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DATE=8/24/1999 TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT TITLE=DRUG WAR IN COLOMBIA NUMBER=5-44125 BYLINE=ED WARNER DATELINE=WASHINGTON CONTENT= VOICED AT: INTRO: The United States is stepping up its aid to Colombia to combat the combined forces of Marxist guerillas and narcotic traffickers, whose growing power threatens the state. America is also threatened by the cocaine pouring in from Colombia, some seventy per cent of the total that reaches the country. But critics say given the heavy demand for illicit drugs in the United States, trying to eliminate the supply is futile and leads to further destabilization of Colombia. V-O-A's Ed Warner reports. TEXT: Some 300 American soldiers, CIA operatives and drug enforcement agents are now in Colombia to try to stop the cocaine flooding into the United States. So far in this mission against narco-guerrillas, eight Americans have died in surveillance plane crashes. More casualties are likely as the U-S mission expands. Colombia is the third largest recipient of American aid after Israel and Egypt, and there are proposals to double that amount. Yet it hardly compares to the estimated 600-million dollars a year that the guerrilla movement known as FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) gains from the drug trade. The group is said to have more automatic weapons than the Colombian army. Nor is there any sign of cutting back cocaine production despite U-S and Colombian efforts to eradicate it. Reports say areas of coca cultivation have increased by 50-percent in the last two years. Andy Messing, Executive Director of the National Defense Council Foundation, served in the U-S Special Forces in Vietnam and Central America and has traveled extensively in Colombia. He believes too little U-S help has allowed the narco-guerrillas on the left to challenge the government, which also must cope with a paramilitary force on the right. Mr. Messing says the United States must offer aid and advice to the Colombian government and insist on reforms that will satisfy some of the rebels' demands for social justice. At the same time, he says, FARC must be deprived of its income by eradication of the coca fields: /// FIRST MESSING ACT /// If you do not attempt to reduce supply, then you have incredible volumes beyond demand coming into the United States, which creates a new level of demand in the United States. So you have to address both demand side and supply side. The best you can ever hope for is making it hard to get and very expensive to get, and that drives down some of the demand. You can never win against drugs, but what you can do is reduce it to its lowest manageable level. /// END ACT /// If supply is not reduced, says Mr. Messing, a narco-sovereignty could be established in Colombia, putting the drug dealers effectively in control. Mexico would not be far behind in his opinion, and the rest of the hemisphere would be endangered. Mr. Messing says the previous guerrillas in the region were motivated by communism, but today's rebels reflect a predatory capitalism: // SECOND MESSING ACT // Dark-side capitalism is ten times worse than Communism ever was because it lends a distinct level of strength to their operation that Communism never had. Communism was not a successful economic model. Dark-side capitalism, which is dictatorial and monopolistic and favors a hedonistic, narcissistic ruling elite, has its own perverse momentum. /// END ACT /// Ethan Nadelmann is Director of the Lindesmith Center, a drug policy institute in New York. He is skeptical of U-S efforts to eradicate cocaine in Colombia. If production is suppressed in one area, it moves to another: /// FIRST NADELMANN ACT /// If you look at the last seventy to eighty years