-Caveat Lector-
Subject:
Drugs replace communism as the point of entry for U.S. policy on
Latin America [Please forward]
Date:
Fri, 27 Aug 1999 01:17:40 CST
COUNCIL ON HEMISPHERIC AFFAIRS
Wednesday, 24 August 1999
Drugs replace communism as the point of entry for U.S.
policy on Latin America
U.S. Policy Towards Colombia About To Massively Veer
Off-Track
Heading for disaster
The Clinton Administration is on the brink of a decisive
shift in its
policies toward Colombia, a country engulfed in a protracted
civil war
against leftist guerrillas that has cost tens of thousands
of lives. Until
now, the Clinton Administration, admirably, has attempted to
maintain a
thin line between counterinsurgency and counter-narcotics in
Washington's
support of the Colombian military and police forces. But
following the
recent visit to Colombia by White House drug policy director
Barry
McCaffrey and Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, it
has become
clear that Washington is on the verge of more aggressive
action in the
region. The administration is moving from a policy of only
indirect
intervention and a relatively hands-off role in the
guerrilla conflict to
an overt strategy aimed at rooting out the threat the rebels
pose to the
political and economic status quo in Colombia.
In other words, a previously cautious State Department and
National
Security Council has lost control of the issue to Clinton
Administration
politicos who fear that the Republicans are preparing a
frontal attack on
the administration for being "soft" on drugs and equally
soft on the
drug-trafficking guerrillas. As a riposte, the Clinton
Administration will
now ready a major public initiative to convince Americans of
the imminence
of the threat posed by the guerrillas, and the urgency of
the need for
action. Another crucial White House concern will be to
reassure the public
that U.S. involvement in the Colombia cauldron will be
limited. But
Americans were told the same thing when the U.S. first
became involved in
El Salvador in the early 1980's, and ended up spending
almost a billion
dollars a year to fund a proto-military regime's barbarous
civil war
against its own citizens. Roughly three-quarters of a
million Salvadoreans
fled to the United States during the conflict, and skeptics
are now asking
how many hundreds of thousands of Colombians will now decide
to flee to the
U.S. if Washington moves to "liberate" Colombia from its
guerrillas,
further confounding this country's stressed social programs.
The unofficial reason for this change in policy, which
eliminates any
distinction between Colombia's civil and drug wars, is that
U.S.
counter-narcotics efforts in the region have in the past
done nothing to
impede powerful, drug-running mafias from operating in
guerrilla-controlled
territories, which accounts for 40% of the countryside. The
guerrillas-or
"narco-terrorists" as McCaffrey now refers to them-are using
their enhanced
revenues from "war taxes" levied on the drug traffickers to
finance their
rebellion.
General McCaffrey in particular noted the urgency of the
present situation
in Colombia, calling the conflict "a disaster." He believes
the situation
in the country is so grave that it will require a regional
effort to tame
Colombia's drug-trafficking guerrillas. On an August 23
visit to Brazil,
the region's largest economic and political power, McCaffrey
said: "We must
recognize that the problem of drug-trafficking is
regional...Colombia
cannot combat the problem alone." Given the context in which
this proposal
was made, some critics are loathe to recall that Washington
offered similar
explanations when communism rather than drugs was public
enemy number one
in Latin America, or, as officials in Washington refer to
the region to
this day, "our own backyard." McCaffrey speaks as if he is
readying a
purgative crusade in the rest of the hemisphere, and those
who fail to
cooperate will lose their annual drug certification rating.
McCaffrey, who his critics liken to Lt. Col. Oliver North in
his fervor,
has chastised the White House for regarding Colombia as a
relatively minor
league issue relative to its other global preoccupations.
The
administration, McCaffrey suggests, has given "inadequate
attention to a
serious and growing emergency." Indeed, the deteriorating
situation in
Colombia was not considered grave enough to seriously
concern the president
until last week, when, according to the Washington Post, his
advisers
briefed Clinton on the subject for the first time.
How much aid and to whom?
Colombia is quickly becoming the major focus of U.S. Latin
American policy,
and McCaffrey's exhortations seem to have overwhelmed all
resistance in the
State Department against expanding the U.S. role in the
country.
The State Department is presently considering Colombia's
request for an
additional $500 million in military aid over the next two
years, a figure
which McCaffrey himself proposed after Colombian President
Andres Pastrana
first made the request several months ago. The Pentagon has
resumed
training Colombian security officers and is upgrading army
intelligence
networks used to track the movement of the guerrillas. The
U.S. Southern
Command, which McCaffrey headed before assuming the
drug-czar position, is
currently training a 950-man Colombian army battalion whose
primary
objective, according to the Washington Post, will be to
regain control of
guerrilla territory in the southern part of the country. Two
more such
battalions are supposedly in the works, according to
Pentagon and State
Department officials.
The cost-benefit effectiveness of such a rapid
intensification of U.S.
intervention is predicated on two assumptions. First, the
U.S. can
strategically control the end-use of funding to such an
extent that human
rights abuses will be avoided, or at least minimized (to
which the lie was
put in El Salvador); and second, the FARC leaders, a main
target of U.S.
intervention, are little more than a cluster of evil
terrorists and
rapacious drug lords, without a popular following. As in El
Salvador, the
U.S. refuses to acknowledge that atrocities on the part of
government
security forces are the best recruitment tool that the
guerrillas possess.
These two assumptions are far from accurate, and have little
connection to
the realities of both the drug trade and the civil strife in
Colombia.
Understanding Colombian realities realistically
While the FARC undoubtedly generates wealth through the "war
taxes" it
levies on drug processors and traffickers, as well as
through the abduction
of foreign corporate executives and wealthy Colombians for
ransom, there is
no direct evidence linking the rebels to the actual export
of drugs to the
U.S. Available evidence reveals that among the primary
transporters of
drugs are right-wing paramilitary groups in collaboration
with wealthy drug
barons, the armed forces, key financial figures and senior
government
bureaucrats.
The creation of the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia
(AUC), the
official title of the loosely-connected paramilitary
organizations formed
in the 1980's, was made possible in large part through the
private fortunes
amassed through their leaders' earlier involvement in the
drug trade. The
AUC, in fact, was outlawed in 1989 after government
investigations revealed
that Pablo Escobar, the notorious boss of the Medellin drug
cartel, had
taken over one of its largest paramilitary operations.
The paramilitaries, composed of right-wing extremists
(including many
military and police officials) virulently opposed to the
guerrillas and
their sympathizers, have become a mainstay in Bogota's
anti-FARC campaign.
While the AUC is personally repugnant to President Pastrana,
his efforts to
curb explicit collusion between the Colombian security
forces and the
paramilitaries have been futile. So, while army helicopters
routinely
attack coca and poppy fields within rebel territory, major
drug lords and
their paramilitary cohorts are able to conduct their own
drug operations
with relative impunity.
It seems clear that ranking U.S. officials are unwilling or
unable to grasp
the nuances affecting the narcotics industry in Colombia,
which has
affected not only every level of Colombia's national life,
but apparently
has seeped into the senior levels of U.S. officials, with
the wife of the
ranking U.S. anti-drug military officer in Colombia under
investigation for
shipping drugs into the U.S. via a U.S. armed forces pouch.
McCaffrey's rising influence
General McCaffrey seems to be the policymaker most obsessed
with the notion
of the guerrillas as ravenous drug barons, but Congressmen
Dan Burton
(R-IN) and Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) are not far behind. In an
official
statement, the representatives made no mention of the
paramilitaries'
intense involvement in drugs, while emphasizing that the
FARC
"narco-terrorists" reel in "an estimated $100 million per
month in revenues
from facilitating narco-trafficking."
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who has been slightly
more cautious
and objective, says: "Both the guerrillas and the
paramilitaries use the
drug trade to finance their operations," although a recent
op-ed which she
authored suggested that she too is beginning to sanction the
removal of the
fine line between drug cultivation and civil strife.
Albright's past
distinctions are not only lost on Gilman and Burton, but
they fail to
convey the reality of narcotics in Colombia, which is that,
as The
Economist of London writes, "the right-wing paramilitary
groups.and the
traffickers they protect are far deeper into drugs-and the
DEA (U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration) knows it."
Another troubling aspect of current U.S. policy is the
Colombian military's
active and well-documented de facto alliance with the
paramilitary
organizations in their fight against the FARC and the
smaller leftist force
known as the National Liberation Army (ELN). The
paramilitaries are
notorious for their savagery, directing their aggression not
only against
the guerrillas but, as one major humanitarian affairs
official says,
"anyone involved in the defense of human rights."
In 1991, the Colombian military, in collaboration with the
CIA,
restructured its intelligence networks to more effectively
confront the
guerrillas. The country's security officers worked closely
with
paramilitaries to increase their effectiveness against both
the guerrillas
and their suspected civilian sympathizers. Official support
for the
paramilitaries, however, went beyond providing covert
intelligence, and
included the Colombian armed forces also engaging in joint
combat
procedures. The country's military took part in several
infamous atrocities
as a result of such collusion with the paramilitaries,
provoking even the
State Department to acknowledge, "...the [Colombian] armed
forces committed
numerous, serious human rights abuses."
Despite Bogota's statements to the contrary, the
paramilitary/military
nexus is still very much alive. One recent example of this
was a July 26th
incident near the municipal borders of Curumani. At
approximately 7 a.m., a
group of armed paramilitaries kidnapped and then murdered
several peasants
at El Cano San Ignacio. The paramilitaries, uniformed and
heavily armed,
then fled to the nearby town of Curumani, where they must
have passed
either the Army military base or the police station guarding
the entrances
to the town. Observers add that the military and police
facilities were
recently upgraded and fortified with new equipment and
manpower;
nonetheless, the assassins were not apprehended.
The FARC regularly accounts for its share of human rights
violations as
well, but the paramilitary/military alliance is responsible
for a
disproportionate percentage of all political killings,
roughly 70% as
calculated by a number of reputable human rights bodies.
Clean record?
Surprisingly, McCaffrey's proposal to radically increase aid
to the
Colombian military might face opposition in Congress,
particularly from
Representatives Gilman, Chairman of the House International
Relations
Committee, and Burton, Chairman of the Government Reform
Committee, as well
as from the left. The aforementioned hardliners ordinarily
could be counted
upon to strongly back any action directed against the
leftist guerrillas.
But in this instance, they have become convinced that the
Colombian
military is not a reliable ally to depend upon in the
anti-drug war. Gilman
and Burton argue that rather than funnel aid to the
tarnished armed forces,
U.S. funds should be allocated almost entirely to the
National Police
(CNP), led by General Jose Serrano, whose "duty is not
counterinsurgency,
it is counternarcotics."
On several occasions, however, counterinsurgency appears to
have been
precisely the CNP's "duty." Numerous paramilitary massacres
have been
carried out in recent years with the tacit and, in certain
instances, the
overt support of police units operating in the affected
areas. In October
1997, anti-narcotics police in the town of Miraflores
welcomed
paramilitaries at a local airstrip jointly run by area
police and military
units. The paramilitaries later killed six suspected
guerrilla supporters
within the next three days. The police, local residents say,
were well
aware of these events, which included numerous other death
threats, but did
nothing to prevent them. The killers remain at large, with
no significant
investigations yet underway.
Other incidents involving a direct paramilitary/police de
facto alliance
occurred in the towns of Mapiripan in July 1997 and Chalan
in October of
that year. In the case of Chalan, the police seemed to
punish local
citizens for what was perceived as their allegiance to the
guerrillas.
After a rebel raid on the town, police commanders withdrew
all of their
forces, even though, according to observers, they had been
alerted to an
impending paramilitary attack. In the weeks that followed,
paramilitaries
threatened and then proceeded to kill scores of local
teachers, community
leaders and farmers, prompting scores more to flee the area
as internal
refugees.
Following the rebel incursion, General Serrano, championed
by some House
members as "the best cop in Latin America," said, "If the
civilian
population fails to collaborate, well, we'll withdraw the
police."
Serrano's assistant added: "The people of Chalan don't
deserve the police
they have.the people either support the [guerrillas] or
support us."
In spite of such unprofessional attitudes, it should be
acknowledged that
the police display a somewhat higher regard for human rights
observance
than their military counterparts. Nonetheless, the belief
that aid can be
channeled to any element of the Colombian security forces
without
contributing to human rights violations rests on fallacious
presuppositions. This is why the Dodd-Leahy amendment wisely
prohibited the
disbursement of military aid to any Colombian armed forces'
battalion known
to be complicit in human rights violations, eventually
leaving only one
military unit qualifying for such U.S. assistance in the
entire army.
The facile assumptions guiding U.S. support for Colombia's
anti-drug
efforts are emblematic of the weaknesses in U.S. narcotics
policy as a
whole. The inability of Washington and Bogota's war on drugs
to bring about
an overall reduction in Colombian narcotics production (or
U.S.
consumption) shows that a confrontational policy of direct
supply
intervention, including aerial spraying and the
fortification of military
and police arsenals, is both shortsighted and even
counter-productive.
Inequality, drugs, and rebellion
U.S. policy consistently has failed to consider the economic
and social
roots behind both the drug trade and the guerrilla
rebellion. Many of the
producers who are the object of aerial spraying and other
such aggressive
tactics are poor-to-destitute peasants without the means to
sustain
themselves in the absence of drug cultivation. Coca is often
referred to
among Colombia's poor as "the blessed plant," because, as
one farmer in the
rural town of Miraflores put it, "it is the only one which
gives us enough
to live on." Using force against these people merely evades
the central
issue, which is their lack of viable economic alternatives.
Nonetheless, Congressmen Gilman and Burton maintain that the
reason drug
production is so high in Colombia is not the paucity of such
alternatives,
but rather is attributable to the Clinton administration's
miserly
reluctance to donate more U.S.-made Black Hawk helicopters
to the CNP for
aerial spraying and surveillance purposes. The legislators
lament that "the
CNP only has 19 operating helicopters," and they chastise
the State
Department for its inability to "deliver a single helicopter
on time."
Cecilia Zarate-Luan, the highly respected director of the
Colombia Support
Network, an outreach organization based in Madison,
Wisconsin, dismisses
such simplistic notions and insists that the despair of the
Colombian
peasantry is indeed a factor behind drug cultivation in the
country.
According to Zarate: "The peasants.have two options: to go
the big cities
and become beggars and prostitutes, or go to the rainforest
to colonize the
land." Zarate added, "Colombian peasants growing coca are
the result of
social, political, and economic problems that cannot and
will not be solved
by military means."
Similarly, the guerrilla war can be understood only after
comprehending its
socio-economic roots. Inequalities of land and income
distribution in
Colombia and skewed living standards are among the worst in
Latin America,
with 3% of the population controlling 70% of arable land. Of
the nearly 50%
of Colombians estimated by human rights groups to be living
below the
poverty line, three-fourths reside in rural areas. Full-time
employment,
furthermore, is no guarantee of adequate living conditions.
It is estimated
that the wages of nearly 60% of the employed are not
sufficient to satisfy
basic nutritional and health needs.
With the country in economic free-fall, and beset by record
crime levels,
1,000 persons line up daily at the U.S. embassy in Bogota
seeking a visa to
flee the country and the miasma in which it now finds
itself. One has to go
back to the depression of 1929 to recall such hard times in
Colombia. The
current malaise has created an explosive situation which
only peace,
demilitarization and basic economic reform can begin to
cure. Lamentably,
the only response that Washington is coming forth with is to
militarize the
impasse in Colombia, risking a wide-scale U.S. military
intervention which,
like in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Haiti before,
will lead to
hundreds of thousands of Colombians fleeing to this country.
Unfortunately,
Washington's intervention model is low on political tuning
and high on
quick-fix schemes based on the application of force. Nor
does Washington
have an answer to whether the increasing political pressure
on Pastrana
from all sides may void his effectiveness as president, as
the country
lurches into all-out conflict.
Colombia's alarming social indicators help explain not only
the incentives
for producing drug crops, but also, in part, the widespread
support for the
guerrillas in the countryside. Rather than continue to fund
Colombia's
dubious anti-drug institutions, or taking the dangerous step
of widening
the scope of the war to include a more explicit
anti-guerrilla campaign,
Washington should consider providing broadened support for
increased
economic equality, social justice and the establishment of a
truly
democratic political process.
The immediate effect of such support from Washington would
be to inject
life into the moribund peace negotiations between the
Pastrana
Administration and the FARC. In July, the FARC (who were
proving extremely
reluctant to sit down to begin peace talks) were chastised
by officials in
Washington and Bogota for opting to mount an offensive
rather than
negotiate with Pastrana. In part, the guerrillas deserve
criticism for
their general obduracy regarding the talks, but given the
lugubrious
outcomes of the guerrillas past experiences with the peace
process and its
aftermath, one can hardly fault the current leadership for
failing to
embrace diplomacy con brio, even though their strategy at
times seems
bizarre.
In 1985, former guerrilla leaders formed the Patriotic Union
party (UP) in
an effort to lay down their arms and participate peacefully
in civil
society. The UP candidates, with an economic and political
agenda markedly
distinct from that of the establishment Liberal and
Conservative Party
platforms, enjoyed tremendous popular success, with roughly
4,000 party
members voted into various state and municipal positions.
In a lesson not lost upon the present generation of FARC
leaders, virtually
all of these UP officials were systematically murdered by
right-wing
extremists, with the cases never being solved or those
suspected of being
involved in the murders brought to justice. Incidentally,
among the
assassinated were the two UP members to declare themselves
presidential
candidates.
"Small fish and the "core" of the problem
A more sensible U.S. policy should also include a focus on
drug factors
closer to home. For example, the Clinton Administration
might consider
cracking down on U.S and other Western corporations involved
in exporting
to Colombia the enormous quantities of the precursor
chemicals required to
process raw narcotic plant material into hard drugs. Drug
processing,
according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is an
extremely
"complicated" process, requiring "sophisticated equipment
and skills," as
well as "expensive chemicals" like potassium permanganate,
ether and
acetone "that are harder to find and often not manufactured
in the
processing country." Those that bear the brunt of aggressive
U.S.
supply-side drug policies in Colombia-peasant cultivators,
petty drug
pushers, and the guerrillas-are clearly not the major
players in the
lucrative, transnational narcotics industry.
The U.S. should also consider devoting funds to an in-depth
investigation
of the major multinational banks and companies involved in
laundering
billions of dollars in drug revenues. If anything, the
volume of money
laundering has grown in recent years even as the U.S.
public's
consciousness of the problem has declined.
Alberto Galan, brother of murdered Colombian presidential
candidate Luis
Carlos Galan, emphasized the weakness of U.S. policy in not
probing this
link between private corporations and drugs. Washington,
according to Mr.
Galan, avoids "the core of the problem.the economic ties
between the legal
and illegal worlds.the large financial corporations.It would
make a lot
more sense to attack and prosecute the few at the top of the
drug business
rather than fill prisons with thousands of small fish."
Although Washington may not be ready to implement such
drastic measures, it
must at least take note of the complexities of Colombia's
civil strife, a
conflict that is not reducible to the ingenuous notion of
McCaffrey's
"narco-guerrillas" as the enemy, and a problem which will
not be resolved
by military force alone.
Nick Trebat
Research Associate
The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an
independent,
non-partisan and tax-exempt research and information
organization. It has
been described on the floor of the Senate as being "one of
the nation's
most respected bodies of scholars and policymakers."
_________________________
Council on Hemispheric Affairs
1444 I St., Suite 211 NW
Washington, DC 20005
phone: (202) 216-9261
fax: (202) 216-9193
Website: www.coha.org
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