January
2000January
2000President Clinton announces aid package for Colombia
The Latin America Working Group proposes alternative course of action
Office of the Press Secretary
(Grand Canyon, Arizona)
For Immediate Release
January 11, 2000
STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT
Today I am announcing an urgently needed, two-year funding package to assist Colombia in vital counter-drug efforts aimed at keeping illegal drugs off our shores. It will also help Colombia promote peace and prosperity and deepen its democracy. Building on our current efforts, over this year and next our resulting support would total over $1.6 billion.
President Pastrana's inauguration in August 1998 brought to Colombia a new spirit of hope -- for deeper democracy, for broader prosperity, for an end to that country's long civil conflict. But, increased drug production and trafficking, coupled with a serious economic recession and sustained violence, have put that progress in peril.
President Pastrana has responded with a bold agenda - Plan Colombia. It provides a solid, multifaceted strategy that the United States should support with substantial assistance. We have a compelling national interest in reducing the flow of cocaine and heroin to our shores, and in promoting peace, democracy and economic growth in Colombia and the region. Given the magnitude of the drug trafficking problem and their current economic difficulties, neither the Government of Colombia nor its neighbors can carry the full burden alone.
In Fiscal Year 2000, much of our support will be focused on alone-time infusion of funds to help boost Colombia's interdiction and eradication capabilities, particularly in the south.
The package will also include assistance for economic development, protection of human rights, and judicial reform.
Our bilateral aid to Colombia will be supplemented by multilateral agencies. The World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank are considering hundreds of millions of dollars in loans for Colombia next year. The IMF has already pledged a $2.7 billion Extended Fund facility to help jumpstart the economy. And we will also continue to encourage our allies to assist Colombia.
The obstacles to a better future for Colombia are substantial. We expect it will require years before the full benefits of Plan Colombia are felt. But I believe that with our support and that of other donors, Plan Colombia can soon accelerate Colombia's nascent economic recovery. Over the longer haul, we can expect to see more effective drug eradication and increased interdiction of illicit drug shipments.
Strengthening stability and democracy in Colombia, and fighting the drug trade there, is in our fundamental national interest. So, with President Pastrana and with our Congress, we must and we will intensify this vital work.
January 11, 2000
To: Press Contacts
From: Adam Isacson, Center for
International Policy & Lisa Haugaard, Latin
America Working Group
Re: Colombia Aid Package
Today, the Clinton Administration will announce a two-year, $1.3 billion aid package for Colombia. The package, which will be introduced in Congress as a supplemental appropriation for 2000, is likely to include hundreds of millions of dollars in new assistance for Colombia's armed forces.
Colombia's military and police are already the world's third-largest recipients of U.S. assistance, with arms and training growing from about $65 million in 1996 to nearly $300 million in 1999. (For a detailed picture of current U.S. military and police aid to Colombia, visit www.ciponline.org/facts/co.htm.) Until 1999, U.S. support had primarily gone to the Colombian police; this changed with a number of military-aid initiatives such as the creation of a new counternarcotics battalion within the Colombian Army. Though purportedly for counternarcotics only, the proposed aid will greatly increase the U.S. financial commitment to Colombia's army, and will bring the United States still closer to involvement in Colombia's intractable conflict.
Fighting between the Colombian military, leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries has escalated enormously since the mid-1990s, making the hemisphere's oldest conflict its bloodiest by far. The violence has forced about 1 million people from their homes in the past four years alone, creating a humanitarian crisis of global proportions. It is a conflict in which massacres and displacement are used as military tactics and civilian non-combatants account for at least two-thirds of casualties.
Our organizations believe that the United States should help Colombia with substantial diplomatic and financial support. However, we are concerned about the military portion of the proposed aid package for the following reasons:
1. Its effect on Colombia's peace process.
Colombia's president, Andrés Pastrana, has made the pursuit of a negotiated end to the conflict the centerpiece of his term in office so far. Though fraught with difficulty, talks with the FARC, Colombia's largest guerrilla group, have been proceeding for a year now, and the ELN guerrillas have also expressed an interest in negotiations. The talks with the FARC are still in a fragile phase, and it is clear that both the guerrillas and the Colombian government are divided over whether to keep negotiating. In addition to escalating the conflict, infusing hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid risks weakening the process by radicalizing anti-peace elements on both sides. Militarists in the FARC will see the aid as a reason to keep fighting, while the aid will give comfort to hard-liners in Colombia's ruling circles who already resist any further concessions. Supporters of military aid sometimes argue that "gains on the battlefield will be reflected at the negotiating table." This ignores the nature of Colombia's "battlefield," in which civilian non-combatants are the main targets. If the United States introduces more weapons and trains more fighters to participate in this conflict, it risks intensifying the crossfire in which innocent civilians are already caught.
2. Its effect on human rights.
Despite some positive steps taken by the Pastrana Administration to dismiss high-level officers involved in human rights abuses, concerns remain strong over the Colombian military's human rights record. Most center on the army's continuing connections to paramilitary violence. Paramilitaries were responsible for 78 percent of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in 1999, according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a respected human rights group. Guerrillas were linked with 20 percent - including numerous horrendous cases of kidnapping of civilians - and state forces with 2 percent. However, the percentage does not reflect state forces that routinely assisted paramilitary atrocities. "Cooperation between army units and paramilitaries remained commonplace," asserts Human Rights Watch's December 1999 report, Colombia: Human Rights Developments (available at www.hrw.org). "For instance, government investigators detailed direct collaboration between the Medellin-based Fourth Brigade and paramilitaries commanded by Carlos Castano. Repeatedly, paramilitaries killed those suspected of supporting guerrillas, then delivered the corpses to the army. In a process known as 'legalization,' the army then claimed the dead as guerrillas killed in combat while paramilitaries received their pay in army weapons." The report went on to note that "The debate over percentages also leaves unaddressed continuing criminal activity by military intelligence, which government investigators linked to a string of high-profile killings and death threats, including the August murder of humorist Jaime Garzon." The report also notes the army's failure to control paramilitary violence: "Soldiers pursued guerrillas once an attack was reported. In contrast, although paramilitaries often announced plans to attack publicly and well in advance, authorities not only failed to act to stop killings, but rarely pursued paramilitary units even when they remained in the region after massacring noncombatants."
3. The growing overlap between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency.
Policymakers insist that all new military aid will be dedicated to the war on drugs. The drug war and Colombia's real war overlap significantly, however, increasing the risk that the United States will again be drawn the quagmire of another country's civil conflict. Counter-drug and counter-guerrilla efforts in Colombia resemble each other in four important ways:
Location. Years of drug fumigation without providing economic alternatives have pushed Colombian coca-growers deeper into guerrilla-controlled territory. U.S.-aided units on counternarcotics missions will end up fighting the FARC in the guerrillas' own strongholds, placing Washington at the center of Colombia's war effort. The base of the new U.S.-created counte rnarcotics battalion in Putumayo, near the Ecuadorian border, lies within a 100-mile radius of some of the Colombian Army's most notorious recent defeats at the hands of the FARC.
Training. U.S. military trainers offer their Colombian counterparts training in skills that can be applied easily to counter-guerrilla operations. Small unit tactics, light infantry skills, ambush techniques, marksmanship and other skills are equally applicable for counterinsurgency situations.
Intelligence. In March 1999, the United States loosened its guidelines for sharing intelligence about guerilla activity with Colombian military units. In drug-producing areas, guerrilla-related intelligence may now be shared even if it has no counternarcotics content.
Guerrilla involvement in drugs. Several FARC and ELN fronts earn profits by protecting the drug trade in areas they control. As a result, U.S.-supported units will inevitably become involved in the wider conflict even if pursuing a narrow anti-drug mission. At the same time, U.S. planners are not adequately taking into account paramilitary groups' own admitted involvement in the drug trade.
4. Its continuation of a misguided policy.
If the United States really has $1 billion to spend on the anti-drug effort in Colombia, it should be part of a long-term effort to eliminate the reasons why Colombians choose to cultivate drugs in the first place. These reasons - state neglect of rural areas, a nonexistent rule of law, a lack of economic infrastructure and opportunity - not only explain the flourishing drug trade; they also account in part for the proliferation of armed groups in Colombia's countryside.
President Pastrana has indicated a strong interest in bringing state services and the rule of law to rural Colombia. But U.S. assistance so far has been overwhelmingly military in nature. While military and police aid to Colombia totaled almost $300 million in 1999 - plus $70 million for a crop-fumigation program - assistance for alternative development, judicial reform and human rights added up to less than $7 million. While the upcoming aid package promises more economic assistance in the aggregate, it is likely to carry a similar imbalance in favor of military assistance. The United States' all-stick-and-no-carrot anti-drug strategy in Colombia not only has human rights implications-it is also not effective.
There are no easy answers in Colombia and there is no magic package. In our view, however, a positive Colombia package would center on the following:
Aid to strengthen Colombian government investigations into human rights violations and drug trafficking. While impunity for severe human rights abuses is the norm in Colombia, there are effective Colombian government institutions that could benefit from U.S. resources. U.S. could expand existing judicial programs and fund technical training for judges, investigative techniques for police, and witness protection programs and protection programs for judges and investigators under threat.
Peace initiatives. The United States should fund civil society peace initiatives, which range from local community roundtables, consensus-building community development projects, local mediation programs and church-led programs of dialogue to anti-kidnapping campaigns.
Human rights. The U.S. should fund governmental and nongovernmental human rights programs, especially human rights education to develop greater consensus on human rights norms and the need to respect international humanitarian law (especially respect for civilians during wartime).
Alternative development and other economic assistance. The United States should fund comprehensive alternative development programs for small coca and poppy growers to encourage them to switch to legal crops. Currently, the United States has allocated funding only for a small program for the poppy growing area. The U.S. should make a sizeable multi-year commitment to fund programs for small coca growers in the areas where it is funding fumigation programs. The U.S. should provide other kinds of economic assistance as well, including for rural development in conflict areas.
Relief for the displaced. Colombian government and nongovernmental programs are unable to address the needs of Colombia's enormous and growing displaced population. The United States should contribute substantially to emergency relief and especially longer-term resettlement assistance for Colombia's displaced. The amount dedicated to date, $2 million, is far from adequate.
These programs must be accompanied by strong U.S. diplomatic support for a peace process in Colombia, along with efforts to encourage the Pastrana Administration to strengthen its human rights policy.
Finally, at the same time as the United States is considering a package of assistance to Colombia, it should consider expanded funding for U.S. drug treatment and prevention programs and programs for youth at risk in order to limit demand at home.
Adam Isacson, Center for International Policy, 202-232-3317
Lisa Haugaard, Latin America Working Group, 202-546-7010
For immediate release
January 11, 2000
(Washington, DC) -- Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) opposes the Clinton Administration's $1.28 billion military aid program for Colombia because of the extensive links between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups, the human rights organization announced Tuesday.
"As long as Colombian paramilitary groups allied with the Colombian Army continue to commit massacres and other serious human rights violations, US military aid to Colombia is tantamount to underwriting the Colombian 'dirty war'," said Carlos Salinas, AIUSA Advocacy Director for Latin America and the Caribbean. "We must not return to the failed policies of the 1980s, which were characterized by death squad activity and massive human suffering."
To its credit, the Clinton Administration has supported the Leahy Law to block aid for foreign military units directly involved in committing gross human rights violations. However, in the Colombian context, this important prohibition does not go far enough.
"Paramilitary groups often commit atrocities in heavily militarized areas and go through Colombian military roadblocks, with no interference from the Army," Salinas said. "There is an extensive collusion between the Colombian Army and the paramilitaries."
The Colombian government has dismissed some Army officials for their involvement with paramilitaries yet these links persist nationwide, and the vast majority of Colombian officers accused of involvement have escaped prosecution for their crimes.
"Despite some steps taken by the Colombian government, its Army continues to collude with the paramilitary groups, which are responsible for the vast majority of political killings," said Salinas. Amnesty International believes that the final toll for political killings and "disappearances" in 1999 may reach at least 2,000.
Just weeks ago, on Nov. 28, 1999, human rights defender Edgar Quiroga was abducted along with a companion, Gildardo Fuentes, by paramilitaries in a heavily militarized region in the state of Bolivar. Although the paramilitaries acknowledge abducting the men, they remain "disappeared" - their whereabouts unknown. Several thousand Colombians were driven from their homes as a result of political violence in 1999, bringing to approximately 1.5 million the number of Colombians displaced since 1985.
Write to President Clinton expressing your opposition to the aid package. You can use the following sample letter to send as an individual or you may gather signatures or send it on behalf of your organization.
SAMPLE LETTER
William J. Clinton
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Our concern for the tragic situation facing the people of Colombia causes us to write to you. As citizens of many countries with a variety of political opinions, we are united in urging you to change your Colombian policy from a predominantly military strategy to an approach that supports the needs and hopes of the Colombian people.
While it is impossible to summarize in one letter all the dramatic circumstances affecting Colombia, we want to highlight the points that seem most alarming to us:
Reports from a number of sources, including the U.S. State Department, have documented the continuing collaboration between members and units of the Colombian armed forces and paramilitary groups. This collaboration has included several cases of open alliances. The paramilitaries, according to these reports, are responsible for 75% to 80% of the cases of assassination, kidnapping, torture, and massacre of civilian non-combatants, while the guerrilla groups and the armed forces commit the rest of these abuses. Only a few implicated officials and soldiers have been investigated and punished, while collaboration between the armed forces and the paramilitaries continues to this day. The U.S. contributes to the deterioration of this disturbing human rights situation by continuing to provide military aid, training, and sales, despite these well-documented reports of collaboration.
The armed conflict has forced as many as 1.6 million internal refugees to seek protection for their lives and well-being, according to the United Nations. The number of families who have fled their homes in Colombia exceeds the forced expulsions that the world witnessed with horror in both Kosovo and East Timor. The U.S. is doing little to help care for the refugees that U.S. military aid is helping to create.
Further military aid will undermine the fragile peace process that has been initiated by President Pastrana. Civilians in Colombia have overwhelmingly voted for peace and marched in favor of peace. Massive infusions of military aid will not only increase the number of deaths and massacres carried out by all the armed groups, but will also strengthen hard-liners in Colombia who oppose the peace process. Recent murders of academics, human rights defenders, trade unionists and even entertainers who worked to support the peace process illustrate the difficulty of working for peace in Colombia.
The U.S. Drug War strategy has been an expensive failure and more of this same strategy will not combat drugs. This strategy has not reduced coca cultivation in Colombia, the flow of cocaine or heroin to the U.S from Colombia, or the profits of the drug traffickers. Instead it has caused untold environmental and human destruction. It has also strengthened the guerrillas as more landless peasants join their ranks. Military aid will not address the reasons why Colombians choose to cultivate drugs in the first place. The problems that have led to increased drug cultivation include state neglect of rural areas, a nonexistent rule of law, and the lack of economic infrastructure and opportunity. These problems can only be resolved through support for efforts to strengthen the peace process and to enhance the lives of the poor.
We respectfully make the following requests of your administration:
Given the Colombian armed forces' continuing collaboration with the paramilitaries, such as in the massacre at Barrancabermeja in 1998, and their continuing impunity from prosecution for that collaboration, we ask that you send no further U.S. aid to the Colombian armed forces. You eloquently told the people of Guatemala in May of 1999:
"For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong. The United States must not repeat that mistake."
Colombia already receives the greatest amount of U.S. military aid in the Americas and the third most in the world. Please do not make the problem worse by giving any more money to the partners of the paramilitaries.
We ask that you recognize the biased nature of the war on drugs, which is mainly being fought against landless peasants and unarmed civilians, leaving many real drug traffickers, including the paramilitaries, untouched. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, some of the paramilitary leaders such as Carlos Castaño are major drug traffickers. Consequently, we object to using the war against drugs as even a partial pretext for increased military aid.
We ask that the U.S. play a key role in supporting initiatives for international mediation in Colombia, with possible mediators including the European Parliament, the Secretary General of the UN, the UN High Commission for Refugees, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. This peace effort must include Colombia's civil society. On October 24th, 1999 the world witnessed marches for peace that mobilized more than nine million Colombians of all ages and social positions. Colombian civil society has courageously demanded and actively worked for peace and deserves to be heard. The U.S. should honor these efforts by providing Colombia with humanitarian and economic support, not the tools of war.
Respectfully,
(Signers follow)
Name
Affiliation (if applicable)
City
Country
c.c.
Senate Majority Leader
Senate Minority Leader
House Speaker
House Minority Whip
Alison Giffen
Director
U.S./Colombia Coordinating Office
Phone: 202-232-8090
Fax: 202-232-8092
Suite 200 1630 Connecticut Ave. NW
Washington D.C. 20009
agiffen@igc.org
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