Pubdate: Sat, 21 Apr 2001
Source: Economist, The (UK)
Copyright: 2001 The Economist Newspaper Limited
Contact:  http://www.economist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/132

DRUGS, WAR AND DEMOCRACY

IT IS a country with many qualities. Though only the fifth-largest in Latin 
America by area, Colombia is the third-largest by population (with 41m 
people), and the second (after Brazil) in biodiversity. More of its women 
work outside the home than elsewhere in Latin America. It is the world's 
second-biggest supplier of coffee and of cut flowers. For much of the past 
century, Colombia was a rare model of Latin American economic stability and 
success. Between 1945 and 1995, its economy grew at an annual average rate 
of almost 5%. It was one of the few countries in the region to enjoy an 
investment-grade credit rating. Among foreign businessmen, it came to be 
known as Latin America's best-kept secret.

Colombia also claims to be the region's oldest democracy (though that 
requires some qualification), and it takes its culture seriously. Not only 
does it have a living Nobel-prize-winning novelist in Gabriel Garcia 
Marquez, but its cities are teeming with bookshops, and its exports of 
books exceed those of any other Latin American country. Colombian-born 
Fernando Botero is perhaps Latin America's greatest living visual artist.

But nowadays Colombia has become associated with less attractive features: 
the prevalence of illegal drugs, and the violent disorder of its guerrillas 
and paramilitary bands. For the past two decades, Colombia has been the 
world's main supplier of cocaine. Its role in this industry was originally 
that of an entrepot. It would import the coca (whose leaves provide the raw 
material for the drug) in semi-processed form from Peru and Bolivia, where 
most of it was grown, and re-export it as refined cocaine to the United 
States and Europe. But in the 1990s, coca growing became concentrated in 
Colombia.

The country's central role in the illegal-drug business has fuelled a wider 
breakdown in public order. Violence in Colombia is not new, but it has 
taken on new forms. The drug gangs have turned a generation of unemployed 
urban youths into sicarios, or hired killers. At the same time, the drug 
business has supplied finance, and given new military strength, to three 
irregular armies: on the left, the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed 
Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN); 
and on the right, bands of paramilitary vigilantes, most of whom are 
organised in the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC).

Conflict between the guerrillas and the security forces, which enjoy the 
unofficial (and increasingly unwelcome) support of the paramilitaries, 
began four decades ago, but it has recently become more intense. The number 
of civilian casualties is rising. The government's writ now runs over only 
about half of this vast country--though that half includes the cities, 
where most Colombians live.

The statistics of violent death in Colombia are shrouded in confusion, some 
of it deliberate. The murder rate climbed steadily in the 1980s; it then 
remained broadly constant during the 1990s. In proportion to the 
population, it is the world's highest (see charts 1 and 2).

According to the Defence Ministry, there were 1,777 deaths in combat last 
year. But the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ), a human-rights group, 
says that in all, 6,067 people were killed as a result of "socio-political 
violence" in the 12 months to September 2000--an increase of almost 50% 
compared with the previous 12 months. The security forces' traditionally 
poor human-rights record has improved. But the CCJ identifies the 
paramilitaries as the authors of 49% of the non-combat killings, with the 
guerrillas responsible for 11%.

All the armed groups target civilians who are held to be "collaborators" 
with rivals. The paramilitaries do this with particular savagery: their 
massacres of civilians are aimed at "cleansing" territory. Over the past 
five years, some 1m Colombians are thought to have fled to the cities to 
escape rural violence. Last year, the International Committee of the Red 
Cross gave emergency aid to 130,000 such "displaced people".

The paramilitaries' raison d'etre, they say, is the state's failure to 
provide security against kidnapping and extortion by the guerrillas. In 
kidnaps, too, Colombia is the world leader. Last year the police recorded 
3,707 kidnaps, or roughly ten every day, well over treble the number in 
1996. The guerrillas were responsible for about 60% of these, according to 
the defence ministry. Some kidnap victims are rich, but many are merely not 
poor. Some are seized at impromptu roadblocks; some are children.

To make matters worse, the economy no longer seems immune to the insecurity 
of everyday life. In 1999 Colombia suffered a steep recession: GDP shrank 
by 4.5%. A tentative recovery is now under way, but unemployment stands at 
20%. Until security improves, investment may be held back.

In search of safety and better economic prospects, record numbers of 
Colombians are leaving their country for the United States, Venezuela, 
Ecuador and Central America. According to ANIF, an economic think-tank in 
Bogota, 1m Colombians have moved abroad since 1996.

To add to the gloom, Colombians are disillusioned with their political 
leaders. The guerrillas have little public support; the paramilitaries have 
only slightly more, though approval of them is growing. But democratic 
politics has become tarnished not just by the apparent helplessness of 
government in the face of the country's problems, but also by rising 
corruption in public life.

In 1998, Colombians elected as their president Andres Pastrana, a 
Conservative former television news anchorman from a prominent political 
family. Faced with a dispiriting panorama, Mr Pastrana took two big steps. 
The first was to begin peace talks with the FARC. The second was to start 
repairing Colombia's relations with the United States, which had suffered 
under his predecessor, Ernesto Samper.

The peace talks have moved slowly, but Mr Pastrana's second initiative has 
been more successful. In Washington, drug fighters were fretting over the 
surge in coca cultivation. Policy buffs were alarmed that 
Colombia--strategically located between the Panama Canal and Venezuela's 
oilfields--was deteriorating into a "failed state", which in turn could 
endanger the weak democracies of its Andean neighbours.Uncle Sam steps in

Their answer was Plan Colombia, drawn up jointly by Colombian and American 
officials and launched by Mr Pastrana in September 1999. It is officially 
designated as "a plan for peace, prosperity and the strengthening of the 
state". It is meant to involve an investment of $7.5 billion over three 
years, including $4 billion from Colombia itself.

But Plan Colombia has a hard core. Last year the United States granted 
Colombia $1.3 billion in emergency aid, to be spent over two years. Most of 
this is military aid, but it includes $81m for schemes to wean farmers off 
coca, as well as $122m for human rights and for the judiciary. It was 
approved with strong bipartisan support in America's Congress, and comes on 
top of an annual aid programme of some $330m, most of it for fighting 
drugs. This makes Colombia the biggest recipient of American aid anywhere 
outside the Middle East.

The Clinton administration insisted that the military aid was to fight 
drugs, not guerrillas--but that by cutting the flow of drug money to the 
insurgents, it would force them to take the peace talks seriously. That is 
a distinction the Bush administration may blur.

Plan Colombia has been controversial from the start. Polls show that most 
Colombians welcome American aid, though they may disagree on the details. 
But neighbours, especially Ecuador, are nervous, fearing overspill from an 
intensified war. The presence of American military advisers in a foreign 
jungle conjures up memories of Vietnam. Human-rights groups note the 
history of brutality in Colombia's armed forces, as well as links between 
some military officers and the paramilitaries.

Some critics ascribe Colombia's difficulties mainly to what they consider 
to be the failings of its democracy, and see the guerrillas as the product 
of political exclusion and socio-economic injustice. Others, especially in 
Europe, claim to favour more "social investment" rather than military 
aid--but the European Union has so far offered only a modest $100m in aid 
to Colombia, though Spain has also offered a similar sum.

According to a second set of critics, Plan Colombia's military aid is too 
narrowly focused on the United States' war against illegal drugs rather 
than on Colombia's own problems. Two decades of repression of the drug 
industry in the Andean countries have failed to make a dent in its overall 
output. These critics fear that Plan Colombia may simply move coca 
cultivation to other parts of Colombia, or to neighbouring countries. They 
think that foreign aid should instead be concentrated on strengthening 
Colombia's democratic state across the board. A recent joint report by the 
Council on Foreign Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue, two American 
foreign-policy think-tanks, concluded that: "The core problem has to do 
with state authority, the inability of the government to protect its 
citizens. In seeking to strengthen the capacity of Colombia's security 
forces, more emphasis should be placed on professionalisation and training 
than on supplying equipment to fight drugs."

It is true that Colombia's problems have been hugely aggravated by drugs, 
which in turn have flourished in the country's atmosphere of general 
lawlessness. Since the rich countries that are the world's main consumers 
of cocaine show no sign of depriving the drug gangs of their vast profits 
by legalising the stuff, they have a responsibility to help the country 
that has suffered most from their habit.

But mending Colombia goes beyond trying to tackle the drug trade. It means 
dealing with three other problems: public insecurity, lack of economic 
confidence and political cynicism. That requires an understanding of how 
Colombia got into its current mess--not least because Colombians' 
perception of the present is shaped by myths about their past.

GRAPHIC: The world's demand for drugs has given new fuel to old conflicts 
in Colombia. Establishing democratic order will take time, and outside 
help, writes Michael Reid; Can President Pastrana make peace?
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