U.S. Aid Money Will Worsen Colombia's Internal Conflicts

by Yadira Ferrer

"Plan Colombia" does not attack the roots of the drug trade problem, as the government claims, but instead will intensify the country's decades-long internal conflict, resulting in thousands more displaced persons, continued human rights violations and worse environmental damage, the specialists say.

Ricardo Vargas, director of Andean Action, a think tank specializing in the impacts of the region's drug trade, said the plan's heavy military component would produce an increase in armed conflicts in southern Colombia.

Plan Colombia is to be financed in part by a $1.6 billion aid package from the United States, currently being considered by Congress at the behest of Pres. Clinton.

The Pastrana government defines the plan as "an integral strategy" for strengthening the fight against drug trafficking, ending the related violence, and promoting human rights and economic development.

The U.S. aid "opens a definitive structural relationship that is projected to last eight years," with which Washington seeks to reinforce its own anti-drug strategy, Vargas told IPS.

The drug trade expert said the U.S. assistance is not going to resolve the drug problem because it does not attack the trade's primary support, which lies in the drug cartels' funding for growing the illegal crops.

U.S. military aid included in the plan "includes an implicit redefinition of the role of the (Colombian) armed forces," stated Vargas.

In this context, the creation of anti-narcotics battalions, along with the commitment of the rest of the region's forces, will replace a large portion of the existing regional policies for fighting the drug trade, he explained.

These battalions would be most active in southern Colombia, with Putumayo department at its epicenter. There, according to U.S. anti-drug agencies, "nearly 80 percent of Colombian coca is produced in fields protected by the leftist guerrillas."

Putumayo is a strategic area for coordinating the guerrilla groups and will be defended to the death, said Vargas, which would render the Colombian government powerless to protect the lives of civilians, who will be caught in the middle of a vicious war.

If this scenario were to come about, the displacement of civilians from their homes would only intensify -- already one of the nation's most serious problems, stressed Jorge Rojas, director of the Council for Human Rights and Displacement.

Rojas estimated that 150,000 people would be forced to leave the southern zone as a result of intensified armed conflict once the Plan Colombia is implemented, joining the 1.5 million Colombians who have been displaced by the fighting over the last 15 years.

A report by the non-governmental Human Rights Watch indicates that Colombia was third in the world last year for the total number of people displaced by violence, following the Sudan and Angola.

Another voice warning about the negative effects of Pastrana's anti-drug plan is that of Alberto Yepez, of the Medellin-based environmental group, Corporacion Region.

Yepez maintained that further programs for eradicating illicit crops by using herbicides would result in "serious environmental devastation of the Colombian Amazon region."

Plan Colombia is projected to unfold over three years, with a total investment of $7.5 billion. Of that total, $1.6 billion would come from the United States, $3.5 billion from the Colombian government, and the rest from future donations made by a group of European governments set to meet in Spain this June.

The Pastrana plan also has its critics in several other local and international circles.

In a column published in the U.S. edition of The Economist last week, the author affirmed that "the proposed (U.S.) aid is ambiguous in purpose and its results may disappoint."

The columnist added that the United States is committing "lots of cash, military hardware and advisers to a battle in a foreign jungle" in a country where "the president faces daunting problems."

At home, the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), currently involved in peace talks with the Pastrana administration, has also emitted an opinion, saying that the plan "is a declaration of war" masked as an anti-drug fight.

The FARC spokesman at the peace negotiating table, Raul Reyes, said his guerrilla group, the largest and oldest in the nation, rejects the Pastrana program because "it will facilitate greater U.S. intervention in Colombia's internal affairs."