Pubdate: Wed, 05 Jul 2000
Source: Salon.com (US Web)
Copyright: 2000 Salon.com
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Author: Ana Arana
Note: Ana Arana is an investigative journalist who focuses on criminal 
organizations in Latin America. She is a senior fellow at the Center for 
War, Peace and the News Media.

FIGHTING DRUGS WITH CHOPPERS AND POISON

Even advocates of U.S. military aid think the anti-narcotics package will 
only unravel the peace with Colombian guerrillas.

July 5, 2000 - As President Clinton prepares to sign the bill to send $1.3 
billion in anti-narcotics military aid to Colombia, criticism from 
Colombians and Europeans has gotten more and more severe. Angry that the 
plan was not subject to a national debate, Colombians fear the military 
solution to fight decades of drug trafficking will unravel peace 
negotiations and worsen its civil war. Europeans are threatening to pull 
out their aid for social programs that would have gone along with the U.S. 
aid. And in the middle of it all, Colombian President Andres Pastrana is 
under fire for not letting Colombians have a bigger say in developing the plan.

On Friday, Congress passed the aid package to help Colombia fight drug 
traffickers and their guerrilla allies. The U.S. aid is a contribution to 
Colombia's $7.5 billion total development plan. The House approved a $1.7 
billion version last March, and the Senate approved a package with less 
money last month, attaching tougher human rights conditions. The lion's 
share of the aid will be for Blackhawk and Huey helicopters and training of 
two Colombian anti-narcotics battalions that will operate in southern 
Colombia, a drug-producing area largely protected by guerrillas from the 
Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC). The aid also includes $200 
million for nonmilitary social and human rights programs.

The Clinton administration first asked for emergency aid to Colombia last 
February, and Pastrana banked heavily on getting the aid sometime this 
year. But the aid is not expected to arrive in Colombia until the last year 
of Pastrana's term in office. The delay has cost Pastrana heavily. He had 
managed to keep unity in the country by waving the millions of dollars the 
U.S. package would bring, but as the months have passed, his leadership has 
weakened considerably. The fact that the aid package, which is known in 
Colombia as Plan Colombia, was not debated nationally, has added to the 
perception that the initiative was written by the U.S. and not by the 
Pastrana government.

Just as Washington congratulates itself for supporting Latin America's 
oldest democracy and making an investment in the fight against drugs, 
Colombians are questioning the strategy the anti-narcotics package will 
finance. Groups that are traditionally against military aid, such as human 
rights organizations and trade unions, view the package as a direct threat 
to the incipient peace process with leftist guerrillas. And even those who 
support U.S. military aid are criticizing the package. They fear that some 
of the plan's anti-drug techniques, such as fumigation of coca plantations, 
will only turn the affected coca growers into full supporters of the 
leftist guerrillas.

Colombians with sophisticated knowledge of the drug war and the insurgency 
accept that the U.S. is more comfortable fighting a drug war than helping a 
government besieged by well-armed leftist guerrillas. But they worry that 
the new U.S. initiative will end up as muddled as the U.S. anti-drug 
mission of the early 1990s, when Colombians fought against the Medellin and 
Cali drug cartels.

The plan to use fumigation as a main weapon is a major controversy in 
Colombia. Under the aid package, planes will spray hundreds of hectares of 
coca plantations in southern Colombia with glysophate, a herbicide known in 
the U.S. as Roundup. In order to avoid the FARC guerrillas who patrol the 
coca plantations, the planes will spray from higher than normal, increasing 
the danger that the herbicide could fall on local inhabitants. U.S. 
officials maintain that the herbicide is safe to humans.

"I support the concept of U.S. aid in global terms," said Enrique Santos 
Calderon, a respected analyst and editor in chief of the daily El Tiempo. 
"We need a more professional army, we need the helicopters; we need the aid 
with human rights conditions, so the army can fight off the guerrillas and 
the paramilitary groups. But I am worried to see we are too focused on 
fumigation. After so many years of fighting drugs, it becomes a charade 
that Washington wants to keep using methods that have failed," he said.

Despite five years of fumigation programs in Colombia, drug production has 
increased by 20 percent. "It is a balloon effect," Calderon said. "I press 
here and the coca growers are displaced there," he said.

Calderon is among many Colombians who feel that Washington's emphasis on 
seeing the war in Colombia through the narcotics prism -- and believing 
that only police work and fumigation will weaken leftist guerrillas and 
make the Colombian army more professional -- has the potential of creating 
more chaos in Colombia.

"I understand that Washington has to say they are not going to chase 
guerrillas. That they will only attack guerrillas if they attack the 
fumigating planes. But for Colombians fumigation is a problem, it affects 
our ecosystem and it could unravel other elements in the civil war. The 
fumigation part is the Achilles' heel of the Plan Colombia," he said.

Knowing all along that the United States would back a military, drug-war 
solution, Colombian leaders were banking on money from Europeans to fund 
peace-based social programs to resolve civil conflicts and help the 
besieged government. The Colombian government has asked Europe for up to $1 
billion in aid for crop substitution, judicial reform and other projects. 
But Europeans are balking at the U.S. package and threatening to cut their aid.

At a meeting of European donors in London late last month, a constituency 
of Colombian nongovernmental organizations brought a message that worried 
the European community. After years of working in the countryside, they 
said the government had ignored their concerns that the U.S. military 
option would only threaten the peace process launched with the FARC last year.

In response, some European representatives said their countries will only 
provide aid if the Colombian government allows the dissenting organizations 
more say in the future of the social aid. In general, Europeans believe the 
Colombian government has mishandled Plan Colombia by combining the peace 
initiative they want the Europeans to finance with the U.S. military aid.

"It was to be expected that many European nations would not go for Plan 
Colombia," said a representative from an international organization who was 
present at the London meeting. "The plan has become controversial. The 
Colombians should have realized that although the U.S. and Colombia have a 
bilateral interest in the drug issue, in Europe the concerns are different. 
There should have been two different plans." Europeans envision a kind of 
Marshall Plan for Colombia, to help it rebuild after four decades of conflict.

Colombia's credibility with Europeans took an especially big hit when a key 
mediator dropped out. The Program for Development and Peace for the 
Magdalena Medio, a conflict resolution and development NGO, declined the 
government's request to pilot the social investment aspects of Plan 
Colombia. In addition, the Rev. Francisco Le Roux, a centrist who has been 
attacked both by paramilitary and guerrillas, publicly said he could not 
collaborate with the government's plan as it was drafted.

But some European community representatives have tried to save the issue. 
Jan Egeland, the United Nations special advisor to the secretary general 
for Colombia, a Norwegian national, has urged the international 
representatives to continue to support the peace process in Colombia. 
Obviously there is a lack of agreement on some issues, he told participants 
at the meeting, but this should not be an obstacle to providing aid to 
those social groups in Colombia who will clearly be desperately in need of 
European support. A final answer from the Europeans will come after a 
meeting in Madrid on July 7.

The U.S. package is not strictly military. It does contain $200 million for 
social programs and stipulations on human rights conduct. Some here think 
Colombians might see the package in a more positive light if only U.S. 
politicians pushing for the aid weren't so focused on the drug war.

"Washington needs to understand the concerns of our citizens," Pardo said. 
Colombians know all about the drug war, "because we have fought it for a 
long time. Colombians fear that Washington will not help us with the peace 
process, and that their help will be limited only to the fumigation issue," 
he said.

According to Raphael Pardo, a peace negotiator in the 1990s and Colombia's 
first civilian defense minister, things aren't as bad as many Colombians 
believe. The social impact of fumigation has been exaggerated and few 
Colombians understand that the U.S. military package already has $200 
million for social changes. "That's a lot of money, which will have an 
impact in the country," he said. Pardo has studied other fumigation 
programs that were successful in Bolivia and Peru. "None of those projects 
had the social investment we have now," he explained.

But for Pastrana, things do look bad. The showdown over the aid has come 
down while Pastrana's political arsenal has been devastated. His 
conservative party, including top members of his cabinet, has been rocked 
with accusations of corruption and misuse of public funds. He has also 
fallen out of favor with the Liberal Party-dominated Congress, which has 
put the brakes on a number of legislative pieces needed to get the peace 
program going.

Meanwhile, the FARC has not made any pronouncements since the congressional 
approval of U.S. aid. But its representatives have been traveling 
throughout Europe discussing their willingness to sign peace agreements. 
The guerrillas and the government will exchange cease-fire proposals in the 
next few weeks. While nobody expects a cease-fire to be reached soon, 
analysts worry about the military reaction the guerrillas could make when 
President Clinton signs the final bill. "They won't get up from the 
negotiating table, but they will do something to express their discomfort," 
said Pardo.

Critics of the Pastrana government, both at home and in the United States, 
say the Colombian government has created many of its problems itself by not 
debating the aid package robustly in Colombia. "President Pastrana has 
always played his cards close to the chest," says Miles Frechette, a former 
U.S. ambassador to Colombia. "I don't agree with the Colombians' analysis 
of what glysophate does, but there should have been a more open discussion 
of the entire aid package, including fumigation and its impact."

Thus a lack of debate has cost Pastrana the political boost he was counting 
on, and it might also have cost Colombians knowledge about the plan that 
could calm their concerns.

~~~

About The Writer

Ana Arana is an investigative journalist who focuses on criminal 
organizations in Latin America. She is a senior fellow at the Center for 
War, Peace and the News Media.
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