I’ve never snorted cocaine or smoked crack. But I’m willing to wager that at least one person at Macalester has done so; maybe more than we would expect. And we all know the damage that our war on drugs has wreaked at home—hey, we have movies like Traffic with sexy stars and rich white girls becoming prostitutes to momentarily edify and terrify the suburbs. Yes, the United States has a drug problem, but the way in which it approaches this problem has real consequences for other people far away, off the movie screen and out of our minds. The effects of military aid and aerial fumigation in the Andean region, particularly Colombia, have been escalating as the quiet battle against “narco-terrorism” continues. Instead of aggressively pursuing alternative crop development (and, more easily said than done, providing markets for those crops), the United States fuels a civil war between insurgent leftist groups and rightist paramilitaries.

Recently the activities of the leftist groups the FARC and the ELN have been reported in mainstream news media, including a horrific street bombing and the abduction of tourists. Less reported are the frequent massacres, assassinations and “forced disappearances” perpetrated by paramilitary groups that are closely linked to government security forces. All of these groups use illegal coca (and to a lesser extent, opium) trafficking to fund these atrocities, so the answer seems simple: cut off the source, weaken the militant groups.

At least this seems to be the answer to the Bush administration, which has a package on the table to send $550 million dollars in military and police aid to Colombia, funding widespread aerial fumigation of coca crops by counter-narcotics unit DIRAN. The first major problem with this strategy is ecological disaster: the pesticides used by aircrafts (flying much higher than desirable to avoid rebel fire) also destroy “legitimate” crops, as well as harm the people and environment in the surrounding areas. Also, coca farmers are migrating up mountainsides, avoiding the police but causing massive soil erosion and deforestation problems in mountainous areas unfit for intense cultivation.

The second major problem is that funding government security forces inevitably funds paramilitaries, fueling dirty wars between rival groups. Proponents of the Colombia plan have argued that since 50 percent of the aid is contingent upon upholding human rights standards, the government security forces will be forced to obey international law when conducting counter-narcotics activities. Unfortunately, the “dirty work” of the government military can be done by the AUC, the leading paramilitary faction that was classified by Colin Powell as a foreign terrorist group two years ago. The cozy government-paramilitary relationship has become clearer as a blanket amnesty skewed towards pardoning paramilitaries has been offered by President Uribe.

It would be unfair, however, to characterize the United States as simply a bad guy in this conflict: some of the $135 million in socioeconomic aid to Colombia will be spent on alternative crop development and human rights monitoring. Unfortunately, the deals that U.S.-sponsored alternative development initiatives offer, such as DEVIDA in Peru, offer paltry rewards of $360 to eradicate one’s coca crops and plant new alternatives. UN programs also lack funds: a program for Colombian families to replant trees in deforested areas offers $400 a year, about a tenth of what they would be making planting coca. The reality is that the military and police aid outweighs alternative development programs by too much. As the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime asserts, “in cases of low-income production structures among peasants, alternative development is more sustainable and socially and economically more appropriate than forced eradication.”

A final problem to face is that if Cargill sold cocaine, there probably wouldn’t be a narcotics trade in Colombia. As the G-22 at the recent Cancún talks may have pointed out, alternative crop development won’t do much for Colombian peasants if markets are still flooded by subsidized American and European agricultural products.

Even if alternative crop development is not the answer, it is better than forced eradication, which only pushes impoverished peasants into the arms of militant groups. Even if total eradication of coca were possible, it would not ameliorate the long-standing civil strife in Colombia, nor would it prevent Americans from becoming drug addicts in one way or another. We can only fight the terror wreaked by militants in Colombia by giving peasants reasons to stop joining and supporting these groups. As Jaime Restrepo, a mayor in Colombia, stated, “It’s a survival economy. One way to survive is coca.” It might not make a good movie or fit into simple campaign slogans, but giving Colombians new viable options for survival is still the only way out.