Drug Control

The narcotics threat continues from Colombia--the world's leading manufacturer and distributor of cocaine. According to State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration reports, the cultivation of coca leaf in Colombia increased by 50 percent between 1994 and 1996. The prevalence of Colombian heroin on the streets of the United States has steadily increased. Significant obstacles, including widespread corruption and extensive violence, have impeded U.S. and Colombian counternarcotics efforts. Colombian insurgent groups, which are increasingly involved in drug trafficking, have further complicated the situation. Since the initial decertification decision in March 1996, Colombia has taken several steps to address U.S. concerns, including passing laws to hinder drug trafficking, eradicating illicit drug crops, interdicting drugs, and combating drug-trafficking organizations and activities. U.S. officials believe that Colombia must now fully implement newly passed laws on asset forfeiture, money laundering, and trafficker sentencing and show a willingness to investigate and punish corrupt officials. Decertification had little impact on Colombia's economy because the President chose not to apply discretionary sanctions against Colombia. However, mandatory economic sanctions required by the decertification decision have led to the termination of some U.S. economic aid and may have hurt some U.S. businesses. Management problems continue to plague the U.S. counternarcotics program in Colombia. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Drug Control: Counternarcotics Efforts in Colombia Face Continuing Challenges, by Henry L. Hinton, Jr., Assistant Comptroller General for National Security and International Affairs Programs, before the House Committee on International Relations. GAO/T-NSIAD-98-103, Feb. 26 (nine pages).

GAO noted that: (1) the narcotics threat from Colombia remains and may be growing, and U.S. efforts in Colombia continue to face major challenges; (2) the United States has had limited success in persuading the Colombian government to take aggressive actions to address corruption within the government, which limits its ability to arrest and convict traffickers; (3) for its part, the United States has had difficulty implementing a well-planned and coordinated strategy to assist Colombian authorities; (4) according to recent Department of State and Drug Enforcement Administration reports, the cultivation of coca leaf in Colombia increased by 50 percent between 1994 and 1996, and the prevalence of Colombian heroin on the streets of the United States has steadily increased; (5) since the initial decertification decision in March 1996, Colombia has taken several actions to address U.S. concerns; (6) at the initial decertification decision in March 1996, State was not prepared to determine whether some programmed assistance intended for the Colombian police and military could continue to be provided; (7) it took State, in conjunction with other executive branch agencies, about 8 months to decide what could be provided; (8) as a consequence, about $35 million in programmed counternarcotics assistance was cancelled or delayed; (9) however, the overall operational implications of the cutoff on U.S. and Colombian counternarcotics program is unclear; (10) the U.S. counternarcotics effort in Colombia has continued to experience management challenges; (11) State did not take adequate steps to ensure that equipment included in a 1996 $40 million assistance package from the Department of Defense inventories could be integrated into the U.S. Embassy's plans and strategies to support the Colombian police and military counternarcotics forces; (12) as a result, the assistance package contained items that had limited immediate usefulness to the Colombian police and military and will require substantial additional funding to become operational; and (13) moreover, the military assistance was also delayed for 10 months because State and the Embassy could not reach agreement with the government of Colombia over acceptable end-use provisions to ensure that the assistance was not being provided to units suspected of human rights violations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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