Naeem — Failed 'Plan' in Colombia
Topic(s): Colombia | Comments Off on Naeem — Failed 'Plan' in ColombiaTHE NATION
Failed ‘Plan’ in Colombia
by PETER CLARK
[posted online on July 31, 2003]
Three years ago this summer, President Clinton signed a $1.3 billion
spending bill for “Plan Colombia,” aimed at curbing violence in Colombia and
drug abuse in the United States. Don’t expect festive anniversary celebrations
this summer, though, in either the barrios and rural villages of Colombia or the
overburdened drug rehab centers here. The Bush Administration has invoked
the ubiquitous terrorism justification to try to keep this floundering policy
going, but concerns are mounting.
The bulk of the 2000 aid package paid for helicopters and training for a
Colombian counterdrug brigade, as well as spray planes to fumigate fields of
coca, the raw ingredient in the cocaine that provides some of the guerrillas’
funding. The policy objectives have not been met, but Congress has provided
hundreds of millions of dollars more each year and extended the plan’s
mission.
Colombia is home to three groups classified as terrorists: the left-wing FARC
and ELN guerrillas and the pro-government AUC paramilitaries. It took only
eight months after 9/11 for Congress to expand US engagement from fighting
drugs to “a unified campaign against narcotics trafficking [and] against
activities by organizations designated as terrorist organizations.” On the
grounds of fighting terrorism, seventy Special Forces troops were sent to
Arauca province in January to begin training Colombian soldiers to hunt
down guerrillas and protect an oil pipeline partly owned by Occidental
Petroleum.
This year, House Democrats have increasingly argued that there is no quick
fix for the complex challenges facing Colombia but that military aid and aerial
fumigation have made things worse. The facts are on their side. Today, the
guerrillas and paramilitaries continue to participate in the drug trade and kill,
kidnap and torture civilians, particularly in the Putumayo and Arauca regions
targeted by US policy. Since last summer, an average of nineteen people
have been killed every day for political reasons, compared with an average of
fifteen each day during the year before Plan Colombia. The United Nations
and State Department both report that Colombian security forces are still
working with the paramilitaries and directly committing abuses of their own.
Last year, the FARC killed nine local mayors and forced hundreds to resign,
while the paramilitaries were responsible for most of the 184 assasinations of
trade unionists–by far the highest rate in the world. The number of internal
refugees increased sharply, with some estimates showing nearly a million
people fleeing their homes during the three years of Plan Colombia.
The Justice Department reported in January that cocaine continued to be
“widely available” in the United States. Efforts to combat drugs at the source
have only managed to shift coca to new regions and back to old ones, as the
law of supply and demand has kept total coca cultivation in the Andean
region at around 200,000 hectares (540,000 acres) for fifteen years.
These and other concerns have made Colombia policy one of the most
controversial aspects of the foreign aid bill in the House, where most of the
Democrats, led by Congressman Jim McGovern, voted against military aid
twice this year. Meanwhile, across the Capitol, no senators are publicly
leading the charge against this policy the way the courageous Paul Wellstone
did. It appears that this year, just as in 2002, there will be no Senate floor
debate or vote on Colombia.
Yet pressure to respond to critics is growing. Colombian President Alvaro
Uribe’s government has answered with recent reports of decreased violence
and increased guerrilla desertions and the prediction that within twelve to
eighteen months the guerrillas will be so battered they’ll come to the
negotiating table begging for a truce. The Bush team has begun to articulate
an exit strategy: sustained high-level US involvement until September 2005,
followed by the Colombianization of operations.
Any success in slowing the violence and weakening the illegal armed groups,
while respecting human rights and tackling impunity, would certainly be
welcome. But Bush and Uribe’s increasingly hard-line approach is both
inhumane and ineffective. Uribe’s proposal to lift limits on the powers of the
military, the desperation fomented among farmers whose legal and illegal
crops are destroyed by herbicides, accusations that NGOs are guerrilla fronts,
and the neglect of the ballooning internal refugee population are likely to
estrange many Colombians from the government and generate recruits for the
guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug gangs. Greater US participation in the war
there will not defeat the formidable guerrilla groups, which have controlled
parts of the countryside for years (a major US role in search-and-rescue
operations has not been enough to free three Pentagon contractors taken
hostage by the FARC in February). Negotiations that disarm combatants and
bring to justice those who commit atrocities should be encouraged. But Uribe
has offered the paramilitaries a peace accord that would pardon virtually all
AUC members and allow them to keep land stolen from the displaced, while
leaving other paramilitary factions to continue the dirty work.
Responding to Congressional concerns, defenders of the policy are
employing language with a familiar ring to it. At a Senate hearing on
Colombia in June, Southern Command’s General James Hill described drugs
as a “weapon of mass destruction” and warned that “corruption and instability
create safe havens for not only narcoterrorists but also for other international
terrorist organizations such as Hizballah, Hamas and Islamiyya al Gammat,
which have support cells throughout Latin America.”
True, the State Department does report that some of these groups are raising
money in the tri-border area of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. But that’s far
from Colombia and far from a good reason to continue aid to its abusive
military. If the “war on terrorism” has moved to Latin America, the next step
should be the suspension of aid to the Colombian armed forces because of
their ongoing ties to paramilitaries listed as terrorists by the US government.
Only by steering this runaway policy toward greater support for Colombia’s
judicial system and other civilian institutions, the rule of law, and social and
economic development–along with expanded drug treatment programs at
home–can US policy-makers begin to create the conditions for security and
democracy in Colombia.