Investor's Business Daily, September 11th, 2007
The War On Drugs: Only Osama bin Laden had a higher price on his head than cocaine lord Diego Montoya, No. 2 on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Now he's in custody, and the U.S. owes Colombia a debt of gratitude.
The Colombian army's capture of Pablo Escobar's successor couldn't have been more satisfying. Montoya, capo of Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel, whose spies tracked U.S. Navy warship positions to ensure control of 70% of the cocaine headed for the U.S., got busted Monday wearing only his dirty underwear.
"I lost," was the toppled kingpin's only observation.
The rest of us won.
"This is huge," DEA spokesman Steve Robertson told IBD. "This strikes at the head of the source for all the cocaine coming into the U.S. This was one of the most powerful cocaine organizations in the world, and when an organization loses someone of this stature, it's going to have a tremendous negative impact. ... We salute the Colombian government."
Acknowledgment is important, because Colombia's leaders have shown signs of discouragement over the drug war and their inability to persuade the U.S. Congress to approve a free-trade deal.
Vice President Francisco Santos, who was himself once tied to a bed for eight months as Pablo Escobar's hostage, on Sunday said: "After a five-year frontal attack against drug trafficking, the results aren't the most successful or the ones we hoped for."
But the facts, topped by the bust of the year, tell a different story.
Montoya's arrest is the apex of a swift succession of knockouts of Colombian drug lords. The pyramid of collaborators and rivals taken out of circulation include:
Juan Carlos Ramirez-Abadia, aka "The Lollipop," captured in Brazil in August, extradited to the U.S.
Eduardo Restrepo Victoria, aka "The Partner," captured in July. He is the right-hand man of the only remaining Norte del Valle kingpin still on the lam, Wilber Varela, known as "Soap."
Hernando Gomez Bustamante, aka "Itchy." Ran a huge trafficking organization in the 1990s, was deported from Cuba to Colombia and extradited to the U.S. in July.
Tomas Medina, aka "The Black Acacia," killed in an airstrike in September. The top narco-trafficker from the Marxist FARC group.
These captures have yielded results. According to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy:
Twenty-six U.S. cities report the price of cocaine rising, in some cases doubling, as the supply fell in the last two to four months.
Quest Diagnostics reported a 16% decline in the use of cocaine by U.S. workers, based on drug tests in the first six months of 2007.
Illicit drug use among U.S. teenagers hit a five-year low of 9.8% in 2006, a 16% drop from 2002.
Montoya's bust leaves not a single Colombian name on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. It may correspond to Colombia's cleaning out its army of generals who collaborated with him. And "Los Machos," Montoya's private army responsible for 1,500 deaths, is no more.
It's huge progress in the war on drugs. The way to keep Colombia fighting is with some recognition and gratitude for all of its sacrifices, which are finally yielding success. What better way than for the Congress to give Colombia the free -- and legal -- trade it's earned.
