Source: The Economist Pubdate: June 27 - July 3, 1998 Contact: http://www.economist.com/ PANAMA - A NEW BASE FOR A LOST WAR? HOWARD AIR FORCE BASE -- The F-16 fighters swoop down from the sky on to Howard United States Air Force Base much like the tropical birds that occasionally fly into their engines. They taxi smoothly to join the rest of the hardware stacked on the tarmac at this base at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. But no such smooth flight or landing is in sight for the negotiations between the United States and Panama on plans for a "multilateral counter-narcotics centre"-CMA, from its initials in Spanish-encompassing Howard and other American bases after December 31st 1999. That date was laid down in a 1977 treaty as the end of the long history of the United States' military involvement in Panama. The issue that has kept the two countries haggling for two years now is what installations, if any, the Americans may after all retain. They have several reasons for wanting to stay. One is security for the canal, another Colombia. The one being trumpeted by the Clinton administration is drugs. The CMA already exists, though not in multilateral guise, in the Joint Interagency Task Force South, an American intelligence outfit that uses ground and airborne radar and other means to monitor suspected drug flights. Its mission is to work with other countries' security services to "deter, degrade and disrupt" the production and shipment of drugs in the Caribbean, Central and South America. The JIATF-South is active enough. But is what it terms the policy of "engaging in the source zone" doing any good? JIATF-South officials say that drugs worth $1.2 billion were intercepted with its aid in 1997. That sounds a lot, but it is peanuts compared with the United States' estimated annual imports of $30 billion of cocaine alone, much of it from South America. True, the cost is not huge. Some $155m, around a fifth of the United States' Southern Command (Southcom) budget is now spent on the anti-drugs war, plus whatever millions more go to government in the region for the same purpose. The yearly costs of the CMA, if it happens, are put at $60m. The war often borders on black comedy. Packages of cocaine and marijuana weighing up to 100 kilos-220 pounds-are regularly washed up on Panamanian beaches. Four months ago, one came ashore right next to Howard base, on the beach of the adjacent fishing town of Veracruz, where smuggling, say its residents, is rife. These packages are thrown, to avoid seizure, from aircraft and boats which JIATF-South is "interdicting". So far, so successful. Whether every finder of a package dutifully takes it to the police is another question. Some notable traffickers have met their demise thanks to Southcom. And not only traffickers. In the early 1990s the Americans regularly tipped off Peru's armed forces to force or shoot down suspected aircraft. Quite soon the trigger-happy Peruvians had shot down more than 120 aircraft. One was a Southcom C-130 on a clandestine reconnaissance mission. Critics of the anti-drug war talk of "mission impossible". Colombia, for instance, has some 500 authorised airfields and thousands of dirt airstrips. The traffickers fly at night to avoid prying eyes, or at low level to avoid prying radar. Some use Southcom's own radar transmissions for guidance. In Colombia, where the trade has moved north since the cracking of the Cali and Medellin mobs, the coastal cartels have a new tool: fibreglass submarines. So would the proposed CMA serve much purpose? Perhaps not. But a continued military presence, under that name, might. The end of the cold war has not much altered the function of the American bases. If they have been useful since then-for activities ranging from air-sea rescue to air support for Southcom operations-they still would, the Americans reckon. Of the bases, Howard is the jewel in the crown. There are various radio listening posts, a naval station and a jungle-warfare school. Three firing ranges and a laboratory are used for testing weapons and equipment in tropical conditions. It would be hard to reproduce this elsewhere: Panama has just the climate the army needs, say those concerned. The tropical-testing centre has become a sore point between the United States and Panama. But one way or another-perhaps under a nominally private-sector flag-it seems likely to survive, whether the CMA plan goes ahead or not. How much of the rest could endure under a CMA guise is unclear. The Americans think plenty could and should, and claim that a majority of the Panamanian public, hand on wallet, thinks so too. The result so far is deadlock. Even in Panama's government, whose chief, President Ernesto Perez Balladares, dreamed up the CMA idea, it has lost favour recently, especially after other Latin American countries consulted in January-after all, this is meant to be a multilateral effort-criticised it as a thinly disguised base for future American military interventions in the region. Though Senator Jesse Helms shot his mouth off this month, criticising Panama's refusal to bow to American wishes in his usual imperial style, neither government's officials are saying much at this sensitive moment: in two months, the referendum is due that will say yes or no to Mr Balladares's plan for a constitutional change allowing him to run for re-election. The CMA too may be put to a referendum. - --- Checked-by: Richard Lake