Plan Colombia and Beyond

« 2005: The year of non-military aid? | Main | No progress on impunity »

January 04, 2005

Rebutting the rebuttals

Administration officials have recently begun responding to U.S. papers' editorials criticizing U.S. policy in Colombia. While this posting hardly qualifies as "rapid response" - the editorials in question were published back in October - here are our rebuttals to the officials' letters.

January 3, 2005

Editorial Board
The Chicago Tribune
435 North Michigan Ave.
Chicago IL 60611

Dear Sir or Madam:

I write to thank you for your editorial of October 12, 2004 (“Sliding into Colombia’s morass,” reposted here) regarding increasing U.S. military involvement in Colombia. “American policy in Colombia is not working,” your editorial stated. “This nation needs to rethink its involvement in Colombia's civil war, rather than pouring more money and personnel into a failing enterprise.” The Center for International Policy completely supports this assertion, and shares your concerns about where the United States is headed in Colombia.

I also wish to respond to some of the assertions in the letters to the editor you received from Rafael Lemaitre, the deputy press secretary of the White House’s drug czar’s office (published October 22), and from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman (published October 27).

“Your analysis is inaccurate on several counts,” Mr. Grossman’s letter reads. Yet the officials’ letters themselves include several misstatements, or overstatements, which deserve a response.

• Mr. Grossman’s assertion that “violence in Colombia is at the lowest level in decades” is an oversimplication. Common crime may be dropping, but conflict-related violence persists. Interpreting data gathered by several prominent Colombian human-rights organizations, the Colombian Commission of Jurists reports that the drop has not been at all steep. In 2003, 6,335 people – over 17 per day – were killed by “sociopolitical violence.” Corresponding numbers for past years were 6,639 in 2000, 6,641 in 2001, and 7,803 in 2002. If anything, violence had dropped to 2000 levels, not “the lowest in decades.” The Colombian human-rights group CODHES meanwhile notes that 130,346 people were violently displaced from their homes during the first half of 2004, a 33.5 percent increase over the last six months of 2003.
  
  
• Mr. Grossman observes that “drug crop eradication, interdiction and drug-related arrests are at record high levels,” while Mr. Lemaitre’s letter argues that “the assertion that coca cultivation in Colombia has simply ‘just moved from one place to another’ is false.” Mr. Grossman’s statement is true, as far as it goes; indeed, aerial herbicide fumigation in drug crop-growing areas has reached record levels, as have arrests and amounts of drugs confiscated. Mr. Lemaitre’s argument is off base: even though satellites are showing some reduction in coca acreage in Colombia, the product still moves from one place to another with astonishing frequency.
  
  Neither letter mentions the uncomfortable fact that, as U.S. government statistics show (PDF format), years of aid, eradication and interdiction have so far failed to affect the price, purity and availability of drugs in the United States. In dollar terms, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime reports (PDF format), the price of coca paste in Colombia’s illegal market has not risen either. This probably indicates that while satellite measurements are showing reduced coca acreage, growers are adapting. Coca plots are getting smaller and harder to detect, with plants sown closer together and even in shade. The crop is appearing in new, often very remote zones.
  
  Meanwhile, leaders in some drug-producing areas claim that official estimates of reduced coca acreage are far too optimistic. Antonio Navarro, a prominent senator from southwestern Colombia, wrote of a recent meeting between police officials and local-government leaders in his home province of Nariño. “While the police spoke of 13,000 hectares [33,500 acres] of coca [in Nariño], the governor’s office estimated that the real amount is three times greater. When results were considered by county, it was even more surprising. While official statistics found zero hectares in various counties, every one of us present who is familiar with the region knew that there are thousands of hectares planted there.”
  
  
• “The Colombian economy grew by 3.7% in 2003, and is expected to grow by 3.8% in 2004,” Mr. Grossman contends. Even if the 3.8 percent target is reached – which may be unlikely, given a disappointing annualized third-quarter GDP growth rate of 2.43 percent – Colombia still lags far behind the Latin American average for 2004, which according to the Inter-American Development Bank has reached 5.5 percent. Is Colombia’s growth rate due to U.S. assistance, then, or is its economy being modestly buoyed by a rising regional tide?
  
  
• Finally, Mr. Grossman writes, “you say that increasing the cap on U.S. personnel constitutes ‘mission creep.’ In fact the mission for these personnel is unchanged.” True, the nature of the U.S. military-aid mission did not expand on the day the troop cap was increased. But as your editorial points out, the U.S. mission has been steadily expanding since the 1990s. The latest innovation in 2004 was “Plan Patriota,” a large-scale military offensive in southern Colombia, in which over 15,000 Colombian personnel have been trying to conquer remote guerrilla-held jungle zones. The offensive depends in part on the logistical support, intelligence and advice provided by U.S. military and contractor personnel – a new level of involvement in counter-insurgency – and is a key reason why the Bush administration asked Congress to double the limit on U.S. troops in Colombia.

As both letters correctly note, U.S. military personnel are not involved in combat in Colombia. That threshold has not been crossed yet. I hope that it will not be. In order to avoid that outcome, we must keep on sounding the alarms about “mission creep” whenever we perceive it. For that reason, your editorial made a timely contribution to the continuing debate over where our country is headed in Colombia.

Sincerely,

Adam Isacson                                                                      
Director, Colombia Program                                                                       
Center for International Policy

January 3, 2005

Editorial Board
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
34 Blvd. of the Allies
Pittsburgh, PA  15222

Dear Sir or Madam:

I write to thank you for your editorial of October 28, 2004 (“Blood for oil”) regarding U.S. military aid and U.S. oil firms’ exploration in Colombia. I also wish to respond to some of the assertions in the letter to the editor, published on November 3, you received from Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega.

“Your Oct. 28 editorial about our troop presence in Colombia contains a number of misstatements,” Mr. Noriega’s letter begins. I wish to reassure you that, although oil is only one of many interests the United States is pursuing in Colombia, your arguments are sound.

At the beginning of 2003 the Bush administration, having won a $99 million appropriation from Congress, began sending Special Forces personnel to the conflictive department of Arauca in northeastern Colombia. They have since trained and equipped thousands of members of the Colombian military charged with defending the Caño Limón oil pipeline from guerrilla bombings. It was the first major non-drug military aid program implemented after a 2002 expansion in the mission of U.S. aid to encompass “counter-terrorism.”

Forty-four percent of the oil in that pipeline is the property of a U.S. company, Occidental Petroleum (or “Oxy”). “While Oxy did not push specifically for a U.S.-funded training program,” the Los Angeles Times reported on December 28, “it waged a far more aggressive campaign to persuade the U.S. and Colombia to improve security for its operations than it has publicly acknowledged.” Since the initial $99 million outlay, smaller amounts of U.S. funds have continued to flow to the pipeline-protection program.

While Mr. Noriega’s letter accuses the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of misstatements, his letter includes some of its own, several which deserve a response:

• “Thanks to the Uribe administration, Colombia's government now has retaken significant portions of its national territory that criminal groups had once controlled and used to cultivate and transport illegal narcotics.”
  
  To say that territory has been “retaken” is quite misleading. Yes, military and police presence has been increased in town centers and along main roads in many conflictive parts of Colombia. In general, though, security conditions and a lack of funds have kept the civilian part of Colombia’s government from making any appearance in “re-conquered” zones, and there has been little change in violence levels or illegal armed groups’ activity in these zones’ rural areas.
  
  This is absolutely the case in two areas that have attracted the bulk of U.S. military assistance. In the coca-growing province of Putumayo in the south, and oil-producing Arauca in the northeast, guerrillas and paramilitaries continue to operate freely, attacks on infrastructure remain frequent, and murder is commonplace. Colombia’s non-governmental Security and Democracy Foundation noted (PDF format) that Arauca had the country’s highest murder rate in 2004, and that Putumayo’s murder rate increased by 19 percent last year. (On New Year’s Eve, meanwhile, FARC guerrillas faced no obstacles as they massacred sixteen civilians just south of the pipeline in Tame, Arauca.)
  
  While Mr. Noriega credits the U.S. aid program with reducing the frequency of pipeline attacks, the cause-and-effect relationship is less clear. The State Department’s annual “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report notes that pipeline bombings dropped precipitiously in Colombia from 2001 (178) to 2002 (41). The Special Forces training program did not even begin until January 2003.
  
  
• “While more work needs to be done, the Colombian leader has made great progress in reforming his country's military and political institutions, as well as improving the security situation for Colombian citizens, while creating the conditions that have spurred economic growth.”
  
  Military reforms have included improvements to combat effectiveness, mobility, logistics, intelligence and similar measures. Almost no progress has been made, however, on a crucial measure of military and civilian institutions’ effectiveness: impunity. In a country where the judicial system fails to punish over 95 percent of crimes, it is exceedingly rare to see powerful individuals found guilty of human rights abuses or corruption. For instance, though the State Department’s regular certifications of Colombia’s human-rights performance acknowledge that “more needs to be done to protect human rights and to sever military-paramilitary ties,” the latest report cites only three examples of judicial or disciplinary action for human rights abuses against military officers above the rank of captain.
  
  The point about economic growth is also disputable. Colombia’s 2004 economic growth was in fact anemic by the standards of Latin America, which saw GDP growth of about 5.5 percent last year, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. Colombia likely saw its hope of reaching 4 percent in 2004 dashed by third-quarter results showing growth at an annual rate of just 2.43 percent.
  
  
• “If oil fields and the pipelines are more secure, that helps Colombia's economy to provide more opportunities for its citizens and resources to help fight the illicit narcotics trade.”
  
  This argument could be applied to nearly all U.S. investments in Colombia, which of course employ at least some Colombians and generate at least some income for the country (and in the case of the Caño Limón oil pipeline, hundreds of millions for Oxy). In the name of “providing more opportunities and resources,” should U.S. military aid, trainers and taxpayer dollars be deployed to defend all enterprises – from mines to factories – that count U.S. citizens or corporations among their owners?

Your editorial’s main point is on the mark. Though Mr. Noriega’s letter makes it appear that the purpose of U.S. military assistance has been to promote the well-being of Colombians, most of our military presence, and the vast majority of our over $3 billion in military and police aid since 2000, has not gone to protect Colombians. It has paid to protect drug-crop spray planes and oil infrastructure that benefits U.S. companies. Though there are exceptions, when the Colombian government has sought to protect its citizens from harm, it has had to do so with its own funds.

Thanks again for your valuable contribution to the debate over U.S. policy toward Colombia.

Sincerely,

Adam Isacson                                                                      


Director, Colombia Program                                                                       


Center for International Policy

Posted by isacson at January 4, 2005 02:28 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://ciponline.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/34

Comments

Posted by: jcg at January 6, 2005 10:32 PM

Post a comment