Colombia is a society crippled by narcotics, not so much because its people have become addicted but because much of the country has been taken over by ruthless drug barons. First of all, it was gangsters from the Medellin and Cali drug cartels who made billions of dollars by forcing peasants to grow and harvest narcotics, principally the cocoa plant which is made into cocaine. With a ready market in the United States, where the highest echelons of society think it chic to take drugs, successive US administrations have struggled to stem the almost ceaseless stream of smugglers, bringing in their merchandise of death by land, sea and air.
The Colombian cartels remain a great menace but theirs has been an operation that always had its limits. They needed to be able to use bribery and coercion to enable them to act virtually with impunity, especially in their home bases. They never sought to destroy the authorities they knew they could suborn, because they provided the cloak behind which they could carry on with their evil trade. With Colombia’s ruthless guerrilla movements, most particularly the largest group, the FARC, such niceties have not mattered. They wish to overthrow and destroy the country’s democratically elected government and they will use any means in their power to do this. Their brutal war is funded almost completely by money earned from trading narcotics. The so-called freedom fighters of the FARC are now the country’s major drug traders.
Intelligence reports suggest that they still need the traditional drug barons of the cartels but only to act as middlemen to move on their own narcotics production. The once cozy relationship between the gangsters and the guerrillas has more than once broken down and, when it has turned to violence, the gangsters have generally had the worst of it.
On the ground in Colombia, the forces of law and order are now really making progress. The capture of Fabio Ochoa, one of the last of the major drug barons and his imminent extradition to the United States is a major coup. Ochoa had accepted an amnesty, served five comfortable years in jail and was let out in 1995 promising to have no more to do with drugs. But this year he was arrested as part of a joint Colombian-US operation named Operation Millennium, which netted a large number of traffickers. Though protesting his innocence, Ochoa’s extradition to the US to face trial has been approved by the Colombian Supreme Court and is almost certain to be approved by President Pastrana.
No one should imagine that Ochoa will not be replaced but his downfall is a significant event. Now the US needs to work with the Colombians to defeat the guerrillas. The desultory peace talks that have been taking place are meaningless. These people have no political agenda. They are simply an extremely large and well-armed criminal gang, who has a vested interest in maintaining their insurrection. Whatever peace they might agree to would have to guarantee their drug income and in a civilized society, such an accommodation can never be acceptable. When Colombia’s drug-dealing rebels are finally smashed, it will be a lesson to the criminals elsewhere, for whom too insurgency is a multibillion-dollar business.
