By PHK
In 2000, Colombia competed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for domination of the US headlines. Colombian drug lords, leftist guerrillas, and rightist paramilitaries were portrayed as running rampant. The US initiated “Plan Colombia” a multi-pronged five year approach to help stabilize the war-torn country. The five year follow-on, “Plan Colombia II” is now in progress. What does this mean? What has worked and what hasn’t? And is what happens in Colombia as crucial to the US as in 2000? These questions still demand our attention.
John Heard is a former senior Foreign Service Officer with USAID, who spent most of his career in Latin America and recently returned to the US after four and one half years in Bogota as head of the Pan American Development Foundation Office (PADF), which administers major USAID projects there. Heard described the situation and discussed these issues at the September 17, 2007 World Affairs Forum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The text for John Heard’s presentation follows. It is entitled “Why we should pay attention to Colombia and support rational policies for our most important ally in Latin America."
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The Major Points in a Nutshell:
• Afghanistan may be the world’s poppy capital, but Colombia is its coca capital and the US is the largest recipient: Over 70 percent of the cocaine in the US comes from Colombia. The US has spent over $5.4 billion trying to solve the problem since 2000 without success. This scourge poisons both the US and Colombia but for different reasons. Opium poppies are cultivated in Colombia too, but the crop is nowhere near as large or as important as coca.
• Terrorism: The continuing conflict in Colombia threatens US interests in the country and the region. Leftist guerillas hold hundreds of hostages including three US citizens. Both the guerillas and the partially demobilized United Self Defense Forces (paramilitaries) use terror as a weapon and they both thrive on the drug trade. Meanwhile, the conflict that began as an ideological one has morphed into one that is all about business - political and economic power. It is now 95% business and 5% ideological.
• Displaced persons: As a result of the conflict, between two and three million Colombians are internally displaced. This places Colombia second only to Sudan – despite a major US financed program to assist these people reintegrate into their communities.
• US investment and trade interests: Colombia is the eighth largest supplier of oil to the US. The largest operations are run by Occidental Petroleum, Chevron, Texaco, BP and Exxon. Colombia is a major supplier of coffee, oil, fresh flowers and garments. In fact, Colombian flower exports result in 200,000 jobs in the US and 90,000 in Colombia. Colombia is also an important market for US goods and services.
• US foreign assistance: Today US military and economic support for the Colombian government runs between $400 and $500 million per year. Of this, two-thirds to three-quarters are devoted to the military. The US Embassy in Bogota is one of the largest in the world with over 400 direct hire employees, 40 government agencies and hundreds of military and contract personnel – in uniform and out. Well over a hundred million dollars a year are awarded to business contractors and grantees (NGOs) for program implementation. We need to make sure the money is well spent.
• Current US policy: The goal is promotion of peace and reduction of the flow of drugs to the US through Plan Colombia II. So far – with the exception of a shaky ongoing paramilitary demobilization - it has not produced the results the US and Colombian Government seek.
• US-Colombian relations: the country under President Alvaro Uribe is a friend. Uribe, first elected in 2002, is extraordinarily popular. Over the years, the Colombian government has had warm relations with both Clinton and Bush administrations. The US needs all the friends it can have in Latin America: as it stands now, Colombia is flanked by anti-American leftist governments in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
THE THREE MAKE OR BREAK ISSUES: Continuing Conflict, War on Drugs, Grinding Poverty
1. The Continuing Conflict
Although Colombia’s level of violence – ordinary murder and crime rates have fallen - has been significantly reduced under President Uribe, internal conflict continues. Kidnapping and extortion remain high and thousands of families are driven, homeless, from their communities every month. This is a byproduct of a continuing war fueled by the proceeds of the drug trade. The situation in Colombia, however, is not like Central America after the fall of the Soviet Union where state-sponsored funding for insurgents dried up within a year or two.
The vicious circle: Hundreds of millions of dollars from the international drug trade feed the leftist guerillas and rightist paramilitaries – a seemingly unending revenue stream. The guerillas pay salaries, purchase modern weapons, and use modern communications technology, not only for internal communications but also to finance strong public relations campaigns in Europe and Colombia. They have professional websites and also strong recruitment programs.
The answer: In addition to military pressure, e.g. pursuing them where they live under Uribe’s Democratic Security program with better trained and strengthened military forces, the existing unending income stream needs to be cut.
Incomplete paramilitary demobilization: Approximately 32,000 paramilitary members – or right wing militias originally formed by large landowners for their own protection and to combat the left wing guerillas – have demobilized over the past three years. The process has been shaky: many have kept their weapons or gone back to the mountains. Others have turned to crime. No one knows how many paramilitary are still under arms. Many of the weapons turned in were obsolete and there is a sense that the most effective weapons are still out there. USAID is helping to reincorporate demobilized paramilitaries into society through the International Organization for Migration. A US supported Organization of American States (OAS) Monitoring Mission is observing the process.
The “para-politica” housecleaning should be encouraged not discouraged: Just in the past year, key paramilitary figures in the Uribe government have been exposed in a series of scandalous revelations. These revelations have made the US Democratic Congressional leadership leery of supporting the Uribe government. This has resulted in reluctance to ratify a pending bilateral Free Trade Agreement signed last year. What the Democrats don’t understand is that the identification and prosecution of these paramilitary figures is good, not bad. It means Uribe, Colombia’s most honest president in decades, is cracking down and housecleaning. This process should be supported, not thwarted.
2. The War on Drugs: why we can’t seem to get it right and what we can do about it
In 2000-2001, our focus was on gradual eradication of the coca crop. It didn’t work. Next, “make development happen and offer alternatives for growth and employment and they (the cocoa producers) will come” became the US government’s mantra. The result: development happened, but the drugs kept flowing.
Aerial fumigation and forced eradication: The policy of aerial fumigation and forced eradication has been in place since 2004 – each year with a stronger program, but it is failing too. To date, the US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on fumigation. The chemical used is Gliphosphate (Roundup). Its effect is short-lived (three months or less). The producers simply move down the road, cut down more forest and plant again. Or they put molasses on the crop to protect it.
This has resulted in the “balloon” effect. The growers are squeezed here but pop up there. Production also migrates back and forth between Peru and Colombia.
Spraying itself is controversial. The people hate it, it has damaged other crops and the environment although how much is the subject of continuing debate. Regardless, the point is: it hasn’t worked.
The other form of forced eradication is employing brigades of paid laborers that have to be heavily guarded by the armed forces. This has proved dangerous and many people have been killed in the process.
Meanwhile, agricultural research has improved yields – especially of coca – and much of the production has been moved into protected areas especially into National Parks and along Colombia’s border with Ecuador where finding and spraying the coca plants is more difficult as well as politically controversial.
What does work? There is only one approach that has proven effective in limited areas but it is costly, staff intensive and takes several years. The key - PADF (financed by USAID in Colombia to carry out alternative development projects) – learned, is to work directly and intensively with the coca producers themselves over three to four years. The winning formula means establishing trust in a partnership arrangement with the producers. This is done by recruiting staff from the coca producing communities themselves who help the growers convert to long term economically viable solutions in particular cocoa (“cacao”), natural rubber, African palm and coffee.
This approach also includes cultivation of short and medium cycle crops that produce income in the early years as well as developing external employment options and assisting with health, education, housing and local infrastructure. Finally, the approach incorporates lots of “social capital” – organizing and connecting the local communities to local governments and other aspects of civil society in mutually supportive networks.
Regarding risks posed from working in conflict zones, the local community is its staff’s best protection. If the staff provides the community with real answers, PADF has found, the people protect them with their lives.
3. Grinding poverty
Despite solid macro-economic growth over the past several years, grinding poverty remains an enormous problem. Close to half of the population lives below the poverty line and up to a quarter are indigent, living on a dollar a day or less. Scenes in Cartagena and Quipdó (the capital of Chocó the poorest Department on the Pacific Coast with a 90% Afro-Colombian population) are as heart-breaking as anything seen in Haiti or much of Africa. The situation is especially bad for Afro-Colombians and others who have been displaced as a result of the fighting.
Poverty provides fertile ground for guerilla and paramilitary recruitment. It fuels the conflict and the drug trade. Hunger, desperation, poor or no access to resources, bad health and lack of education and above all no jobs are huge factors that need to be addressed. The Colombian Government is dedicating hundreds of millions of dollars to help alleviate the situation, but it is not enough – especially on the employment front. The private sector also needs to chip in to a much greater degree.
What else can and should be done?
The answer is long term development in tandem with the Colombian government and the private sector. There is no military solution to ending the conflict and drug production and trade cannot be eliminated by fumigation. Yet since the very beginning of Plan Colombia, two thirds to three quarters of the funding has been for the military.
This has included fumigation. In contrast, less than one-third to one-quarter of the US funds have been devoted to social and economic side of the war on drugs - reintegration of displaced people into society and activities to improve administration of justice, human rights and reduce corruption.
Since January 2007 and the Democratic control of Congress, the pendulum is beginning to swing in the right direction – toward a greater focus on social and economic priorities. It needs to swing far wider, however, if the flow of cocaine to the US is ever to diminish appreciably. Of course, US demand must also be cut to deal adequately with the problem, but that is a separate issue and requires a whole other world of effort.
Finally, if Colombia is to compete and prosper in the US and global markets, passage of the Free Trade Agreement pending ratification in the US Congress is essential. The Agreement’s implementation will create more jobs and promote enhanced productivity in both countries. It will stimulate US exports to a growing market. Adjustment will not come easily, but it will ultimately produce higher employment and better returns in both countries. When all is said and done, Colombian workers need to move to a higher level of productivity to escape from the morass of the drug business and the debilitating culture it spawns. This is the bottom line for the good of their country and ours.
RECOMMENDATIONS
1. Colombia is a friend that continues to need US help in dealing with a myriad of entrenched problems. The drug trade, poverty and armed conflict are interrelated. If we don’t rise to the challenge now, the costs to address these scourges in the Andean region will escalate significantly down the road.
2. The support for a stronger, more effective, better thought through aid package is imperative. The current program costs nothing compared to what is being spent in Iraq. It will have high returns in terms of both economics and security in our own backyard. Colombia can also help the US in the rest of Latin America as well as in the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS).
3. Change strategies to ones that work: that means working with the people in need. The conflict has no military solution. In this sense, it is similar to Iraq. Poverty is the issue, then drugs. Shift funds to types of programs with successful track records in alleviating the problems and away from those that have failed.
4. Support reputable non-governmental organizations that work on social and economic development in Colombia. Examples include PADF, CHF International, ACDI/VOCA, Plan International and others including European and Colombian NGOs. US taxpayers can contribute to US 501 (c) 3 organizations and take a tax deduction.
5. Finally, visit Colombia: it is a country of incredible beauty – amazing people, spectacular scenery, fascinating history, art, handicrafts and beautiful cities: Bogota, Medellin, Cartagena, Villa de Leiva, Popayan. The Amazon is in Colombia’s extreme south. The country includes some of the most bio-diverse sites in the world. The country has it all in terms of fascinating and authentic tourist sites – and it is now much safer than in the 1980s and 1990s. Go and see for yourself. Learn what makes this fabulous country tick. You will not regret it. (end text)
Map Credit: Colombia - Perry-Castaneda Map Collection, University of Texas.