Fighting Anarchy in Colombia

...is often the only type of agricultural activity taking place," Vâsquez says...

...In effect, he said Americans could have their cake and eat it too —win the war without pain or sacrifice...

...Like that drug it is much cheaper than refined cocaine...

...But the chaos that reigns in the judicial system—the backbone of any democracy—perhaps most dramatically illustrates the difficulties of the fight against the cartels...

...diplomat...

...Assassination continues to be the instrument of choice for criminal mercenaries, the military, Rightwing death squads, and Leftist groups like the one that besieged the Palace of Justice...

...One segment carried a message from terrorists who hadbombed the travel office where my wife once worked and were holding her ex-boss hostage...

...We will kill him unless you give us the money...

...The organization, compared by some authorities here to the Ku Klux Klan, has vowed to "clean up the streets of Bogota...

...The Colombian authorities have disrupted the traffickers' communication lines," one senior U.S...

...But I have learned from several knowledgeable sources here that Lehder was set up for capture by his cohorts because his embarrassing flamboyance and unpredictability were jeopardizing business...

...When the drug traffickers show up with large sums of moneymore money than the farmers have ever seen in their lives—it is impossible to stop the planting of coca and the production of cocaine...

...Although the strike lasted only six days, by the end of August a significant number of judges had quit their jobs...

...Many Colombians believe their nation has been plunged into a de facto civil war...

...In practical terms that may not matter much...

...During the past decade, Colombia has suffered a calculated reign of terror of awesome proportions...

...We have Rightists killing Leftits...

...No matter how innocent it might seem to us, it could be taken by them as a threat to their survival...

...They told his family: "We've had him for 20 days...

...After General José Guillermo Sanchez resigned as chief of the national police force earlier this year, it was rumored that he had received money from Pablo Escobar Gavina, leader of the Medellin cartel...

...So by disrupting their communication lines, we are actually hurting our own pocketbooks...

...They [the drug traffickers] don't think like normal civilized people think...

...Twice before—after the 1984 murder of Colombian Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla and the 1986 killing of El Espectador editor Guillermo Cano—the government announced it would begin extraditing indicted drug traffickers and failed to follow through...

...Many have discreetly opted for the former...

...The problem is not one of decrees," Bogota Councilman Carlos Landeros asserts...

...Convictions in Colombian courts are incredibly rare—only 1 per cent of the cases terminate in sentences, according to a recent government study leaked to the press...

...I call the program Operation 2000...

...One press report, if true, corroborates the skeptical view: José Rodriguez Gâcha, the most vicious of the Medellin kingpins, is believed to have escaped from a regional airport controlled by local military authorities when his Cessna Caravan, which had been seized by Army troops at the start of the crackdown, disappeared mysteriously from its hangar for six hours...

...military presence in the country...

...The narco-traffickers' penetration of the Colombian government and military is a big part of the problem," acknowledged the senior American diplomat...

...It is a brutal reminder of the country's ongoing nightmare...

...They worry about it becoming another Lebanon...

...Even if the revived treaty survives present efforts to overturn it, along with other components of the emergency decree, theU.S...

...Many Colombians are saying that the companies owned by the drug traffickers are contributing to the country'sgrowth...

...Widespread predictions of a Galân victory in next May's elections worried the nation's powerful drug bosses, who put a $500,000 bounty on his head...

...President Barco soon signed a revised treaty that was again successfully challenged in court...

...Small wonder that Colombia has one of the highest murder rates ever recorded by a country not officially at war...

...Publicly most prominent Colombians denounce theideaof negotiations, but privately they express doubts about the chances of winning an unqualified victory...

...Within hours of the Galân assassination, President Virgilio Barco Vargas vowed a renewed struggle to break the drug cartels...

...Several people I talked with questioned the loyalties of their countrymen...

...In what a friend called "a concrete example of how our society has gone crazy," one such group, "Death to Street Children," murdered 20 gamins last June and early July...

...Colombians were not impressed...

...Please, please, don't quote my name," one journalist pleaded...

...Colombians say that, were the authorities to succeed in capturing an Ochoa, Escobar or Gacha no prison could hold them...

...In December 1987 the incarcerated Ochoa, whose extradition the U. S. and Colombian governments hoped to arrange, simply walked away from jail arm in arm with the warden and went into hiding...

...He has just returned from his seventh trip to Colombia in two and a half years...

...Some sources here suggest that President Barco decided to move quickly and boldly against the drug bosses because he feared their further infiltration of the military would doom a more gradual campaign...

...The drug bosses are thought to have formed alliances with militants on both the Right and Left...

...Buta 1985 State Department study found that over 600,000 Colombians out of a population of 30 million use drugs derived from the coca shrub...

...This country is notorious for exporting cocaine—an estimated $35 billion worth yearly, and up to 80 per cent of all cocaine entering the U.S...

...They are therefore urging an international summit to plan the necessary strategy...

...Thedrug barons, perhapsthe world's most sophisticated urban terrorists, have given Colombians a simple choice: piata or pluma (money or the bullet...

...Other newspapers and radio and television stations have received bomb threats since the drug mafia's declaration of all-out war on August 24...

...I'm hearing that the drug war is going to harm us," said one journalist...

...Does Barco's government have the determination or the means to halt the national decay, and to transform Colombia into a strong ally in Washington's effort to free the U.S...

...Eduardo Martinez Romero, an economist indicted in absentia in Atlanta in a $1.2 billion moneylaundering operation linked to the Medellin cartel, was flown to the United States on September 6. But the history of U.S.-Colombian extradition dating from the initial treaty in 1979 has not been inspiring...

...The majority of politicians and intellectuals believe that nothing less than a concerted effort involving all the affected countries can deliver a death blow to the cartels...

...Those who once talked openly with me, especially journalists, now won't let me into their offices...

...Now the fight is with blood...

...On top of that, we have drug traffickers who appear to be in league with both sides...

...The fight against the drug lords pushing Colombia toward the brink of anarchy is complicated by the substantial number of drug abusers in every stratum of the society...

...from its own drug problem...

...On August 18, as Galân was about to address a campaign rally of 10,000 enthusiastic supporters in Soacha, a small town 12 miles outside the capital, a hit team of about seven gunmen suddenly opened fire on the speaker's platform...

...The single big-name cartel member ever shipped off to the United States was Carlos Lehder Rivas, who was extradited in 1987, convicted in May 1988 and is now serving a life sentence...

...It's a problem of political will to eradicate the violence...

...About three-fourths of a typical evening news broadcast is devoted to reports of the violence...

...Indeed, the perpetrators of violence are more diverse than headlines blaring an escalation of the "War on Drugs" might suggest...

...In Colombia judges are not held in high esteem and are grossly underpaid...

...Thus until Martinez' extradition this month, the drug lords considered themselves immune from the danger of facing American judges...

...As Jorge Cardona, my Bogotân brotherin-law, explained, "Many Colombians felt Galân's presence in the campaign showed that the country's political system had not been totally corrupted by the narco traffickers and that perhaps a future for Colombia was possible...

...A few days later the capos, as they are called here, declared "total and absolute war on the government...

...The enemy has much of the Western Hemisphere as its sanctuary...

...Driven by a sense of destiny, he ignored their threat and became one of the most outspoken advocates of the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States...

...They agree that the war has just begun...

...Bombs planted in two radiostations were discovered and defused...

...But it is questionable whether President Barco can keep the offensive going...

...Not anymore...

...The Mayor of Medellin, Juan Gomez Martinez, has called for negotiations with the capos in response to the offer by Fabio Ochoa Restrepo, patriarch of one of the city's major cocaine families, to withdraw from the drug business in return for a guarantee of amnesty...

...As the situation worsens, the specter of violent death seemstocreepclosertoeach person here...

...He did, however, take the advice of the police: He always wore a bulletproof vest in public...

...The gunmen have not been caught...

...Mixed with tobacco, it is smoked like a marijuana cigarette and is said to have an effect comparable to that of crack...

...Currently, the 50100 U.S...

...My wife, who is Colombian, told me the anchorwoman we were watching on television one night had herself been kidnapped about a year ago but had been released unharmed, and a correspondent we saw has received a death threat...

...An estimated 800,000 regularly smoke marijuana...

...a fourth killed him...

...The government is impotent against the bombs of the barbarians...

...I'm sure they're going through newspapers right now looking for names...

...Many in the middle silently give their support to the Right-wing death squads...

...It is a basic consideration that has to begrasped bytheU.S...

...His death came in the wake of the murder of police chief Waldemar Franklin Quintero and a Supreme Court judge...

...Sadly, the society has been so corrupted by drug money and power, and its political institutions so weakened, that a protracted struggle may be unrealistic...

...Cautious Colombians do not venture out after dark...

...So far, it has mainly been Colombian blood that has been shed," complained a journalist...

...Ron Chepesiuk, a previous NL contributor, is a free-lance writer specializing in Latin American affairs...

...Appalled by the murder of the Supreme Court Justice in August, all 4,379 of the nation's judges went on strike to protest the government's inability to protect them from the drug lords—who have threatened to kill 10 of them for every trafficker extradited to the United States...

...The legal team of kingpin Jorge Ochoa Vâsquez, for example, consists of six ex-Supreme Court justices and seven former university presidents...

...Galân's vest stopped three bullets...

...We are at war, so we have to explore every option," reasons Alfredo Vâsquez, a former foreign minister who now heads the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights...

...At the minimum, the U.S...

...We have screamed for it, but we will not beg for it...

...Many of the street people in Bogota are strung out on basuco, the residue of coca leaves laced with gasoline, hydrochloric acid and lime...

...Over the past 12 months, three police colonels plus dozens of lesserranking officers have been dismissed for collaborating with drug traffickers...

...Since 1985, over 800 members of the Patriotic Union Party, the political arm of the proMoscow Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, have been killed...

...advisers here do not engage in antidrug patrols, but they have recently been authorized to move outside base camps to train local forces in areas secured by government troops...

...Members of Colombia's Liberal and Conservative parties, while equally disappointed with Bush's drug plan, have nonetheless stressed that they do not want an expanded U.S...

...The Medellin drug lords, meanwhile, brazenly flaunted their defiance in a communiqué that read: "We do want peace...

...As for the highly publicized arrests of 11,000 suspected drug purveyors a few weeks ago, all except 3,000 were quickly released for "lack of evidence" and amere535 have actually been indicted so far...

...diplomat here told me...

...They are likely to be impressively defended...

...The police are widely suspected of corruption, too...

...Friends dream of leaving the country...

...The internal corruption has meant that police operations against the traffickers are often compromised before they begin...

...We in America have got to realize it's going to be a long haul, one that's going to take billions of dollars and more energy and effort on our part...

...Leftists killing Rightists...

...Hundreds of thousands of shocked Colombians took to the streets to vent their outrage...

...Some kind of international plan is required if other agricultural crops besides coca are to be grown...

...Everyone is excited about the fortunes of the Colombian national soccer team as it vies for a berth in the 1990 World Cup championships...

...The government is hurting the traffickers...

...In addition to the daily murder of ordinary citizens, the country's desperadoes have assassinated a Justice Minister, an Attorney General, the editor of the second largest newspaper, El Espectador, 25 journalists, at least 40 judges, and 170courtofficials...

...American officials on the scene understand the Colombian point of view...

...He would like to see the development of a program on the model of the Marshall Plan to deal with the problem of coca production in Peru and Bolivia...

...Two days after I visited El Espectador, 130-220 pounds of dynamite heavily damaged its building, killed one person and injured over 80 others aboard a pair of passing buses...

...Others insist that the majority of officers have not succumbed to bribery, but admit that lower-ranking officers in cocaine trafficking regions often are on the bosses' payroll...

...In 1986,11 Supreme Court judges were killed in a shootout between the Army and Leftist guerrillas believed to have been hired by the drug barons...

...Thecountryisbeingtomapart,' says one journalist, who like most others interviewed for this article did not want to be identified because he feared reprisal...

...In 1987, an intimidated Supreme Court found technical grounds to declare the treaty invalid...

...Last October my sister-in-law's boyfriend was killed in front of a bank for no apparent reason...

...Since its range is almost 1,500 miles, the plane could have flown him as far as Brazil, a country that has no extradition treaty with Colombia...

...The Bush Administration angrily condemned the drug kingpins and reiterated its support for this country's government...

...The Colombian government's current offensive is not going to end the drug problem...

...America has got to do something as drastic as Colombia has done or we are going to give up the fight...

...if it is to understand the drug situation not just in Colombia, but also inMexico, Peru, Boliviaand other Latm American countries connected to the drug traffic...

...In the first few days of the crackdown, Colombian police reported detaining almost 11,000 suspected drug traffickers captured in 817 raids, while impounding 1,161 cars and trucks, 22 yachts, 13 helicopters, and 134 planes...

...We will be at this drug thing until well into the 21 st century," predicts the senior U.S...

...The streets are bustling...

...At night, the catchy beat of salsa resonates from the smoky, overcrowded bars...

...The offices of two of the nation's largest political parties have also been bombed...

...The overriding feeling here is that if President Bush is right about Colombia's new offensive being "the best hope we have against the traffickers," it will unhappily be a short war...

...Barco's new emergency decree, a valiant attempt to reinvigorate the rule of law by reviving the U. S.-Colombian extradition treaty that gives the government the authority to extradite drug dealers without judicial review, appears to be working...

...In years past, my wife and I would often go for evening walks in La Serena, the barrio where her parents live...

...In many parts of those countries, coca...

...If we don't accept this, we are not going to win...

...Such anxiety is understandable...

...When they do talk, it is in a tone that borders on hysteria...

...And it does appear that he has taken the initiative...

...More than 140 paramilitary organizations operate in the country with such names as "Rambo" and "The Terminator...

...There will always be suppliers of drugs as long as the American public demands drugs," insists Vâsquez...

...government will have to devise a more imaginative approach to the whole problem than the one outlined in the President's September 5 speech...

...Two drug-related killings recently occurred less than two blocks from their house...

...Then you see a giant billboard of a buoyant, handsome, Luis Carlos Galan and the slogan, "The President that Colombia Needs...

...What I say to you is off the record...

...Just over a month ago, the Liberal Party candidate and senator symbolized the hope of Colombian democracy...

...has little prospect of bringing its 12 most wanted drug traffickers to justice...