Pubdate: Sat, 20 May 2000
Source: Moscow Times, The (Russia)
Copyright: 2000 The Moscow Times
Contact:  Ulitsa Pravdy, Dom 24, 125865 Moscow, Russia
Fax: (7-095) 937-3393
Website: http://www.moscowtimes.ru/
Author: Robert Dowd
Note: Robert Dowd, a retired U.S. Air Force officer, is an organizer of the
Veterans for More Effective Drug Strategies. He contributed this comment to
the Los Angeles Times.

INTERVENTION IN COLOMBIA

U.S. demand created the drug crisis situation in Colombia, and our military 
intervention there merely places U.S. troops and civilian contractors in 
harm's way in an effort to salvage our failed drug policy.

The U.S. administration has proposed, and congressional Republicans seem 
prepared to accept, a $1.7 billion military aid package to Colombia. This 
formidable expenditure builds on existing aid - Colombia is already the 
largest recipient of U.S. military aid outside the Middle East - and 
involves us more deeply in a decades-old civil war, as well as perpetuates 
programs that have failed to control drug production.

As a veteran, I know the importance of a clear military objective, of 
having the resources needed for success, and a clear exit strategy.

In Colombia, we are sending a handful of helicopters and a few hundred troops.

Yet we were unable to control a smaller Vietnam with hundreds of 
helicopters and half a million troops.

The Colombia military intervention seems poorly planned, unrealistic and 
doomed to fail. After a few years of military support, we will face the 
choice of accepting defeat or gradually being pulled into an expensive 
military quagmire in which victory is unattainable.

The reason the United States is becoming more involved in Colombia's 
internal affairs is that the U.S. government's efforts to reduce cocaine 
availability have failed miserably, and drug money has strengthened the 
rebel armies.

We already spend hundreds of millions of dollars annually to eradicate 
crops in South America, especially in Colombia. According to a 1999 report 
by the General Accounting Office, "Despite two years of extensive 
herbicides spraying, U.S. estimates show there has not been any net 
reduction in coca cultivation - net coca cultivation actually increased 50 
percent."

Rather than escalate a failed policy, we should recognize that the present 
strategy cannot succeed and look for new approaches. According to the Rand 
Corp., eradication is the least effective way to reduce drug use. Rand's 
research found that $34 million spent on drug treatment in the United 
States would have the same effect as $783 million in eradication 
expenditures. Naturally, the less cocaine the United States consumes, the 
less incentive growers in Colombia will have to grow coca. That would be 
the best eradication policy.

Further, we need to face the difficult and politically controversial 
question of whether prohibition enforced by the drug war provides better 
control of the drug market than regulation enforced by administrative law. 
If we want to get international cartels and urban gangs out of the drug 
market, we must determine how to control the market through civil law 
rather than criminal law. The administration's most frequent rationale for 
pumping millions of dollars in aid and tons of military equipment into 
Colombia is the need to fight "narco-guerrillas." In fact, there are 
reports that all sides - including the side the United States supports, the 
Colombian military - have been tied to the drug trade.

It seems that we are supporting one group of drug traffickers while 
opposing another group.

Finally, one of the most troubling aspects of the aid package working its 
way through Congress is its near-total ignorance of the massive human 
rights violations being committed by forces allied with the Colombian 
government. According to Human Rights Watch, the Colombian army tolerates, 
aids and abets human rights violations. Terror is so rampant in Colombia 
that most human rights organizations have closed their Colombia offices.

Yet just 4 percent of the aid package would go toward the improvement of 
human rights and judicial reform.

The Colombian aid package is nothing more than an introduction to a 
quagmire and an escalation of failed drug policy.

The administration and Congress should step back and formulate goals they 
want to achieve in Colombia and then determine how best to achieve them 
without promoting bloodshed and lawlessness. 
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart