The New York Times

Friday, April 21, 2000

COCAINE WAR

A special report.

Weave of Drugs and Strife in Colombia

By LARRY ROHTER

Part II: The Combatants

Part III: The American Role

Part IV: The People

Part V: The Hard Questions

MONTCLART, Colombia -- Nearly half the world's supply of cocaine originates within 150 miles of this isolated Colombian military outpost on the Putumayo River. So when Lt. Germ n Arenas and his anti-drug troops recently set out by boat, they knew that finding a target would be the easy part.

Four hours later, his squadron of young marines stopped and marched into the equatorial wilderness, guns at the ready. By nightfall, they had found three crude cocaine-processing laboratories in the jungle, more than 6,000 seedlings of a new, more potent variety of coca plant, a half-dozen large fields brimming with ripening coca bushes and four hapless peasants.

But after they destroyed as much as they could, arrested the peasants and headed back downriver, the soldiers left behind at least 200 more labs hidden in the dense, trackless jungle and thousands more acres of coca plants, visible from the air everywhere across southern Colombia.

Over all, to the growing alarm of the Clinton administration, which has been bankrolling much of the anti-drug fight here, coca production in Colombia has more than doubled in the past five years. Using recent satellite images, American officials estimate that the country now grows or processes more than 500 tons of cocaine a year, or some 90 percent of the world's supply, and that Putumayo and Caquet provinces are responsible for two-thirds of that.

But here as in many parts of southern Colombia, the army and the police dare not send spray planes and helicopters to eradicate the fields because the instant they appear, the aircraft invariably draw ground fire from the Marxist guerrilla forces that thrive on the drug trade.

The principal rebel group, the 15,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or F.A.R.C., has been fighting the government since the mid-1960's, financing their war for most of that time with kidnappings and extortions.

But that has changed sharply in recent years. With the smashing of the notorious Medell n and Cali cartels, the guerrillas gained greater access to a far more lucrative source of income: coca and heroin. Now the rebels provide protection and support to the dozens of smaller trafficking groups that have sprung up to replace the cartels, and they are earning, by the Colombian government's estimate, more than $1 million a day.

That, in turn, has blurred the lines of what was once painted in relatively simple terms as an ideological battle between a pair of left-wing insurgencies that enjoy almost no popular support and a flawed but functioning democracy. Along the way, the focus of the conflict has shifted so that while the government still controls most of the country's territory, the war itself is increasingly being fought over cocaine and heroin.

On one side is the popularly elected government of President Andr s Pastrana and its thin and poorly trained security forces. On the other are the increasingly well armed and richly financed leftist guerrillas. Equally menacing are the right-wing death squads, which have a long history of collusion with elements of the Colombian military and are also dealing in drugs.

"It is the only self-sustaining insurgency I have ever seen," said Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm, who is responsible for Latin America as commander in chief of the United States Southern Command. "There is no Cuba in back of it; there is no Soviet Union in back of it. It is this delicate merger of criminals, narco-traffickers with insurgents."

After nearly a decade of trying with little success to give government forces the edge in this confrontation, the White House and Congress are on the verge of the biggest gamble yet: a $1.6 billion package over two years that would beef up anti-drug training for the Colombian police and military and provide them with better equipment, including more than five dozen helicopters.

Critics in the United States and in the region worry that Washington is embracing an unrealistic plan. They say that Colombia lacks a concrete strategy for quickly getting the job done, that attacking cocaine at the source will be more difficult in Colombia than it was in neighboring countries, and that ultimately American military advisers will be drawn into the broader war between the guerrillas and the government.

THE COMBATANTS

Coca Brings Shooting From Many Directions

In the jungle and the farming villages, the distinction that the Pentagon and the State Department try to draw between arming an anti-drug war and avoiding Colombia's long-running civil conflict is blurred. The drug trade finances both the leftist insurgents and their rivals, the paramilitary death squads, who often operate with the tacit support of Colombian Army units.

"When people are shooting at you, it is hard to determine their immediate affiliation," said William Ledwith, director of international operations for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. "Does it really make a difference if you are attacked by the F.A.R.C., the E.L.N., by paramilitaries or by a gang of narcotics traffickers wanting to defend their laboratories?" he asked, using the acronyms for the guerrillas groups. "To me, all the bullets are the same."

The rapid expansion of coca production in Colombia is in large part a consequence of two developments. One is what is known as the "balloon effect" -- the reappearance of a problem in a new place after it has been squeezed in another -- which followed successful American-led campaigns against coca growers in Peru and Bolivia.

The other, more recent development was a crucial miscalculation by President Pastrana. Elected on the promise of ending the debilitating war against the guerrillas, he tried to lure them to the negotiating table in 1998 by granting the leading guerrilla group control over a chunk of territory larger than Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. The guerrillas quickly turned it into an armed protectorate and a coca-growing factory, and the peace talks have floundered.

The breakup of the powerful Medell n and Cali cartels -- the D.E.A. once called the latter "the most dangerous criminal group in history" -- was originally expected to cripple the Colombian drug business. But their demise actually served to spur coca cultivation in more remote regions of the country and to foster unholy alliances between new drug gangs on one side and the leftist guerrillas and paramilitary forces on the other.

Just five years ago, Putumayo and neighboring Caquet province were perhaps the poorest and most neglected areas of the country. Today, they have become a paradise for coca growers, with more than 100,000 acres cultivated under the protection of the largest rebel group, F.A.R.C.

Colombian trafficking groups have not only pushed aside Peru and Bolivia, the traditional sources of raw coca leaf, but also have moved aggressively into the heroin business, replacing Southeast Asia and Afghanistan as the source of most of the heroin seized in the United States.

For the Colombian military, that is a formidable challenge.

Though the national armed forces look strong on paper, with more than 100,000 soldiers, barely a third of them are ready for fighting. Under a widely criticized law that reflects the class prejudice and favoritism that run through Colombian society, high school graduates are forbidden to participate in combat.

The Colombian 90th Marine Battalion, to which Lieutenant Arenas, 28, and his teenage soldiers belong, patrols more than 1,500 miles of waterways in a network of four major rivers with barely 1,000 men and a handful of boats.

"For an area like this, a thousand men is nothing," Lieutenant Arenas said as his gunboat, the A.R.C. Leticia, equipped with two cannons, two machine guns and a pair of grenade launchers, chugged up the Putumayo River, with only the sound of its motors breaking the quiet. "Even though my guys are motivated, skilled and happy to be here, they face a lot of limitations."

THE AMERICAN ROLE

Shoestring Operation Welcomes Assistance

The situation on the ground in Colombia had been eroding throughout the 1990's. But in 1994, just as the F.A.R.C. was beginning its big advance, the Clinton administration's relations with the Colombian government went into a deep freeze after Washington received information that President-elect Ernesto Samper had accepted $6 million in campaign contributions from drug cartels.

Normal ties resumed with the election of Mr. Pastrana in 1998. But it was not until the F.A.R.C. launched a nationwide offensive that brought it within striking distance of Bogot last July that the real dimensions of the crisis began registering in Washington.

Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the director of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy and before that the commander of American military forces in Latin America, was the first to visit, and immediately began pushing President Clinton for emergency aid. That pressure, along with the major rebel action in July, convinced the White House of the seriousness of the situation in Colombia.

"It is essential the Colombian government restore state authority in this crucial region," General McCaffrey said during a more recent visit to a military base where three new anti-narcotics battalions, trained and financed with American assistance, are being formed. "The rapid expansion of drug production in Colombia, almost entirely in zones dominated by armed illegal groups, constitutes a drug emergency."

The biggest single item in the administration's proposed assistance package, which has been approved by the House and is pending in the Senate, is 63 helicopters, divided between 33 Bell UH-1N models and 30 more modern Sikorsky UH-60L Blackhawks, which are equipped with night vision equipment and special armor. As the guerrillas and traffickers are aware, once training programs for crews and the construction of hangars are taken into account, the earliest date for complete delivery of the American-supplied equipment would be late next year.

Nevertheless, the prospect that American aid may soon begin flowing clearly excites the weary soldiers here. "Tell them we need air support, like the police get for their operations," said Lt. Gustavo Lievano, the marine unit's second in command.

A sergeant wanted to know, "How much more money are they going to give us to buy intelligence from informants?"

Illustrating the shoestring nature of operations here, on this mission Lt. Arenas was relying on walkie-talkies he paid for out of his own pocket while in the United States last year. Sometimes, even having enough gasoline for boats can be a problem.

But to some in Washington, the prospect of increased American involvement in Colombia is viewed much more warily.

"Before we quadruple our military aid and embark on an open-ended, costly commitment, the Colombian government needs to come up with a workable strategy," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. "And our own administration needs to explain in detail what its goals are, what it expects to achieve at what cost over what period of time, and what the risks are, both to the thousands of Colombian civilians who will be caught in the middle when the war intensifies and to our own military advisers there.

"The Colombian government wants a blank check. That is not going to happen."

On the Colombian side, a recent poll shows that a majority of Colombians favor American intervention.

"Pastrana has shown that he doesn't know how to deal with this situation," said Diego Bedoya Hurtado, a Bogot accountant. "Only the Americans are going to be able to get us out this mess."

From the perspective of the Pastrana administration, however, the American aid package is only part of a broader effort. It hopes to combine American military aid with nearly $1 billion from European nations for social and economic programs, and loans from international organizations, making for a whopping $7.5 billion effort that mixes carrot and stick.

One additional concern, both in Andean capitals and in Washington, is that any success against coca cultivation in Colombia will inevitably lead to a resurgence of coca growing in Peru or Bolivia.

"The balloon effect in drugs is something that we are always looking at," said Mr. Ledwith, director of international operations for the D.E.A.

Coca growing in Peru and Bolivia has been cut by more than half following increased cooperation between their governments and the United States. Successful crop substitution programs are one reason, but Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori's policy of shooting down any drug plane flying over Peru has been a huge deterrent, as have stepped-up eradication efforts.

Thus the bulk of coca production has shifted to Colombia, where most of the processing and marketing operations were already located. Feeling relatively safe on their native soil, the coca-growing syndicates have invested heavily in developing more potent strains, some of which can be harvested in as little as 60 days.

Smaller, more vulnerable trafficking groups have gravitated toward insurgent-dominated areas like this one, paying a tax on their drug income to the guerrillas in return for protection from the Colombian government's anti-drug campaign.

In 1996, a United States intelligence summary concluded that while guerrilla units were selling protection "in virtually all departments where traffickers operate," only a few "probably are involved more directly in localized, small-scale drug cultivation and processing."

But that has changed dramatically over the past 18 months, since the Colombian government gave a chunk of territory to the F.A.R.C. That step in late 1998 was intended as a gesture of good faith to lure the rebels into peace negotiations.

Hopes that the long war with the leftist guerrillas could end were raised almost two years ago when Mr. Pastrana was elected as a peace candidate implicitly endorsed by the F.A.R.C.'s main leader, Manuel Marulanda.

Informal peace talks with the group began last year. But after Mr. Pastrana flew to San Vicente del Cagu n, the largest town in the rebel-held zone, for the opening ceremonies, Mr. Marulanda delivered a calculated snub by failing to appear, sending subalterns instead and leaving Mr. Pastrana looking at an empty chair in front of television cameras and photographers.

Since then, the negotiations have repeatedly stalled, with the F.A.R.C. breaking off discussions every time the government refuses to bend to one of its demands, and the government eventually giving in. Though the agreement called only for military forces to withdraw, the F.A.R.C. has also driven mayors, judges and Roman Catholic priests from its zone.

April 21, 2000

THE PEOPLE

Ever-Present Violence Creates Nation of Fear

By LARRY ROHTER

To the average Colombian, it appears that while the government and rebel negotiating teams quibble over procedural issues, the F.A.R.C. is building up its military might and its drug-trafficking capabilities.

As a result, cartoonists now routinely portray Mr. Pastrana as a shrunken figure too small for the presidential sash and his shirt and pants.

F.A.R.C. leaders quickly converted their area, bitterly referred to by locals as "Farc landia," into a major cocaine production center complete with airstrips for exporting the product. Now, the second largest left-wing guerrilla group, the Army of National Liberation, known by the Spanish acronym E.L.N., wants its own demilitarized zone.

In recent interviews in Caquet , the province adjoining the F.A.R.C. haven, peasants -- none of whom were willing to be identified -- also complained of being ordered by local F.A.R.C. commanders to grow coca. Other peasant farmers in the region who were already cultivating coca say they are now forced to sell to a guerrilla-controlled monopoly at a price that is about half what their crop would have fetched on the open market a year ago.

The paramilitary death squads controlled by Carlos Casta o and closely allied with elements of the Colombian Armed Forces have acted no differently. These paramilitary troops were originally protected by law, defending businesses and landholders from leftists guerrillas, and aiming their assaults at civilians they suspected of aiding the rebels.

The paramilitary units lost their legal status more than a decade ago, and moved heavily into the drug trade. Three years ago, the D.E.A. described Mr. Casta o "as a major narcotics trafficker in his own right," and in a startling interview on Colombian television on March 1, the paramilitary chieftain acknowledged that the bulk of his group's money now comes from drugs.

As the conflict deepens, the situation for ordinary Colombians has grown worse. At least 35,000 people have been killed over the past decade, and more than 1.5 million people, most of them peasants, have been forced to leave their homes.

"First the paramilitaries came and told us to leave or they would kill us, and then when we were resettled, the guerrillas came and at gunpoint forced two of my sons to join them," said Javier Gonz lez, a refugee from C rdoba province in the northwest. "For the past three years, we have been sent from one place to the next, but everywhere we go, we are mistreated and abused."

In addition, at least 2 percent of Colombia's 40 million people -- some 800,000 mostly middle-class people -- have left the country since 1996, most of them for the United States. Investors are also fleeing in the face of extortion demands by guerrilla and paramilitary groups, and unemployment is at a record rate of one worker in five after a recession that shrank the economy by more than 5 percent last year.

A recent poll shows Colombians worry most about the pervasive violence that accompanies the drug crisis.

Colombia's murder rate is 10 times that of the United States, and its kidnapping rate is the highest in the world, thanks in large part to spectacular mass abductions like the E.L.N.'s raid on a Roman Catholic church service in Cali last year that resulted in more than 150 hostages.

"It feels like we are besieged, with an enemy just outside the castle walls waiting to pluck anyone who comes into their grasp," a doctor who lives in Cali said recently. "There is no longer anywhere you can go where you are safe."

More than five million people marched last fall in support of the "No M s" civic foundation, which is demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities. But the leader of that movement, Francisco Santos, was forced to leave the country in mid-March after the F.A.R.C. threatened to kill him.

"There is a tendency to see the Colombian conflict as a table with two legs, the government versus the guerrillas," thereby ignoring the aspirations of civil society, Mr. Santos said recently in Miami.

April 21, 2000

THE HARD QUESTIONS

Narcotics and War Become Intertwined

By LARRY ROHTER

For the Clinton administration, the unraveling of the situation in Colombia has created an uncomfortable dilemma. While the United States is determined to diminish the flow of cocaine and heroin into American cities, especially with an election looming, it does not want to be pulled into what can only be a long, bloody and expensive campaign in Latin America's longest running guerrilla war.

"The situation on the ground in Colombia is increasingly complicated, but our policy is very straightforward," Brian E. Sheridan, the Defense Department coordinator for drug enforcement policy and support, said recently in testimony to a Congressional panel. "We are working with the Colombian government on counternarcotics programs. We are not in the counterinsurgency business."

But to Colombian military officers in the field, there is no such distinction. "To me, they are one and the same thing," Lieutenant Arenas said, clearly puzzled that anyone would suggest there is any difference between drug traffickers and guerrillas.

And while the Clinton administration is talking only of a two-year program, focused on the delivery of the helicopters and a training program for pilots, top Colombian military officials lay out a six-year campaign. They envision being able to break the F.A.R.C.'s control of coca-growing areas in the south in two years, after which the Colombian Armed Forces would focus on the Guaviare region in the country's heartland for two years and then northern areas dominated by paramilitary groups.

American officials contend that the only way the government can regain control of Putumayo and Caquet provinces is through a coordinated effort in which the Armed Forces clean out guerrilla concentrations and are followed by police units that fumigate coca fields by air.

But very little in the battlefield record of the Colombian Army and Air Force inspires confidence in that kind of plan. Throughout the 1990's, the United States funneled most of its aid and training to the Colombian National Police because American officials regarded the Armed Forces as a bloated, corrupt and largely defensive force.

The American approach is also likely to exacerbate a longstanding debate about the most effective way to reduce drug cultivation. While aerial spraying is traditionally favored by the United States, many in Colombia argue that crop substitution programs similar to those that proved successful in Bolivia and Peru are more effective ways to wean peasant farmers from drug crops.

The aid package now before the United States Congress includes a hefty increase in financing for such "alternative development" programs, to $127 million over the next two years from $5 million in the last budget. But the experience of the National Plan for Alternative Development, the Colombian government's crop substitution agency, makes clear that coordinating aerial spraying and crop substitution programs requires a precision that has eluded American and Colombian experts.

Human rights groups see another, equally troubling problem in the White House aid package. They point to a long history of cooperation between some Colombian military units and Mr. Casta o's right-wing death squads, or paramilitaries.

According to the Colombian prosecutor's office, the death squads killed nearly 1,000 people in more than 125 massacres in 1999. Recent reports by Human Rights Watch and the United Nations and investigations by Colombian prosecutors have singled out specific Colombian military units and commanders as having provided support to the death squads or having failed to heed calls for help from villages under attack.

To curb such abuses, Congress passed the Leahy Amendment in 1997, prohibiting the United States from providing assistance to any Colombian military unit that violates human rights. As a result, some Colombian battalions have been disqualified from receiving American aid, new units have been formed, and instruction in human rights has become a required part of Colombian military training. But critics of the Clinton administration's aid package insist not only that those restrictions be strengthened, but that new oversight mechanisms be included.

"The government paints a rosy picture, but the reality is that army officers who commit atrocities are almost never prosecuted," Senator Leahy, the author of the amendment, said recently.

"Links between the army and paramilitaries are widespread, and human rights investigators have had to flee the country."

R. Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, denied that paramilitary groups would receive more favorable treatment than their enemies on the left. "We are pressing the Colombian government to live up to the promise that they will go after the paras, and we will continue to do that," he said, referring to the paramilitary troops.

American policy, however, is to "go after the drugs wherever they are," Mr. Beers added. "We will start by going after the largest concentrations of those drugs, and right now that is in the south. So it's not that they are getting a free ride because they are paras. It's because the paras have fewer forces in the south than the F.A.R.C. at this time. That said, the paras are increasing their presence in the south, and are becoming a more significant problem there."

Even without the aid package, the United States' commitment in Colombia is already growing. The Colombian battalions patrol the rivers of southern Colombia in American-made Pira a vessels, and last year, a Riverine War School opened in Puerto Legu zamo with some classes by visiting American instructors.

"We've had your Coast Guard come in to show how to board vessels, your Army and Marines to teach combat on land and water, the Miami police to demonstrate detention methods," Lieutenant Arenas said enthusiastically. Many of the Americans leave equipment and supplies behind as gifts, a gesture that is deeply appreciated by troops who are short of everything from boots and maps to two-way radios.

At any given moment, 80 to 220 American military officials are working in Colombia, according to the United States Embassy in Bogot . The largest concentrations are at Tolemaida in the center of the country, and Tres Esquinas in the southwest, where the first of three counternarcotics battalions was trained last year and two more battalions are scheduled to be formed this year.

All told, American aid to Colombia has grown by 3,500 percent since 1993, General McCaffrey said. That makes Colombia the largest recipient of American aid outside the Middle East even without the new flows of equipment and training under discussion.

Washington clearly hopes that this large one-time injection of new aid will prove sufficient for the Colombian government to regain the upper hand. But Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, a former minister of the interior and ambassador to the United States, was speaking for many Colombians, and some Americans, when he recently suggested that a pair of fundamental questions remain.

"Is the elimination of narcotics trafficking the key to achieving peace, or is the achievement of peace necessary to the elimination of narcotics?" he asked. "That is a dilemma that has to be analyzed and contemplated