Last year’s $1.3 billion “Plan Colombia” supplemental gave $860 million to Colombia for 2000 and 2001. Of that amount, 75 percent went to Colombia’s military and police, with the remainder going to social and economic programs. This was hardly a “balanced package.”

This year’s plan looks more benign. The 2002 Foreign Operations request includes six other countries in the Andean region, and is now being called the “Andean Regional Initiative” (ARI) instead of Plan Colombia. The State Department is selling its $882 million ARI as a 50-50 balance between military and economic programs. The Colombia portion is 63 percent military.

(Millions of dollars)

Bolivia	Brazil	Colombia	Ecuador	Panama	Peru	Venezuela	Total
4.88	0.92	79.82 (actual request, not an estimate)	9.13	0.65	8.95	2.83	107.18

(Millions of dollars)

Bolivia	Brazil	Colombia	Ecuador	Panama	Peru	Venezuela	Total
0	0	29	2	0.23	2	0	33.23

Adding these estimates for non-foreign operations aid channels means that:

The 2002 “Andean Regional Initiative” actually would equal $1.041 billion, 57 percent of it military and police aid. The portion for Colombia rises to $526 million, 71 percent of it military and police aid. Several Andean countries will see large increases in military aid over 2000-2001 levels: Bolivia 20%; Brazil 345%; Ecuador 63%; Panama 220%; Peru 82% and Venezuela 144%

Colombia, 2002

As recently as the first half of the 1990s, not much coca was actually grown in Colombia. Coca itself was grown in Bolivia and Peru.

This began to change in the mid-1990s, after the breakup of large drug cartels, interference with the “air bridge” between Peruvian and Bolivian coca sites and Colombian processing sites, and some successful alternative development programs. Though the net amount of coca cultivation in South America changed little, Colombia became the center of coca-growing.

Colombian coca was first centered around Guaviare department in south-central Colombia. The United States set up a large-scale fumigation program there in 1995 – but never offered affected peasants a cent of alternative- development aid.

The U.S. fumigations drastically reduced coca cultivations in Guaviare by the late 1990s. But the total amount of coca in Colombia more than doubled – and became centered in Putumayo department to the southwest, out of the range of the spray planes and deeper into guerrilla territory.

This is already happening. In March, immediately after the first fumigations in Putumayo, the New York Times reported of new coca cultivation in a department immediately to the west, Nariño, in an area the locals are calling “Little Putumayo.” According to the Times, the spraying in Putumayo “displaced coca growers and their crops, sending them to the jungles here in Nariño Province. It is a familiar pattern.”

The strategy at the heart of the U.S. military package is centered on Colombia’s department of Putumayo, along the border with Ecuador. Putumayo has been dominated by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas for over twenty years, and the FARC shoots back at drug-crop fumigation planes. The strategy has set up three battalions in Colombia’s army, armed with dozens of helicopters.

The battalions’ mission, according to the U.S. Southern Command, is “setting the security conditions that are mandatory for safe and productive execution of eradication and other counterdrug operations” in Putumayo.

Putumayo

But can “security conditions” be achieved by this plan? The strategy calls on 2,250 troops with a few months’ training to force Colombia’s FARC guerrillas out of one of its most fiercely defended strongholds. Several battles in the past few years have demonstrated the guerrillas’ ability to launch large-scale military attacks in Putumayo. The Southern Command’s Gen. Charles Wilhelm told a House committee in 2000, “We've received numerous reports that the insurgents have surface-to-air missiles. We've heard everything from U.S. Redeye missiles on up to SAM-16s from Eastern Europe.”

What happens if our plans in Putumayo fail? What will the next step be? It is not too far-fetched to imagine that the debate over a 2003 aid package might take place after several pitched battles that may involve losses in Putumayo. There is some likelihood that we may be debating another escalation in our military involvement a year from now. While Vietnam analogies are not quite adequate, we must guard against “mission creep” and an uncomfortable level of military involvement in a country fighting one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts.

The contractors operate with very little transparency or oversight, raising several important questions:

We can’t even answer these questions because of the lack of transparency and accountability in which the contractors operate. Because these risks are so plausible and real, it is absolutely crucial that existing limits on contractors be maintained.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and other human rights groups have documented very close ties between the Colombian military and paramilitary groups in Colombia’s Putumayo department, the zone where most U.S. military aid is being spent. Nothing is being done to break those ties. Will U.S. assistance inadvertently help the paramilitaries?

Paramilitaries have been on a rampage in Putumayo. Since they first appeared in the zone, the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia have killed hundreds and displaced thousands. Their collaboration with military units in the area is disturbingly common. In October 2000, a bold police officer denounced military-paramilitary cooperation in Puerto Asís to local civilian authorities. According to the Bogotá daily El Tiempo, the policeman reported that the paramilitaries blatantly identify themselves with insignia and move easily in clearly marked vehicles. The policeman said he did not understand "the abilities and skills that they use to make a mockery of the Army's roadblocks, and to station themselves right in front of them." He added that he has heard numerous charges that the local army command meets regularly with paramilitary leaders.

In August 2000, a BBC reporter showed how easily and openly the paramilitaries operate in Putumayo:

I was looking to contact the paramilitaries who control the town [of Puerto Asis, Putumayo] and some of the neighbouring hamlets. … Finding them was not as hard as I had thought. Despite the fact that the Colombian state denies there are any links between them and the right-wing death squads, their headquarters in Puerto Asis is five minutes drive past the local army base, in a luxurious villa. To get there I just hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the paramilitary headquarters, as if I knew where it was and something I did every day of the week. He did not even blink, simply put the car in gear and sped down the potholed streets, passing the army checkpoint and into the countryside outside the town.

The United States is pumping arms, helicopters, and well-trained military units into this zone of close military-paramilitary cooperation. It is not unreasonable to expect increased human rights violations to result. There is a danger that U.S.-provided intelligence, equipment and perhaps even weapons could find its way to the paramilitaries. This appears to have happened already with some U.S. aid in Putumayo, as the Boston Globe reported in March.

On a recent day, one gunman, dressed in plain clothes and standing guard in a village, picked through a pack of US Army C-rations, hunting for chewing gum and pound cake. He shrugged off questions about where he got the supplies, issued to the three Colombian Army antidrug units that have been trained by US Special Forces advisers.

Except for Spain, not one of our European allies has endorsed Plan Colombia. Most see it as a big mistake, and many have expressed disappointment that they had no chance to take part in designing it.

The European Parliament declared in February that “Plan Colombia contains aspects that run counter to the cooperation strategies and projects to which the EU has already committed itself and jeopardize its cooperation programs.”

The U.S. and Colombian governments had hoped that non-U.S. donor countries would contribute $2 billion to Plan Colombia. After several donors’ conferences, however, Europe has pledged only $350 million in assistance, which they insist is support for Colombia’s peace process and not for Plan Colombia. (They also point out that the $350 million contribution is about equal to the United States’ pledges of social and economic aid in 2000-2002.)

“We are preparing a European Program of aid to the Peace Process in Colombia, which is totally different from Plan Colombia.” – Renaud Vignal, European Union, October 2000