Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Washington's ill-conceived policy could hurt human rights and fuel the drug trade.
Oct 7, 1999 | Colombian President Andres Pastrana came away from his trip to the United States last month with pledges of support from President Clinton and international lending agencies for his new Plan Colombia, a comprehensive strategy to strengthen the faltering economy and address the growing threat from drug traffickers and armed groups in the civil-war torn Andean country.
On Wednesday, Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Clinton administration is still reviewing the plan and insisted it will submit an aid proposal to Congress before the current session ends. But Congress isn't waiting. Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga., and Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, told the same committee they are drafting a bill to increase military and other aid. Their proposal, which Coverdell said "compares favorably" with Pastrana's plan, would provide $1.5 billion over the next three years. The first year, he said, would be funded "on an emergency basis" -- and wouldn't count toward the spending caps that Washington's Republican leadership has struggled with lately.
High-level talks between U.S. and Colombian officials over increased aid have been taking place for several months. Pickering, drug czar Barry McCaffrey and several members of Congress took separate trips to Colombia over the summer to assess the situation. In July, McCaffrey, former head of the U.S. Southern Command and a drug-war hawk, proposed nearly doubling U.S. aid to Colombia -- already the third-largest recipient of such assistance, behind Egypt and Israel -- from $321 million this year to $570 million in fiscal year 2000.
In August, Pickering urged the Colombian president to formulate his own proposal, and Pastrana, in consultation with American advisors, responded with the three-year Plan Colombia. The remarkably broad plan seeks not only to combat drug trafficking -- the stated goal of U.S. policy toward Colombia -- but also to strengthen judicial and other democratic institutions, create jobs, improve access to markets and end the Western Hemisphere's longest-running civil war.
Most Colombians recognize that these problems are intertwined and require a comprehensive solution. The Clinton administration and Congress give lip service to support for such a solution, but the reality is that most law- and policymakers see the growing alliance between drug traffickers and leftist guerrillas as the biggest threat to U.S. national security, not the growing privation of Colombia's population. They don't want to fight a war on poverty, they want to fight the war on drugs. It's a perilous disposition. Every time someone decides to get tough on guerrillas, law-abiding civilians get caught in the cross-fire.
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