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Chaos in Colombia: The Role of the U.S

By Mandy Sheffield

The violence, corruption and overall disorder that exists in Colombia is difficult to fix because so many groups contribute to it. The United States, however, in the past, has seen Colombia's number one problem as drugs. Our government has contributed billions of dollars to crop eradication programs, hoping to gain some ground in Colombia and in America's war on drugs. It has also focused on what it thinks are the most violent groups, the guerrillas. Though the paramilitaries are seen by many as the most violent, the biggest group being the United Self-defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the visibility of the attacks by most well-known guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), makes the them an easy and blamable target to focus on for its anti-drug programs.

To support this view, the U.S. government led Americans to believe that the narcos and guerrillas were both communist in nature. This was not true. Categorizing the two together skews the entire conflict. To decrease drug production in Colombia, people must understand the difference between the groups.

The narcos grow and produce the drugs, the guerrillas want land reform, and the paramilitaries fight the guerrillas for the narcos. Until recently, the guerrillas were not involved with the drug industry. They taxed coca crops to raise money for their own social programs, but out of greed or growing frustration, they too have turned to the country's golden export for income. Another way both groups make money is by kidnapping each other, or anyone connected to them. According to Miller, in the year 2000, around 1,500 people were kidnapped in Colombia.

In an article in Foreign Policy Review in May 2001, Andrew Miller, advocacy director for the Americas at Amnesty International USA, wrote that “the simplistic narcoguerrilla notion obscures the separate identities and goals of drug traffickers and guerrillas, as well as the reality that parts of Colombia's armed forces, paramilitaries and political elite are also tied to the drug cartels.”

Last year, Colombia Report Editor Garry Leech criticized the government's interpretation of the conflict: “Washington has seriously misrepresented a conflict that has, for 50 years, been deeply rooted in the political, social and economic inequalities so prevalent in Colombian society. Even the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency admitted that FARC was not involved in international drug trafficking. Rather, it is one of many actors-including elements of the armed forces and paramilitary organizations-engaged in the lucrative drug trade.”

American Involvement

Prior to 1984, Colombians were not against profitting from the drug trade. That year, the attitude changed when Pablo Escobar rocked the country by murdering Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara after authorities destroyed 14 tons of Escobar's cocaine. President Betancur declared an all out war on drugs and vowed to bring down the narcos and their cartels. It was the first time the population recognized the need to eliminate the narcos and would cooperate with the U.S. in this goal.

In 1988, President Bush signed National Security Directive 18, the Andean Initiative. It allocated $250 million - spread over five years - in military, law enforcement and intelligence assistance, to Andean countries in South America to combat drugs.

Colombia received an extra $65 million in emergency aid to relieve a portion of its economic burden and for American special forces to train special Colombian police and military units. Two-thirds of the money was allocated for police and military spending. Some countries only wanted to accept the third of the money that was economic aid, but to receive any money, they were required to accept the military and police aid, too.

Assassination and Terrorism?

Starting in the late '80s, special U.S. intelligence forces in Colombia provided information to the Colombian government, which used the information to kill hundreds of people connected with the cartels. American forces were initially surprised at the action, but chose to ignore that they were aiding in dozens, even hundreds, of murders. The U.S. military operations in Colombia were kept extremely confidential, and officials on U.S. soil weren't even aware they were sharing so much information with Colombia's government.

Ford's Executive Order No. 12333 made it illegal for the U.S. government to engage in or assist in assassination in any way. The only exception is for a terrorist group that poses a threat to U.S. national security.

Though the operations' goals were not to kill so many Colombians, many of those targeted were considered terrorists, which would legally make the actions all right. But the so-called terrorist threat to U.S. national security was questionable. Of course drugs themselves were threatening to Americans, but were the narcos in Colombia?

The narcos may be questionable, but the guerrillas no longer are. After Sept. 11, President Bush officially declared that the guerrillas were terrorists, essentially giving permission to fight them openly. The reasoning was laid out by Attorney General John Ashcroft.
“Lawlessness that breeds terrorism is also a fertile ground for the drug trafficking that supports terrorism,” he said. “To surrender to either of these threats is to surrender to both.”

It seems that Washington is finally realizing that previous policies in Colombia have not worked, and different approaches are needed to accomplish anything (i.e. to make progress you can't fight one group and not the other). However, the Bush administration's idea of terrorism seems rather broad. Are we fighting people who terrorize Americans, American interests, or Colombians?

Fumigation

Between 1998 and 2001, the U.S. earmarked nearly $2.5 billion for aid to Colombia. But instead of contributing most of the money to support land reform, the U.S. keeps allocating much of the money to aerial spraying programs that kill coca crops. Spraying started in 1994, and in 2002 the goal of the U.S. was to kill at least 3,000 acres. Fumigation is very effective in killing coca, but it is also very effective at killing most other plants and harming humans living in the area, especially children.

Dow Agro Sciences, the manufacturer of the chemical used for fumigation, tebuthiuron, said it should not be used for crop eradication. Leech reported that the company said tebuthiuron “can be very risky in situations where territory has slopes, rainfall is significant, desirable plants or tress are nearby, and application is made under less-than-ideal circumstances.” This risky situation perfectly describes the areas being sprayed in Colombia. And since the chemicals kill food crops farmers grow alongside the coca, the farmers' situations grow worse because they have no food to eat and no money from coca leaf sales to buy any.

With the help of U.S. funds, the Colombian government offers incentives to small farmers to stop growing coca, and said it will concentrate on spraying only industrial-size fields. To receive the incentives, coca farmers must agree to stop growing coca and destroy their crops. But, according to Juan Forero in his Aug. 10 New York Times article, many didn't stop producing coca and their farms were sprayed. Oftentimes, they do not comply because the program only offers them money after they destroy the coca, and unless paid beforehand, they do not believe they will see a cent of the money.

Their worries were warranted. The Colombian government, in many cases, has not followed through on its promise of reimbursement. An analyst with the Center for International Policy in Washington estimated that only 20 percent of farmers who agreed to cease growing coca actually received aid.

“This is a game that the government and the coca growers in Putumayo have played for over a decade,” said a U.S. official. “Each one of them promises something and neither of them actually complies.”

The Colombian and U.S. governments must take direct steps toward stopping the drug traffickers instead of the growers who supply them with coca leaves. Only then will crop eradication do any good; where there is demand, suppliers will always supply.

Oil

Colombia has major oil and gas potential both on and offshore. Officials from Ecopetrol, the state-owned Colombian oil company, say the potential for oil and natural gas in Colombia is enormous. Until recently, most of the country's prospects were never explored. According to last November's issue of The Petroleum Economist, in 2000 and 2001, 62 new association contracts (for exploration by private investors) were signed with Colombia; that is a world record.

Occidental Petroleum Corporation, a California-based group contracting with Ecopetrol, has been in Colombia since 1983. Its pipeline runs from the border of Venezuela to the western coast of Colombia. Occidental's profits from Colombia account for 5 percent of the company's world production, wrote Christian Miller in the Sept. 25 issue of the Los Angeles Times.

Occidental makes royalty payments to the Colombian Government and also contributes money directly to Arauca, the province in which the pipeline starts, to improve the area's basic infrastructure. Miller said the local government budget used to be around $3,000. Now, it is $80 million.

The second largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), has attacked the pipeline almost since its existence. Now FARC participates in pipeline bombings too, and Occidental's line has been routinely under fire. Last year, attacks shut it down for eight months.

Most residents of Arauca are those who fled their homes during La Violencia, and the ELN was protecting the small settlements that sprang up. Arauca's public officials were ELN members, so the money Occidental was contributing to the town was essentially in the hands of the ELN. In 1999, FARC decided they wanted a piece of the profits, so many members went there to try to destroy the pipeline and earn some money for themselves. With such a high density of guerrillas in the area, the paramilitaries were right on their heels, fighting against both groups and also looking for Occidental money.

The province of Arauca is the most violent in Colombia. The average number of murders per year was around 200 in the 1990s, according to Phillip McLean in last summer's Washington Quarterly. In the first nine months of 2001, 400 people were already killed. That murder rate is more than double Colombia's national rate: 73.3 violent deaths per 1,000 people. The rate of violent deaths in the U.S. is only eight per 1,000.

Protecting the Oil

In September, under pressure from Occidental and the United States, the Colombian government deployed troops to protect the 483-mile-long pipeline. In October, American troops arrived to train special Colombian military units that would protect the line more effectively. Colombian army officials said that stationing so many troops there has hurt their ability to maintain control throughout the rest of the country.

At the end of last year, polls showed that Colombians supported American involvement, even if it meant implementation of extreme measures. But when the time comes for U.S. soldiers to defend themselves, and they kill a Colombian, support for U.S.-backed efforts might fall.

So far, the intensified protection of the pipline is working. In 2002, there were 170 attacks on the pipeline; by September 2003, there had only been 29.

New Leadership in Colombia

There is hope for solving Colombia's problems, and it seems to be in the the form of a politician. Last May, 53 percent of the Colombian electorate chose Alvaro Uribe to be president. He won support by promising to increase efforts to end violence by cracking down on both guerrilla and paramilitary groups.

Uribe plans to face problems head on - mobilizing the armed forces, offering money for tips, cutting parts of the Colombian budget to invest more money in the war effort, and creating crop substitution programs – and he doesn't plan on backing down. He has even levied a 1.2 percent war surtax on the upper and middle classes, he told Jim Clancy last September during a CNN interview.

Uribe is running the country with a take-no-prisoners attitude, and that is exactly what Colombia needs. Eliminating the drug industry is the only hope for peace in Colombia. The U.S. is providing him with plenty of funds to support his policies, but to see the problem all the way through, both the U.S. and Colombia will face tough decisions, including whether more violence, if it becomes necessary, would be worth the final result.

“We need tough decisions. We need determination to implement those decisions,” Uribe told Clancy. “This is not a question of half-acts. This is a question of complete determination and complete acts.”

Another question people have asked is, will Uribe survive long enough to make a difference in Colombia? Since taking office, there had been 15 assassination attempts made on Uribe, according to Agence France Presse in June. And with 17,000 FARC members at large in the country, the president is going to have to be very careful not to end up like his father, who was killed by the FARC in 1983.

An end in sight?

Foreign policy in Colombia is designed to promote American interests. But the policies are ineffective for both the U.S. and Colombia because the U.S. only seeks to improve part of Colombia's situation; so many problems are intertwined so tightly there that only fixing all of them will yield postitive results.

Uribe is not ignoring the cartels and leaving the U.S. to deal with them, like past Comobian leaders have done. However, eliminating the will and desire of people to continue supporting the drug industry is going to be tough, because everyone – from peasants to millionaires – stands to lose substantial amounts of money.

Attempting to fix all of Colombia's problems would call for extreme measures. Like the Middle East, Colombia is an area where violence has raged on for centuries, and will continue to proliferate, unless a serious commitment is made to stop it in its entirety. It may become necessary, for example, to eradicate an entire group of people to create a society in which the majority of people have similar goals, or to eliminate the demand for drugs, which exists far and wide across the world.

Uribe may have the will to accomplish this, but the means come from the U.S. For the U.S. to continue supporting Uribe's policies, Americans themselves must continue to support Washington's policies. With protection of human rights so important to Americans, voters might decide the price for peace in Colombia is too high. If fiscal support does dwindle, Colombians will have to act alone to end the violence.

The Americans have little to fear from the Colombian narcos, because it is not in their interest to kill Americans; it is in their interest to take Americans' money.

And if the drug industry were elminated, new conditions would have to be created that allow Colombians to earn enough money to live comfortably without producing illegal drugs. Somehow, the appetite for drugs in the U.S. must be curbed so there is no economic temptation for the farmers to revert to growing and selling coca, and that requires a much larger and more active effort by our government. Where demand exists, suppliers will always supply.

Mandy Sheffield is a senior journalism major. Email her at asheffi1@ithaca.edu.