Via
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/19/AR2009021901879.html">the Washington Post:
Colombian Minister: US aid key to stability
By FRANK BAJAK
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 19, 2009; 3:17 PM
BOGOTA -- Colombia's defense minister said Thursday that he hopes to convince U.S. officials that any serious cuts in U.S. aid could badly hurt his country's security gains against leftist rebels.
"Look, we're winning, we're doing well. We're just about to reach the other side of the river. Don't pull out the rug," said Juan Manuel Santos, outlining the message he'll take to senior U.S. officials in a three-day Washington trip beginning Tuesday.
Santos also told The Associated Press in an interview that there hasn't been a single report of an extra-judicial killing by the military since October, when a scandal over civilian murders led to an unprecedented purge in the ranks.
Santos is to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and national security adviser James L. Jones, as well as Sens. Patrick Leahy and John Kerry, powerful Democratic committee chairmen whose party has expressed deep concerns over Colombia's human rights record.
This violence-wracked nation has received more than $6 billion in U.S. aid since 2000 under Plan Colombia, initiated under former U.S. President Bill Clinton. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia">Plan Columbia entry from Wikipedia:
The term Plan Colombia is most often used to refer to controversial U.S. legislation aimed at curbing drug smuggling by supporting different Drug War activities in Colombia.<1> Plan Colombia also refers to a wider aid initiative originally proposed by Colombian President Andrés Pastrana Arango, which contemplated the above piece of legislation but was not limited to it. The plan was conceived between 1998 and 1999 by the administration of President Andrés Pastrana with the goals of social and economic revitalization, ending the armed conflict and creating an anti-drug strategy. The most controversial element of the anti-narcotic strategy is aerial fumigation to eradicate coca. This activity has come under fire because it damages legal crops and has adverse health effects upon those exposed to the herbicides. Critics of the initiative also claimed that elements within the Colombian security forces, which received aid and training from it, were involved in supporting or tolerating abuses by the now largely dismantled right-wing paramilitary forces against left-wing guerrilla organizations and their sympathizers.
From Al Giordano's
http://www.narconews.com/Issue55/article3338.html">NarcoNews site: (This was an interesting discussion during the Confirmation hearing for Hillary Clinton for SoS that talked about American policy toward Columbia and South America in general and the changes to come.)
Kerry’s Shot Across the Bow
Many pundits and reporters have noted that in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearing on Clinton’s nomination, there were many aspiring presidents at the table: Senators Richard Lugar, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Clinton and Kerry himself all sought the White House in recent years, and it was an open secret that Kerry almost became the nominee for the post Clinton will soon fill. It was also the committee’s first major hearing since Kerry assumed its chairmanship.
And one of Kerry’s written questions to Clinton suggests he’s soured considerably on “Plan Colombia” – the multi-billion dollar US military intervention in that country – which after nine years has not shown results at what was stated as its main goal: impeding the production and trafficking of cocaine. Kerry’s question also revealed his evident concern about repeating the mistakes of “Plan Colombia” now with “Plan Mexico,” also known as the “Merida Initiative”:
An October 2008 report by the GAO concluded that, although Plan Colombia improved security conditions in Colombia, it has not significantly reduced the amount of illicit drugs entering the United States. What lessons can be drawn from Plan Colombia, not only to improve its effectiveness, but to improve other U.S. counternarcotics policies, including the Merida Initiative, in Latin America?
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry asked how to avoid the failures of Plan Colombia in the “Merida Initiative” (Plan Mexico).
That question was a friendly but tough shot across the bow from Kerry, who in the 1990s led the Senate investigation exposing US government involvement in cocaine trafficking through the Iran-Contra case. It put Obama and Clinton on notice that he, their political ally, and now the most powerful voice on foreign policy in Congress, is not going to sit back quietly if Plan Colombia marches on as before, or if Plan Mexico repeats its grievous errors. Here’s Clinton’s answer – fairly boilerplate and only marginally breaking from 16 years of failed Clinton-Bush policy toward Colombia, but the “wiggle room,” emphasis added in bold type, gives Kerry and others an opening to push harder, and a suggestion of the language that could be most effective in pushing the administration to change policy:
The President-Elect has supported the Andean Counter-Drug Program, and believes that it must be updated to meet evolving challenges.
The security situation in Colombia has improved, but very significant quantities of illicit narcotics continue to flow from Colombia to the United States. I look forward to working with Congress and our friends and partners in Colombia to ensure that future investments help staunch the flow of illegal drugs and help consolidate security gains to contribute to a durable peace in Colombia. To do so, we must learn from the successes and failures of the past. We will fully support Colombia’s fight against the FARC, and work with the government to end the reign of terror from right wing paramilitaries.
As we continue our struggle against the scourge of illegal drugs in our society and throughout the Americas, we must ensure that we are doing what is necessary here at home to reduce demand, enforce our laws through effective policing, and disrupt the southbound flow of money and weapons that are an essential element of the transnational illicit networks that operate in Colombia and elsewhere in the Americas. It is important that we work together with countries throughout the region to find the best practices that work across the hemisphere and to tailor approaches to fit each country.
On US-Colombia policy, the incoming administration is thus ceding part of the steering wheel to Congress (in effect saying, FDR style, “go out and push us to change it”). This is very different from the previous stances by Presidents Clinton and Bush that merely railroaded Congress’ concerns about human rights and other matters through pressure built up through media campaigns. String the bold-typed words together, and here’s the “new language” with which to push the next administration: Plan Colombia “must be updated,” that should be done by “Congress,” to correct the “failures of the past,” and when it comes to Plan Mexico, “tailor the approach” to make it different from Plan Colombia.
That’s hardly the embracing of a bold new or better policy, but it cracks the door for Civil Society to push through and open wider.
(And to those doing the good work of that pushing, the wording of Kerry’s question ought to provoke an obvious light to go on above our heads: That Kerry, if given the language and the hard information to do it, might be persuaded to become the spear for a more concrete change in direction when it comes to the failed Plan Colombia, and, in time, perhaps the larger failure of US drug policy that molded it.)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
