A Slippery Latin Slope

By DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

The news was worse than the CIA had ever imagined. After reviewing a fresh batch of spy-satellite photos and intelligence reports from the ground, agency analysts this month concluded that Colombia produced 520 metric tons of cocaine last year, three times what the agency had previously calculated. Then last week, Administration drug czar Barry McCaffrey made public the other CIA bombshell: Colombia's opium-poppy cultivation also jumped 23% in 1999. All told, says McCaffrey, 80% of the cocaine and heroin entering the U.S. comes from or through Colombia, causing 52,000 deaths here each year, along with $110 billion in health-care, crime and lost-productivity costs.

What happened? Weren't we supposed to be winning the drug war in Latin America? The infamous Medellin and Cali cartels were busted in the mid-1990s. And since 1995, successful eradication programs have reduced coca cultivation by two-thirds in Peru and by more than half in Bolivia.

It turns out, however, that Colombian traffickers weren't ready to raise the white flag. The billion-dollar cartels were replaced by more than 40 independent organizations that are difficult to penetrate and whose leaders have been just as enterprising as the old kingpins. When Peru and Bolivia put the squeeze on coca cultivation, the traffickers moved their crops to southern Colombia, which the government in Bogota had largely ceded to Marxist guerrillas. Then, improved refining techniques enabled traffickers to increase output. To combat the growers, the White House has asked for $1.6 billion in aid. For foreign aid, it's a staggering sum. If Congress approves the money--and Republicans there seem eager to--Colombia will become the third largest recipient of U.S. assistance, behind Israel and Egypt.

Almost three-fourths of the $1.6 billion would pay for military hardware and training, including 30 top-of-the-line Blackhawk helicopters. The rest would be economic and law-enforcement assistance, which White House officials have ordered U.S. aid agencies to pump into Colombia as fast as its government can absorb the dollars. All that money would be used to battle not only the drug traffickers but also the guerrillas who are aligned with them and who have waged a 35-year insurgency against the government. What's more, U.S. officials say privately that the $1.6 billion would be just the first installment. Clinton's successor would have to pump in hundreds of millions more. No American combat troops are planned, but otherwise the U.S. would be joining the war in Colombia in a big way.

Politics at home, however, is pushing Clinton into this war as much as the threat from abroad. During its first term, the Administration shifted money from blocking the flow of drugs from Latin America to trying to reduce demand at home. Now, in the second term, "the Republicans believe Clinton is vulnerable on the drug issue," says Myles Frechette, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. During the past two years, conservative House members complained that the White House was ignoring Colombia--and began working directly with Colombian National Police commander Jose Serrano to slip weapons he wanted into appropriations bills.

Clinton has given the Republicans plenty of ammunition. Ever since the departure in 1998 of his senior counselor Thomas ("Mack") McLarty, who had the Latin America portfolio, Colombia has been off the White House's radar screen. From February to June of last year, a period during which the Colombian crisis worsened, the top aide for Latin America on the National Security Council was detached to deal with Kosovo. With Republicans threatening last summer to ram through their own billion-dollar aid package, McCaffrey began lobbying the White House for a plan of its own.

The CIA, meanwhile, began warning that Colombia was spiraling out of control. The coca fields in the south were protected by guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an 11,000-strong force, which, along with the 6,000-member National Liberation Army, operates in 40% of the country. The FARC was earning at least $100 million a year from the traffickers. Its well-armed guerrillas, who have choppers, signal-intelligence equipment and even R.-and-R. resorts in Panama, were becoming better paid and equipped than Colombian army soldiers.

The Administration had cooled relations considerably with Colombia's previous President, Ernesto Samper, accused of taking $6 million in campaign contributions from narcotraffickers. But current President Andres Pastrana, who was elected in 1998, is considered a hero in Washington. Senior State Department aides began working with him last year to carve out a long-term aid deal and antidrug alliance.

There's just one problem: Pastrana is more popular on the Potomac than in Colombia, where unemployment is at 20% and the nation is enduring its worst recession in 70 years. According to a Human Rights Watch report released last week, the Colombian army is still fighting guerrillas with the help of some 5,000 paramilitary thugs "responsible for gross human-rights violations." Though the White House publicly insists its aid will fight drugs and not guerrillas, Clinton aides privately admit it will be impossible to separate the two in many future battles.

Pastrana says the only way he can reverse the slide is with American aid, not only to fight drugs but also to shore up a crumbling economy and judicial system that has enabled the traffickers and guerrillas to flourish. "We know that we have to take difficult and unpopular measures," says Pastrana. That's good, because an awful lot ails his nation. The question will be whether Colombia--and the U.S.--can survive the cure.