Fortsetzung: Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace?
Alice Coulter
Drugs: An issue of supply or demand?
"The Andes continues to produce virtually all of the world’s cocaine, and an increasing amount of heroin - thus representing a direct threat to our public health and national security" - State Department fact sheet, 2001.[11]
Colombia has come to be associated with a burgeoning illicit drugs trade. Coca production in Colombia has increased by over 150% since 1995.[12] This highly profitable industry has helped to fuel the long-running civil conflict, both directly by providing funding for armed factions, and indirectly by undermining legitimate political and judicial institutions. "In short, the hopes of the Colombian people and the work of the Colombian government have been frustrated by drug trafficking, which makes it extremely difficult for the government to fulfil its constitutional duty."[13]
As well as the noticeable effect on producer countries, the drugs trade also has an impact on the major consumer countries, such as those within North America and Europe. While cocaine use in the US has remained stable at around 330 metric tons per year since 1997, an increasingly large proportion of this originates from Colombia.[14] "The United States faces few threats in the world today that can generate the casualties among U.S. citizens that result from Colombian drug flows to this country, few threats that could be destabilizing to so many important allies, and few threats that are at such a critical juncture".[15]
The response of the US has been a major policy focus on militarised counter-narcotics strategies within Colombia, as outlined within their substantial aid package. The cornerstone of the US package (60% of Colombia’s share) is an operation dubbed the "Push into Southern Colombia". This consists of a Colombian Army offensive into Putumayo, a FARC-controlled area, to create safe conditions for counter-drug activities, such as aerial fumigation. What is the likely success of this approach towards reducing the illicit drugs trade?
Bolivia and Peru, two of Latin America’s major cocaine producers, recently experienced similar intensive counter-narcotics measures. While the effects of these strategies on the social and economic development of both countries need to be separately evaluated, their production of illegal drugs has indeed been significantly reduced. "U.S. assistance to the region to combat drug production and trafficking has been significant, and has achieved some remarkable successes. In the last five years, coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia have been cut by nearly 70%."[16]
Despite these impressive-seeming gains, this decrease in production has been largely offset by the dramatic expansion of drug production in Colombia. "The potential harvest of coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine, doubled in Colombia from 1996 to 2000 as production moved north from Bolivia and Peru."[17] In effect, production driven by opportunity and demand merely relocates to other suitable locations. Given the lack of counter-measures within Plan Colombia, there is little reason to assume that the ‘push into southern Colombia’ will be any more successful in permanently eradicating drug production. "Pushed by a lack of viable economic choices, state neglect and the lack of rule of law, and pulled by a ravenous demand for drugs in the United States, poor rural Colombians will continue to view coca cultivation as an indispensable survival strategy."[18]
Even top officials in the Bush administration, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, are beginning to acknowledge that reducing domestic demand for drugs is potentially more effective than directly combating supply.[19] "As long as millions of Americans are willing to pay for drugs, there will be no shortage of suppliers".[20] Yet, despite the official justification for the aid being to counter domestic drug use, domestic drug prevention and treatment strategies in the US support package are noticeably understated.
Explanations for the surprising weakness of the US package range from the seemingly innocent to the downright sinister. Perhaps the apparent contradiction between recognising the relevance of demand in the illegal drugs industry, yet targeting counter-measures predominantly at production, points to mere short-sightedness of policy-makers? Or, perhaps it indicates more complicated aims of the US aid package than merely drugs reduction, such as counter-insurgency?
The latter suggestion appears less far-fetched when combined with the tendency by officials in both Washington and Colombia to lump together the problems in Colombia, and blame so-called ‘narco-guerrillas’. "The governments of Colombia and the United States don’t discriminate between who is the drug trafficker and the insurgent".[21]
It is without doubt true that certain members of the major guerrilla organisations play a role in the drug industry, most obviously by extending their taxation of regional businesses to include cocaine producers. However, calls to combine anti-narcotic and anti-insurgent activities as a solution to the drugs industry reveal a limited understanding of the situation in Colombia. Scapegoating ‘narco-guerrillas’ "obscures the separate identities and goals of drug traffickers and guerrillas - as well as the reality that parts of Colombia’s armed forces, paramilitaries, and political elite are also tied to the drug cartels".[22]
For many, this down-playing of the complexity of the illicit drugs trade is a deliberate measure enabling the US to target insurgents while claiming to be attacking domestic drug consumption. Why? Because attacking leftist insurgency groups, and fumigating crops belonging to small landholders paves the way for land procurement and industrial development. "In reality [Plan Colombia] is an imperialist plan disguised as an anti-drug plan, which aims to strengthen the capitalist grip on the region".[23]
This vision of renewed Cold War counter-insurgency and neo-liberal imperialism may be hard for many to swallow, centring on widespread suspicion of US international power. Yet, the theory contains elements of historical reality, including US foreign policy towards Central America in the 1980s, and therefore cannot be simply dismissed when evaluating the motives of US foreign policy in Colombia today.
Yet another possible explanation for the militaristic focus of US aid is less sinister in motivation but also contains potentially damaging consequences. The increasing influence of the Pentagon in US foreign affairs can perhaps explain the militaristic counter-narcotics focus of Plan Colombia, and shall be considered in the following section.
[11] U.S. Policy Toward the Andean Region, State Department fact sheet, May 17, 2001 http://usinfo.state.gov/admin/011/lef409.htm
[12] Ibid.
[13] Colombia, President, Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace, Prosperity, and the Strengthening of the State [Bogotá], Colombia: Presidency of the Republic, 1999.
[14] Mark Bowden, "Plan Colombia," in Prospect, (July 2001) p.43.
[15] David J. Rothkopf in Toward Greater Peace and Security in Colombia: Forging a Constructive U.S. Policy, Report of an Independent Task Force Sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Inter-American Dialogue, 2000.
[16] U.S. Policy Toward the Andean Region, State Department fact sheet, May 17, 2001 http://usinfo.state.gov/admin/011/lef409.htm
[17] "Plan Colombia: U.S. Anti-Drug Aid Fuelling Brutal Civil War," Washington Office on Latin America, http://www.wola.org/Citizen_Action_Plan_Colombia.PDF
[18] Adam Isacson, "US Military Aid to Colombia"
[19] "Plan Colombia: U.S. Anti-Drug Aid Fuelling Brutal Civil War," WOLA
[20] Mathea Falco, Towards Greater Peace.
[21] Rand Beers, US Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs as quoted in, "Colombia: Stoking the fires of conflict," in Terror Trade Times, Amnesty International (June 2001). http://web.amnesty.org/web/ttt.nsf/June2001/colombia.
[22] Andrew Miller, "Colombia in Crisis,"
[23] Miguel Campos, "Plan Colombia: Talking peace, preparing for war," at http://belgium.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=759. Fortsetzung: Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace?
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