| Interview Transcript: Maj. F. Andrew Messing | ||
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MESSING: The National Defense Council Foundation is a defense and foreign affairs think-tank in Alexandria, Virginia. We're a group that's studies Special Operations, Low-Intensity Conflict for over 21 years. We've also done 198 tons of food and medicine to the hottest combat areas of the world. I've had 20 trips into Colombia since 1985. I'm a former Special Forces Officer, retired as a major from the Reserves 10 years ago.
LOTTMAN: According to conventional wisdom, the 1990s were a decade which saw a fair amount of progress in Latin America. Peace agreements, guerrilla armies demobilizing to some degree, and the emergence of democratic, civilian rule. Do you agree with this conventional wisdom? What kinds of gains do you see as having been made in the past decade?
MESSING: Well, you have to understand that it's almost situational in nature. There are some places within South America, like for instance Colombia and even Peru, that still have a measure of turmoil that's generated from social, political, economical, and security inequities.
LOTTMAN: Turmoil continues in a lot of these places. The rosy scenarios we're talking about actually don't extend much into the social fabric. But to the extent that there have been gains, is there a potential for seeing those things reversed-a reversion to autocratic, military governments in the region. Is there a potential that we could start to backtrack?
MESSING: Well, our measure of democratic capitalism is not necessarily the same measure in Central and South America. And there's still many countries there that still haven't fulfilled their complete potential. And that's why you still have guerrilla groups, some of them backed by drug money, that are still trying to foment turmoil.
LOTTMAN: As far as the turmoil goes in Colombia, what are the dangers present in that situation, as far as how it affects us directly, here, and also how the turmoil there is affecting that country.
MESSING: Well, for over 35 years, there's been a substantial insurgency in Colombia. And the reason for this turmoil has been they've had social, political, economic, and security problems that they haven't been able to adjudicate within their own society. And until they do meaningful negotiation, the turmoil is going to continue. The thing that's terrible about the whole thing is that it's being fueled by narcotics money, to the tune of almost $100 million per month. This is what causes the United States a lot of problems because of the fact that we're the recipient of an increasing drug flow into our country, which hurts us and endangers our national security and our citizens. That's our interest. And the next reason, and a reason the United States ought to be concerned, is because we don't want a narco-sovereignty, or a place where darkside criminal capitalism can manifest itself in our hemisphere. And the third reason why we should be concerned is an extension of Cuban influence in the region.
LOTTMAN: Tell me a little bit about "darkside capitalism" as a threat to stability on all the various geopolitical levels.
MESSING: Well, this foundation bifurcates capitalism into "lightside" and "darkside" capitalism. Lightside capitalism is what was espoused by Locke, Adams, Jefferson, and others from our forefathers, who believed that capitalism should have a benevolent and uplifting and ethical component to it. Darkside capitalism is viewed as a narcissistic, hedonistic capitalism which is monopolistic and detrimental to democracy. It undermines our judicial pinnings, in other words our judges and our police are subverted. And it manifests itself in a very singular, evil kind of way.
There's two types of capitalism. One that raises, a rising tide raises all boats and gives hope and opportunity and is equitable, or manifests some sort of ethics, and then there's the other type that is just pure greed, narcissistic evil greed.
LOTTMAN: In your literature you referred to the ecological damage from the Colombian conflict as another problem which goes beyond that country's borders.
MESSING: Worldwide, there's been particular ecological damage done to our planet by drug-purveyors of drugs, drug dealers. They cut down tens of thousands of acres of jungle, virgin triple-canopy jungle, which winds up killing animals, and then they use precursor chemicals to pollute the waters, like the headwaters of the Amazon River are polluted from precursor materials. And this is done to make way for little bushes that don't give 1/100th the oxygen into our atmosphere or provide any type of material substance to our planet, compared to virgin jungle. And this goes on day after day, we're seeing acres and acres eroded day after day to make way for coca bushes and heroin plants. Poppy plants. So this is its own ecological damage that's being conveyed on the United States on the countries involved, and on the planet itself.
LOTTMAN: In the literature you gave me, you really played up the role of eradication as the linchpin of the strategy. Could you just develop that.
MESSING: Well, you never can win the Drug War. What you can do is reduce the supply to its lowest manageable level. And part of the equation, besides doing demand-side activities of education and treatment and stuff like this is to reduce the supply as far down as you can. And when you reduce the supply you have several tools that you can use. And one is eradication at the very source. And this is important because of the fact that that's where it's cheapest to stop drugs. And you can do it literally in bulk at that level. But the key to it is getting environmentally benign, plant-specific kind of eradication sprays and stuff like this, pellets, or insects, or fungus, to go after these drug-producing plants, like coca with Tubuthiron or something like this. Now you can't compare it to agent orange or something like that because these have been proven safe. But the point is, it's a lot cheaper to go after the tens of tons of drugs that are coming into the United States when we're eradicating the plants at the lowest level, and allowing other plants to grow in its place, like banana trees, or any other type of trees, because again, this is a plant-specific type of pellet or spray that they're using. So it's important to havr that component in the Drug War. Eradication is one of the linchpins.
LOTTMAN: Practically, how do you get at those fields to administer these agents or chemicals to do the eradication? What's the best way to do that?
MESSING: Well, aerial spraying, you can cover the greatest amount of territory. The Peruvian government did a study one time to find out who were the people that were winding up growing the drugs. And a lot of people come in from the cities. 50% of the people were coming in from the cities because they were trying to find a job. The jobs weren't in the cities, so they went out and wound up going and growing drugs. You have to have an active, or very proactive and aggressive crop substitution program. And in the case of Peru, there were 22 different types of crops that could have been substituted, and some of them, like tea and coffee, that were very economically viable, in the particular regions. And you have to wind up having an aggressive crop substitution plan that you go in there for. So eradication can't be done just in a vacuum. You have to have a proactive substitution so you don't create more guerrillas by going in and spraying. And at the same time you give economic hope to the region. But it's important for a country to have a specific policy on eradication, so these people know that they have to go toward crop substitution in order to earn a living.
LOTTMAN: What are the advantages of aerial spraying over, say, having ground forces go in and do this eradication?
MESSING: Well, aerial spraying versus manual eradication, aerial spraying you can cover a lot more territory. There's no doubt it. If you pellet an area using aircraft, you can do tens of thousands of acres. If you have manual eradication, 300 men can only eradicate X number of hectares or acres in a given space. It's a lot slower, it's more laborious, it's more costly, it's just time consuming. So the object of the exercise is to bring a halt to the production as soon as possible, with the least amount of expense and effort. And the safest way too.
LOTTMAN: It's less dangerous to do it from the air.
MESSING: Yeah, it is, too, because, you know, the people that you have going in are exposed to people who want to continue the drug trade. They're exposed. Whereas aircraft are not as exposed.
LOTTMAN: A coca-specific agent you referred to as Spike....
MESSING: Tebuthiron.
LOTTMAN: How much is that being used today in the spraying that's being done.
MESSING: It's not. What they're using is Round-up. Which is used here in the United States. In fact, a lot of people who want to keep grass from growing on their sidewalks use Round-up, and farmers use Round-up to keep weeds off of their farming area. So it's a fairly safe chemical. But it's not as effective as plant specific chemicals, or else fungus, or else some custom-designed insects that go after coca.
LOTTMAN: So they're not using Spike at all?
MESSING: You'd have to ask NDRA now why they're not using Spike because a lot of companies are afraid because they'll be threatened. There's some companies that won't allow the use of it. They won't even sell it to the government because they're afraid that their companies will come under attack and that their people will be kidnapped.
LOTTMAN: I was reading a GAO report the other day which showed the total area that they had sprayed, and then the actual area they had eradicated. Somewhere between 10 and about 25% of what they spray actually dies for some reason. Now could that proportion go up if they used an improved chemical.
MESSING: Probably yes. The point is that a lot of times when you're spraying, you can't get, because of the hostility of the area, you can't get close enough to have the spray take. I mean it's too dissipated by the time it gets to the plant. Because they have to fly too high, or there's some reason. Eradication still has to be done, because it's a way of slowing down this voluminous supply that's coming into the United States. Right now we're having more supply than demand. They are trying to create additional marketplaces. That's why, this is why it's a national security issue for the United States. They're sending in more drugs than current drug users need right now, or take. And we have to reduce that supply to make it expensive or harder to get. In other words, a pound of cocaine coming onto a school, it'll be expensive and not used as much as if 100 pounds of cocaine are coming onto the same school. Just out of natural curiosity, a lot of people would wind up trying it. And out of that group, some of them would be addicted or wind up abusing it in some form or fashion, causing death, or some instantly mind-bending incident which could cause a car accident or something like this. So you got to cut back on the amount that's coming into the United States. That's a very critical point in the Drug Conflict.
LOTTMAN: Briefly back to the subject of aerial eradication, aside from just doing of it, and using more effective agents, what else could be done to improve the effectiveness of that? I'm sort of thinking in terms of the equipment that we're using, or maybe the kinds of support that the US is giving those campaigns?
MESSING: Well, consistency in our support of anti-drug elements is important, and we haven't had consistency. Up until November of 1992, we were having a consistent, we were having what I call traction against the drug war. We were finally getting traction in the Drug Conflict, as I like to call it, rather than Drug War. And then we had the November election in 1992, and then the emphasis went down. Now it's starting to come back up because Congress is pushing the Administration to get more involved in it. And we've seen a measure of traction starting to take place at the nadir, and it's starting to come a little bit back up. But we have to have consistency, that's point number one. Point number two, we have to have a long-term strategy, where not only is there the right tactics involved in supporting anti-drug groups, but it should involve making sure they have proper human rights, that they have the right equipment, that we're not getting over-involved to the point where we're taking away their responsibility. These are all components of the strategy, and then we need to have the right material equipment. So they have the right equipment to lower the supply, and lower levels of violence within their own country. Which are two important points. You don't want to give them a nuclear device when all they need is a Huey helicopter. I mean that's exaggerating, but the point is that there's some equipment that is not appropriate for the drug war, versus there is proper equipment for the drug conflict. From satellite information to aerial spray aircraft that should be suited for it, and that's what you gotta give 'em.
LOTTMAN: Do they have the right kind of aerial spray aircraft? Is it just a question of using the right agents and getting the planes in closer, to kill a greater proportion of plants?
MESSING: Well, right now, in Colombia for instance, they don't have enough equipment to maintain their own security while they are doing this, and to wind up affecting an anti-drug mission that gets enough traction to reduce the supply down to its lowest manageable level? We have to figure out what that threshold is, because clearly we are not at that threshold right now. And any time we give people equipment, we have to do a conditional release of that equipment to them, where we're monitoring the human rights, we're monitoring their total behavior. In other words, that that element is not doing anti-democratic, anti-human rights activities. Upgrade the professionalism is the way I like to say it, of the military groups involved, whether they be the anti-drug elements of the army or the police. And it's important that we constantly monitor this, and that we don't oversupply them, but we at the same time don't under-supply them because our national health is involved. Our mental and physical health is involved in making sure that we reduce the supply. So we have a vested interest in it, so we have to be engaged in this process.
LOTTMAN: It's already part of our policy that we place conditions. But at the same time, it causes this big bureaucratic struggle, so none of this gets done in a timely fashion. So how do we find the happy medium?
MESSING: On the fifth of November, 1999, we will deliver three Blackhawk helicopters to the Colombian National Police. This has been in the process of delivery, like 7 or 8 Blackhawk helicopters, for over three years. It's basically too little, too late in some respects. Because during that time frame, they were not able to go up into the high-altitude, opium poppy growing areas to eradicate a lot of poppy because they didn't have the aircraft to do it. Meanwhile tens of tons of opiates have come into the United States as the result of our not supplying them with the right eradication equipment, or the ability to go up there an eradicate or interdict on the growing process. So somewhere along the line you have to make it a priority to wind up giving them the right equipment at the right time, and train them to use it. And soon the objectives of assisting them in their democratization and vetting of their police forces. And there's like, ten different components here you've gotta be looking at simultaneously. The idea that we're just dribbling equipment into them, enough for them to do just the bare minimum is not sufficient, because in the meanwhile, we're still having a flood of drugs coming into the United States that we're not having traction on.
LOTTMAN: What role specifically do these helicopters have in eradication? Do they spray using a helicopter? I don't see how you can do that with a prop going.
MESSING: They have spray devices for helicopters. But they also go up there and they provide troops on the ground to provide manual eradication, or they go after troops themselves, or they protect aircraft that have the capability, like thresh aircraft, that have, fixed-wing aircraft, that have the capability of doing that, and they provide them the protection. But if they can't get up to those altitudes, up to the 10,000-plus altitudes where they are growing poppy, then it just goes unabated. And as a result we see an increase in the amount of heroin coming into the United States at some point.
LOTTMAN: So mobility is a big key in this as well.
MESSING: Mobility, intelligence, training, all this kind of stuff. Increasing their professionalism, vetting them to make sure that, because, drugs are very corrosive to democracies and to armies and to many businesses. And so all of this is part of the anti-drug process that you have to do.
LOTTMAN: What would you look at as the first steps the US could take in order to be more effective in I guess executing its own strategy in Colombia.
MESSING: I think I mentioned consistency first of all. We have to have a long-term drug strategy, and be consistent about effecting it. And then, once this is known, people can rely on our word, and what we say we're gonna do. That's very important, because there are a lot of decent Colombians that wanna fight the drug scourge within their own country, because they have seen how it's corrupted their own judicial processes, their own political processes, their own business processes, and they are repelled over the idea that drugs has corrupted elements of their societies. Because Colombians first and foremost are decent people. So we have to show that consistency, do a long-term strategy, and then provide them with a certain level of assistance that they can use, whether it be equipment or intelligence or training, or whatever. At the same time being conditional about it, saying here's what it's going to be used for. And by the way, we better see the army increase their professionalism, and we better not see any human rights violations in the course of the use of this equipment. And things like this. And just like in El Salvador, you start to see an upturn in the behavior. It's a behavior modification thing. And you see an increase in professionalism, behavior, consistency, that winds up coming to the point feel, the narco-guerrillas who are getting $100 million a month, that they wind up deciding, hey , we better come to the negotiating table if we're going to wind up getting any measure of power-sharing. And then you start to see the social and economic, and political and security problems start to go away as the internal machinations occur and everybody starts to talk and agree with each other on how to solve problems. And we get the drug aspect out of this thing and we as the United States, as Americans, start to see a downturn in the supply that's coming into the United States. But we have to think in terms of long-term process.
LOTTMAN: I've also picked up in your literature, and I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but just the sense that we don't necessarily have the best personnel in the field down there, or that the different agencies don't work that well together, and also the way they deal directly with the Colombians, that there might be some room for improvement there. Is there room for improvement just in those things we do on a day-to-day basis. Who is eminently qualified to do this sort of stuff. If people there have shortcomings, who could do it better?
MESSING: Well, there's two main groups that are involved in Colombia, for instance, at this point: the State Department and the Department of Defense. They're our lead elements in doing anti-drug activities down in the Southern Cone. You have to have the brightest, the best, and the bravest of both components going down there. We have to have people that are language qualified, area oriented, that understand the political, social, economic, and security concerns of the region and how it interacts in our national interest. So that's first and foremost. The second thing is, within the State Department, you have to have people that have been schooled in anti-drug activities. They have to not just be acquainted with how to conduct a good dinner party, and negotiate and make treaties. They have to understand what components are involved in doing anti-drug activities on a government, on a macro and micro level. And as for DoD, they can't have, in the case of Colombia, the conventional military being involved in this type of thing, because this is no place for B-2 bombers, B-1 bombers, aircraft carriers. It's a place for Special Forces, Navy Seals, and Marine Reconnaissance types who are upgrading the professionalism and quality of the military and the police down there. And that goes with, you have to have experienced DEA and FBI guys. The FBI guys should be establishing judicial protection, looking after out interests, they have authority to look after our interests down there in terms of going after the bad guys. And all of these people should be intertwined and coordinated with each other, on the country-team level. And cooperating in the best and most cogent way. We haven't seen that in the past. We've seen a lot of ad hoc stuff. We've seen a lot of non-cooperation. A lot of jealousy on the part of interagency elements. And we've seen political agendas, left and right political agendas which have no room in this conflict.
LOTTMAN: The last time I was inhere I asked whether the drug conflict can really be fought, can really be prosecuted while, at least as far as the Colombians are concerned, as long as there is this larger guerrilla conflict going on. But it seems to me from your perspective, paraphrasing here, is that if we could make some headway in the drug war, that'll help bring the larger conflict to some kind of peaceful conclusion.
MESSING: Well, the case of the Colombian conflict, it's gone on for 30, over 35 years. And it was jump-started by social, political, economic, and security inequities. You know, guerrillas don't become guerrillas unless they're ticked off about something. The nomenklatura had oppressed them. They hadn't let em power sharing, they didn't give economic opportunity, and socially they were pushed in at the bottom levels of society. And their own security was in jeopardy because their own people that were in charge at the time could push them around at their will. So you had a guerrilla movement spring up and they aligned themselves with the wrong element at the time which was the Cubans and the Russians. Now things have changes. There are still social, political, economic, and security inequities, but the fact is, at about 1990, when there was a decision to go after the cartels, and the cartels were eliminated by '93 or '94, the guerrillas wound up jumping into the void, and assuming the drug trade, and making their own cartels. And so, now they get $100 million a month. And like a comandante I once met said to me, who was invloved in the drug trade, this was pre-'90, he held up his gold credit card and said to me when I got this gold credit card my ideology went out the window. So we have some old time ideologues like Mono Joyjoy in there. But then you have a whole new sort of darkside criminal capitalist that are involved in this movement. So you're not exactly clear where the FARC and ELN are. Some of them are just in it for the business, you know, the darkside capitalist business, and some of them like Mono Joyjoy, are still involved in some sort of ideological bent. But we've had a metanosis or metamorphosis of the guerrilla movements from the 70s, into the, now the year 2000. And we have to understand that taking the cause away from the guerrilla like we did in El Salvador was an important element, but we also have to take away their money. We have to deal with two problems now. Not just taking the causes away from the guerrilla fight, but we have to also take away this darkside capitalist money that they're taking, because they're getting $100 million a month to fuel this turmoil.
LOTTMAN: So economic self-interest is one of the things that keeps the guerrilla going. It seems to me, political conditions in Colombia even have changed a great deal. You've got a reasonably progressive administration in there now that wants to make a deal, essentially.
MESSING: The guerrillas have empowered themselves by jumping in the void and taking over the drug trade. They've empowered themselves economically. So that makes them, and they're winning on the battlefield. So they're winding up being in the driver's seat in spite of the fact that you have a president, Pastrana, who is winding up making these rather generous offers of negotiation, giving them whole areas of Colombia, on the size of Switzerland, to wind up having as a neutral zone. This still doesn't impress this group, because now they are economically empowered, at $100 million a month, and they can afford to run their game, so to speak. And that doesn't bode well for Colombia, and it certainly doesn't bode well for our national security interests.
LOTTMAN: Is there anything else you want to say about American military aid in this situation. I know you wanted me to keep in mind what the Post ran yesterday about the military buildup going on on the guerrilla side. So what's the importance of our military aid. It's something a lot of people are concerned about because they have to pay for it.
MESSING: Well, first of all, if we're going to provide aid, it should be two-part aid. One-fourth of the aid should be military aid, three-quarters of it should be economic aid. That's the formula of success that we used in El Salvador, and trhat's what we have to do. Second, it should definitely be conditional aid. The aid that we give is to upgrade the professionalism and human rights of the regional elements that we're giving assistance to. And the third reason that we wanna give aid, is just for our national interest. We wanna stop, or at least reduce to the lowest manageable level, the amounts of drugs coming into the United States. So we have a vested interest to provide this aid so we can keep a government from turning into a narco-sovereignty. We don't want to see a haven for darkside criminal activity in our own hemisphere. Because once we allow this darkside criminal capitalist enterprise to occur In our own hemisphere, then it's Katie, bar the door.
LOTTMAN: Is the level of aid they're talking about now, in this next three year plan, is that appropriate as far as a pocketbook sense of getting our money's worth?
MESSING: The best thing the liberals did during the El Slavadorean conflict was to cap the level of military aid to 55 Americans. Now in the case of Colombia, it's 8 times the population and size, so an appropriate cap may be 8 times 55. Just to keep the conventional side of the military out of the equation. Because they've got no business being there. We had 55 plus 100 that were just dedicated to just increasing the medical capabilities of the Salvadoran military at the time. I'd be amenable, also to a cap on medical people that we could send in. In other words, they were doing not only civic action, but they were also helping the El Salvadoran military at the same time. And this is important that we upgrade the medical capabilities of the Colombian army and the Colombian police, because they are on the cutting edge. They've had 4,000 policemen die in five years, fighting in the drug war. It's an amazing amount of people just on the police side. I'm not clear on how many army people have died also. This is avery tough war. Already 35,000 people have died in this conflict. It's horrible. So the object of the exercise of us putting economic and military aid into this situation is to get parity on the battlefield, so that we wind up having these negotiations. The guerrillas come to thew negotiating table with sincerity. Because right now, they are in the driver's seat. They have no reason to settle on Pastrana's terms, or in conjunction with Pastrana. Let's put it that way. So we have to get parity on the battlefield. Once that's accomplished, I feel confident that the guerrillas will come, the narco-guerrillas as I call them, will come to the negotiating table, and we'll see an and to hostilities in Colombia, one, and two, we'll accomplish our national objectives, which is reduced drug supplies coming into the United States. And that's what I'm concerned about.
LOTTMAN: My final question is what are our goals and how do we achieve them. But I think you just answered that as far as arriving at a negotiated settlement.
MESSING: Yeah, negotiated settlement is first and foremost. Because without a cessation of turmoil, we can't really deal with the drug problem. So the first part of this is to assist the anti-drug forces, the fledgling democratic government-even though it's a 200-year-old democracy I think-in other words, let the democracy survive, so we have the anti-drug forces intact. So we can deal with the anti-drug element to this thing. Every ton of cocaine that comes into the United States means a billion dollars in damage to our economy and to our citizens. One ton, one billion.
LOTTMAN: To what extent has the guerrillas' willingness to make a deal, sooner rather than later, has that been tested. In other words, could there be more of a fast track to getting a deal done, or do you see that as just not being practical at this time.
MESSING: Well, the guerrillas are winning on the battlefield. They have the latest arms, ammunition, communication. They get training, they rent a trainer from former British SAS, Israeli soldiers, Russian mafia types and Russian soldiers are assisting them. So they wind up having the capability, at $100 million a month according to El Tiempo, the leading newspaper there-that had got that information from combined sources-they have the capability of doing whjatever they want, both on the battlefield and to achieve their objectives, which is the transfer of power to their system. And their system is suspect now, because they are so heavily involved in the drug trade. If they were anti-drug, this would almost be like a pure civil war, like it started out. But the fact that they have immersed themselves in drugs has corrupted their cause. And like I said before, when that guy got the gold credit card, he lost his ideology. That FARC comandante.
LOTTMAN: Just so there's no confusion here. The guerrillas have an advantageous position now. You think that makes them less willing to come in out of the jungles and make a deal, I guess because they are making a lot of money?
MESSING: The guerrillas have two advantages right now. They are winning on the battlefield, and they have an incredible amount of money that they are making through the drug trade. And so they are doing things to their timetable, their way. And that puts President Pastrana and the democratic government of Colombia in an untenable situation, because they are coming out on the short end every time, as reflected in the recent breakdowns of negotiations over the past couple of months.
LOTTMAN: So as long as they have the advantage, any sort of deal will be capitulation? They'll just keep doing what they are doing now?
MESSING: Yeah. At this point, Pastrana's overtures have met with little acceptance on the part of FARC and ELN. And Pastrana is in a losing situation, a no-win situation. And that's why parity on the battlefield at this point, pushing the guerrillas to the point where they have to come to the negotiating table, is such an important concept.
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