Attacking The Source

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Nonetheless, the DEA is already plunging ahead with Operation Snowcap, a hemisphere-wide program that shifts emphasis from crop eradication to search- and-destroy missions against clandestine labs, airstrips, riverboats and warehouses. Last year DEA chief John Lawn, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Watson and Peruvian officials agreed to build a secure base for Snowcap activities in the Upper Huallaga. The deal called for the U.S. to haul bulldozers to a settlement called Santa Lucia, where an airstrip would be cleared so that cargo planes could land supplies. The State Department, however, objected to having U.S. Army Engineers air-drop the bulldozers; diplomats warned against political backlash if American military personnel were spotted in the valley. The final deal, worked out after Lawn brought the impasse to Bush's attention: State borrowed two bulldozers from a U.S. Agency for International Development project and had the Santa Lucia airstrip under way by early July.

South America is not the only place where the U.S. is putting pressure on friendly governments to crack down on the drug trade. But where the drug fight runs counter to other foreign policy objectives, the record is decidedly mixed. Standout example: in Burma the State Department last fall suspended support for Burma's antiopium campaign and ordered the DEA not to deal with Burmese officials. The action was meant to register displeasure with a repressive military regime, but some DEA agents contend that it disrupted still productive DEA-Burmese operations.

In Thailand DEA agents and consular officials based in the northern city of Chiangmai said the U.S. should seriously consider shutting down an antidrug program. Reason: official corruption had gone so far that heroin was sometimes being transported in Thai police vehicles or even army helicopters, making the program a joke. The embassy, however, decided to live with the problem because it could see no alternative.

Prospects have brightened in Pakistan and Mexico. Haji Mirza Iqbal Baig, described as a heroin kingpin, surrendered to Pakistani police in early August; they hope he will help convict other powerful smugglers. In Mexico President Carlos Salinas de Gortari is prosecuting some formerly untouchable drug lords and officials, notably Jose Antonio Zorrilla Perez, the feared former chief of the Federal Security Directorate. But the State Department and the DEA are split over what to do about Cuba. State officials dismiss the executions of General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez and three other officers, allegedly for drug trafficking, as being really intended to destroy Fidel Castro's rivals. DEA officials argue that whatever Castro's motives, his antidrug posturing should be exploited.

Where U.S. geopolitical interests collide with drug policy, geopolitics usually wins. Bennett's plan may change that. After years of complaining that Washington was not serious about the drug fight, the public may soon learn the cost of fighting a full-scale war -- at home and abroad.

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