Pubdate: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 Source: Arizona Daily Star (AZ) Copyright: 2000 Pulitzer Publishing Co. Contact: http://www.azstarnet.com/ Author: Robin Kirk Pacific News Service. DRUG WAR POLITICS DEMAND THE HARD LINE AND SPENDING A BILLION OR SO A billion dollars seems like a lot to spend for guilty pleasure. But that is what the Clinton administration proposes in Colombia - a billion dollars to fight drugs this year, and another half billion in 2001. There will be arguments in Congress, but what is really at stake is pleasure, not politics. Americans seek pleasure, and so buy cocaine and heroin in record amounts - but we are ashamed of what we perceive as a weakness. Blame the work ethic or our Puritan heritage, TV, boredom. The end result is that even as we buy certain drugs, we make those drugs illegal. For three decades, the United States has spent billions to buy drugs and billions more to wage a "war" against those who sell and use them, prompting us to arm ourselves as no modern nation ever has in peacetime. Yet illegal drugs remain cheaper, more potent, available and popular than ever. Presidential elections loom, but no candidate acknowledges the utter failure of the "war on drugs." Appearing tough on drugs remains a political necessity. Republicans and Democrats alike share a view encapsulated by Al Gore in a recent speech: cocaine and heroin are on the wrong side of the "fundamental line between right and wrong in our own minds and hearts." True, Colombia produces most of the cocaine and heroin bought in the United States. But Colombia may have little choice - the global marketplace wants no more of its coffee, cattle or bananas. As Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells has written, the cyber-empires need little from the likes of Colombia. Criminal activity becomes one of the few ways left to engage in the market - Castells calls it the "perverse connection." America's drug warriors want to kill coca and opium from the air. State Department pilots can spray herbicide in the morning and be back in time for cocktails, without touching toe to ground. It's like Kosovo, only here corn and beans suffer collateral damage. Clinton authorized the flights in 1994. By 1999, anyone with pen and paper could see the United States was losing dramatically - the area devoted to coca cultivation has exploded and now tops 222,000 acres and rising. Some argue that this is a direct result of U.S. policy. In the late 1980s, the United States cut the air routes that fed Peruvian and Bolivian coca to Colombian refiners. Instead of giving up, traffickers planted in Colombia and opened new areas along the border with Venezuela. The shift of coca to Colombia also helped strengthen Colombia's irregular armies. The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) make millions off drugs. So do the right-wing civilian irregulars known as paramilitaries who, with the acquiescence and at times open support of the army, control much of northern Colombia, where drugs are refined and packed for shipment. The resulting war has converted Colombia into what one observer calls an "archipelago of bloody little independent republics." In 1999 alone, Colombian authorities recorded more than 400 massacres carried out for political reasons. More than 1.5 million Colombians are internal refugees, double the number of Albanian Kosovars who fled Serbs at the peak of their terror. In short, the war on drugs has not only failed, it has helped push Colombia to the brink of dissolution. Will more cash help? The proposed plan, far from strengthening Colombia's faltering democracy, calls for opening the floodgates of military aid. And for the first time, Colombia's abusive military will be our closest allies - their criminal past is history, according to drug warriors (a conclusion disputed by Colombian and international human rights groups). Fresh from massive U.S. training and equipped with the latest in weaponry, the military will vanquish the "narco-guerrilla" threat and eliminate illegal drugs forever. There is, of course, no mention of the glaring fact that eradication has already failed. Now, it will fail under a cloud of U.S. tolerance for human rights abusers. Colombia faces a mortal paradox. The only Colombian products that developed countries will pay reliably and well for are cocaine and heroin - the best customers will continue to punish it for providing exactly what they demand. As one congressional aide explained to me, Democrats and Republicans agree that the American public wants to see action - not necessarily results - on drugs. "And the best way to do that is to say you are going to send money, a lot of money." What actually happens to the money is apparently, at least for the moment, beside the point. - --- MAP posted-by: Allan Wilkinson