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US-Funded Colombian Anti-Drug Program To Change
Pubdate: Tue, 28 Dec 2004
Source: Miami Herald (FL)
Copyright: 2004 The Miami Herald
Contact: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/262
Author: Pablo Bachelet, Miami Herald
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
U.S.-FUNDED COLOMBIAN ANTI-DRUG PROGRAM TO CHANGE
WASHINGTON - Plan Colombia, the United States' signature international
drug-fighting effort, is to get a major overhaul once its five-year term
ends at the end of 2005, with policymakers looking to give it more of a
social and less of a military character.
Officials say the $3.5 billion program has succeeded in putting Colombian
drug traffickers and armed groups on the run or suing for peace.
Kidnappings and other violent crimes in the South American nation also have
declined.
Still, major changes for a successor program could include not just
emphasizing social rather than military spending but reducing direct U.S.
involvement by putting key aspects of the plan, such as the drug crop
eradication program, in the hands of Colombians.
Also on the agenda: coaxing Europeans to get more involved in the drug war,
and making sure Colombia gets equipment and aid to target the heroin as
well as cocaine industries.
Officials say the debate is at an early stage and any changes would be more
the result of a natural evolution of a program that has worked, rather than
the need to fix something that's broken.
"If we are going to consolidate our gains, we will have to shift in the
direction of greater attention to the social fabric in the country," said
Robert Charles, head of the State Department's Bureau for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, which oversees Plan Colombia.
The debate over Plan Colombia is occurring at a time of rising demand for
U.S. aid around the world.
"For a lot of budget cutters, the ... initiative looks like low-hanging
fruit," said Adam Isacson, who follows Colombia affairs at the Center for
International Policy, a Washington group that advocates spending more on
social programs in the war-torn country.
Republicans, he added, "aren't all that crazy about foreign aid" as the
Iraq war continues to drain resources. In addition, President Bush has
pledged billions of dollars for the Millennium Challenge Account, an
initiative to help the world's poorest nations and to fight the spread of HIV.
Congressional appropriators have increased the total foreign operations
assistance - from $16.5 billion in 2000 to $19 billion in this year's
budget - but that might not leave enough money for an ambitious second Plan
Colombia, Isacson said.
The White House remains committed to Plan Colombia. Bush likes President
Alvaro Uribe's gutsy leadership and his aggression in pursuing anti-drug
programs and the country's three illegal armed groups, which all allegedly
profit from links to the drug trade.
Uribe also supports Bush on the Iraq war and on hemispheric initiatives
such as a free-trade pact for the Americas.
"My nation will continue to help Colombia prevail in this vital struggle,"
Bush said in a news conference with Uribe in Colombian port city of
Cartagena last month.
Colombian and U.S. officials have already been discussing the future of
Plan Colombia in regular, almost daily contacts, according to officials on
both sides.
The process has been picking up speed lately as both countries work to put
something together before Bush makes his 2006 budget request to Congress in
February.
The final version of the next Plan Colombia, however, will be shaped later
in Congress, with several committees weighing in.
Plan Colombia has historically had bipartisan support. It was first crafted
by the Clinton administration, together with former Colombian President
Andres Pastrana, with the idea of reducing the area under coca cultivation
by 50 percent in five years.
The Clinton-Pastrana initiative, initially budgeted at $1.6 billion, aimed
to modernize Colombia's armed forces by providing greater mobility and
resources to go after coca and opium poppy crops, interdict drug shipments
and pursue traffickers.
The plan also had a social component, mainly reforming Colombia's judiciary
to improve human rights. In the end, the social component never exceeded
more than 20 percent of the plan's outlays, in part because European
partners failed to come up with most of the $1 billion they had pledged for
Colombia.
Colombians say the plan is working. Since taking office in mid-2002, Uribe
has extradited nearly 200 drug-trafficker suspects to the United States. He
has added 46,000 troops and 26,000 police officers to help set up a law
enforcement presence in the remote countryside. Drug seizures and spraying
of coca and poppy acreage with herbicides are at all-time highs.
As a result, Colombians say, violent crime is on the decline. Kidnappings
have fallen off 53 percent in the first 10 months of this year against
2002, and homicides 27 percent. About 6,600 guerrillas and paramilitary
fighters have been killed or demobilized this year, more than double the
number in 2002.
"The fact is that the Colombian government has shown very positive
results," said Colombia's ambassador to Washington, Luis Alberto Moreno.
"That is the best argument to keep (Plan Colombia) going."
Critics, however, say the program has done little to sever the links
between the armed forces and the right-wing paramilitary groups that have
been accused of the worst human rights atrocities in Colombia. A
demobilization program for the paramilitaries does not have enough
safeguards to ensure that rights violators go to prison, human rights
activists say.
They also say that Plan Colombia, by diverting most of its resources to
military programs, has ignored the social ills that spawned the guerrillas
and the drug trade.
And, they note, Plan Colombia has failed to lower the purity of the cocaine
and heroin available in the United States, or reduce their price, a sign
that supply is not being affected despite massive herbicide spraying.
U.S. officials recognize that the project has yet to make an impact on U.S.
streets, but they say the latest measurements from 2003 are based on drug
shipments coming into the United States before the full impact of Plan
Colombia hit the supply chain.
Nobody is expecting a future Plan Colombia to take on a completely new
look, but, as one Senate aide put it, the support in Congress for
additional military assistance "is going to be much thinner now than seven
years ago."
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