Colext: How 'victory' in the Drug War has left Colombia in ruins

[Juan David Guti�rrez Rodr�guez]

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How 'victory' in the Drug War has left Colombia in ruins
The U.S. boasted that defeating Colombia's cartels would end the illegal
drug trade. Instead, things got worse.
Dan Gardner
The Ottawa Citizen
BOGOTA, Colombia - They are only dark memories now, but in the 1980s and
early 1990s, Colombia's drug lords loomed large in North American
nightmares. Pablo Escobar, the ruthless chief of the Medellin cartel, was
the most infamous of all, the personification of the cocaine plague.
In 1989, pressed hard by Colombian authorities, Escobar declared "total and
absolute war." A horrified world watched as the drug lord launched an
unprecedented campaign of terror. The Colombian government responded with
its own brutal force. For the first time, the "War on Drugs" became a
literal war.
Ultimately, with much bloodshed and sacrifice, Colombia won the battle with
Escobar. Then the other great Colombian trafficking ring, the Cali cartel,
was taken down. These were the greatest victories the War on Drugs has ever
known.
Yet today, just a few years after these triumphs, Colombia is suffering
political turmoil, economic free-fall, epidemic violence and massive
corruption -- all while producing and shipping more drugs than Pablo Escobar
could have imagined in his greediest dreams. Victory over the cartels did
not stop the illegal trafficking of drugs. Nor did it stop the corruption
and violence drug trafficking breeds. It only made these plagues worse.
For Colombians, this recent, bitter history foreshadows the future. With the
backing of the United States -- President Bill Clinton travelled to Colombia
last week to formally deliver a massive aid package -- Colombia is preparing
a new anti-drug assault. The details have changed but not the essential
approach: Once again, the illegal drug trade will be fought with police,
soldiers and helicopters. Once again, the War on Drugs will become a literal
war.
Monica de Greiff shakes her head with disgust when she talks of this looming
war. Her memories of the last one are vivid.
In 1989, Ms. de Greiff was vice-minister of justice. Pablo Escobar had
ordered the murder of a leading presidential candidate, prompting Colombia's
president, Virgilio Barco, to announce a crackdown on traffickers and the
extradition of the worst of them to the U.S. The drug lords were enraged.
President Barco made Ms. de Greiff his minister of justice. The next day,
Escobar launched his terror campaign to stop the extraditions. Life for Ms.
de Greiff became "like hell," she says.
Now a lawyer in private practice in Bogota, Ms. de Greiff is an elegant
woman graced with the bright blue eyes of her Swedish ancestors who settled
in Colombia in the early 19th century. She would fit in easily among her
colleagues on Bay Street, though her experience as Colombia's chief law
officer is a nightmare beyond the imagination of any Canadian.
The drug lords feared extradition, and Monica de Greiff's signature was
needed to send them to trial in the U.S. The death threats started
immediately. There were blunt phone calls and notes. Funeral arrangements
arrived expressing condolences for her passing. A headless doll was
delivered to her inside a tiny coffin, inscribed with the name of her
three-year-old son.
Meanwhile, Escobar launched a wave of maniacal assaults throughout the
country:
- A bus packed with 500 kilograms of dynamite exploded in front of the
headquarters of the Colombian federal police, killing 80 people and injuring
700;
- The editor of a muckraking newspaper was murdered; a truck bomb later
destroyed the newspaper's offices;
- Judges and police officers, with rich bounties on their heads, were
murdered by the score;
- Car bombs maimed shoppers and street merchants;
- A bomb aboard a commercial airliner knocked the plane from the sky,
killing 107 people.
For Ms. de Greiff, life was a state of siege. Soldiers blocked off the
street in front of her house. Her little boy went to school surrounded by
guards and machine-guns. She travelled in a bombproof car, though with
Escobar's well-known desire to kill her, it was rarely possible to go
anywhere. "People were so scared, that if I went shopping or to a
restaurant, they would get up and leave."
The government answered Escobar, attack for attack. There were massive
seizures of drug cartel property. In sweeping investigations, as many as
10,000 people were detained for questioning. State security forces took
emergency legislation as a licence for ferocity, committing summary
executions of suspects and murders wholly unrelated to the war with Escobar.
In 1989, 5,700 people died in politically related murders, 70 per cent of
these committed by the army or police.
Amid this chaos, Monica de Greiff lasted nine months. One day, a caller
described to her precisely where her son went to school, how he got there,
what time he arrived and when he left. She resigned and fled to Miami with
her family.
Escobar and his henchmen never were extradited. But over the next several
years, the Colombian government dismantled the Medellin cartel, player by
player. In 1993, Pablo Escobar, hunted and alone, was shot dead.
One of the key men responsible for taking down Pablo Escobar was Monica de
Greiff's father, Gustavo. As Colombia's prosecutor general, he was a
frontline commander in the War on Drugs. And thanks to his role in the
sensational manhunt, he was also a hero in the U.S.
While Escobar was still on the run, American television journalist Sam
Donaldson interviewed Gustavo de Greiff in Colombia. If Escobar is
imprisoned or killed, asked Mr. Donaldson, what effect will it have on the
drug trade in Colombia? Mr. de Greiff startled the American with his answer.
"Mr. Donaldson, nothing will happen. There is so much appetite in your
country for drugs, the killing of Escobar will not be a solution."
Gustavo de Greiff was beginning to doubt that the illegal drug trade could
be crippled by going after drug lords. As long as the demand existed, there
would be huge profits to be had, and people prepared to risk prison or even
death to get those profits. The carnage and destruction in Colombia, he
suspected, was pointless.
As it turned out, Mr. de Greiff was not quite right in saying that nothing
would happen to the drug trade. Illegal drug exports did change after the
death of Pablo Escobar: They rose.
Escobar's rivals, the Cali cartel, had been instrumental in the destruction
of the Medellin cartel, supplying the government with intelligence and
taking out Medellin gunmen with their own assassins. Once the competition
was in jail or dead, the Cali drug lords cashed in. Cocaine shipments to the
United States outpaced demand -- the price of cocaine in the U.S. actually
fell in the years after Escobar's death. The Cali cartel became flush with
money and power.
Colombia's first victory in the War on Drugs had produced only more drugs,
more corruption, and more power for organized crime.
Just how bad things had become was confirmed in the 1994 presidential
election when evidence surfaced that the campaign of the winner, Ernesto
Samper, had been financed in part by the Cali cartel. Where Pablo Escobar
had tried to destroy the state, the Cali cartel threatened to buy it.
The U.S. responded by "decertifying" the Samper government -- issuing a
formal reprimand for not doing enough to fight drug trafficking. Economic
sanctions and an end to American financial aid were threatened.
Colombia's economy had only just been opened to international trade and
investment, and with 40 per cent of the country's exports going to the U.S.,
economic sanctions would have been devastating. The Samper government,
desperate to improve relations with the U.S., attacked the Cali cartel with
a vengeance. By 1996, all of the Cali drug lords were either in prison or
dead. Still the Clinton administration refused to give its blessing to the
Colombian government and Ernesto Samper left office under a cloud of
corruption allegations.
With the destruction of the Cali cartel, the War on Drugs had won its second
triumph. But the cost was terrible. In the decade between 1985 and 1995,
3,400 Colombians died and another 5,000 were wounded in the fight with the
drug lords, including helpless civilians caught in the crossfire. The
impoverished nation -- with total government revenues in 1996 of only $26
billion U.S. -- was spending as much as $1.3 billion U.S. each year in
counter-narcotics measures.
Yet Colombia had scored two smashing victories. At the time, American and
Colombian officials directing the fight against drug trafficking were
elated. Ted Carpenter, a foreign policy analyst with the Cato Institute, a
free-market think-tank in Washington, D.C., recalls that "when Escobar was
killed and the Medellin and Cali cartels were broken, drug warriors in this
country and in Colombia loudly proclaimed victory. They said, 'The back of
the drug trade has been broken.'
"But these statements always disappear down the Orwellian memory hole."
Far from breaking the back of the illegal drug trade, the triumphs over the
Medellin and Cali cartels set in motion changes which have made Colombia
today at least as desperate as it was at the height of Pablo Escobar's
campaign of terror.
First, the defeat of the drug lords did not sever the link between South
American cocaine and North American noses. Instead, it helped create a whole
new swarm of trafficking groups. Where there had been two main cartels,
there are now hundreds of trafficking alliances, each much smaller and much
less centrally organized than the old cartels. No longer can police focus on
a few major targets. Infiltration, too, can be more difficult because the
groups are so small. Worse, in this fluid environment, traffickers who are
taken down by police are quickly and seamlessly replaced by competitors.
Mr. Carpenter notes that this aspect of what happened in Colombia fits a
pattern. "What seems to happen when the big, better-organized cartels are
shattered is that you get more of the small operators, the freelancers, the
next generation of traffickers who, if anything, tend to be even more
ruthless and more unpredictable." And successful: Despite the collapse of
the Colombian cartels, so much cocaine flooded into the U.S. between 1991
and 1998 that the wholesale price dropped by one-third -- from $68.08 U.S.
to $44.51 U.S. per pure gram.
Meanwhile, an even more fundamental change was occurring, helped along by
the fight with the old cartels. Until the 1990s, Colombia grew very little
coca, the plant from which cocaine is derived. Instead, Colombian cartels
got coca "base" -- unrefined cocaine -- from Peru and Bolivia. They then
processed it into cocaine and shipped to the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Beginning in 1992, the planting of coca expanded rapidly in Colombia. In
1995, it took off. Over the next five years, the amount of coca grown in
Colombia doubled. The U.S. government estimates that coca now covers some
123,000 hectares of the country, making Colombia the single largest source
of coca in the world. Combined with the coca brought into the country to be
processed, Colombia now exports three-quarters of the world's cocaine.
Even more dramatic was the shift to opium poppy, the plant from which heroin
is derived. Before the 1990s, opium poppy was little-known in Colombia. Now
it covers 7,500 hectares. That's enough to supply two-thirds of the American
heroin market.
Why did drug production suddenly soar in Colombia? In large part, coca
shifted over the border when government crackdowns in Peru and Bolivia
(helped by a fungus that attacked Peruvian coca) pushed production down in
those countries. Opium poppy arrived after Colombian traffickers cut deals
with southeast Asian gangs, who traditionally dominated heroin production
and smuggling, in order to get involved in the American heroin market.
More crucial, though, was the chaos in the Colombian countryside. Leftist
guerrillas who held effective control over huge swaths of Colombia,
especially in the south, encouraged the traffickers to develop coca and
opium poppy on their lands. In exchange for protection from the government,
the rebels "taxed" the drug producers. The traffickers got a steady supply
of drugs, and the rebels got a lucrative new source of financing for their
war.
The current civil war in Colombia has been going on for 35 years, at varying
levels of intensity. Why had this shift not occurred before? Because the
guerrillas had never before been so strong. Many experts feel they owed
their new strength to the American government's decision to isolate
president Ernesto Samper.
Ethan Nadelmann, a former Princeton professor, is now head of the Lindesmith
Centre, a drug policy reform group in New York City, and a leading critic of
the War on Drugs. In Colombia, he says, the U.S. "did the stupidest thing we
could have imagined. We had a guy there, President Samper, who was taking
money from some traffickers, but this was the same guy who had done more to
take out traffickers than any other president had."
"We were so hung up on the corruption end of it that we went after him with
all we had and punished the country to get rid of him. In two or three years
of punishing Samper, we weakened the central state, we weakened the civilian
government."
With Colombia's government isolated and forced to focus its meagre resources
on the fight against the drug cartels, the rebels rapidly expanded their
territorial control. Drug producers were invited into rebel-controlled
lands, creating a bonanza for the guerrillas which financed new weapons
purchases. The main rebel faction, known by its Spanish acronym, FARC
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), is now the best-financed insurgent
group in the world. Estimates vary, but the FARC probably makes between $200
million and $500 million U.S. a year "taxing" coca and opium poppy, making
it powerful out of all proportion to its numbers. The FARC's 17,000 fighters
are far better equipped than their adversaries in the Colombian army. They
are even better paid.
In response to the rising power of the guerrillas, and the weakness of the
central government, rich landowners and major drug traffickers -- who are
often one and the same -- formed their own paramilitary groups. The
paramilitaries commonly massacre and terrorize innocent peasants, usually to
frighten the population away from supporting the rebels. But sometimes it's
also done to force farmers to turn over their property to the
paramilitaries' financial backers.
During the same period of government weakness that fostered the growth of
the rebels, the paramilitaries rose to become political powers unto
themselves, with independent financing and strong control in many regions.
Again, the illegal trade in drugs was their springboard. Not only have the
paramilitaries profited by offering protection to traffickers, they are
heavily involved in refining and smuggling drugs themselves. A top
paramilitary leader admitted on Colombian television that "drug trafficking
and drug traffickers probably finance 70 per cent" of the paramilitaries'
operations.
These paramilitaries have long been known to have close ties to Colombia's
official military. Army units have frequently allowed paramilitary
operations to occur in regions they control and, in some cases, have
actively facilitated massacres. The Colombian government has tried for years
to break the link between the army and the paramilitaries, but, in its
weakened condition, it has failed.
The economy, meanwhile, has crumbled. After decades of economic expansion,
Colombia is now in its worst economic recession since the 1930s, leaving one
in five Colombians without work. Here, too, the fingerprints of the illegal
drug trade can be found. Corruption, the standard tool of illegal drug
trafficking, erodes the quality of governance, which in turn hampers
development efforts, as a recent United Nations report noted. And the huge
profits of narco-trafficking create serious structural distortions to the
economy over time.
Not the least of these is money laundering. Drug traffickers, who need to
hide the origins of their profits, are willing to take a percentage loss on
each dollar in the process of laundering it. So, for example, they will set
up legitimate businesses that operate below cost to encourage a high cash
flow-through. The money that comes out afterward is "laundered." But these
businesses undercut their honest competitors, driving them out.
All this leaves Colombia as it is today, seven years after Pablo Escobar was
shot dead. The murder rate is 10 times that in the U.S. -- on average, one
person is killed every 20 minutes. The kidnapping rate is the highest in the
world -- an average of seven people are seized every day. Powerful guerrilla
factions dominate much of the countryside. Civil war has forced 1.5 million
people from their farms and villages into lives of misery and desperation.
And more drugs are being produced and shipped than ever before.
The sense that Colombia stands at the edge of chaos is everywhere. Days
before I arrived in Bogota, the capital's power stations were knocked out by
rebel attacks. A planned interview with the national police chief was
cancelled when two massacres and a major guerrilla attack occurred within
the span of five days. In the choked streets of Bogota, refugees from the
carnage in the countryside stood at traffic intersections, babies in arm,
begging for spare coins.
Kidnapping has become an industry in its own right, making even the main
streets of major cities dangerous. Early one afternoon, on a busy street, my
Canadian photographer, Liam Scott, was approached by an English-speaking man
in a suit who claimed to be a police officer. He said tourists must register
with the police and he pointed Mr. Scott toward an unmarked building. Having
been warned that this approach is used by robbers and kidnappers, Mr. Scott
bolted in the other direction.
If the cities are dangerous, the countryside is a minefield. Guerrillas
often erect roadblocks and search vehicles to see if they've netted
landowners, businessmen, foreigners or anyone else who may be worth a
ransom. They call it "miraculous fishing."
Monica de Greiff has a summer home two hours' drive from Bogota that she
hasn't seen in years. She can't take the short drive there because, she
says, even with armed bodyguards, "I'm scared."
Two per cent of Colombia's population of 39 million has left the country
since 1996 and every young, educated person I met in Bogota is desperately
looking for a way to join them. Aside from government officials, everyone I
spoke with -- whether refugee, student, activist, or cab driver -- believes
this nation of bounteous natural riches and beauty will suffer even worse
torments in the future.
l
The common strand interwoven through Colombia's woes is drug prohibition.
Jaime Ruiz, senior adviser to the current president, Andres Pastrana, says,
"as long as there are drugs, the other problems become bigger. It is
fuelling the rest of the problems." The illegal drug trade is not the source
of all of Colombia's problems; violence, civil strife, and corruption have
plagued the country since independence. But illegal drugs are like gasoline
poured on smouldering fires. As Mr. Ruiz wrote in a key government
statement, illegal drug trafficking in Colombia is fostering violence,
corruption and instability "on a scale comparable only to the era of
Prohibition in the United States."
Mr. Ruiz's comparison of Colombia's plight with that of the U.S. during
alcohol prohibition is provocative yet insightful. The mayhem of the
Prohibition era was fuelled not by alcohol itself, but by illegal alcohol.
By banning alcohol, the U.S. took the trade in that profitable drug away
from law-abiding companies, leaving it to organized crime. Violence and
corruption exploded.
In the same way, many are now saying, Colombia's woes are fuelled not by
drugs but by illegal drugs. There was a major, worldwide, legal cocaine
trade long before the drug was banned in the early 20th century. Farmers in
South America and elsewhere grew coca peacefully, as they would any other
crop. Producers of cocaine included good corporate citizens such as Merck in
Germany and Parke, Davis in the U.S. Cocaine retailers included
neighbourhood pharmacies and, famously, Coca Cola. Much the same was true of
opium and heroin. Neither drug was associated with violence, corruption,
rebels, paramilitaries or "drug lords." Only when cocaine, opium and heroin
were banned did the trade in these drugs become the domain of organized
crime. And only then did these drugs become intimately linked to murder,
bribery, civil unrest and enrichment of gangsters like Pablo Escobar.
When the U.S. legalized alcohol in 1933, the trade was effectively taken out
of the hands of gangsters like Al Capone and returned to law-abiding
companies like Seagram and Budweiser. The mayhem associated with alcohol all
but vanished.
So Mr. Ruiz's comparison of Colombia's situation with that of the U.S.
during Prohibition invites a question: If the solution to the violence and
corruption of the American Prohibition era was to legalize alcohol, would
the violence and corruption in Colombia be eased by legalizing cocaine and
heroin?
Mr. Ruiz, who says he has "read a lot about the Prohibition era," answers
the question bluntly. "From the Colombian point of view, (legalization) is
the easy solution. I mean, just legalize it and we won't have any more
problems. Probably in five years we wouldn't even have guerrillas. No
problems. We (would) have a great country with no problems."
The profits of the drug trade would no longer buy guns for rebels,
paramilitaries and drug lords. They would no longer corrupt officials and
institutions or undermine the legitimate economy. Instead, drug trade
profits would go to law-abiding companies who could even be taxed on their
profits.
However, Mr. Ruiz quickly adds, legalization might cause drug consumption in
other countries to go up, so he's not ready to support it. But he wishes
there were more open discussions at the international level of alternatives,
including legalization. "I, myself, am not sure what the solution is."
Mr. Ruiz's candour is rare in official circles. The American government
disapproves of discussing alternatives to current policies, and Colombia,
the third-largest recipient of American foreign aid in the world, cannot
buck the U.S.
Not surprisingly, then, the Colombian government intends to deal with drugs
by once again attacking illegal producers and traffickers. As President
Pastrana recently told the Los Angeles Times in words that echoed his
predecessors, "our goal is to break the spine of the cartels." Drug fields,
he wrote in the Citizen, "have spread like an oil stain through our Amazon
territory."
As a key part of what it calls "Plan Colombia," his government is creating
army units that will, with the backing of attack helicopters, drive into
rebel-dominated territories in the south and destroy these coca and opium
poppy fields. The U.S. will finance the operation with a $1.3-billion U.S.
aid package. President Clinton made that official with a visit to the
Colombian city of Cartagena last week.
Once again, the War on Drugs will become a literal war.
Ms. de Greiff, who is affiliated with the opposition party in Colombia, says
of the Plan Colombia, "It's a plan for Colombia for the United States, but
it's not a 'Plan Colombia' for Colombia." A newspaper columnist in Bogota
put it succinctly in a headline: "El Plan Washington."
Robert White, a former American ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador, and
former No. 2 man with the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, is president of the Centre
for International Policy in Washington D.C. He, too, is critical of the
planned military offensive. "If you read the original Plan Colombia, not the
one that was written in Washington but the original Plan Colombia, there's
no mention of military drives against the FARC rebels. Quite the contrary.
(President Pastrana) says the FARC is part of the history of Colombia and a
historical phenomenon, he says, and they must be treated as Colombians."
But, Mr. White claims, when the Colombian government came to Washington
looking for aid for its peace and development plan, the Americans wanted the
anti-drug military drive. "They come and ask for bread," Mr. White says
disgustedly, "and you give them stones."
Many critics of the military attack plan, both inside and outside Colombia,
think this coming war is even less likely to produce lasting good than the
war against the cartels. Robert White points to the superior equipment,
motivation, and experience of the guerrillas. These factors, plus a terrain
dominated by mountains and jungle, mean "there's no way that this thing can
work and we're going to find that out."
Human-rights workers worry that the drive will intensify murder and terror
directed at civilian farmers, a standard tactic used by all sides. The
anti-drug attack may mean more atrocities and more refugees begging on the
streets of Bogota.
The futility of these drug-war plans is something Mr. White feels
personally. At the American Embassy in Bogota, "I was in charge of
co-ordinating the counter-narcotics program," he says. "I nearly got four
very fine young DEA (drug enforcement agency) agents killed by authorizing
an operation. And then three months later the chief of the DEA (in Bogota)
was killed. And all of this sacrifice and hard work and resources was all
for nothing because it turned out that the chief of the national police and
the chief of the special narcotics unit were in the pay of the drug
traffickers."
Monica de Greiff, too, despairs. She feels Colombia today is even worse off
than it was when Pablo Escobar and the drug lords terrorized the nation.
These should be happy days for Ms. de Greiff. Earlier this year, she finally
gave up her last bodyguard. "I can walk in the streets alone, I can go and
shop alone." But the dark mood in the streets and shops is draining. At her
law office, Ms. de Greiff gets "three or four calls a day from people trying
to go to live in the States. Really, you don't see the future here in
Colombia."
That's a bitter reality to accept, she says, after so many "good people,
police officers, military officers, and judges have died." This wasn't how
it was supposed to be after fighting and winning the greatest victories the
War on Drugs has ever known.


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