the presence of the battalions has militarized the conflict, bringing more leftist rebels and paramilitary forces to the state of Putumayo, where nearly half of the country’s cocaine is grown.

Local nonprofit organizations recorded a near doubling in the number of refugees who have fled the region since the battalions began operating in December.

“Plan Colombia must have as powerful, or a more powerful, social component than a military one, to be a success,” said Putumayo Gov. Ivan Gerardo Guerrero. “The battalions have militarized the situation, which made things worse.”

There is little agreement on the reasons for the stability of cocaine prices in the face of the seemingly staggering attacks against the supply of the drug here.

Some, like DEA chief Marshall, believe that the market for cocaine is flat, with only hard-core addicts using the drug. Others maintain that not enough time has passed for any effects at the street level to be visible.

Still others simply believe that the economics of the cocaine trade doom any attacks against cocaine supply. A kilogram of coca paste sells for about $800 in Colombia. The same kilogram, when turned into pure cocaine, brings as much as $30,000 in Miami.

With profit margins so high, drug dealers can afford to absorb whatever losses arise from a reduction in the source of the drug, these critics argue.

“Plan Colombia and the anti-narcotics brigades have been a complete failure,” said Jorge Rojas, a leading activist and one of the plan’s harshest critics. “The U.S. is wasting its money.”