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offered ten million dollars for the capture or death of Escobar: two million to those providing
information and the residual eight million to the Search Bloc police.104 After his death, deals were
102
Ibid., 239.
103
Safford and Palacios, 360.
104
Bowden, 225-226.
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made with the Colombian policía allowing them minor victories in order to maintain their multi-
billion dollar venture.105
Colombian cocaine shipments to the United States did not slow during the hunt for
Escobar. Prices dropped directly after his death, allowing more Americans to buy more product.
In 1993, there was more cocaine available at lower prices than ever before, and throughout the
1990s, costs continued to decline.106 In many ways, eliminating Escobar made things worse.
Max Mermelstein, a one-time lieutenant in Escobar's organization, said in a telephone
interview that he thought drug trafficking to the United States could actually increase in the
aftermath of Escobar's death. "Pablo had a very tight rein on trafficking operations, I think there
will be an increase not a decrease," he said. "Now they don't have to worry about paying Pablo
off. Everybody is going to establish their own routes."107
In addition to its continued stardom as the king of cocaine production, Colombia is the
only country today in the Western hemisphere with a significant guerrilla warfare problem.108
This decapitation operation resulted in a tactical success with strategic failures. Many dollars,
lives, and years were spent hunting Pablo Escobar, and although Colombia and the world were rid
of an extremely dangerous enemy, his death had significant long-term detrimental effects.
The structure of the Colombian narcotics industry as a whole was not vulnerable to
decapitation. The Medellín cartel was hit hard, but the cocaine business actually increased due to
Pablo s death. Two years after, in 1995, the Calí cartel was believed to be the source for eighty
percent of the cocaine and thirty percent of the heroin shipped to America. Prices dropped and
105
Ibid., 271.
106
Ibid., 271.
107
Peter Eisner, Cocaine Trafficker Pablo Escobar Killed in Colombia, Newsday, Vol. 113, No. 62, 3
December 1993, p. 2, (Miami: accessed on 13 March 2004); available from http://www-
tech.mit.edu/V113/N62/escobar.62w.html; Internet.
108
Safford and Palacios, 362.
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production increased.109 Just last year on 21 March, the Treasury Department added nine business
names to its list of Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers. These businesses are now subject
to economic sanctions imposed against Colombian drug cartels according to Executive Order
12978 signed by President Bill Clinton in 1999. All of these newly added businesses are owned
or controlled by the Calí cartel indicating that it is still a considerable participant in the narcotics
industry. Pablo s death effectively aided its growth.
109
National Drug Strategy Network, Colombia Arrests Suspected Head of Calí Cartel, September 1995,
p. 1, (accessed on 13 March 2004); available from http://www.ndsn.org/SEPT95/CALIHEAD.html;
Internet.
46
Chapter Four
Decapitation Criteria
On the beaten side, the loss of all order and control often makes the
prolongation of resistance by individual units, by the further punishment
they are certain to suffer, more injurious than useful to the whole.
Carl von Clausewitz
The United States has ample history conducting decapitation operations. Over the course
of one hundred years, strategic individuals have threatened America s national interests and
security in a myriad of ways. Decapitation has been used to coerce, deter, disrupt, and destroy
enemy capabilities threatening the nation. Joint, interagency, and multinational task forces have
targeted leadership elements and their support/political structures in nearly every setting around
the world from the Philippine jungles, to the Mexican wastelands, from the Pacific islands to
Panama City and Medellín. These operations have resulted in various levels of success and
failure, and many are still a matter of debate.
This monograph has explored five decapitation operations that involved foreign and
domestic national security issues in times of limited conflict and total war. In two of these five
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