Pubdate: Thu, 17 May 2001
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Julian Borger, Martin Hodgson

US DRUG WAR AIDS COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARIES

A leading US Democratic senator has denounced Washington's
billion-dollar anti-drug policy in Colombia as an expensive failure
which has boosted rightwing paramilitaries while achieving negligible'
results.

Condemnation of the policy came amid reports that the area in Colombia
used for the production of coca, the raw material used to make
cocaine, dramatically increased last year despite extensive
crop-spraying and military operations.

In a broad attack on the US's Plan Colombia, an ambitious
anti-narcotics strategy to which it is contributing more than a
billion dollars, Senator Patrick Leahy criticised the exemptions
granted the Bogota government from human rights conditions on the
disbursement of aid.

The senator said: "We give more aid to the military. They give more
aid to the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries are involved with
atrocities. Guerrillas are too. Drug lords seem to flourish, but the
paramilitaries are now working as sort of semi-drug lords too."

"Since the human-rights waiver was granted", he said, "the
paramilitaries have doubled in size. The number of massacres have increased."

Responding to the senator's criticism, the secretary of state, Colin
Powell, denied that the US was supporting paramilitaries, and insisted
that Washington was committed to the maintenance of human rights in
Colombia.

We speak candidly to the Colombian government,' Mr Powell said. And in
my conversations with my Colombian colleagues, I make the point that
human rights are an essential part of our strategy.'

Critics of Plan Colombia say that it is being used to fight leftwing
guerrillas, rather than to solve the underlying social and economic
pressures which push farmers into coca cultivation.

Moreover, a Bogota newspaper, Cambio Revista, said that a survey
jointly commissioned by Colombia and the UN and conducted by
satellite, found that the area devoted to grow-ing coca grew 60% to
162,000 hectares (400,000 acres) in the year ending December 2000.

A spokesman at the UN's Drug Control and Crime Prevention agency in
Vienna, would not confirm the figures.

However, according to several reports from Bogota, the survey found
that far more cocaine was being produced in Colombia than had
previously been thought. If confirmed, it would suggest that the
widespread crop-spraying has dramatically failed to reduce production.

Meanwhile, crop-substitution programmes aimed at providing local
farmers an alternative to coca have yet to get off the ground,
according to Colombian municipal officials and aid workers.

Lisa Haugaard, of the Latin America Working Group, said that the small
number of families who signed pacts with the government agreeing not
to grow coca in return for subsidies had yet to receive any aid.

Our concern is the fumigation part and the military part of Plan
Colombia is moving ahead, but the alternative development part is
lagging behind,' Ms Haugaard said.

Without humanitarian and alternative development assistance,
coca-growing families may soon be facing famine, a local researcher
said.

Senator Leahy also questioned the safety of the pesticide being used
for crop-spraying, glyphosate. While its manufacturer, Monsanto, says
it is safe, it recommends that livestock be kept out of the area for
two weeks after spraying and that people stay away until it dries.

Community leaders in the Putumayo region, where much of Colombia's
coca is grown, said that villagers exposed to the pesticide had
developed rashes and fevers, and that it had killed off livestock,
fish and birds.
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