U.S. War on Drugs Becomes Blurry in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia — The U.S. government has made its position clear:

1) The United States will do all it can to support Colombia's war on drugs.

2) The United States will not become involved in Colombia's other war: its long, internal conflict. The Colombian army has been fighting leftist guerrillas for three decades and is increasingly coming into confrontation with right-wing private armies.

What is not clear is where one war ends and the other begins.

"You really can't draw the line," one U.S. official admitted.

Armed Colombian factions--on the left and right--control the territories where the coca bushes and opium poppies are grown, and they levy a "tax" on that production. They fire at the crop dusters--many piloted by U.S. civilians hired by the Colombian government with American funding--that fly over the fields, spraying herbicides to destroy the illegal crops. One U.S. civilian pilot has already been killed in guerrilla attacks on fumigation planes.

Thus, the war against drugs becomes a war against the insurgents. And some observers see signs that the United States is being drawn more deeply into that conflict.

Colombia received $90 million in U.S. anti-drug funding in the 1997 fiscal year, according to the State Department. Now, for the first time in more than two years, the United States can offer Colombia military aid once the armed forces clean up their human rights record, which has been among the worst in the Americas.

Colombia's eagerness to remove obstacles to direct military aid became evident Tuesday, when the army's 20th Intelligence Brigade was disbanded. Colombian prosecutors have repeatedly implicated the unit in death squad activity, but it was dissolved only after 34 Capitol Hill lawmakers specifically mentioned the brigade's activities in a May 6 letter that urged President Ernesto Samper to control military violence.

Previously, military aid was blocked because an annual State Department review determined that Colombia had not fully cooperated in the fight against narcotics. This year, the review found that any penalties against Colombia should be waived because of U.S. national security interests.

"This decision can open the doors for better, more comprehensive and more effective security support to the security forces of Colombia as they attempt to regain the initiative" against the country's leftist guerrillas, Lt. Gen. Charles E. Wilhelm, commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military interests in Latin America, said in recent testimony before the U.S. Congress.