Latin America Says No to the Militarization of Colombia's "Drug War"

[Judi Lynn]

By Kevin Young
Latin America Says No to the Militarization of Colombia's "Drug War"
A few drug lords, politicians, and corporate profiteers benefit, but most of the population suffers from increased poverty, migration, drug production, street crime, and violence.
January 7, 2011 |

This past September, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drew criticism for comparing the current situation in Mexico to “Colombia 20 years ago.” Most of that criticism questioned whether the analogy was appropriate or whether the statement was an unnecessary affront to a close U.S. ally, the Mexican government of Felipe Calderón. But the more significant part of Clinton’s comments was her enthusiastic praise for Plan Colombia -- the massive U.S. military aid package started by her husband in 1999 -- and her insistence on the need “to figure out what are the equivalents” for other regions, particularly Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean.

The idea that Plan Colombia should be emulated anywhere is appalling to those acquainted with Colombia’s human rights record, which has been the worst in Latin America for the past 20 years. Ché Guevara once famously called for “two, three, many Vietnams” in order to overthrow capitalist imperialism in the Third World. Clinton’s call for the replication of the Colombia model elsewhere is no less bold, for she too called for international transformation. That prescription appears less surprising when grounded in the broader context of recent U.S. policy toward Latin America.

For Whom Did the Colombia Model “Work”?

In her September 8 remarks, Hillary Clinton commented that “there were problems and there were mistakes” with Plan Colombia, “but it worked.” As with any policy, it is critical to understand how, and for whom, it “worked.” If implementation of the Colombia model -- my shorthand for U.S. policy toward Colombia over the past two decades -- reflects the Obama administration’s vision for the rest of Latin America, the logic and consequences of the model must be addressed.

In 1999, Bill Clinton initiated Plan Colombia, billed as an anti-narcotics program. Since then, the primary stated justification for appropriating more than $5 billion in U.S. military and police aid to Colombia has been the “war on drugs.” But the program has not been motivated by a sincere concern for public health. First of all, more substantial threats to public health have elicited little concern in Washington. Cancer, heart disease, and diabetes each kill more people than cocaine or heroin. And their links to tobacco use, industrial food production, and corporate pollution, as well as the U.S. government’s encouragement of these practices through subsidies, foreign trade agreements, and lax regulations, are well documented. Tobacco alone kills more people than illegal drugs, alcohol, car accidents, murders, and suicides combined. A recent study by the medical journal
Lancet found that alcohol harms far more people than crack and heroin. Yet few politicians are willing to propose a “war on tobacco” or a “war on alcohol,” complete with mandatory prison sentences for producers, users, and distributors.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/news/149417/latin_america_says_no_to_the_militarization_of_colombia%27s_%22drug_war%22

[Judi Lynn]

1. Caught in the crossfire

Caught in the crossfire
As the gang war over the country’s lucrative drug trade escalates, locals are increasingly the target
by Nadja Drost on Friday, January 14, 2011 12:01pm

~snip~
Though Colombia has a long history of drug trafficking groups, today’s variety pose an increasing threat to security as they consolidate their local and regional power, and take urban and rural communities into their grip. For much of the 1990s and the early 2000s, after Colombian police brought down the country’s once all-powerful drug cartels, most of Colombia’s drug trade was controlled by right-wing paramilitary groups brought together under the banner of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC. Between 2003 and 2006, after signing a peace deal with the government, over 32,000 AUC members put down arms in exchange for reduced sentences for top commanders and immunity for foot soldiers. Many of the top leaders were extradited to the United States on narco-trafficking charges.

But most mid-ranking paramilitary commanders either never demobilized, or returned to criminal life, starting new drug trafficking groups and recruiting many former AUC fighters to work for them. By 2006, the national police estimated that 4,000 men belonged to these paramilitary successor groups. Stepped-up police efforts have resulted in 2,765 arrests of their members in 2010 alone, but don’t appear to have put a dent in their size as others fill their ranks. The police put their membership at 4,100 in 2010, while the Nuevo Arco Iris research organization estimates they number at least 10,000. “They have a capacity to keep operating, while losing people and then recouping people immediately,” says Victor Negrete, a professor at the University of Sinú in Montería, Córdoba. Indeed, Mauricio Romero of Nuevo Arco Iris estimates neo-paramilitary groups control about two-thirds of Colombia’s estimated 68,000 hectares of coca crops.

Since 2000, the U.S. has poured $6 billion into fighting Colombia’s drug war, including efforts to decrease coca production. But while the amount of coca grown was down 16 per cent in 2009 according to the UN Office of Drug Control, Colombia remains the world’s top coca producer. And although today’s drug trafficking groups do not have the wide-reaching influence of the famous cartels of the 1980s and ’90s, nor the national scope of the AUC, they now operate in 24 of Colombia’s 32 departments, and their local and regional power is strengthening and expanding.

~snip~
In few other places can their presence be felt more than in Córdoba, a narco-trafficking mecca, home to extensive fields of coca, labs that process it into cocaine, and roads and waterways that can transport it to the Atlantic coast within three hours. Córdoba was the birthplace of the AUC, and after the group’s demobilization there in 2006, the department became awash with former paramilitary fighters, many of whom joined newly established drug gangs. Homicides have climbed every year since 2006, and by mid-December of 2010 had doubled to 569, according to Córdoba’s governor’s office, serving a population of 1.5 million.

More:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/01/14/caught-in-the-crossfire/