Colombia supplies up to 80 percent of the world’s cocaine, and about 70 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States. Production has been steadily rising (up nearly 20 percent) in the past 15 years, despite the successful eradication efforts in neighboring Bolivia and Peru. The majority of the coca leaves are grown on large plantations in southern and central Colombia, most of which are under the control of large drug cartels. Recently, coca growers have burned 2.4 million hectares of rain forest to clear new areas for cultivation.The Colombian government has recently attempted to counteract this by offering a subsidy to farmers who switch to legal crops such as maize and yucca, but illegal crops remain by far the most lucrative of all the agricultural products in Colombia.

The coca leaves are processed into cocaine in laboratories located mainly in remote southern and central regions. Colombia’s location, with access to the Caribbean, the Isthmus of Panama, and the Pacific Ocean, makes it ideal for drug trafficking. Cartels based in cities organize the export of narcotics to the US (primarily), as well as to Brazil and Europe, and traffickers transport the narcotics by ship to Central America and from there across the US border. Altogether, the narcotics industry accounts for about 3 percent of Colombia’s gross domestic product.

Since he took office in May 2002, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe has upped the effort to eliminate the power of the industry. His government has been engaged in talks to negotiate an end to the 40-year, drug-related civil war with the two biggest paramilitary organizations in Colombia, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia and the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, both of which use narcotics money to finance their operations. When Uribe took office, the paramilitary organizations had about 20,000 troops. As of April 2005, about 2,600 of the troops have been demobilized. The negotiations are stuck, however, on the issue of prison sentences for the surrendering paramilitaries. The leaders of both sides insist they will not lay down their arms without a guarantee that they will not serve prison time.

The Colombian government’s primary strategy for combating the narcotics industry and associated paramilitary groups that control vast areas of Colombia involves aerial crop spraying with Roundup weedkiller. Opponents argue that the costs of this strategy outweigh the benefits, since the spray shrivels not only coca plants, but any other, legal, crops in the vicinity. Indeed, it will be hard for the struggling legal agricultural sector to get on its feet with the continual sprayings. Subsequently, the UN Drug Control Program has requested an independent international monitoring of the crop spraying methods to evaluate its costs and benefits.

Another weapon President Uribe has utilized is extradition to the United States. In early 2005, Colombia extradited Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, who founded the drug cartel that once supplied the United States with 80 percent of its cocaine. Unlike the Medellin cartel, which used terror in the 1980s to avoid extradition, the Cali cartel run by Orejuela used bribes to buy respectability. The cartel gave millions of dollars to the campaign of the former president Ernesto Samper, leading the United States to revoke his visa. He was later cleared of charges, although his defense minister and several other members of his cabinet were indicted.

In the void left after the Cali cartel disintegrated, however, over 300 “baby cartels” have sprung up. Overall, about 175 members of the cartels have been convicted in the last decade, without a noticeable effect on the amount of cocaine flowing into the United States. The effectiveness of extradition is hampered, however, by the inefficiency of Colombia’s judicial system. The courts process only about 10 percent of crimes and struggle with corruption.

In July 2000, US President Bill Clinton signed a bill giving Colombia US$1.3 billion of aid to initiate an ambitious counternarcotics program—Plan Colombia. As the primary consumers of Colombia’s cocaine, the United States and Europe see a responsibility to aid Colombia in fighting the drug war. The program has seen moderate success, reducing the land under coca cultivation by almost half since 2000 (from 163,300 to 86,300 hectares). Despite this figure, however, the cocaine industry appears healthier than ever. The price of cocaine is falling despite rising demand, indicating that there is an excess supply. One explanation offered for the excess demand is that coca cultivation has spread to new areas and that productivity and efficiency is rising.

Uribe has lately become one of US President George W. Bush’s closest allies in South America, a region where anti-American sentiment has been on the rise. According to David N. Kelley, the United States attorney for the Southern District, “Colombia is an important, if not the most important, partner in our globalized law enforcement efforts.”