Plan Colombia and Beyond

Novak's ideas about the drug war are extremely far from my own tastes, but as far as I know he is definitely very well connected, so his opinions probably represent a bit of what many in the circles he frequents believe.

Which is that they are content to still foolishly waste resources in a strategy that will not help those young policemen, as you've mentioned.

On the other hand...according to another recent column of Novak's, it seems that the White House didn't like that Uribe wasn't willing to publicly oppose Chavez, despite Bush's suggestions during their recent meeting.

Which is a good thing, in my view.

If fumigation in Colombia doesn't decrease the supply of cocaine here in the U.S., why indeed are Novak and the Republicans in favor of this expensive and futile activity?

I have read that the fumigation mostly takes place in areas where the FARC guerrillas have a strong presence. I'm wondering whether the U.S.-supplied planes and helicopters are perhaps being used by the Colombian army for intelligence and even military operations against the FARC.

If that's the case, one could understand why anti-communist Republicans might support Plan Colombia in spite of its failure as a drug control program.

Finally, let me thank the originator of this blog, Mr. Isacson, for providing a forum for intelligent discussion of Colombia.

I recently tried participating in the newsgroup
soc.culture.colombia and was dismayed at the irrelevant, uninformed, and just plain crazy posts there.

The thing is, richtiger, that fumigation and current drug policy in general are not that useful against the FARC either, to say the least. Even from an anti-communist perspective, it makes little sense, in practice, to continue that policy.

For better or for worse, the apparent fact is that many of the Republicans you speak of do continue to be morally convinced (or think they need to be, in order to get elected) of the rightfulness of the war on drugs per se.

And as for the Colombian military using such equipment against the FARC goes, I should remind you that the U.S. has already formally allowed that to happen. Still, the fact that those resources are also used for drug war activities makes them take on too many missions at the same time, which obviously reduces efficiency.

I love (NOT) it when the prohibitionists and media concentrate on area under cultivation and neglect the more direct measure of drug war success: production.

As an example, consider the recently publicized UN report that pegs illicit opium cultivation in 2005 as down 22% over 2004. Most media reports wait a few paragraphs to mention that production is down only 5% due to increased yields.



In the case of cocaine, stats are



Year    Coca (hectares)    Cocaine (tons)

1990    211,700    774

1993    195,700    769

1996    209,700    950

1999    220,600    925

2002    170,300    800

2005    159,600    910



Due to changing yields, potential manufacture is the better (and more direct) metric.

Jcq writes: "...the Republicans you speak of do continue to be morally convinced...of the rightfulness of the war on drugs per se." I suppose you're right, jcq. It's interesting, though, that these Republicans support the least effective method of drug "war." Education and rehabilitation here in the U.S. is the most effective tactic. Even intercepting drugs at the U.S. border reduces the flow better than crop fumigation in Colombia.

Maybe the "Republican/Novak" attitude comes from a kind of demonization of the problem. It's the foreign devils in Colombia who are subverting basically innocent Americans. Let's concentrate on the devils "there" and project the problem onto Colombia instead of owning the problem ourselves, instead of admitting that without U.S. buyers Colombians wouldn't be producing the cocaine.

Finally, I don't doubt your statement that the U.S. has given Colombia formal permission to use "fumigation" planes and helicopters against the FARC, but I'd be glad to get a reference from you: either a reputable internet site or (gasp) a published document, article, or book.

I'm a little confused. First off, the U.N. and the U.S. give different figures for illicit coca cultivation. The U.N.says there were 80,000 hectares
in 2004 and 86,000 in 2005. The U.S. says there were 114,100 (I like that "100") in 2004 and 144,000 in 2005. Part of the increase in the 2005 U.S. government figures apparently come from increasing the area surveyed. Well, so, how much DID coca cultivation increase?

I guess the important thing is that it DID increase by some amount; but according to Colombian Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt, it would have increased a whole lot more if it hadn't been for fumigation. So--really--fumigation was a success, according to Pretelt.

Pretelt claims that if the fumigation is doubled, reductions in hectares cultivated will be seen.

Now I still think that fumigation is ineffective
compared to health measures and interdiction of the cocaine supply (preferably en route to the U.S. even before reaching our borders). However,
I do think Pretelt makes Novak's attitude a little more plausible. Not right, but more plausible.

but according to Colombian Interior Minister Sabas Pretelt, it would have increased a whole lot more if it hadn't been for fumigation



I suppose there's no way to falsify this claim, is there?

>br />
Maybe there is. By reviewing the production trends of cocaine in Colombia. As before, in 3 year increments starting from 1990, in tons: 92, 119, 300, 680, 580, 640. Assuming that before Plan Colombia (2000), production amount was mostly dictated by demand, then 680 tons (in 99) represents satisfied demand. The 640 tons in 2005 represents a 6% drop in production as per UN figures. Considering all 3 producing countries, the peak was 950 tons in 1996. 910 tons in 2005 represents a 4.2% drop. So, given the increasing yield in Colombia (in 1996, 67,300 hectares = 300 tons; in 2005, 86,000 hectares = 640 tons), the esteemed Colombian minister seems to have been smoking his country's famous product a bit too much.

I hope I'm not posting too much; but thanks, daksya, for your analysis of Pretelt's claim. I never was very good at statistics and math-type logic; but--hey!--sounds good to me.

Speaking of logic, I'm wondering how logical Robert Novak really is. Consider this quote from his June 29th (2006) column in the Chicago Sun-Times.

""...(Colombia) owes Washington for surviving the most serious Marxist-Leninist armed threat on the continent... . 'Plan Colombia saved Colombia,' one anti-terrorist military specialist told me, and I could find nobody here who disagreed. Colombia is wholly dependent on U.S. aid and, indeed, needs more aircraft and warships for eradication and interdiction of drugs."

In the column Novak simply assumes that the improvement in Colombian security under Uribe is the direct consequence of Plan Colombia. Novak
doesn't take into acount Uribe's road protection policy or his "Plan Patriot" military offensive against the FARC. The improvement is automatically the result of U.S. policy, not Uribe's policy.

If Novak's mind set is typical of conservative Republicans and even of the Bush administration, U.S. voters need to elect "more logical" leaders.

Well, I'll try to be quiet for a while now.

richtiger, here's a source on that:

"El mes pasado el gobierno de Estados Unidos también aprobó el uso de los recursos del Plan Colombia contra el terrorismo, especialmente los helicópteros y la inteligencia. Esta no es una solución mágica contra el terrorismo, pero nos va a permitir mayor flexibilidad en nuestra ayuda a los militares y la Policía."

-Former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia, Anne W. Patterson, on September 2nd, 2002.

http://bogota.usembassy.gov/wwwsa031.shtml

Note that, in practice, we are talking about the use of Plan Colombia helicopters and intelligence assets, not fumigation planes per se. They are not really suited for counterinsurgency purposes other than surveillance and, it should be said, there are already enough standard planes available for that (helicopters, on the other hand, tend to be not as easy to acquire and maintain as any old plane).

Btw, even from that point of view, Novak exaggerates when he says that "Plan Colombia saved Colombia" (though, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you may have got "Uribe's policy" and "U.S. policy" backwards there)...then again, the point is that even under Pastrana the Colombian government began to improve things, counterinsurgency-wise, even before Plan Colombia resources flowed in. Even some U.S. military analysts have admitted that, but then again the Bush administration is rather picky about who it listens to, even among its own brass...

daksya:

While I'm on your side as far as criticizing U.S. and Colombian drug policy goes, I'm afraid that we might differ a bit on that point, because your initial assumption can be debated (was production dictated merely by the forces of demand before, considering that plenty of fumigation efforts were already in place pre-2000? They didn't begin with Plan Colombia, and in fact the existance of an anti-fumigation "cocalero" movement circa 1996 illustrates that). Not saying that you're wrong, just that there's a lot of cloth yet to be cut, so to speak.

Thanks, jcq, for the reference from the U.S. embassy in Bogotá. Having just migrated here from the unmoderated soc.culture.colombia newsgroup, I'm still a little suspicious of statements presented as facts--especially since I've only resumed "Colombia" reading fairly recently and am still not "up to snuff" on some recent Colombian history.

As I read Ambassador Patterson's welcoming remarks, I realized that various dignitaries from the Colombo Americano centers were in her audience. I taught English for a year at the Centro Colombo Americano in Medellín. Small world, I guess.

As regards my confusing statement, I probably should have written something like "(According to Novak), the improvement is automatically the result of U.S. policy, not Uribe's policy.

jcq: was production dictated merely by the forces of demand before, considering that plenty of fumigation efforts were already in place pre-2000?



We need to determine what's the demand for cocaine, and how much of that demand is unfulfilled due to short supply. Is it really supply that's holding back new consumers? Key question being, in the absence of coca eradication efforts, would South America be producing 1500 tons of cocaine in 2005?

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