Officials Visiting This Week Press for Continued Funding of an Antidrug Strategy and Passage of a Free-Trade Agreement. Washington - Colombian officials are mounting a full-court diplomatic press in the United States this week as they seek to stave off a fall from the high-flying status their country achieved in Washington as a favored ally of the Bush administration. Colombia was promoted as a Latin success story by President Bush but denigrated by human rights advocates and some members of Congress as a failed state. Now, it's likely to find itself far from center stage in a Washington grappling with the economic crisis and still finding its foreign-policy footing. [continues 697 words]
A Deal Is Underway to Increase US Involvement in the Fight Against Mexican Drug Lords. Alarmed by rising threats to Mexican law and order from ever-more-brazen drug lords, the Bush administration is quietly negotiating a counternarcotics aid package with the Mexican government that would increase US involvement in a drug war south of the border. The fact that Mexico - which has historically been averse to any assistance from the US that could be construed as a breach of its sovereignty - is seeking the increased aid shows how serious a threat President Felipe Calderon sees drug gangs posing to his country. [continues 1020 words]
Illegal And Easily Made Narcotics Such As Ecstasy And Meth Spread Rapidly, Break Traditional Trafficking Patterns WASHINGTON - The dime-a-dozen storage unit in San Gabriel, Calif., yielded a big find: Law-enforcement officials on Sunday uncovered 70 pounds of Asian methamphetamine, carrying a street value of $3 million. The largest US seizure of the pure and potent Asian variety of the stimulant, it was also the latest evidence of the global rise of powerful synthetic illegal drugs. Two decades after the naturally derived drugs cocaine and heroin washed over global markets, this new peril is hitting shores from Asia to Europe like a tsunami. Synthetic drugs - principally amphetamines, methamphetamine, and the "party drug" Ecstasy - are already heavily used in some Northern "developed" countries but are now catching on among other youth populations. [continues 906 words]
Combatting Terrorism, Like Narcotics, Is Expected To Involve Unlikely Partners WASHINGTON - It is a long war, often unseen by Americans, and has no foreseeable end. It requires the US to align itself with regimes that might not otherwise be to its liking, but this is overlooked for the benefit of the war. Lots of money is spent, some citizens believe the war tramples their rights, and with no victory in sight, support for the war wanes. This is the war on drugs - which the US has been waging at home and abroad for three decades and counting. [continues 813 words]
As 'Plan Colombia' Seals Off Traditional Air And Ground Routes For Drug, Waterways Become Popular Alternatives. The waters of the Caucaya River in Colombia's southern jungle roil like dark varnish as the armored gunboat advances head-on into the river bank's tangled vegetation. Menacing assault rifles in hand, Colombian marines jump to the oozing jungle floor and slash their way to the interior. Their objective: the hidden forest labs that turn coca leaf into coca paste, the basis for powdery cocaine. [continues 976 words]
BOGOTA -- A chilling New Year's resolution echoed through Barrancabermeja, an industrial city in Colombia's north. As 2001 dawned, armed paramilitary groups put out the word that they had a hit list of 400 people in the city, including union leaders, leftist guerrillas and their suspected sympathizers, and common thugs. Five months later, they've kept their word. After a wave of violence in which gun-wielding bands took over several city neighborhoods and went house to house searching for their victims, more than 200 of the targets are dead, and others have fled. [continues 885 words]
In a region dependent on coca-growing, Colombia's president tries to sell alternative crop program. At the livestock arena of this jungle outpost in the world's principal coca-growing region, Colombian President Andres Pastrana is kicking off the "soft side" of Plan Colombia - the US-backed program to end the crop's cultivation in the south and slash the global supply of cocaine. It's been five months since the multi-billion-dollar plan's "hard side," or military component began, over objections from local leaders, international environmental and rights groups, critics in the US Congress, and dubious European and South American governments. [continues 911 words]
US-Peru inquiry begins this week into downing of missionary plane as drug interdiction flights halted. Behind Peru's tragic shootdown of an American missionary plane is an aggressive drug-interdiction program that has earned Peru nothing but praise from the United States - until now. The Peruvian Air Force's attack Friday on a Cessna aircraft is revealing to Americans the extreme measures foreign governments sometimes take in the US-promoted drug war - measures that in some cases would not be tolerated at home. The shootdown killed an American missionary and her infant daughter. [continues 919 words]
TIJUANA, MEXICO - Jorge Castanada is a Tijuana cop, not a film critic. So he knows something about life on the streets of this border town. But if you ask him about the film "Traffic," which opened here this week, he gives it two thumbs up. "It was realistic, it showed the dark side of the drug trade we can't deny exists here. It also takes up the reality of drug use" in the United States. But many Mexicans are less-than enamored with this Oscar-nominated flick - and several other recent films. After years of bemoaning their low profile in Hollywood, Mexicans are finding that center stage is, well, not all fun and Zorro. [continues 343 words]
President Fox's Crusade Is Part Of A Promised Effort Toward National Renewal. CIUDAD JUAREZ, MEXICO - Promising more resources and fresh law-enforcement battalions, Mexican President Vicente Fox has declared a "war without mercy" against drug trafficking. Everyone has heard that before. But this time there are signs that someone from the opposing camp is listening. First, the governor of the drug-riddled northern-border state of Chihuahua, who had spent the past year railing against corruption and lack of will in the national government's antinarcotics effort, was shot Jan. 17 by a former policewoman. Two days later, one of Mexico's most notorious drug traffickers escaped from prison with inside help. [continues 749 words]
Second Of Three Us-trained Battalions Graduated Friday. Welcome to Putumayo, ground zero in the US-Colombia drug war. On Friday, the second of three Colombian Army battalions graduated from an intensive training course, led by US Green Berets, here and is now ready for action. This weekend, more than 700 peasants kicked off a crop-substitution project in the region. Just five years ago, aerial maps showed only sparse patches of bushy coca plants growing in this river-laced jungle region in southern Colombia. Then came what campesinos here call la bonanza, or the coca boom. [continues 683 words]
Alternative development. If Putumayo's farmers are not convinced that crop substitution - pulling out coca bushes and putting bananas, palms or cattle in their place - is going to work for them, they will continue with coca. And the flow of powder to the US and Europe will continue. Originally under Plan Colombia, Putumayo's coca fields were to be sprayed indiscriminately with defoliants. But after heavy protests from local officials, the plan was modified to give small coca growers a reprieve: Their land will not be sprayed if they agree to take part in a voluntary crop-substitution program. [continues 431 words]
Guerrillas blockade food, supplies in a coca-growing region to protest anti-narcotics initiative. For five days, Omar Ramos, his wife, and their five children have been sitting on a concrete curb outside the airport of this Colombian jungle town, waiting for a military helicopter to take them away from the frontier that for four years was their home. "There's no food for the kids, there's no transportation, no gas or lights, and there's no work for me," says Mr. Ramos. "Why would we stay? How could we stay?" [continues 814 words]
US aid in war on drugs draws fire from critics who say human rights are being overlooked. All Dora Isabel Camacho Serpa wanted was the "quiet miracle of a normal life." Instead, the midwife and neighborhood leader was pulled from her family's modest home in the northern coastal town of Cienaga by paramilitary gunmen Monday, police officials say. Her husband and children found her in a nearby ditch, shot in the back of the head. Nine other residents of her poor neighborhood suffered the same fate in this country afflicted with staggering abuse of human rights. [continues 534 words]
Clinton Visits Colombia Today To Bolster A $7.5 Billion Antidrug Offensive. President Bill Clinton's visit to this Caribbean city today marks the beginning of an unprecedented level of American financial - and military - commitment to this struggling nation. Last month, the US Congress approved a whopping $1.3 billion aid package for Colombia - the world's biggest supplier of illicit drugs. That's more money spent over the next two years than the US spent on military aid to El Salvador throughout the 1980s. [continues 1081 words]
AGUAYTIA, Peru -- Standing knee-high in a field of young green palm plants, Dionisio Flores Ortiz recalls how not long ago he and the farmers with plots around his would have been up to their waists in coca -- the raw material for cocaine. ``Now we're going to be trafficking something else,'' he says, as he pulls on a palm that will be harvested for hearts of palm. ``The farmers here just want to support their families and get a little ahead. As long as there's a market for these new products, this change can be permanent.'' [continues 577 words]
Today Colombian President Andres Pastrana is lobbying Washington for $1.6 billion to fight drugs. AGUAYTIA, PERU -- Standing knee high in a field of young green palm plants, Dionisio Flores Ortiz recalls how not long ago he and the farmers with plots around his would have been up to their waists in coca - the raw material for cocaine. "Now we're going to be trafficking something else," he says, breaking into a smile as he pulls on a palm that will eventually be harvested for hearts of palm. "The farmers here just want to support their families and get a little ahead. As long as there's a market for these new products, this change can be permanent." [continues 874 words]
Congress could vote on a $1.6 billion package that is expected to be approved as early as this week. BOGOTA, COLOMBIA-By post-cold-war logic, Colombia's guerrilla war should have ended some time in the nineties, as other ideological conflicts in Latin America did. Colombia's war has not merely dragged on; it has intensified. The reason? In recent years, the country's insurgent parties have built up a sizable war chest via close association with cocaine and heroin traffickers. Through "taxation" of drug production and charging for crop protection and other services, Colombia's guerrillas - and increasingly the much-feared paramilitary groups - have built up an annual income estimated at $500 million. With this backdrop of a drug-fueled war, the US is proposing a $1.6 billion aid package for Colombia - aimed primarily at eradicating drug crops, but many observers worry cash will be used against guerrillas. In Colombia, most people take it as a given that warfare and narcotics production are closely intertwined, and that until the two are uncoupled a conflict with terrible civilian costs is likely to continue. [continues 739 words]
Two months after officials dug up nine bodies near Juarez, pressure to locate the 'disappeared' mounts. As any mother would, Esperanza Gomez de Ontiveros remembers the day her son disappeared from the streets of Ciudad Juarez as if it were yesterday. She can still picture Victor Hugo, an armaments specialist with the Chihuahua state judicial police, stopping by after work on Sept. 2, 1996, to celebrate the start of his vacation. "He was happy about his time off when he left for his house," says the retired teacher, whose middle-class neighborhood sits just a few miles from the Texas border. "Then three blocks from here, neighbors saw his car surrounded by other cars with heavily armed men in dark clothing. They said Victor tried to escape," she adds, "but the men shoved him into one of their cars, and they sped away. We never saw him or heard a word about him again." [continues 1220 words]
A Bicontinental Investigation Is Leading To Arrests And Searches For More Victims Of The Powerful Juarez Cartel. The disappearance of a US Drug Enforcement Administration operative may have pushed officials to aggressively search for more victims of the Juarez cartel's drug wars, observers here say. Although US officials have not confirmed the agent is missing, the Mexican press is reporting the DEA agent - one of four officials assigned to the US Consulate in Juarez - had a car equipped with a tracking device that led investigators to a shed on one of the ranches being searched. [continues 1126 words]
