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Plan Colombia is an ambitious and controversial initiative aimed at resolving the ongoing, forty-year civil war in Colombia.
The Plan was conceived in 1999 by the administration of President Andrés Pastrana Arango with the stated goals of:
- social and economic revitalization
- overcoming the armed conflict
- an anti-narcotic strategy
Elements of the anti-narcotic aspect of the plan include airborne fumigation efforts that involve the spraying of herbicides over suspected drug plantations, efforts which have come under fire for sometimes allegedly damaging legal crops and having adverse health effects upon those exposed to the chemicals. The program also includes social and economic development programs in Colombia.
Some critics are also against the plan because they claim that elements within the Colombian security forces, which receive aid and training from it, may be involved in supporting or tolerating abuses by rightwing paramilitary forces against the population and legal leftwing organizations. These critics argue that, in order to remain elegible for such aid, the Colombian state and military should sever any persisting relationship with these illegal forces and heavily prosecute past offenses by paramilitary forces or its own personnel.
Financing
This original plan called for a budget of US$7.5 billion. Pastrana initially pledged US $4.864 billion of Colombian resources (65% of the total) and called on the international community to provide the remaining US$2.636 billion (35%).
The Clinton administration in the United States supported the initiative by committing $1.3 billion in foreign aid and as many as 500 military personnel to train local forces. An additional 300 outsourced civilian personnel were allowed to go further in assisting that country in battles with cocaine growers and the organizations that distribute their product. This aid was in addition to previously approved US aid to Colombia of over US$330 million. US$818 million was earmarked for 2000, with US$256 million for 2001. These appropriations for the plan made Colombia the third largest recipient of foreign aid from the United States.
Originally, it was intended to allocate 51% of the total resources for institutional and social
development, 32% for fighting the narcotics trade, 16% for economic and social recuperation and 0.8% to support the then on-going effort to negotiate a political solution to the state's conflict with insurgent guerrilla groups.
Colombia planned to finance US$4.864 billion of the estimated US$7.5 billion overall cost, most of which would go towards the social portion of the project, but was ultimately unable to do so in part due to the state's 1999-2001 economic crisis.
The final U.S.-approved US$1.3 billion assistance package is mostly of a military and counternarcotics nature but also includes a small amount of social development aid.
Though the Colombian Government had sought additional support from the European Union and other countries, with the intention of financing the mostly social component of the original plan, it eventually met with little cooperation as the would-be donors considered that the U.S. approved aid represented an undue military slant, and additionally lacked the will to spend such amounts of money for what they considered an uncertain initiative. Some countries did end up donating several hundred million dollars to Colombia (approximately US $ 128.6 million dollars, 2.3% of the total) but most preferred to avoid falling under the Plan Colombia moniker, and fell short of the amounts that the original Plan called for.
In The War on Drugs
Although the Plan Colombia program that has been finally implemented includes components which address social aid and institutional reform, the Plan Colombia label has become associated with being fundamentally a program of counternarcotics and military aid for the Colombian government.
Officially, especially in the US, it is justified as part of the "war on drugs", but many suspect the true targets of the Plan would be the guerrilla forces, which have exerted influence over vast swaths of territory in the rural interior of the country. Some of the more critical observers argue that the peasantry and indigenous people might be considered as a target of the Plan, as they would be calling for social reform and the protection and eventual legalization of drug crops as their source of income or cultural expression, thereby potentially interfering with alleged international plans to exploit Colombia's valuable resources, including but not limited to its oil (Colombia has been considered as the 7th or 8th oil supplier to the USA, though recent studies point to a coming reduction in the country's currently known oil reserves).
Prominent in the aid package approved by Clinton is the so-called "Push into Southern Colombia", an area that for decades has been a stronghold of Colombia's largest guerrilla organisation FARC; it also a major coca producing region.
This funding would train and equip new Colombian army counternarcotics battalions, providing them with helicopters, transport and intelligence assistance, and supplies for coca eradication.
While the assistance is defined as counternarcotics assistance, many believe it will be used primarily against the FARC. Supporters of the Plan argue that such an action would make sense as the distinction between guerrillas and drug dealers may have increasingly become irrelevant, seing as they could be considered as part of the same productive chain.
In June 2000, Amnesty International issued a press release in which it criticized the implemented Plan Colombia initiative:
Plan Colombia is based on a drug-focussed analysis of the roots of the conflict and the human rights crisis which completely ignores the Colombian state's own historical and current responsibility. It also ignores deep-rooted causes of the conflict and the human rights crisis. The Plan proposes a principally military strategy (in the US component of Plan Colombia) to tackle illicit drug cultivation and trafficking through substantial military assistance to the Colombian armed forces and police. Social development and humanitarian assistance programs included in the Plan cannot disguise its essentially military character. Furthermore, it is apparent that Plan Colombia is not the result of a genuine process of consultation either with the national and international non-governmental organizations which are expected to implement the projects nor with the beneficiaries of the humanitarian, human rights or social development projects. As a consequence, the human rights component of Plan Colombia is seriously flawed. [1] (http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/2000/colombia07072000.html)
During the late 1990s, Colombia was the leading recipient of US military aid in the Western Hemisphere, and due to its continuing internal conflict has also compiled the worst human rights record, with the majority of atrocities attributed (from most directly responsible to least directly responsible) to paramilitary forces, insurgent guerrilla groups and elements with the police and armed forces.
A United Nations study reported that elements within the Colombian security forces, which have been strengthened as a whole due to Plan Colombia and other initiatives, at times and in certain regions do continue to maintain intimate relationships with right-wing death-squads, help organize paramilitary forces, and either participate in abuses and massacres directly or, as it is usually argued to be more often the case, deliberately fail to take action to prevent them. Critics of the Plan and of other initiatives to aid Colombian armed forces point to these continuing accusations of serious abuse, while supporters of the Plan consider that the number and scale of abuses directly attributable to the government's forces have been slowly but increasingly reduced.
Statistics distributed by the Colombian Defense Ministry and by U.S. agencies in official statements and press reports estimate a reduction in illicit drug crops of 37.5% between 2000 and 2002, and 43% between 2002 and 2003. It is argued that this reflects a potential reduction of 79 tons of cocaine which, adding in those amounts seized during the period, would have prevented drugs worth US $ 8.425 million from entering the international market. It is stated that aerial fumigation has been largely responsible for these results and that, if the fumigations receive continued support, it would allegedly be possible to accomplish the 2005 Plan Colombia goal of achieving an erradication of 50% of drug crops. [2] (http://alpha.mindefensa.gov.co/index.php?page=181&id=783)
U.S. government officials have admitted that the market price of drugs has yet to suffer any significant upward increase, as would be expected from the above reductions in supply. Some observers consider this as a sign of the Plan's failure, while others support the argument that druglords, irregular forces and international traders have been able to keep a relatively constant flow of drugs into the market because of the availability of hidden stashes and other methods of circumventing the immediate effect of eradication efforts.
Recent Changes
In 2001, the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush expanded the program with the appropriation of $676 million for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative. Of this appropriation, approximately $380 million was targeted at Colombia. The rest went towards other South American countries covered by the Andean Counterdrug Initiative. The 2001 initiative reduced the limitations on the numbers and the activities of civilian contractors, allowing them to carry and use military weapons which, according to the U.S. government, would be necessary to ensure the safety of personnel and equipment during spray missions. Congress rejected amendments to the Andean initiative that would have redirected some of the money to demand reduction programs in the United States, primarily through funding of drug treatment services. Some critics have opposed the rejection of these modifications, claiming that the drug problem and its multiple repercussions would be structurally addressed by curbing the demand, and not the production, of illicit drugs, since drug crops can always be regrown and transplanted elsewhere, inside or outside Colombia and its neighboring countries, as long as there is a commercially viable market.
In 2004, the United States appropriated approximately $727 million for the Andean Counterdrug Initiative, $463 million of which was targeted at Colombia.
In October 2004, the compromise version of two U.S. House-Senate bills approved to increase the number of U.S. military advisors that operate in the country as part of Plan Colombia to 800 (from 400) and that of private contractors to 600 (from 400). [3] (http://ciponline.org/colombia/041008cap.htm)
On October 15, a statement by U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry's campaign office and an interview with his Latin American affairs advisor Peter Romero, both published in the Colombian daily El Tiempo, pledged to continue supporting Plan Colombia and the efforts made by Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, but highlighted the need for the Colombian government to improve the grave human rights situation inside the country, by severing any remaining links with right-wing irregulars and to provide adequate protection to all its citizens, including rights and union workers.[4] (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/inte/eucanada/noticias/ARTICULO-WEB-_NOTA_INTERIOR-1821890.html)[5] (http://eltiempo.terra.com.co/inte/eucanada/noticias/ARTICULO-WEB-_NOTA_INTERIOR-1822858.html)
In a November 22 visit to the coastal city of Cartagena, U.S. President George W. Bush stood by the results of Colombian president Uribe's security policies and declared his support for continuing to provide Plan Colombia aid in the future: "My nation will continue to help Colombia prevail in this vital struggle. Since the year 2000, when we began Plan Colombia, the United States has provided more than $3 billion in vital aid. We'll continue providing aid. We've helped Colombia to strengthen its democracy, to combat drug production, to create a more transparent and effective judicial system, to increase the size and professionalism of its military and police forces, to protect human rights, and to reduce corruption. Mr. President, you and your government have not let us down. Plan Colombia enjoys wide bipartisan support in my country, and next year I will ask our Congress to renew its support so that this courageous nation can win its war against narco-terrorists." [6] (http://usinfo.state.gov/gi/Archive/2004/Nov/23-231491.html)
See also
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