Pubdate: Thu, 18 Jan 2001
Source: Quad-City Times (IA)
Copyright: 2001 Quad-City Times
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Author: George Will
Bookmark: Bookmark: Columbia Bookmark: Reports about Columbia  
http://www.mapinc.org/area/colombia

DEMAND THWARTS U.S. BID TO STOP COLOMBIA DRUG FLOW

Why Rumsfeld Is Skeptical

With the delicacy of someone seasoned by much experience near the 
summit of government, Donald Rumsfeld has indicated strong skepticism 
about a policy from which this country may reap a bumper crop of 
regrets.

Asked about the $1.6 billion - so far - undertaking to help fight the 
drug war in Colombia, Rumsfeld said he had not formulated an opinion. 
However, he embroidered his agnosticism with thoughts antithetical to 
the program for which George W. Bush, during the campaign, indicated 
support.

In his confirmation hearing, Rumsfeld, the next secretary of defense, 
said combating illicit drugs is "overwhelmingly a demand problem," 
and added: "If demand persists, it's going to get what it wants. And 
if it isn't from Colombia, it's going to be from someplace else."

Indeed. In authorizing the aid for Colombia, Congress demanded, 
delusionally, the elimination of ALL of Colombia's coca and opium 
poppy cultivation by 2005. That would almost certainly mean a 
commensurate increase in cultivation by neighbors.

One reason Colombia is the source of nearly 90 percent of the world's 
cocaine and a growing portion of heroin is that U.S. pressure on coca 
and poppy production in countries continuous to Colombia, especially 
Peru and Bolivia, drove production into Colombia, where coca 
production has increased 140 percent - to 300,000 acres - in five 
years.

Now, pressure on Colombia is pushing production into Colombia's 
neighbors. The New York Times reports that cocaine-processing labs 
have recently been found in Ecuador's Amazon region. This is evidence 
that local peasants, who have crossed the border in recent years to 
work in the cocaine business, are "returning with the drug expertise 
they have acquired in Colombia."

The $1.6 billion in U.S. aid for Colombia will mostly pay for 
helicopters that Colombia's military will use to attack drug 
factories and 17,000 Marxist guerrillas, who are the world's most 
affluent insurgents, waging a war now in its fourth decade.

The guerrillas also are opposed by right-wing paramilitary forces - 
8,000 strong and growing - that are increasingly involved in drug 
trafficking.

Kidnapping has become industrialized in Colombia, and assassins can 
be hired for "a few pesos," according to Brian Michael Jenkins, an 
analyst of political violence and international crime. He says 
Colombia's 30,000 murders unrelated to war translate into a rate that 
in the United States would mean 250,000 murders a year.

Colombia has Latin America's fourth-largest economy and one of its 
highest literacy rates. It has 40 flourishing universities and pays 
its debts. Yet a Gallup poll reveals that 40 percent of Colombians 
have considered emigrating and 60 percent know someone who has 
emigrated in the last two years.

Colombia's drug-related agonies are largely traceable to U.S. cities. 
Although one-third of Colombia's cocaine goes to Europe, America's 
annual $50 billion demand is a powerful suction pulling in several 
hundred tons of easily transportable and staggeringly profitable 
substances.

Here is the arithmetic of futility: About one-third of cocaine 
destined for the United States is interdicted, yet the street price 
has been halved in the last decade of fighting the drug war on the 
supply side.
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MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer