Hello to All.
The Foreign Policy in Focus website has a new brief posted on U.S. policy toward Colombia, and another of possible interest on U.S. drug policy in general.
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n30colo.html
http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n31drug.html
The following is an excerpt from the Progressive Response, the electronic magazine of the Foreign Policy in Focus program.
Top drug policy officials from around the hemisphere, summoned to Washington this week for a summit with Clinton drug czar Barry McCaffrey, should face the reality that the U.S.-led "war on drugs" is a failure. That is a central message in two new briefs published by the Foreign Policy In Focus project.
Between 1981 and today, U.S. federal spending on antidrug programs has grown from about $1 billion to roughly $18 billion, yet this "policy has failed to reduce deaths, drug abuse, drug availability, or the spread of disease. The policy emphasizes law enforcement instead of effective demand-reduction measures," writes Eric Sterling in U.S. Drug Policy: Failure at Home. Sterling, who is president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, argues that the U.S. drug strategies at home and abroad both "rely upon coercion" and "disproportionately target the poorest and the lowest level participants in the narcotics commerce."
Similarly, U.S. security assistance to Colombia, given under the rubric of fighting drugs, has skyrocketed over the last decade from $18 million to almost $300 million--with Congress currently considering a multi-billion dollar additional military aid package. Yet the U.S.' counternarcotics efforts in Colombia "have failed dramatically," writes Winifred Tate, a policy analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America. In her brief, Colombia's Role in International Drug Trafficking, Tate quotes a recent General Accounting Office (GAO) study that found that "despite two years of extensive herbicide spraying" in Colombia "net coca cultivation actually increased 50 percent." Noting that the "current level of military assistance and number of [U.S.] advisors in Colombiahas now reached levels comparable to U.S. involvement in El Salvador in the 1980s," Tate warns that the U.S. "is being drawn, once again, into an unwinnable and costly Latin American civil conflict." Tate argues that the U.S. should cut off all assistance to Colombia's security forces and "lend its full support to a negotiated settlement of Colombia's internal conflict."
The following are excerpts from the two briefs:
The U.S. should recognize that its war on drugs against Colombia and other "source countries" has been a failure and that it must refocus on demand-reduction at home through education and treatment. Although overseas efforts will not solve our domestic drug problems, the U.S. does have a range of policy options that could support Colombian efforts to confront drug trafficking and the violence and corruption caused by that country's drug trade.
Any significant advance against drug trafficking is unlikely as long as Colombia's civil war continues. The opening of peace talks between FARC and the administration of President Andris Pastrana (who took office in August 1998), the first attempt at negotiations in seven years, offers a precious opportunity for peace. The people of Colombia desperately want peace. On October 24, 1999, upwards of 10 million Colombians marched for peace in Bogota and other cities, the largest public demonstration ever in the country's history.
President Clinton pledged support for the peace process and expressed his intent to broaden U.S.-Colombian relations to address a range of issues, including human rights, judicial reform, and trade. This verbal commitment has not, however, been translated into decisive and comprehensive support for peace and alternative development programs. In fact, U.S. counternarcotics policy is escalating Colombia's conflict and continues to present obstacles to the fragile negotiation process.
The U.S. should stop its counternarcotics programs in Colombia and switch to encouraging economic development for illicit crop producers. In 1998, Congress, for the first time, allocated money for alternative development in Colombia-$15 million over three years. But skepticism could easily give way to cynicism regarding this effort: by late 1999, only a half million dollars had been spent on alternative production, while U.S. military aid to Colombia soared to almost $300 million for 1999 alone. Further, current policy dictates that no money can be allocated for development projects in southern Colombia due to guerrilla presence. In fact, alternative development projects are operating in those areas, funded by the Catholic Church, the Colombian and European governments, and the United Nations-and some of these programs have even been destroyed by U.S. fumigation campaigns.
Both peasant farmers and President Pastrana have requested increased investment in development programs for conflictive areas involved in illicit crop production. Peasant farmers in southern Colombia, including coca growers, have repeatedly called for more government assistance. In 1996, these farmers organized a large protest march to demand better government services, only to be met with violent repression from military and paramilitary forces. Although the Colombian government signed a series of agreements for increased public spending on infrastructure, health, and education, these promises have yet to be fulfilled.
In 1999, Pastrana repeated his appeal for international support for "Plan Colombia," an ambitious program calling for substantial investment in development programs. However, Washington's FY1999 aid package and the FY2000 proposals before Congress apportion more than 90% of U.S. assistance to military hardware and training for the Colombian security forces. Washington's aid policy toward Colombia should change to address Pastrana's development objectives.
In addition, the U.S. should dedicate significant economic resources toward strengthening and reforming civilian democratic institutions, particularly local judiciaries. The Colombian Attorney General's Office, particularly the Human Rights Unit, has carried out a number of important investigations of human rights cases. Yet the Colombian military rarely cooperates with these investigations and has successfully blocked some probes. Because of death threats, many prosecutors have been forced to leave the Attorney General's Office; several have fled the country. The U.S. Congress has expressed its support for these human rights investigations but has failed to provide significant assistance.
Congress and the Clinton administration should publicly encourage the Colombian government to take immediate measures to combat paramilitary groups, including purging members of the armed forces who maintain ties to paramilitary groups or who tolerate their activities and enforcing the hundreds of outstanding arrest warrants for paramilitary leaders. The U.S. should deny visas to Colombian military officers implicated in human rights violations and support of paramilitary activities. Given the persistent pattern of human rights abuses by Colombia's security forces and their support for the vigilante violence of the paramilitary groups, the U.S. should terminate all assistance to Colombia's security forces.