12-13-05, 9:21 am

The US policy of providing cash assistance to Colombia ostensibly for controlling the cocaine trade, a five-year program known as 'Plan Colombia,' is a failure. Despite Bush administration claims that Plan Colombia has significantly slowed cocaine traffic to the US, a recent story in the San Francisco Chronicle based on a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report provides evidence to the contrary.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, military aid provided under Plan Colombia 'includes combat helicopters, light weapons ranging from machine guns to rocket launchers and intelligence technology as well as advisers, chemicals and fumigation planes to spray coca fields.'

The White House, through drug 'czar' John Walters, has tried to spin Plan Colombia and related efforts, such as the 'Andean Counter-Drug Initiative.' Since 2000, the US has pumped $6 billion into Plan Colombia and another $7.4 billion into the Andean Initiative (divided between Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, Panama, Ecuador, and Venezuela).

Last month, Walters insisted that the number of acres used to grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine, has been cut in half since 2000 due primarily to fumigation operations. Walters also claimed, according to the Miami Herald, that cocaine prices are high and the purity of the drug is much lower than in the past, indicating scarce supply.

Expert testimony, however, says that between 2-6 million people used cocaine at least on a regular basis in 2004, a figure that has remained constant while Plan Colombia has been in effect, says the GAO report. Additionally, between 325 and 675 metric tons of cocaine entered the US in 2004 alone, according to the White House's own estimates, while cocaine sales in the US totaled approximately $65 billion last year. According to surveys conducted between 2001 and 2004 by the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, cocaine usage among younger age groups is considerably higher than in the 1990s. Additionally, the Justice Department noted that in 2003 cocaine prices were at an all time low, suggesting that 'both powder and crack cocaine are readily available throughout the country.'

Additionally, the GAO points out that coca production in Colombia has not been eliminated. Instead, coca farming has moved to more remote areas still undetected by US military or Colombian government operations.

Colombian human rights activists and local community members have also voiced their opposition to fumigation as an ecological disaster and a major public health problem, resulting from hundreds of thousands of tons of poisons being dumped on about 1.3 million acres of land.

According to Rachel Massey in a report prepared for the Latin America Working Group, a human rights advocacy coalition, several studies of the main chemical ingredient (glyphosate) in the herbicide used in the fumigation program suggest that it is heavily toxic even in low doses and negatively affects the human reproductive system. Other studies have linked the herbicide to genetic damage that causes cancer.

Plan Colombia expires this year, and the Bush administration, in order to get the program extended, is making claims about its success using questionable data. The GAO report criticized the White House’s data on cocaine usage in the US, suggesting that they relied not on actual estimates of the availability of the drug, but on selected law enforcement activity. This method of counting dramatically underestimates cocaine usage and availability.

But Plan Colombia’s persistent failure to reduce cocaine availability and usage in the US has long been documented. According to the Miami Herald, White House claims about scarcer supply are overblown, as current prices and purity levels mirror those of late 2003 and early 2004, and any changes since then can hardly be described as a trend. When higher transportation costs due to rising oil and gas prices are added to the equation, the White House conclusion that higher prices are the result of lower supply seems pure folly.

So why is the White House pushing an apparent boondoggle that saps needed financial resources with no real benefit?

One main reason is that the administration supports the right wing’s long-standing, but miserably failed, 'war on drugs' policy. The rhetoric of war and militarization appeals to the base fears of its political supporters, who blame social ills on immigrants and an imagined permissive culture that looks the other way at 'experimentation,' rather than underlying socio-economic inequalities that make black market deals appealing to some portions of the population.

In fact, the Bush administration’s drug policy is part of a carefully designed, though basically contradictory, public relations scheme. On the one hand, the Justice Department whips up fear domestically about drug usage and availability to promote law enforcement methods of dealing with a 'wave' of drug crimes. On the other hand, the drug 'czar' exaggerates or lies outright about the drug war’s success in order to perpetuate its failed program in Colombia.

In other words, the administration's rhetoric points to severe failures on one hand and near victory on the other. Sound familiar? You might recognize the spin if you have followed White House statements regarding the 'progress' of another war – the war on Iraq. On one hand, the insurgency is in its 'death throes'; on the other, it is making Iraq a perpetually dangerous place requiring long-term occupation. All the flimflam is meant to maintain public support for a wasteful and murderous policy that has simply not worked.

On top of this, the right wing refuses to acknowledge the need to develop a comprehensive approach to drug abuse that includes treatment and adequate access to comprehensive long-term health care. They prefer to waste resources on militarized operations that are oriented exclusively to law enforcement methods.

Plan Colombia as Foreign Policy

But this is not the whole picture. There is a foreign policy dimension that has little or nothing to do with cocaine traffic or drug use. Both critics and supporters of Plan Colombia recognize that the program, under the guise of combating the drug trade, is basically designed to go after the left-wing guerrillas that oppose the right-wing government’s violent repression of political opposition and trade union activities. If the White House is to be believed, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP in Spanish) supposedly takes in $1.3 billion in income from the drug trade.

This estimate is based only on speculation and politically motivated Colombian government reports that do not attempt to be truthful about FARC-EP. For instance, US estimates about FARC-EP’s role in the drug trade don’t mesh with the Colombian government’s own claims that FARC-EP is near extinction, or even with the Pentagon’s insistence that FARC-EP 'has been degraded.' How could an organization that takes in $1.3 billion be so near extinction? Either way, we should view the Bush administration’s accusations about FARC-EP’s role in the cocaine trade with as much suspicion as their claim that Iraq possessed WMD.

and interviewed leaders of FARC-EP, has noted that increased insurgent activities by FARC-EP and its continued control over many parts of Colombia suggest that, rather than having been curtailed, the power of the leftist group is growing. In fact, in the first half of 2005, Brittain reports, FARC-EP altered its strategy from small-scale attacks on government military and right-wing paramilitary forces to a sustained, continuous offensive. The new offensive has been carried on different regions and has resulted in FARC-EP’s control of the department of Putumayo. This recent success is related, in no small part, to growing popular support in the regions in which the group operates.

Meantime, the largest right-wing paramilitary organization, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which appears on the State Department’s terrorism list and is notorious for widespread murder, kidnappings, assault, theft, property destruction, and massive human rights violations, continues to have strong relations with the Colombian government. The main role of this 20,000 member paramilitary organization, in fact, is to organize attacks against the government’s political opponents, such as the local peasant communities that support FARC-EP (rather than the rebel group itself), but also trade unionists and others who organize political opposition.

According to the US/Labor Education in the Americas Project, AUC (and allies) have been primarily responsible for the murder of over 2,000 trade unionists since 1991. In 2002, 184 trade unionists were assassinated, and while these numbers slightly decreased in the past two years threats against union activists have been on the rise. By all accounts, the AUC is deeply involved in the drug trade in order to fund its operations and enrich its leaders.

Critics of the Colombian government’s attempt to reign in the AUC, a process known as demobilization, describe it as a cynical effort to avoid bringing mass murderers and human rights violators to justice. In fact, many known terrorists and killers have already gained access to legitimate business and political structures. According to a report by the International Relations and Security Network published last October, the demobilization process 'allows the [AUC’s] commanders an opportunity to enter into the ranks of society with their vast drug-trafficking wealth intact and with impunity from prosecution.'

Human Rights Watch echoed this view last August when the Americas Director for Human Rights Watch, José Miguel Vivanco, said, 'The government’s failure to conduct the demobilizations in a serious manner is helping paramilitary commanders launder their wealth and legitimize their political power.'

Despite its rhetoric condemning the AUC, the US government has not attached serious conditions to Plan Colombia funding to pressure the Colombian government into curbing that dangerous group. This fact has outraged the vast majority of the US Senate, as about 85 Senators have expressed opposition to further funding as long as the Colombian government remains tied to the AUC.

The White House recognizes the benefits of keeping AUC around, however. In their view, an armed and organized gang is a potential ally, not in the 'war on drugs,' but in other possible conflicts in the region.

(One might recall a comparable strategy in the 1980s used by the Reagan administration to provide covert funding to the so-called contras in Nicaragua in order to de-stabilize that country by fomenting civil war and terrorists attacks. Additional funding provided to death squads in Guatemala and El Salvador by the Reagan administration saw the slaughter of a combined 200,000 people in these three countries. Reagan defended mass killing as necessary in the global war on communism.)

One potential future conflict, in the administration’s view, may center on Venezuela, Colombia’s next-door neighbor. Since the election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 1998 and subsequent failures backed by the Bush administration to unseat him illegally, including a coup d’etat, the White House has ratcheted up its anti-Venezuela rhetoric and on occasion attempted to provoke hostility between the two countries.

For example, the US government has openly funded opposition parties in Venezuela under the guise of promoting democracy, and during the most recent meeting of the Organization of American States unsuccessfully tried to cajole other countries into endorsing a measure that would have isolated Venezuela. Further, various Bush administration officials have baselessly described Venezuela as a destabilizing force and a supporter of terrorism. The administration has never provided evidence to support its claims.

For its part, the Chávez administration recently expelled US military advisors and drug enforcement agents that it said were spying on the Venezuelan government and military. President Chávez noted last August that, 'in the case of the DEA, we have detected intelligence infiltrations that threaten the security and defense of the country.'

Promising to continue to fight drug trafficking, the Minister of the Interior and Justice, Jesse Chácon, added that DEA agents were operating outside Venezuelan law and without the control or oversight of Venezuelan authorities. Their expulsion was a matter of maintaining Venezuela’s sovereignty, based on the principle that it doesn’t need a US law enforcement presence to fight drug problems.

Chávez has also apparently embarrassed the Bush administration through his generosity to people in the US. After the hurricane Katrina disaster, President Chávez swiftly announced his willingness to provide financial and material aid to the victims. Additionally, as oil and gas prices have skyrocketed, Chávez has made a number of deals with working-class communities in the US to provide discounted heating oil.

Because of the Bush administration’s intense hostility towards Chávez, relations between the two countries have markedly deteriorated. Thus, in Bush’s view, maintaining a friendly and dependent government in neighboring Colombia with a well-equipped army allied with extremist paramilitary thugs, makes good sense.

For US taxpayers, however, this policy makes little sense, adds to our country’s financial difficulties, distracts from real solutions to serious drug problems, and won’t bring stability or peace to South America. As is typical of the Bush administration, it is a policy based on lies and misleadership. For that reason, funding for Plan Colombia and similar 'anti-drug operations' should be ended.



--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.