Rethinking Plan Colombia: some ways to fix it

The second school of criticism wants to take the drug-war debate off Colombian soil. These critics say the solutions lie on the side of drug consumption, not production. The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy group, argues for dedicating more funds toward drug prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation programs in the US - and for scaling back altogether on programs aimed at stopping the supply of drugs from Colombia. US treatment programs, in particular, have been proven effective. They cite a 1994 RAND Corp. study that found that if the goal was to reduce cocaine use in the US, treatment of heavy cocaine users was 23 times more cost-effective than drug-crop eradication and other source-country programs, and three times more effective than mandatory minimum sentencing.

War on drugs A three-part series Part 1 - 09/27/06 Ambushed in Jamundí Part 2 - 09/28/06 Plan Columbia: Big gains, but cocaine still flows Part 3 - 09/29/06 How to fix Plan Colombia

But only about 17 percent of Americans who needed treatment for an illicit drug use problem in 2004 received it, because of prohibitive costs, insurance limits, or other barriers, according to WOLA.

Assertions by the White House drug czar's office that the vast majority of the drug-control funding already goes toward battling domestic demand are dismissed by WOLA, which does not consider spending in the US on law enforcement as part of the demand-side solution.

"Six years into Plan Colombia the mili- tary is murdering in broad daylight. We are bolstering militaries and ignoring human rights," says John Walsh, a drug policy expert at WOLA. "Yet we continue to perpetuate the illusion that some supply-side solution exists. The opportunity cost of that is that we are not investing enough in managing the demand in the US. The real game is here."

* * *

Monica Fernando Santacruz Ospina is tired.

Her husband, Maj. Elkin Molina, the officer in charge of the police unit slain in Jamundí, would have turned 36 this month. Normally, Ms. Fernando, his wife of 10 years, would buy a giant cream cake for the occasion. She is a great cook, she clarifies, but she has trouble with cakes. And a birthday demands a cake.

This year, she went to put flowers on his grave instead. It was raining, and she was crying, and she felt like just lying down in the ground beside him.

They had lunch together the day of his death - grilled chicken and vegetables, she remembers, because he was on a diet. She had said: "May God be with you," when he left the house. He kissed their 9-year-old, and told him to stop playing Xbox and do his homework.

Later, while visiting with a neighbor, Fernando's police walkie-talkie started crackling (she was issued the radio as the wife of the unit commander).

"Don't shoot us! Have mercy! We are police. We are fathers!" she heard familiar voices screaming. She knew who was yelling, but she refused to accept it. Again and again, she tried to reach her husband on the radio.

"I want to know who ordered this," she says today, pushing her hair away from her face. "I am scared no one will pay."

Since the massacre, Fernando and her son have relocated from Cali to Bogotá, and, with the help of the police and the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents who had trained her husband, she has gone back to school. She's studying criminology.

"I want to make sure my husband's death was not in vain," she says defiantly. "I refuse to be scared out of fighting back." Fernando then slowly puts her head in her hands and begins to sob. She is stressed, she apologizes, because she does not really know how or when it will all end.

In Washington, Anthony Placido, the DEA's chief of intelligence, understands. "A war has a definable beginning and end. This is not that," he admits, putting aside the usual terminology. "We are more like gardeners, pulling up the weeds," he says. "We are not going to raise a flag and say, we have won. We can't declare an end, a victory."

Back at the courthouse in Bogotá, the preliminary hearing for the Colombian soldiers on trial for the Jamundí massacre is cut short because of a technicality. The young soldiers shuffle out of the courtroom.

THE WAR ON DRUGS: PART 3    1 | 2 | Page 3

• Last of three parts. Read Part 1 and Part 2.