Problems With Current U.S. Policy.

In 1989, President Bush declared that the "gravest domestic threat facing our nation today is drugs," and he announced the "Andean Strategy" to reduce the amount of illicit narcotics entering the United States. Over the last decade, this strategy has expanded and intensified "source country" counternarcotics operations. Antidrug funding for Colombia has dramatically escalated from $18 million in 1989 to almost $300 million in 1999. U.S. programs in Colombia have been two-pronged: extensive herbicide spraying in illicit crop growing areas, primarily coca fields in southern Colombia, and hundred of millions of dollars in military hardware and training for Colombian security forces involved in counternarcotics operations.

Despite inflated funding, counternarcotics efforts have failed dramatically. A July 1999 General Accounting Office (GAO) report found that "despite two years of extensive herbicide spraying, U.S. estimates show there has not been any net reduction in coca cultivation--net coca cultivation actually increased 50 percent." Coca cultivation has moved further into the Amazon and into increasingly remote areas. Peasant farmers, pushed into colonizing isolated regions because of political violence and land pressure in other areas of the country, have turned to coca and poppy production as a means of economic support for themselves and their families. A lack of regional development programs and the failure of the Colombian government to provide basic services have worsened social tensions. U.S.-financed fumigation campaigns targeting peasant growers actually work to the guerrilla's advantage by further exacerbating social tensions. This climate of discontent has helped swell the ranks of FARC and has cast the guerrilla organization as the defender of small peasant farmers.

The second major thrust of U.S. counternarcotics policy--support for Colombia's security forces--has meant increased support for army and police counterinsurgency campaigns. Since 1989, the Colombian National Police (CNP) has received the vast majority of U.S. counternarcotics assistance in the form of military hardware and training. This has been consistent with Washington's contention that the police should be responsible for domestic law enforcement, including eradication and local interdiction efforts, while the military should protect Colombia's borders and concentrate on international interdiction operations. Beginning in 1999, however, U.S. assistance for the Colombian Army--couched as counternarcotics assistance but destined for combat troops in FARC-controlled areas--as well as U.S. support for military intelligence operations has grown dramatically. As a result, U.S. counternarcotics aid is increasingly indistinguishable from counterinsurgency aid.

In addition, there are some 300 U.S. advisors on the ground in Colombia from an array of agencies including the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, and the DEA. The current level of military assistance and number of advisors in Colombia on any given day has now reached levels comparable to U.S. involvement in El Salvador in the 1980s. Some government and military officials as well as members of Congress have raised the concern that the U.S.--by sharply increasing its hardware, training, and intelligence support for the Colombian army (despite eschewing direct intervention)--is being drawn, once again, into an unwinnable and costly Latin American civil conflict. Due to the secrecy surrounding many of these operations, particularly those by the DEA, the CIA, and other intelligence agencies, the exact dimensions of U.S. aid to Colombia are impossible to determine.

The ground for this shift in policy was laid by a December 1998 military cooperation agreement between the U.S. and Colombia. This agreement followed several years of rocky U.S. relations with the Colombian Army because of human rights violations and U.S. frustration that the Colombian armed forces were not sufficiently committed to performing counternarcotics operations. The new cooperation agreement includes the establishment of a bilateral "working group" of U.S. and Colombian defense officials and the creation of a counternarcotics battalion staffed by the Colombian Army and equipped and trained by the United States. By late 1999, embassy officials in Bogota confirmed that three such battalions were being formed. According to U.S. officials, these battalions are intended to support CNP counternarcotics efforts in southern Colombia and to protect against attacks by FARC. The battalions will be under the command of the army, and sources within the CNP complain that the police have been largely marginalized from coordination efforts.

The training and equipment provided for this battalion, as well as its theater of operations, point to an overriding counterinsurgency mission. The first battalion received light infantry and jungle warfare instruction from U.S. Special Forces. The U.S. is also training and funding the Colombian Special Forces Battalion and Special Forces School, which were instrumental in army victories during the July guerrilla offensive.

In addition, the U.S. provides military intelligence assistance that could be used in counterinsurgency operations. A June 1999 GAO report revealed that the U.S. is sharing military intelligence on Colombian insurgents but not monitoring how Colombia's security forces are using this information. The U.S. has been instrumental in establishing the Joint Task Command, a Colombian military and police facility intended to coordinate all operations in southern Colombia. Washington also helped reorganize Colombia's military intelligence following the 1998 disbanding of the armed forces' intelligence brigade due to its role in human rights abuses. The extent of the U.S. role in Colombian intelligence gathering was brought home with the July 1999, plane crash in which five U.S. and two Colombian military personnel were killed. No Colombian police were on the plane, which was involved in intercepting FARC communications.

Key Problems

* The U.S. is escalating its funding for ineffective "war on drugs" programs, centered primarily in Colombia.

* Herbicide spraying has failed to slow the increase in coca cultivation in Colombia and is fueling peasant support for the guerrillas.

* The U.S. is escalating support for abusive security forces and is now directly supporting counterinsurgency operations in Colombia.