Narco-Terrorism

     Narco-terrorism refers actually to two different phenomena: 
first, a form of revolutionary terrorism in which insurgents or
terrorists use the production of narcotics to finance their
revolutionary activities or else as a means of undermining the
social fabric of the United States; second, a form of
entrepreneurial terrorism in which the drug traffickers
themselves use terrorism in order to keep governments, police
forces, or guerrilla groups from interfering with their
operations or profits.   

     Evidence of the entrepreneurial narco-terrorism is quite
striking, with the Medell¡n drug cartel sponsoring the "Death to
Kidnappers" group (See MAS) as well as the "Extraditables,"
(q.v.).  These groups assassinated 3 Colombian presidential
candidates and have carried out several car bombings and also
have bombed at least one domestic Colombian airplane flight, in
order to force the Colombian government to desist from its
antidrug campaign.  Evidence of guerrilla involvement with drug
trafficking can be found in Colombia, Peru, and Thailand where
guerrilla insurgents control areas of drug crop cultivation or
smuggling.  
     
     Demonstrating that guerrillas aid and abet drug trafficking
in order to corrupt North American society is not quite so
straightforward.  The simplest explanation consistent with the
known facts would seem to be that guerrillas will use whatever
resources are available to them, whether extortion or kidnapping
or drug trafficking, to finance their revolutionary agenda. 
Similarly, certain of the Afghan Mujahideen groups have
participated in the manufacture and smuggling of heroin derived
from Afghani opium but did so without regard for their own
Islamic scruples against narcotics and without regard for the
ultimate markets of these drugs, which were more likely to be
found in the West than in the Soviet Union.  While this line of
reasoning suggests that narco-terrorism by guerrilla groups need
not be truly revolutionary in its intent, the terrorism
researcher Rachel Ehrenfeld has documented several instances of
what are purported to be narco-terrorism as a form of
revolutionary terrorism meant to undermine capitalist societies
 
The Medellin Cartel

     Not true "cartels" but at least two big Mob families who
supply 80% of the world's cocaine and sell about $20 billions
worth per year in U.S.A. and elsewhere bringing about $2-4
million back to Columbia each year.

     The Medellin group accounted for about 60 percent of this
trade in 1987 and had about 120,000 full-time employees of whom
2,000-3,000 were stationed in the United States.  The wealth and
scope of influence of the Medellin group has growth so much that
former Colombian President Belisario Betancur stated 

          "we are up against an organization stronger than
          the state."  

Formation of the "Cartel" and its Entry into Terrorism

Carlos Lehder Rivas, a Colombian related to one of the cocaine-
exporting families proved the feasibility of his idea to his
family by flying 500 pounds of cocaine into the United States and
returning with over $1 million in profits.


From 1978-1979 the Colombians "liquidated" the Miami-based Cuban
mob in the so-called "cocaine wars."  Rather than fighting among
themselves the cocaine-producing families of Colombia agreed to
share this market among themselves in a cartel-like arrangement. 
The actual organization was finalized due to the hostage-taking
activities of the M-19 leftist guerrillas 

In 1981 Lehder called a war council with the heads of two other
leading cocaine-producing families of Colombia, namely Jorge Luis
Ochoa Vasquez and Pablo Escobar Gaviria.  Each of the three
contribution $7.5 million to establish their own security force
and anti-leftist death squad

MAS, short for "Muerte a Secuestradores," ("Death to
Kidnappers").  Once the drug lords created their own terrorist
force to deal with leftists, the Colombian government, and
troublesome U.S. elected officials and DEA agents then the
"Medellin Cartel" became in effect a powerful entrepreneurial
terrorist group able to strike at targets both within Colombia
and throughout the world.

     By 1982 MAS was able to deploy 2,000 trained men to destroy
M-19.  Two training camps were estalished in remote rural areas
of Colombia in which 150 recruits a year are graduated after
undergoing training in combat and patrol tactics, martial arts,
intelligence gathering, and C-4 explosives training.  The camps
are run by former Israeli and British special forces commandos
including a former Israeli Defense Forces colonel.  A former
cartel defecter, Diego Viafra said the following about the morale
and discipline of MAS troops:  

     "These combatants and the patrol people who work for
     the paramilitary narco-organization are much more
     disciplined than any Army soldiers in Colombia.  They
     are smarter and they have much more competent
     indoctrination than any Colombian soldier."

     Under the "Big Three" of Carlos Lehder, Jorge Ochoa, and
Pablo Escobar, there are seventeen other "families" who each
carry out tasks of importing coca leaf, processing and refining,
smuggling and distribution within the United States more or less
according to the specialties of each organization.  Each "family"
is made up of related family groups, as well as neighbors,
childhood buddies, and long-established friends.  Those involved
in the actual production and distribution of cocaine are
organized into cellular groups to protect the others.  Most of
the "families" are persons in the support network rather than in
the drug trade itself.  Several wives of the heads of the
seventeen families have assumed important leadership positions in
their own right rather than as mere nurturers of mob bosses.  
Within the Medellin cartel there is strict discipline and even a
sort of Puritanism.  Drug use and heavy drinking are punishable
by death - not simply one's own death but also the killing of
one's parents, siblings, spouse and children.  

Carlos Lehder even made an unfortunate remark that lent more
credibility to the "Narc-FARC" narco-terrorist conspiracy myth: 
"Cocaine is the atom bomb with which we will destroy U.S.
imperialism." - this from the leader of a syndicate which
reinvest approximately half of its profits into the U.S. economy. 
Much of their political philosophy could be more succinctly
restated as "Whatever is good for the Medellin cocaine cartel is
good for Colombia." 

     The cartel employs over one million people in the Andean
nations of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, as well as Ecuador and
Brazil.

     However the biggest buyers of coca leaf are cartel buyers
who buy up most of the crop offering the local farmers three to
fifteen times the legal price set by the government.  About 55
percent of the coca leaf required by the cartel comes from Peru
and Bolivia.Once the coca leaf reaches the processing station in
Colombia the "piscadores" then stomp on the leafs in a giant vat
containing crushed coca leaf, kerosene and sodium bicarbonate, to
extract the cocaine alkaloid from the leaf.  This goes on for
twelve hours during the night and the piscadores are encouraged
in this tedious work by piped in traditional festive music and
heady draughts of native corn beer spiked with coca paste.  Even
the piscadore may earn twice as much as a rural schoolteacher.

     In 1984, when the Untied States co-opted the Colombian
government into its strategy of cutting off the trade in cocaine
at its source, the combined Colombian ANti-Narcotics police and
DEA forces targetted the labs in particular.  On March 10, 1984
they raided one remote lab apprehending 45 people after meeting
heavy armed resistence.  Over 200 others escaped into the
jungles.  The facility had six electric generators, a mess-hall
and dormitory that could accommodate 60 people at a time.  About
nine and one-half tons of cocaine hydrochloride were seized along
with 1.7 tons of coca paste, together having a street value of 42
billion.  A raid in 1987 discovered a more elaborate facility
having six air-fields, a three story concrete dormitory, and also
a refining facility for reprocessing solvents and acids needed
for extraction and stabilization.  There are over 200 such labs
in Colombia and that a new one comes on line whenever another has
been discovered and raided.

     Their air fleet consists of hundreds of plane from Cesnas to
DC-6s flown mainly by American pilots, navigators and electronics
specialists.  About 40 percent of the cocaine is smuggled into
the United States by sea while the remaining 60 percent comes in
by air.  Whereas in other parts of the operation Colombians
dominate here Americans dominate.  In the mid-1980s pilots
received $3,500 for each kilo they smuggled into the U.S. and a
small Cesna could carry several hundreds of kilos.

     Within the U.S. two to three thousand Colombians oversee the
distribution of cocaine.  

In-house courier service company, Consolidated Courier Services,
to ferry illicit dollars out to Panama and the Bahamas to be
laundered by banks 

Of the 100 banks in Panama about 50 are owned by the cartel. 
About one-half of the $2 - 1.5 billion in yearly revenues is
invested in Colombia while the remainder is re-invested in the
United States.  As a result of this cash flow into Colombia and
the indirect effects on its economy Colombia, unlike other Latin
American nations, experienced steady economic growth in the 1980s
and never had to reschedule its debt payments. 

NARCO-POLITICS

     Carlos Lehder run unsuccessfully for President on this
issue.  Pablo Escobar was actually elected to the Colombian House
of Representatives on the anti-extradition issue but did not
actually serve there.  

     These attempts by drug lords to form political parties and
to run openly in Colombian politics appeared afterwards to be
counterproductive for it highlighted to what degree organized
crime was dominating Colombian society and politics.NARCO-PHILANTHROPY

     With their $2 billion a year cash flow from the United
States the drug lords have been able to spend lavishly within
Colombia at no hurt to their own wealth and no imposition on the
wealth or incomes of those on whom they have spent this largess. 
They have gained reputations as providers for poor 
neighborhoods, employers of unemployed (and unemployable) young
men of the slums, benefactors both of communities and churches. 
Pablo Escobar gained the greatest popularity through this tactic
which may have gained him his seat in the Colombian Congress and
he is still celebrated by the poor of Colombia today as a sort of
latter-day Robin Hood who took from the rich "Yankees" and gave
to the poor of Colombia.

     In 1982 Pablo Escobar began his "Medellin Without Slums"
project in which he originally aimed to built 2,000 housing units
for the most poor of Medellin.  Only 500 of these units were
built but he also renovated several crumbling churches, built 80
sports studiums with outdoor lighting, repaired delapidated
schools, and extended electricity and water utilities to
neighborhoods that had lacked these amenities.  When asked about
the propriety of accepting money from criminal syndicates the
Roman Catholic Bishop of Pereira said, "God's hands are not made
dirty by cartel money." 

     In a battle for legitimacy with the Colombian government
these dramatic gestures have tilted the war for the hearts and
minds of Colombia's people in favor of the drug lords.  By
contrast the Colombian government has been unable or unwilling to
provide many of the basic amenities and social services required
by a modernizing and developing nation

     This section on "narco-philanthropy" is not meant to praise
or to excuse the criminality of the cartels but is meant to
underscore how successful the cartel has co-opted the Church,
civil society, and even the State in its greed.  Similarly the
Nazis under Hitler brought down unemployment and inflation under
their social programs, built marvellous Autobahns that became the
model for the U.S. Interstate Highway system, and developed the
Volkswagen assembly which ahs continued to provided millions of
people worldwide with inexpensive cars of high quality.  Yet none
of this erases the record of their atrocities and criminality. 
Likewise the cartel's own criminality is in no way diminished by
these charities which merely represent a Machiavellian policy of
pure self-interest on their part.

FINALLY,... THE REAL NARCO-TERRORISM STANDS UP

     The "narco-philanthropy" just described is merely one tactic on an overall
strategy of state co-optation.  There are three parts of this strategy:  

     1.   Bribery and Payoffs:  With the low salaries of judges, policemen, and
          army officers, this is the most cost-effective means of neutralizing
          state intervention against the cartel.  In 1984 when the Colombian
          government agreed to aid the U.S. in destroying the cartel and
          extraditing the key cartel leaders the cartel made a counter-offer of
          paying off Colombia's national debt of $10 Billion if the Colombian
          government would renege on this deal.  The Colombia government refused
          at that time.  Today Colombian army units protect the labs of the
          cartel.

2.   Intimidation and Violence:  After creating its MAS anti-leftist
     paramilitary force, MAS in turn has created over 180 urban "death squads"
     and execution squads with colorful names like, "The Smurfs," "Los Nachos,"
     and the like.  Although there have been singular instances of honest and
     brave judges and policemen who have resisted the blandishments and threats
     of the cartel for the most part they have been kiled.  Often these killings
     have been conducted in broad daylight in front of scores of witnesses in
     order to broadcast the event as much as possible and have involved
     extremely gruesome methods, such as dismemberment by power chain-saws. 
     Apart from politically motivated assassinations the MAS terror forces also
     specialize in debt collection and lab security.


1984 - Assassination of Justice Minister Lara Bonilla
1986 - head of Anti-Narcotic Police killed 
     - also hostile editor of the Bogota daily "El                 Espectador"
     was assassinated and a bounty of
       over $ 1 million paid to the killer.
1987 - attempted assassination of former Justice Minister
     who had gone into hiding in Budapest, Hungary
1988 - exposure of plan to assassinate Mayer Ed Koch of
     New York City and DEA chief there for their
     efforts to neutralize cartel members there.

          These actions show both the effectiveness and audacity of the cartel's
efforts at intimidation and terror.  While they have not been wholly effective
outside Colombia's borders they have thoroughly intimidated would-be opponents
within Colombia.


     3.   Deep Intelligence Penetration:  The cartel has managed to penetrate
          the Ministry of Justice, the National Police and Anti-Narcotics
          Police, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and even has gained access to
          classified cable traffic of the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.  Often DEA
          agents and Colombian Anti-Narcotics police arrive at remote labs only
          to find that they have been evacuated and most cocaine removed long
          before their arrival thanks to the intelligence efforts of the cartel. 
          The cartel is willing to pay its informants ove three times what DEA
          ofers its informants and for those who peddle bogus information or are
          suspected of being double agents MAS has the option of torture and
          murder as pay-back, while DEA's sanctions for treacherous informants
          are more constrained.

FINAL WORDS

     The  




MAS - The "Death to Kidnappers" group (Spanish:  Muerte a Secuestradores, MAS)
is a nonstate death squad run by Colombian drug traffickers for the limited
purpose of countering and containing their main enemies, namely Colombian
leftist revolutionaries, politicians, and the Colombian state.  The drug
traffickers' alliances with leftist rebels against the government, or with
right-wing elements in the security forces against leftist revolutionaries, have
been purely tactical in nature and intended by the drug traffickers at
preserving their relative autonomy in a fractured and weak Colombian state.

     MAS was founded in December 1981 by drug traffickers Carlos Ledher Rivas
and Jorge Luis Ochoa V squez.  The leader of the Medell¡n drug cartel, Pablo
Escobar Gaviria (d. 1993), was also believed to be among the patrons of MAS. 
This group was originally directed particularly against guerrilla groups, such
as M-19, that had been kidnapping drug kingpins for ransom.  Eventually it
became a right-wing death squad that targeted leftist politicians, students, and
other activists.  MAS is believed to function as an umbrella organization for a
number of right-wing paramilitary groups of which 128 could be identified by
1988.

     Although there has been evidence of collusion in the early 1980s between
drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas, who shared at least a common enemy in
the Colombian government if not a common ideology, such a relationship was
problematic at best, probably more on the level of mutual extortion than
cooperation.  By the late 1980s, the drug traffickers began attacking the
leftists in earnest.  On 11 October 1987, Jaime Pardo Neal, a leader of the
FARC-associated Patriotic Union (UP) Party, was killed by agents of a major drug
trafficker.  On 22 March 1990, traffickers also assassinated UP Presidential
candidate Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa at Bogot  airport and on 26 April 1990 killed
M-19 Presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro Le¢n-G¢mez.  Ironically both
candidates had opposed extradition of narcotics traffickers to the United
States.

     MAS is also suspected of perpetrating the January 1989 killings of 12
members of a judicial commission investigating death squad activity in Colombia.Extraditables - The Extraditables, one of the Medell¡n drug cartel's terrorist
organizations, is aimed at pressuring the Colombian government to desist from
its campaign to end cocaine production and smuggling in Colombia.  The group was
formed in reaction to the late 1989 Colombian government crackdown on the
Medell¡n cartel and was intended to prevent the extradition of key drug kingpins
to the United States.  

     By the end of 1989 the Extraditables had carried out 200 bombings, killing
261 and wounding over 1,200 people.  On 27 November 1989, the group bombed in
mid-flight an Avianca Airlines Boeing 727 flight, killing all 107 passengers and
crew abroad reportedly just to kill five police informants on board.  On 6
December 1989, a truck bomb loaded with at least one-half ton of dynamite was
exploded by the group outside the Bogot  police headquarters, killing over 60
and wounding over 250 people.  On 15 December 1989, however, Colombian police
ambushed and killed Jos‚ Gonzalo Rodr¡guez Gacha, the major Medell¡n cartel
leader at the heart of the Extraditables.  The following month the Extraditables
sued the government for peace, but Colombian officials refused to negotiate any
deal.

      On 13 June 1990 the mastermind behind the Extraditables' bombing campaign,
Juan Jairo Arias Tascoon, was killed in a firefight with police.  The other
major figure involved on the group, Gustavo de Jes£s Gaviria, was likewise
killed fighting the police on 11 August 1990.  Nonetheless, activities continued
in the name of the group:  On 28 June 1990 a Medell¡n police station was car
bombed, killing 14 and wounding 30 people.  On 18 October 1990, motorcycle-
riding gunmen of the group killed High Court Justice H‚ctor Jim‚nez Rodr¡guez in
Medell¡n.

     Pablo Escobar Gaviria, another major drug lord and founder of the "Death to
Kidnappers" death squad (See MAS) surrendered himself to Colombian authorities
on 19 June 1991 on the condition that he be allowed to build his own luxurious
prison and to maintain his own bodyguard.  In spite of this purported surrender,
Pablo Escobar continued trafficking in cocaine and murdering his rivals in
defiance of the Colombian government.   After his escape from captivity in late
July 1992, Pablo Escobar was responsible for over 60 car bombings in Bogot 
during 1993 in an effort to pressure the Colombian government to relax its
pressures on him.  On 2 December 1993 Pablo Escobar was tracked down and killed
by Colombian troops which apparently has ended the reign of terror by the
"Extraditables" of the Medill¡n drug cartel.  While the rival Cali cartel has
filled the place formerly occupied by the Medell¡n cartel in the cocaine trade,
it so far has relied more on bribery to co-opt the Colombian government rather
then having recourse to terrorism.

     When the rival Cali cartel had filled the place formerly occupied by the
Medell¡n cartel in the cocaine trade, it generally relied more on bribery to co-
opt the Colombian government rather than having recourse to terrorism, but would
still use its death-squads against informants and undisciplined underlings.
     During the 1990s the fortunes of the cartels slipped, due to U.S. pressure
on the Colombian government to take more effective steps to shut down cartel
operations, and also due to the resurgence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC, q.v.) which has resumed control over many of the regions in
which coca is grown and processed.  During 1995 the Colombian government of
President Ernesto Samper Pizano undertook a campaign to cripple the financial,
security, communications, and administrative structures of the cartel in the
course of which the three Orejuela brothers, who ran the Cali cartel, were
arrested.  Following this decapitation of the main leadership of the cartel the
distribution network within the United States reacted to the leadership vacuum
by a power struggle and in-fighting which lead to over 20 killings and
abductions between branches of the Cali apparatus in New York City.  
     The Colombian government passed an asset seizure law on 12 December 1996
that would enable it to confiscate the roughly $76 billion in assets of the
cartels as well as 9.9 million acres of land acquired by the drug lords. 
Colombia amended its constitution again in December 1997 to allow extradition of
suspected cartel drug dealers to the United States but the amendment would be
applicable only to those charged with crimes committed after that date.  In the
meantime the FARC had made a come-back, occupying over 40 percent of Colombia
and taking over much of the coca cultivation and processing themselves to fund
their own revolutionary agenda.