Drug War Funding Linked to Colombian Conflict
by LINNEA BUTTERFIELD

President Andres Pastrana of Colombia and President George Bush will meet Feb 27 to discuss the recent effects and continuing implementation of Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia is the design of an American task force - a committee of officials with some input from Colombian heads of state that has drawn up a budget for a $1.3 billion military aid package to fight America's "war on drugs" in Colombia.
"Plan Colombia has a number of objectives from U.S. redeployment and enhanced development to judicial reform, and to civil stability - particularly through bringing what had previously been guerilla elements into the peace process and eventually integrating those elements into the civil society of Colombia and suppressing the large and expanding production industr," Senator Bob Graham said in an online interview with the Washington Post and The National Council July 19, 2000.
Colombia grows 75 percent of the world's cocaine, which is made from the coca plant. The southern state of Putumayo, located on the border with Ecuador and Peru, is notorious in Colombia for producing 50 percent of Colombia's coca. Plan Colombia funds the fumigation to eradicate coca plantations in the southwestern regions of the country.
Transportation to Putumayo exists only by air, as the roads leading in and out of the state are controlled by guerrilla groups. The American helicopter company Sikorsky was present at the meetings with U.S. and Colombian officials, lobbying for a place in Plan Colombia's itinerary. Some observers argued that because the military depends on aerial transport to avoid the guerrilla groups, the helicopters will not just serve as transportation but also as vehicles for counter-insurgency attacks.
Sophomore Sarah Saunders, who spent Jan 5-17 in Colombia with the first visit ever made there by the human rights organization Witness for Peace, said, "The U.S. Ambassador told us that Plan Colombia is focused militaristically because Blackhawk helicopters, supposedly used only for transport, are expensive, and besides, we need to fight the insurgent groups to defend democracy."
Junior Jacqueline Downing was in Colombia from Jan 16-28. She was sent as the youngest member of a fact-finding delegation to research human rights and the effect of Plan Columbia. The delegation was sent from a Colombian-founded organization called the Colombia Support Network. Saunders and Downing will be talking about their trip to Colombia tonight at Peace Community Church on 44 E. Lorain St. at 7p.m.
"All of the campesinos we met with oppose fumigation because it poisons everything," Downing said. "They want to eradicate coca, but they want to do it manually."
She explained that if the money spent on Plan Colombia was used to employ these campesinos to manually erradicate the coca, within one year 2000 jobs could be created while also eliminating the coca crop in Putumayo.
The U.S. focus is to eliminate coca growth in the southern region of Colombia where the nation's largest guerrilla group, The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, (FARC) lives off taxes from coca production and ransoms collected for kidnapped elites. The FARC and paramilitaries in Colombia have been at war for 37 years. The paramilitaries are strong in the northern part of the country, where part of their funding comes from the drug trade.
Colombia's armed forces are allegedly connected to the paramilitaries, the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), headed by Carlos Castaño. The largest left-wing guerrilla group, the FARC is headed by Manuel Marulanda. The paramilitary was founded decades ago by wealthy land owners to protect their cattle plantations, and act like private armies.
The alleged association between the AUC and the Colombian government is a problem Pastrana addressed by firing members of the armed forces with ties to paramilitaries. He said his administration has done much to counteract insurgent tactics of the paramilitary. Still, many citizens feel that the government and AUC continue to work in conjunction.
This past January, 200 people were massacred in Colombia. According to the Human Rights Watch International, 1999 annual report, the AUC was accountable for 78 percent of all human rights violations, guerillas for 20 percent, and the state for two percent, excluding the joint crimes of the Colombian armed forces and the AUC.
The massacres are usually prefaced by warning phone calls, which advise residents to leave their homes or die. Sometimes civilians are not warned of forthcoming massacres.
"The campesinos, small peasant farmers, told us they think their government is waging war against the people of Colombia. Both the guerrilla and paramilitary groups are being financed by coca production, but the cycle of violence began over 40 years ago, and has only been heightened, not begun, by the coca," Saunders said.
In February, the AUC was accused of using such insurgent methods to coerce peasants to block trade routes. Peasants camped out to protest the allocation of land by Pastrana to guerrillas: the ELN (National Liberation Army). Land in the south has been allocateod to FARC as a "demilitarized zone" to facilitate peace talks.
The effects of civil war and the introduction of Plan Colombia have also displaced two million people,--including Afro-Colombians from the Pacific-bound northwestern state of Choco--to cities in disproportionate numbers. While Afro-Colombians make up less than 10 percent of the population, over 30 percent of the desplacados (displaced persons) who must look for work in the cities are Afro-Colombian. Unemployment in Colombia has reached 20 percent.
Downing spent her last day in Columbia at what was once the International Red Cross building. Now 270 desplacados from all over Columbia live there. "They told us their stories," Downing said. "One woman showed us pictures of her brothers who were decapitated by paramilitaries. There are a lot of the stories like that. I spent most of the time just playing with the kids. The conditions there are awful, but the kids were so awesome. It was the best part of the trip."

Plan Colombia focused its fumigation efforts on Putumayo and recent reports from cnn.com say that 50 percent (30,000 hectares) of the coca there has been eradicated with Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia's military aid spends $3 million on social services and human rights, while the remainder of the budget funds pesticides, helicopter transportation and military training.
"We observed the impact of aerial fumigation, which is carried out daily by Colombian personnel and U.S. advisors in four planes escorted by eight attack helicopters. There have been epidemics among children exposed to aerial spraying, whose symptoms include skin lesions, respiratory distress and diarrhea. Water sources and rivers are contaminated. Wildlife, insects and domestic animals are killed.
Fumigation with glysophate has the potential to destroy the Amazon rainforest," reads the Colombia Support Network in its online report. The European Union was involved with Plan Colombia initially but later opposed US methods of intervention and retracted its efforts to help Colombia achieve peace and finance social services. U.S. relief plans help some desplacados on a limited budget and provide three months of shelter and one month of food.

Pastrana will continue to speak to leaders of the AUC, of FARC and the ELN, to bring peace. The FARC have been allowed to stay on demilitarized land in the south of Colombia until Oct 9, 2001.