Clinton
Administration
Will
Propose
$1.2
Billion
Aid
Package
to
Colombia
1/15/00
As stories of a broken cease-fire between government and rebel forces filtered out of Bogota this week, U.S. newspapers reported that the Clinton Administration is moving ahead with plans for a $1.2 billion "anti-drug" military aid package to Colombia. The amount is a fourfold increase from what the country received last year, when it was the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid behind Egypt and Israel. The aid package has been championed for months by retired General Barry McCaffrey, former chief of U.S. military operations in Latin America but now better known as Clinton’s "Drug Czar." McCaffrey has argued that the extensive military aid in the form of weaponry, equipment and both combat and intelligence training is necessary to fight the drug war in that country. But will the plan only hasten the U.S. descent into a Vietnam War-style military quagmire in Colombia? Although the Pentagon has reportedly insisted that it can make sure U.S. aid is used only on the drug war front, it has lobbied to ensure that the aid goes only to the Colombian military, and not to civilian police agencies. This is in line with McCaffrey’s contention that the vast increases in coca production in Colombia in recent years have occurred mainly in areas held by rebel forces of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – a fact disputed by U.N. officials assigned to oversee coca eradication in FARC-held territories – but raises concerns among human rights advocates who cite a long record of abuses by the military. Sanho Tree, director of the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies’ Drug Policy Project, was not convinced by reassurances from Pentagon and Clinton Administration officials that U.S. oversight will prevent further human rights abuses in Colombia. "They say they’re going to monitor the human rights situation and purge violators from the army," Tree told The Week Online. "But there are no jobs, so when these people leave the army, they join the paramilitaries," where abuses continue unchecked. Moreover, Tree explained, the interdiction and eradication programs which the aid package is supposed to fund are widely acknowledged to be the least effective strategies for reducing illicit drug use in the United States. According to a 1999 report from the Government Accounting Office, more than one half billion U.S. dollars spent on interdiction and eradication of Colombian coca products in the past decade, including record seizures and lab destructions in 1998, had no impact on the availability of Colombian cocaine in the U.S. Nor are such strategies cost effective – a 1994 study by the RAND Corporation found that providing treatment to cocaine users in the U.S. is 10 times more effective than interdiction, and 23 times more effective than eradication. Given that eradication and interdiction are largely ineffective, and the likelihood that the U.S. is being drawn deeper into Colombia’s civil war, why would the U.S. consider a massive increase in funding for just these policies? Tree said that SOUTHCOM, the U.S. military’s Latin American operation and McCaffrey’s former command post, depends mightily upon the drug war for its subsistence. "Without the drug war, SOUTHCOM would be a coast guard," Tree said. "It’s one of the few areas in the military that really wants to fight the drug war. It’s their bread and butter." Tree said it’s unlikely the proposed aid package will encounter much resistance in Congress, and compared it to the passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964, which sealed the U.S. entrance into the Vietnam War. "Back then, all the Congressmen were afraid of looking soft on Communism. Now they’re afraid of looking soft on drugs. Most know it’s a failed policy, but they’re afraid to take a stand." What will it take to impel them to take a stand? "Body bags, filled with U.S. soldiers," Tree said. The Institute for Policy Studies is on the web at http://www.ips-dc.org. Read more about the militarization of the drug war in Latin America at the Lindesmith Center web site: http://www.lindesmith.org/library/international_index2.html
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