Pubdate: Tue, 21 Mar 2000 Source: New York Daily News (NY) Copyright: 2000 Daily News, L.P. Contact: 450 W. 33rd St., New York, N.Y. 10001 Website: http://www.nydailynews.com/ Forum: http://townhall.mostnewyork.com/mb/index.html Author: Juan Gonzalez WRONG DRUG WAR STRATEGY Sylvester Salcedo never met Patrick Dorismond, the latest unarmed black man shot to death by a New York City cop. Dorismond, we are told, was an accidental victim of the city's war on drugs. His death comes as the U.S. Senate is about to consider a drug-war bill that, if passed, could create thousands of Patrick Dorismonds all over Latin America. Operation Condor is the lofty name the Giuliani administration has given its new anti-drug offensive begun in January. It evokes visions of "Miami Vice" and sophisticated stings, but it turns out to be just another excuse to stop and frisk or arrest New Yorkers on suspicion of selling nickel bags of marijuana. There are probably a lot of cops who believe they can put a dent in the drug trade with these low-level busts, Salcedo says. He felt the same way back in the early 1980s, when he went to work with Joint Task Force 6, a special Department of Defense intelligence unit assigned to cooperate with federal agencies fighting drug traffickers in Latin America. For nearly 20 years, both as a reservist and active-duty service member, Salcedo served as a naval attache in a half-dozen countries, including Colombia. In each country he toured, he grew familiar with both the druglords and the desperate poverty that created their low-level soldiers. When he was not on active duty, Salcedo, a Filipino-American born in Minnesota, taught Spanish in public schools in Boston's inner city. "That allowed me to see the drug trade from both ends," he says. "In Boston, a lot of my students got caught up in it. I began to realize our interdiction and eradication efforts down there had no effect up here." A year ago, just before he retired, Salcedo got a medal from the President for his efforts. Several months later, he learned that the Clinton administration was proposing an astronomical increase in foreign aid for Colombia to fight the drug war. The $1.3 billion package would make Colombia the third-highest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in the world, after Israel and Egypt. Most of the money would go to finance 60 U.S. helicopters so the Colombian military can fight "narcoguerrillas" in the jungles and mountains of southern Colombia. Colombia, of course, has had two bloody conflicts raging for a long time. The oldest and biggest is the civil war in the countryside, where 10 million of 11 million peasants live below the poverty level. That war pits left-wing guerrillas against the government and dates to the 1960s. It has spawned scores of right-wing paramilitary groups, created South America's worst human-rights record and uprooted nearly 2 million people. The other war is against the cocaine and heroin trade, a conflict less than two decades old that gets far more attention in this country. The guerrillas keep getting stronger. They control or threaten nearly half of Colombia's townships. After the dismantling of the Medellin and Cali drug cartels, the major guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has filled the vacuum — resorting to drugs to finance its military needs. To combat this, Salcedo says, our government chooses the military solution — crackdowns, arrests, crop eradication, more weapons — rather than promoting economic development. In the same way, right here at home, our cities respond by locking up low-level drug users and dealers, instead of trying to treat their addiction to drugs. These massive crackdowns help feed the military and police machines we have created, Salcedo said, "and they keep more and more blacks, Hispanics and poor people in jail." To make his point that this is no way to fight a war on drugs, Salcedo returned his medal. So far, Clinton has not responded, but the Senate might vote on the plan this week. - --- MAP posted-by: Don Beck