President Bush's War On Terror Could Soon Be Fought On A New Front-in America's Backyard While U.S. special forces continue to hunt down remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan, a much less publicized front in the global war on terror may be about to open closer to home. The Bush administration is proposing going beyond the extensive counternarcotics assistance Washington now provides Colombia to help it take more aggressive action against three armed insurgent groups there. All three, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the National Liberation Army (ELN), and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), are on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations. [continues 571 words]
KILLING PABLO The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw. By Mark Bowden. Illustrated. 296 pp. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press. $25. In early 1993, Colombians were crouched in their homes, waiting for the next bomb to go off. They had already lived through one terror campaign led by the Medellin drug traffickers, who were fighting extradition to stand trial in the United States. The bombs and bribes worked that time. Pablo Escobar, head of the cartel, wound up in a cushy jail that he had built near his hometown and staffed with friendly guards. [continues 989 words]
Clinton Green-Lights $1.3 Billion For Drug Fight TRES ESQUINAS, COLOMBIABrig. Gen. Mario Montoya indicates 10 blue circles on a map of Colombia's southern coca-growing region, each representing a unit of up to 250 insurgents. Then, he points to a small red dot in the middle: "We are here." It is from this red dotthe Tres Esquinas Army basethat Colombia is launching its ambitious antinarcotics campaign, with 3,000 soldiers being trained by U.S. Special Forces and supplied with $1 billion worth of U.S. helicopters and other equipment. [continues 630 words]
Stopping Drug Smugglers On The High Seas ABOARD THE USCG CUTTER GALLATIN-The glistening Caribbean is a tourists' delight. But vacationers aren't the only ones cruising its turquoise waterways these days. The Windward Passage around the islands of Cuba, Hispaniola, and Jamaica is the most direct and favored route for drug smugglers piloting small, high-speed boats loaded with cocaine and marijuana bound for the United States. Nearly half the narcotics that entered the United States last year went through the Caribbean, 61 percent on "go-fast" smuggling boats specially designed to elude clunky cutters operated by the Coast Guard, the only U.S. law enforcement agency with authority to stop vessels on the high seas. These sleek crafts, powered by two to four 250 horsepower motors, ride low in the water, hugging the waves, almost invisible to radar or tracking aircraft. [continues 661 words]
On the hot desert flanks of Ciudad Juarez, just across the border from El Paso, each grim new find confirmed the worst fears of those who lived nearby. They had long feared that enemies and associates of the vicious Juarez drug cartel had been buried in the parchment-dry ranchland. As agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Mexican police began pulling remains from the earth, the question became not why but how many? At week's end, six bodies were recovered. Law-enforcement sources say they expect the tally to rise to 50 or more, but no one's really sure. "There are bodies all over the place here," says taxi driver Gerardo Avila as he watched the police dig. U.S. officials tried to put the best face on things, saying that the collaborative investigation shows a new level of cooperation between the two countries, whose relations have often been strained by charges of corruption. But U.S. law enforcement officials say Mexican drug gangs are still operating with impunity along the border. [continues 616 words]
PUERTO OSPINA, Colombia -- Sgt. Lerma Mezu swings his .50-caliber machine gun from one riverbank to another as his comrades peer over their M-60s into the dense foliage, fingers tensed on triggers. These Colombian marines are speeding up the wide, brown Putumayo River for a day's work in the drug- and guerrilla-infested southwestern jungle. Their mission: to find and destroy cocaine labs hidden deep in this no man's land. The Riverine Brigade is the first Colombian military unit to be trained by the U.S. Marines and supplied with surplus U.S. guns, fast boats, and flak jackets as part of a new push to roll back the country's exploding drug industry. No one has to tell them to be on guard; in the town where they're landing, a fellow marine was killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, last year. [continues 1486 words]
