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June 5, 2006
Tying up loose ends
Blogging is a medium with a short attention span. As one “issue of the moment” succeeds another with dizzying speed, unfinished narratives from past posts begin to pile up. This post seeks to tie up some loose ends from the year so far.
- The Jamundí incident: Cautious language appeared in the May 24th account of what was then seen as a “friendly fire” incident. Two days earlier, an army patrol had killed an entire ten-man elite police counter-drug unit in the countryside south of Cali. “In the worst case,” the post reads, “the Army battalion’s members might have been protecting drug traffickers, and trying to stop the police operation.”
What was the “worst case” has since become the leading hypothesis. Colombia’s attorney-general, Mario Iguarán, last week ordered the arrest of eight soldiers, including the colonel who heads the Farallones High Mountain Battalion, for planning and carrying out a “massacre.” Most observers now believe that the soldiers were acting in concert with powerful narcotraffickers.
- Scary e-mails: The threatening e-mail sent on May 8 to several Colombian human-rights defenders by a group claiming to be made up of former paramilitaries was followed by at least two more during the next two weeks. Some of the subsequent messages were also sent to university departments, forcing closures at Colombia’s National University and University of Antioquia during the last week of May.
- Cocaine price and purity claims: John Walters, director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (or “Drug Czar”), sent a lengthy response (big PDF file) to a strongly-worded April 26 letter from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley had argued that Walters was using unclear data in a misleading way to make it appear as though U.S. cocaine supplies were diminishing as a result of Plan Colombia. Walters’ response acknowledges that the data are quite murky.
- 2007 aid: While we still haven’t seen the full text of the House version of the 2007 foreign aid bill, which will be debated in the full House later this week, the aid numbers in our May 21 overview remain correct. Sections of text that we have seen indicate that the House version preserves existing human-rights conditions on aid to Colombia, as well as conditions on aid to the paramilitary demobilization process. Both of these conditions originated in the Senate versions of past aid bills, so it is good to see the House incorporating them on its own.
- No “‘unified campaign’ to contain Venezuela” this year: The House version of the 2007 foreign aid bill does not include language proposed by the Bush administration that would have broadened the purpose of military aid to Colombia to include all “other threats to Colombia’s national security.” The Senate is even less likely to adopt this controversial language.
- “He Knows Too Much”: Gabriel Puerta Parra, the narcotrafficker with strong paramilitary ties believed to be a “walking encyclopedia” of the drug trade, was quietly extradited to the United States on May 24, three months after his extradition received final approval.
- Manual eradication in La Macarena: A big manual eradication campaign, begun with much official fanfare and a bloody FARC attack on soldiers in December, is still proceeding slowly in the La Macarena park. There have been no new reports of guerrilla attacks on coca-pickers or security forces involved in the operation, which may owe to beefed-up security efforts.
- Bolivia: Two posts (“Where is Washington's counter-offer?,” January 6; “Military aid to Bolivia,” February 10) discussed declining aid to Bolivia in the wake of Evo Morales’ election to the presidency in La Paz. The February 10 post argued that military aid to Bolivia was only declining slightly, since counter-narcotics assistance aid was not being cut deeply.
In fact, we have since discovered that the Bush administration’s 2007 aid request, if approved, would increase Bolivia’s military aid significantly, with an additional $24.5 million in Andean Counterdrug Initiative “Critical Flight Safety” money to upgrade aircraft used in counter-drug missions. (We have only learned recently that Bolivia would see such a large share of this regional aid account.) The table in the February post, then, should show an estimated $62.45 million in military/police aid for 2006 and $65.47 million in 2007 – which would be an increase of 16% between 2005 and 2007, not a decrease of 25 percent.
However – and this is a big however – the House of Representatives’ version of the 2007 foreign aid bill would cut Bolivia’s counter-drug military and police aid by $39.5 million. It would give this money to Colombia in the form of $29 million in military/police aid (“Critical Flight Safety” money again) and $10 million in additional economic aid. If the House gets its way, Bolivia’s estimated military/police aid would fall to $25.97 million, or 52 percent less than what Bolivia’s security forces received in 2005. This is still lower than the 96 percent cut claimed in February’s New York Times story, but is nonetheless deep.
- Uribe’s February trip to Washington: “Washington says ‘no’ to President Uribe” was the title of this blog’s February 17 post on Uribe’s visit. Uribe did get a free-trade agreement signed with the United States by the end of February, though he did not appear to win significant concessions on agriculture, as he had hoped. Uribe’s request for $150 million in new military assistance remains unfulfilled, though Rep. Dan Burton (R-Indiana) and others have fought to make partial gains. They added an extra $26.3 million for Colombia in the House version of the 2006 supplemental appropriation and $29 million in the House version of the 2007 foreign-aid bill. Neither bill has yet become law. Meanwhile, the House version of the foreign aid bill does not increase assistance for the paramilitary demobilization process, despite the Uribe government’s requests.
- Torture of army recruits: A February scandal that brought down the chief of Colombia’s Army remains largely under investigation, though this week the Colombian government’s internal-affairs branch (Procuraduría) filed charges for administrative punishments against fifteen members of the Patriotas infantry battalion. The battalion’s commander was not among the fifteen.
- San Vicente and “Plan Patriota”: An April 21 post translated a March 2 letter to President Uribe from community leaders in San Vicente del Caguán, Caquetá, asking for help amid a guerrilla blockade. While the FARC eventually lifted the blockade and generally allowed voting to proceed in the area on May 28, their dominance of this key corner of the “Plan Patriota” zone is unchanged.
- Cracked crystal ball: Here are some predictions that were way off the mark -
- January 13: “Antonio Navarro, not [Carlos] Gaviria, is expected to be the candidate of the new PDA [Alternative Democratic Pole party]. … Gaviria is viewed as an intellectual, well to the left of Navarro and Garzón on most issues, and is widely admired among Colombia’s intelligentsia. But intellectuals rarely win elections, and Gaviria is considered neither a gifted political organizer nor a dynamic public speaker.” Gaviria, of course, not only beat Navarro in the PDA primary but proved to be a brilliant campaigner who tripled his standing in the polls in just over two months, winning 22 percent and finishing second in the May 28 elections.
- December 31: “Alvaro Uribe will win re-election in May, but by a surprisingly thin margin.” Not quite, unless one considers 40 percentage points to be “surprisingly thin.”
- Also December 31: “Official measures of 2005 coca-growing, usually released in March, will show some decline, unlike 2004. But much new cultivation will go undetected.” The opposite happened. 2005 data found a big increase, thanks to the detection of much coca in areas that had not been measured before.
- No closure yet: We still await more information on these issues, which have seen little progress or new information:
- Allegations that DEA agents in Colombia aided drug traffickers and killed informants.
- The scandal surrounding the Colombian presidency’s security and intelligence agency (the DAS), involving ties to paramilitaries and drug traffickers and hitlists of human-rights activists, remains under investigation. It appeared to have no effect on President Uribe’s popularity among voters.
- It should surprise nobody that none of the forty-seven at-large FARC leaders listed in a March U.S. Justice Department indictment has been caught.
Posted by isacson at June 5, 2006 11:19 PM
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