Narcotics and War Become
Intertwined
To
the Beginning of the Times Series on Colombia.
By LARRY ROHTER
For
the Clinton
administration, the
unraveling of the situation
in Colombia has created
an
uncomfortable dilemma.
While the United States
is
determined to diminish the
flow of cocaine and heroin
into American cities,
especially with an election
looming, it does not want
to
be pulled into what can
only be a long, bloody and
expensive campaign in
Latin America's longest
running guerrilla war.
"The situation on the ground
in Colombia is increasingly
complicated, but our policy
is very straightforward,"
Brian E. Sheridan, the
Defense Department
coordinator for drug
enforcement policy and
support, said recently in
testimony to a
Congressional panel. "We
are working with the
Colombian government on
counternarcotics programs.
We are not in the
counterinsurgency
business."
But to Colombian military
officers in the field, there
is
no such distinction. "To
me,
they are one and the same
thing," Lieutenant Arenas
said, clearly puzzled that
anyone would suggest there is
any difference between drug
traffickers and guerrillas.
And while the Clinton administration
is talking only of
a two-year program, focused
on the delivery of the
helicopters and a training
program for pilots, top
Colombian military officials
lay out a six-year
campaign. They envision
being able to break the
F.A.R.C.'s control of coca-growing
areas in the south in
two years, after which the
Colombian Armed Forces
would focus on the Guaviare
region in the country's
heartland for two years
and then northern areas
dominated by paramilitary
groups.
American officials contend
that the only way the
government can regain control
of Putumayo and
Caquetá provinces
is through a coordinated effort in
which the Armed Forces clean
out guerrilla
concentrations and are followed
by police units that
fumigate coca fields by
air.
But very little in the battlefield
record of the
Colombian Army and Air Force
inspires confidence in
that kind of plan. Throughout
the 1990's, the United
States funneled most of
its aid and training to the
Colombian National Police
because American officials
regarded the Armed Forces
as a bloated, corrupt and
largely defensive force.
The American approach is
also likely to exacerbate a
longstanding debate about
the most effective way to
reduce drug cultivation.
While aerial spraying is
traditionally favored by
the United States, many in
Colombia argue that crop
substitution programs similar
to those that proved successful
in Bolivia and Peru are
more effective ways to wean
peasant farmers from drug
crops.
The aid package now before
the United States Congress
includes a hefty increase
in financing for such
"alternative development"
programs, to $127 million
over the next two years
from $5 million in the last
budget. But the experience
of the National Plan for
Alternative Development,
the Colombian government's
crop substitution agency,
makes clear that coordinating
aerial spraying and crop
substitution programs requires
a precision that has eluded
American and Colombian
experts.
Human rights groups see another,
equally troubling
problem in the White House
aid package. They point to
a long history of cooperation
between some Colombian
military units and Mr. Castaño's
right-wing death
squads, or paramilitaries.
According to the Colombian
prosecutor's office, the
death squads killed nearly
1,000 people in more than
125 massacres in 1999. Recent
reports by Human
Rights Watch and the United
Nations and investigations
by Colombian prosecutors
have singled out specific
Colombian military units
and commanders as having
provided support to the
death squads or having failed to
heed calls for help from
villages under attack.
To curb such abuses, Congress
passed the Leahy
Amendment in 1997, prohibiting
the United States from
providing assistance to
any Colombian military unit that
violates human rights. As
a result, some Colombian
battalions have been disqualified
from receiving
American aid, new units
have been formed, and
instruction in human rights
has become a required part
of Colombian military training.
But critics of the
Clinton administration's
aid package insist not only that
those restrictions be strengthened,
but that new
oversight mechanisms be
included.
"The government paints a
rosy picture, but the reality is
that army officers who commit
atrocities are almost
never prosecuted," Senator
Leahy, the author of the
amendment, said recently.
"Links between the army and
paramilitaries are
widespread, and human rights
investigators have had to
flee the country."
R. Rand Beers, assistant
secretary of state for
international narcotics
and law enforcement affairs,
denied that paramilitary
groups would receive more
favorable treatment than
their enemies on the left. "We
are pressing the Colombian
government to live up to the
promise that they will go
after the paras, and we will
continue to do that," he
said, referring to the
paramilitary troops.
American policy, however,
is to "go after the drugs
wherever they are," Mr.
Beers added. "We will start by
going after the largest
concentrations of those drugs,
and right now that is in
the south. So it's not that they
are getting a free ride
because they are paras. It's
because the paras have fewer
forces in the south than
the F.A.R.C. at this time.
That said, the paras are
increasing their presence
in the south, and are becoming
a more significant problem
there."
Even without the aid package,
the United States'
commitment in Colombia is
already growing. The
Colombian battalions patrol
the rivers of southern
Colombia in American-made
Piraña vessels, and last
year, a Riverine War School
opened in Puerto
Leguízamo with some
classes by visiting American
instructors.
"We've had your Coast Guard
come in to show how to
board vessels, your Army
and Marines to teach combat
on land and water, the Miami
police to demonstrate
detention methods," Lieutenant
Arenas said
enthusiastically. Many of
the Americans leave
equipment and supplies behind
as gifts, a gesture that is
deeply appreciated by troops
who are short of
everything from boots and
maps to two-way radios.
At any given moment, 80 to
220 American military
officials are working in
Colombia, according to the
United States Embassy in
Bogotá. The largest
concentrations are at Tolemaida
in the center of the
country, and Tres Esquinas
in the southwest, where the
first of three counternarcotics
battalions was trained
last year and two more battalions
are scheduled to be
formed this year.
All told, American aid to
Colombia has grown by
3,500 percent since 1993,
General McCaffrey said.
That makes Colombia the
largest recipient of American
aid outside the Middle East
even without the new flows
of equipment and training
under discussion.
Washington clearly hopes
that this large one-time
injection of new aid will
prove sufficient for the
Colombian government to
regain the upper hand. But
Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, a
former minister of the
interior and ambassador
to the United States, was
speaking for many Colombians,
and some Americans,
when he recently suggested
that a pair of fundamental
questions remain.
"Is the elimination of narcotics
trafficking the key to
achieving peace, or is the
achievement of peace
necessary to the elimination
of narcotics?" he asked.
"That is a dilemma that
has to be analyzed and
contemplated."
March 1, 1998 NYT
In Drug War, America Barks but Fear of Bite Fades
By TIM GOLDEN
WASHINGTON -- The
driver was late, the aide had the directions all wrong, and as Colombia's
ambassador rode up Capitol Hill the other day to defend his country's drug-fighting
record before
one more skeptical audience,
his only armor was two copies of a thin, boring-looking government
report.
For the emissary of a country
whose drug-enforcement efforts had failed the United States' certification
test two years in a row,
the ambassador, Juan Carlos Esguerra, was looking remarkably unperturbed.
"When we didn't know what
it would mean to be decertified, we were
terribly worried that it
would have catastrophic effects," Esguerra said,
recalling the all-out lobbying
campaigns that Colombia waged in past years
in vain attempts to avoid
the Clinton administration's censure. "Once you
know the impact, you know
you can handle it."
The 12-year-old federal law
requires that, by the end of every February, the
White House publicly evaluate
the drug-control efforts of countries that
produce or ship the cocaine,
heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines that
are consumed in the United
States.
And each year by the beginning
of March, critics attack the process known as drug certification, mostly
because of the anger and
irritation it produces in U.S. relations abroad.
Lately, though, the irritation
has appeared to be mostly skin deep. For countries like Mexico -- which
was fully certified again
Thursday despite a confidential assessment by the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration that was
stingingly pessimistic -- it has become clear, officials say privately,
that
considerations like trade
will outweigh dissatisfactions over the drug issue.
Similarly, the practice of
recent years has shown nations like Pakistan and Lebanon that even if they
are
denied certification, their
strategic importance to the United States is such that they can expect
the White
House to waive the penalties
in the national interest.
Under the 1986 statute, the
penalties include a mandatory halt to some U.S. foreign aid, a requirement
that the United States vote
against their applications for multilateral development bank loans, and
the
possibility of trade and
economic sanctions. But when the law was written, both the Cold War power
of
the United States and the
promise of such sanctions had a fresher smell.
Last year, as the administration
and Congress wrestled with the question of whether to decertify
Colombia for the second
year in a row, the government of President Ernesto Samper dispatched its
police chief and half a
dozen cabinet members to lobby in Washington. The issue was Samper himself,
and the $6.1 million that
U.S. officials say he took as a campaign contribution from cocaine traffickers.
But his government nonetheless
took out full-page advertisements in American newspapers to describe
the sacrifices that Colombia's
people had made, the blood that its soldiers and police had spilled.
Brightly colored booklets
detailing the country's anti-drug achievements inundated Congress.
This winter, the strategy
changed. "No publicity. No advertising. Absolutely none," Esguerra said.
"The
certification issue has
become less important." (Last week, in a gesture that U.S. officials did
not take
seriously, Samper offered
to resign a few months early if it would improve Colombia's relationship
with the United States.)
At a Senate subcommittee
hearing about certification Thursday, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Md., spoke up
for
the process. It remains,
he said, "an effort to prod other governments into action -- actions they
would
not otherwise take."
But in the past, U.S. officials
have been able to count on at least some flurries of police activity abroad
as the judgment day nears:
drug traffickers arrested, drug crops eradicated, drug shipments seized.
Recent years have seen less
and less of that kind of push.
More significant than the
end of Colombia's lobbying are the issues on which it flatly ignored U.S.
appeals -- and threats of
further decertification. In November, the Samper government allowed the
legislature it controls
to reinstate its extradition treaty with the United States with the proviso
that it
would not apply retroactively
-- and thus to the powerful Cali Cartel bosses who are serving relatively
short prison sentences in
Colombia but are wanted by U.S. courts.
The frustration of U.S. law-enforcement
officials with Mexico has been harder for some in Washington
to interpret: Last year,
the government of President Ernesto Zedillo has overhauled its anti-drug
force,
arrested some military and
civilian officials on corruption charges and taken small but potentially
important steps toward extraditing
Mexican drug criminals to the United States.
But at what is typically
the busiest time of the law-enforcement year, U.S. agents were reporting
to their
headquarters that the "new"
Mexican police units were making no discernable effort to arrest the most
important traffickers.
In Pakistan, the government
has steadfastly ignored U.S. pleas for the release of a Pakistani employee
of
the Drug Enforcement Administration
who is serving a five-year sentence at hard labor for helping U.S.
law-enforcement agents with
an undercover operation that led to the jailing of two Pakistani air force
officers on charges of heroin
trafficking.
The drug-enforcement aide,
Ayyaz Baluch, was found guilty of "seducing" the officers to commit a
crime. Pakistan's ambassador
to the United States, Riaz Khokhar, dismissed what he said had been open
threats of decertification
over the matter. "We have lived with certain sanctions in the past," he
said in
an interview. "Frankly,
it won't bother us."
Some U.S. officials blame
the toothlessness of decertification on the limits of the law. Colombian
officials, for their part,
noted that they have been authorized to receive more anti-drug aid since
being
decertified. In Washington,
support is rising for a multilateral approach to setting drug-enforcement
standards.
But even if U.S. legislators
have an alternative, they may still have a problem. "If you favor repeal
of the
certification statute, then
you look like you're weak on drugs," said Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., the
ranking minority member
on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "And that's still an uncomfortable
position for a politician
to be in."
april 21 story
April 21, 2000
THE COMBATANTS
Coca Brings Shooting From
Many
Directions
By LARRY ROHTER
In the jungle
and the
farming
villages, the
distinction that the Pentagon
and the State Department
try
to draw between arming an
anti-drug war and avoiding
Colombia's long-running
civil conflict is blurred.
The drug trade finances
both the leftist insurgents
and their rivals, the
paramilitary death squads,
who often operate with the
tacit support of Colombian
Army units.
"When people are shooting
at you, it is hard to
determine their immediate
affiliation," said William
Ledwith, director of
international operations
for
the United States Drug
Enforcement
Administration. "Does it
really make a difference
if
you are attacked by the
F.A.R.C., the E.L.N., by
paramilitaries or by a gang
of narcotics traffickers
wanting to defend their
laboratories?" he asked,
using the acronyms for the
guerrillas groups. "To me,
all the bullets are the
same."
The rapid expansion of
coca production in
Colombia is in large part
a
consequence of two
developments. One is what
is known as the "balloon
effect" -- the reappearance
of a problem in a new place
after it has been squeezed
in
another -- which followed
successful American-led
campaigns against coca
growers in Peru and
Bolivia.
The other, more recent
development was a crucial
miscalculation by President
Pastrana. Elected on the
promise of ending the
debilitating war against
the guerrillas, he tried to lure
them to the negotiating
table in 1998 by granting the
leading guerrilla group
control over a chunk of territory
larger than Massachusetts,
Connecticut and Rhode
Island combined. The guerrillas
quickly turned it into
an armed protectorate and
a coca-growing factory, and
the peace talks have floundered.
The breakup of the powerful
Medellín and Cali cartels
-- the D.E.A. once called
the latter "the most dangerous
criminal group in history"
-- was originally expected to
cripple the Colombian drug
business. But their demise
actually served to spur
coca cultivation in more remote
regions of the country and
to foster unholy alliances
between new drug gangs on
one side and the leftist
guerrillas and paramilitary
forces on the other.
Just five years ago, Putumayo
and neighboring Caquetá
province were perhaps the
poorest and most neglected
areas of the country. Today,
they have become a
paradise for coca growers,
with more than 100,000
acres cultivated under the
protection of the largest rebel
group, F.A.R.C.
Colombian trafficking groups
have not only pushed
aside Peru and Bolivia,
the traditional sources of raw
coca leaf, but also have
moved aggressively into the
heroin business, replacing
Southeast Asia and
Afghanistan as the source
of most of the heroin seized
in the United States.
For the Colombian military,
that is a formidable
challenge.
Though the national armed
forces look strong on paper,
with more than 100,000 soldiers,
barely a third of them
are ready for fighting.
Under a widely criticized law
that reflects the class
prejudice and favoritism that run
through Colombian society,
high school graduates are
forbidden to participate
in combat.
The Colombian 90th Marine
Battalion, to which
Lieutenant Arenas, 28, and
his teenage soldiers belong,
patrols more than 1,500
miles of waterways in a
network of four major rivers
with barely 1,000 men and
a handful of boats.
"For an area like this, a
thousand men is nothing,"
Lieutenant Arenas said as
his gunboat, the A.R.C.
Leticia, equipped with two
cannons, two machine guns
and a pair of grenade launchers,
chugged up the
Putumayo River, with only
the sound of its motors
breaking the quiet. "Even
though my guys are motivated,
skilled and happy to be
here, they face a lot of
limitations."