DATE=8/24/1999
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA
NUMBER=5-44125
BYLINE=ED WARNER
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
CONTENT=

VOICED AT:


INTRO:  The United States is stepping up its aid to 
Colombia to combat the combined forces of Marxist 
guerillas and narcotic traffickers, whose growing 
power threatens the state. America is also threatened 
by the cocaine pouring in from Colombia, some seventy 
per cent of the total that reaches the country. But 
critics say given the heavy demand for illicit drugs 
in the United States, trying to eliminate the supply 
is futile and leads to further destabilization of 
Colombia. V-O-A's Ed Warner reports.

TEXT:  Some 300 American soldiers, CIA operatives and 
drug enforcement agents are now in Colombia to try to 
stop the cocaine flooding into the United States. So 
far in this mission against narco-guerrillas, eight 
Americans have died in surveillance plane crashes.

More casualties are likely as the U-S mission expands. 
Colombia is the third largest recipient of American 
aid after Israel and Egypt, and there are proposals to 
double that amount. Yet it hardly compares to the 
estimated 600-million dollars a year that the 
guerrilla movement known as FARC (Revolutionary Armed 
Forces of Colombia) gains from the drug trade. The 
group is said to have more automatic weapons than the 
Colombian army. 

Nor is there any sign of cutting back cocaine 
production despite U-S and Colombian efforts to 
eradicate it. Reports say areas of coca cultivation 
have increased by 50-percent in the last two years. 

Andy Messing, Executive Director of the National 
Defense Council Foundation, served in the U-S Special 
Forces in Vietnam and Central America and has traveled 
extensively in Colombia. He believes too little U-S 
help has allowed the narco-guerrillas on the left to 
challenge the government, which also must cope with a 
paramilitary force on the right. 

Mr. Messing says the United States must offer aid and 
advice to the Colombian government and insist on 
reforms that will satisfy some of the rebels' demands 
for social justice. At the same time, he says, FARC 
must be deprived of its income by eradication of the 
coca fields:

            /// FIRST MESSING ACT ///  

      If you do not attempt to reduce supply, then you 
      have incredible volumes beyond demand coming 
      into the United States, which creates a new 
      level of demand in the United States. So you 
      have to address both demand side and supply 
      side. The best you can ever hope for is making 
      it hard to get and very expensive to get, and 
      that drives down some of the demand. You can 
      never win against drugs, but what you can do is 
      reduce it to its lowest manageable level.

            /// END ACT ///

If supply is not reduced, says Mr. Messing, a
narco-sovereignty could be established in Colombia, 
putting the drug dealers effectively in control. 
Mexico would not be far behind in his opinion, and the 
rest of the hemisphere would be endangered.

Mr. Messing says the previous guerrillas in the region 
were motivated by communism, but today's rebels 
reflect a predatory capitalism:  

            // SECOND MESSING ACT //

      Dark-side capitalism is ten times worse than 
      Communism ever was because it lends a distinct 
      level of strength to their operation that 
      Communism never had. Communism was not a 
      successful economic model. Dark-side capitalism, 
      which is dictatorial and monopolistic and favors 
      a hedonistic, narcissistic ruling elite, has its 
      own perverse momentum.
      
            /// END ACT ///

Ethan Nadelmann is Director of the Lindesmith Center, 
a drug policy institute in New York. He is skeptical 
of U-S efforts to eradicate cocaine in Colombia. If 
production is suppressed in one area, it moves to 
another:

            /// FIRST NADELMANN ACT ///

      If you look at the last seventy to eighty years