Colombia - Plan Colombia misses coca target

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This from BBC News website (article link):

Plan Colombia misses coca target


A $6bn US aid plan for Colombia has failed to reach its target of halving drug production in the Andean country, a Congressional report says.


The report said coca production increased despite eradication efforts

Despite record aerial eradication, coca cultivation in Colombia rose by 15% between 2000 and 2006, the report says.
But the US programme - Plan Colombia - has helped reduce Colombia's kidnapping and murder rates while diminishing the threat from left-wing rebels, it adds.

US officials have said aid will be trimmed due to the financial crisis.
Bogota receives around $600m a year in US aid to combat drugs trafficking.

The report recommends aid cuts, advising US and Colombian officials to "develop a joint plan for turning over operational and funding responsibilities for US-supported programmes to Colombia".

Rights violations
The report was requested by Vice-president elect Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, and was prepared by the General Accounting Office.


President-elect Barack Obama is among the US politicians who have expressed concern over human rights violations in Colombia's long-running conflict.

Despite Plan Colombia, the country remains the world's top cocaine producer and is reportedly the source of 90% of the drug in the US.
An initiative formulated by former US President Bill Clinton and his Colombian counterpart Andres Pastrana, Plan Colombia was announced in 1999.
It involves the training of Colombian forces and the provision of equipment and intelligence to combat drug-traffickers and eliminate coca crops.


US aid for Colombia amounted to around $650m in 2008

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[top] Plan Colombia did not achieve goals

Published: Thursday 06 November 2008 12:10 UTC
Last updated: Thursday 06 November 2008 12:39 UTC

According to a United States Congressional report Plan Colombia, which has cost more than 4.5 billion euros, has not achieved its goal of halving the production of cocaine. Instead, between 2000 and 2006 production rose by 15 percent.

The report recommends a reduction in aid as well as the transfer of responsibilities to the Colombian government. President-elect Barack Obama has expressed concern about human rights violations in Colombia. The US government recently stopped helping three Colombian army units accused of executing civilians.

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This is of course not quite true. Plan Colombia was never really about drugs, any more than the illegal invasion of Iraq was about helping the Iraqis or WMDs. It's a way of propping up a corrupt pro-US government, which has extensive links with paramilitaries which are involved in the cocaine trade. In that sense it has been some success.

US criticism for drugs has been focused on Venezuela and Bolivia, because they don't approve of leftist leaders who challenge the dominance of the mainly white elites with whom they prefer to do business. Their own client is the most guilty.

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Latin America: Citing Continuing Human Rights Violations, Amnesty International Urges US to Halt Military Aid to Colombia

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/..._international

The human rights group Amnesty International harshly criticized Colombia in a 94-page report issued Tuesday and urged the US to halt military aid to Colombia unless and until it manages to rein in the killings of civilians and other human rights abuses.

The US government has provided more than $5 billion in assistance to Colombia, the vast majority of it military, since the Clinton administration initiated Plan Colombia in 1999. Originally sold as a purely counter-narcotics package, the US assistance has since 2002 morphed into a counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism mission aimed primarily at the guerrilla army of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The FARC supports itself in part through participation in Colombia's coca and cocaine industry.
Washington has lauded Colombian President Álvaro Uribe for taking the fight to the FARC, and Colombia has seen a decrease in kidnappings and an increased sense of security in some big cities. But in the report, Amnesty questioned Uribe's claims that Colombia "is experiencing an irreversible renaissance of relative peace" and "rapidly falling levels of violence."
"Colombia remains a country where millions of civilians, especially outside the big cities and in the countryside, continue to bear the brunt of this violent and protracted conflict," the report says, adding that "impunity remains the norm in most cases of human rights abuses."

According to the report, more than 70,000 people, the vast majority civilians, have been killed in the past two decades of the 40-year-old war between the FARC and the Colombian state, with somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 "disappeared" and another 20,000 kidnapped or taken hostage. Colombia is also the scene of one of the world's worst refugee crises, with between three and four million people forcibly displaced.
And despite Uribe's protestations, for many Colombians, things aren't getting any better. According to the report, 1,400 civilians were killed in 2007, up from 1,300 the previous year. Of the 890 cases where the killers were known, the Colombian military and its ally-turned-sometimes-foe the rightwing paramilitaries were responsible for two-thirds. Similarly, the number of "disappeared" people was at 190 last year, up from 180 the year before.

Colombia's internal refugees didn't fare any better, either. More than 300,000 were displaced last year, up substantially from the 220,000 in 2006. Much of the displacement and many of the killings took place as paramilitaries attempted to wrest control of coca fields from the FARC and its peasant supporters.
In addition to pressure from donor countries, one key to improving the human rights picture is to get the Uribe administration to admit that it is in a civil war. Uribe refuses to do so, instead labeling the FARC belligerents as "terrorists."

"It's impossible to solve a problem without admitting there is one," said Marcelo Pollack, Colombia researcher at Amnesty International. "Denial only condemns more people to abuse and death."
The report also found that despite Uribe's claim that demobilization of the paramilitaries has succeeded, the paramilitaries remain active and continue to commit human rights abuses. Disturbingly, the report concluded that the FARC in the last year has been creating "strategic alliances" with the paramilitaries in various regions in the country as both groups seek "to better manage" the primary source of income, the cocaine trade.


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Plan Colombia: Drug Reduction Goals Were Not Fully Met, but Security Has Improved; U.S. Agencies Need More Detailed Plans for Reducing Assistance

GAO-09-71 October 6, 2008

Highlights Page (PDF) Full Report (PDF, 108 pages) Accessible Text Recommendations (HTML)

Summary: In September 1999, the government of Colombia announced a strategy, known as "Plan Colombia," to (1) reduce the production of illicit drugs (primarily cocaine) by 50 percent in 6 years and (2) improve security in Colombia by re-claiming control of areas held by illegal armed groups. Since fiscal year 2000, the United States has provided over $6 billion to support Plan Colombia. The Departments of State, Defense, and Justice and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) manage the assistance. GAO examined (1) the progress made toward Plan Colombia's drug reduction and enhanced security objectives, (2) the results of U.S. aid for the military and police, (3) the results of U.S. aid for non-military programs, and (4) the status of efforts to "nationalize" or transfer operations and funding responsibilities for U.S.-supported programs to Colombia.

Plan Colombia's goal of reducing the cultivation, processing, and distribution of illegal narcotics by 50 percent in 6 years was not fully achieved. From 2000 to 2006, opium poppy cultivation and heroin production declined about 50 percent, while coca cultivation and cocaine production levels increased by about 15 and 4 percent, respectively. These increases, in part, can be explained by measures taken by coca farmers to counter U.S. and Colombian eradication efforts. Colombia has improved its security climate through systematic military and police engagements with illegal armed groups and by degrading these groups' finances. U.S. Embassy Bogot? officials cautioned that these security gains will not be irreversible until illegal armed groups can no longer threaten the stability of the government of Colombia, but become a law enforcement problem requiring only police attention. Since fiscal year 2000, State and Defense provided nearly $4.9 billion to the Colombian military and National Police. Notably, over 130 U.S.-funded helicopters have provided the air mobility needed to rapidly move Colombian counternarcotics and counterinsurgency forces. U.S. advisors, training, equipment, and intelligence assistance have also helped professionalize Colombia's military and police forces, which have recorded a number of achievements including the aerial and manual eradication of hundreds of thousands of hectares of coca, the seizure of tons of cocaine, and the capture or killing of a number of illegal armed group leaders and thousands of combatants. However, these efforts face several challenges, including countermeasures taken by coca farmers to combat U.S. and Colombian eradication efforts. Since fiscal year 2000, State, Justice, and USAID have provided nearly $1.3 billion for a wide range of social, economic, and justice sector programs. These programs have had a range of accomplishments, including aiding internally displaced persons and reforming Colombia's justice sector. But some efforts have been slow in achieving their objectives while others are difficult to assess. For example, the largest share of U.S. non-military assistance has gone towards alternative development, which has provided hundreds of thousands of Colombians legal economic alternatives to the illicit drug trade. But, alternative development is not provided in most areas where coca is cultivated and USAID does not assess how such programs relate to its strategic goals of reducing the production of illicit drugs or achieving sustainable results. In response to congressional direction in 2005 and budget cuts in fiscal year 2008, State and the other U.S. departments and agencies have accelerated their nationalization efforts, with State focusing on Colombian military and National Police aviation programs. One aviation program has been nationalized and two are in transition, with the largest--the Army Aviation Brigade--slated for turnover by 2012. Two National Police aviation programs have no turnover dates established. State, Defense, Justice, and USAID each have their own approaches to nationalization, with different timelines and objectives that have not been coordinated to promote potential efficiencies.

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Latin America: Plan Colombia Didn't Work, GAO Report Says

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/...ays_GAO_report

Washington's ambitious $6 billion investment in wiping out Colombia's coca crops and cocaine production has been a failure, the GAO said in a report released Wednesday. The aid program, known as Plan Colombia, had a goal of reducing Colombian coca and cocaine production by half between 2000 and 2006, but instead of shrinking, coca production was up 15% and cocaine production was up 4%, the review found. Or, as the GAO diplomatically put it: "Plan Colombia's goal of reducing the cultivation, processing, and distribution of illegal narcotics by 50 percent in 6 years was not fully achieved."
By all accounts, Colombia has been and remains the world's number one coca and cocaine producer. It is estimated that 90% of the cocaine reaching the US is from Colombia. Despite years of aerial eradication with herbicides, as well as manual eradication, Washington and Bogotá have been unable to put a serious dent in the Colombian coca and cocaine trade. The inability to suppress coca and cocaine production "can be explained by measures taken by coca farmers to counter US and Colombian eradication efforts," the report said.

The report was commissioned by Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It could provide powerful ammunition for congressional foes of Plan Colombia, who are seeking to reduce US assistance to the government of President Alvaro Uribe, many of them citing human rights violations by the Colombian military and the right-wing paramilitaries, who have an ambiguous relationship with the Colombian government. The report calls for aid cuts and advises US and Colombian officials to "develop a joint plan for turning over operational and funding responsibilities for US-supported programs to Colombia." It also called for USAID, which has administered more than $1.3 billion in alternative development funding, to come up with methods of measuring whether its efforts were having any impact.
The GAO did give Washington and Bogotá credit for improving Colombia's security climate "through systematic military and police engagements with illegal armed groups and by degrading these groups' finances." But, as we reported last week, Amnesty International has found that the human rights situation in Colombia remains atrocious, with thousands of killings each year and between two and three million Colombians displaced and living as refugees.

With Democrats in control of both Congress and the White House, Plan Colombia's days could be numbered, and a report like this one ought to kill the beast. But don't be surprised if it doesn't.

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US halts aid amid Colombia scandal

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/am...921826100.html

The US has halted aid to three Colombian army units after officers and soldiers were implicated in the killing of civilians, a senior US official has said.
The US move was "based on the government of Colombia's information that these units were involved with gross violations of human rights," he said.
Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's president, has fired 27 army officers, including three generals, over allegations troops were involved in executing 11 young civilian men in order to present them as rebel fighters and get promotions.
The commander of Colombia's army has also resigned.
"From today on, every battalion, every unit will have a division assigned to compile any accusations of misconduct on the part of any member of the armed forces," Uribe announced on Thursday.
Aid scrutinised
Colombia has received billions of dollars in aid from the US to combat drug production and smuggling operations carried out by rebel groups in order to fund their operations.
The scandal will bolster critics of the $600 million-a-year Washington sends in aid - the largest amount sent to any country outside the Middle East.
The arrangement could change after Barack Obama takes over the White House in January.
US Democrats want new aid to focus more on economic development projects instead of military financing.
Nearly a decade ago the US and Colombia launched a $6bn aid package known as Plan Colombia to cut illegal coca production in half.
But a US congressional report released earlier in the week found coca production had increased by 15 per cent between 2000 and 2006, indicating Plan Colombia appeared a failure.
Democrats in the US congress have also been increasingly critical of Colombia's human rights record, and the staunch Bush-ally may face further aid cuts under Obama's administration.
'Widespread' abuses
The 11 men killed disappeared from their homes near Bogota earlier this year. Their bodies later turned up in mass graves near the border with Venezuela.
The father of one of the victims, Milciades Castro Rojas, told Al Jazeera: "They took them away and killed them to show that they are winning the war. That's what they do here, kill civilians saying they are guerrilla fighters."
Human rights groups allege the incidentis not isolated and say more than 500 civilians have disappeared while in military custody.
"The President has put the armed forces under pressure to show results, to show success in the war," Diana Sanchez, a Human Rights advocate, said.
She and other human rights activists have denounced the system whereby troops gain promotions measured by the number of fighters killed.
The UN high Commissioner for Human Rights, visiting Colombia last week, also called the army abuses "widespread and systematic".
Critics of the Uribe administration have acknowledged that Colombia's four-decade-old conflict has ebbed under his military push and the country has become safer on the whole.