posted on the web on May 19 2003

Country Data

Full Name: Republic of Colombia Capital: Bogota Population: 41,008,227 (2002 est.) Location: South America Total area: 1,138,910 sq km Language: Spanish Ethnic groups: mestizo 58%, white 20%, mulatto 14%, black 4%, mixed black-Amerindian 3%, Amerindian 1% Religions: Roman Catholic 90% Currency: Colombian peso IGO memberships: EU, UN, WHO, WTO Internet site: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Source: CIA World Factbook

Two issues have defined US-Colombian relations for more than a generation: 1) the US "war on drugs" and 2) Colombia's domestic insurgency. Traditionally, American foreign policy has treated these two problems as distinct and of unequal importance to US interests. Since the mid-1980s, curbing the flow of illegal drugs has been the engine driving US policy towards Colombia. Meanwhile, US policymakers have viewed the violent insurrections that have gripped the country for nearly four decades as essentially a domestic challenge best left to the Colombian government to handle. In fact until this year, the US Congress had conscientiously attempted to keep all military and intelligence aid pouring into Colombia strictly focused on counternarcotics efforts by stipulating that US money and materiel could only be used to battle drug interests.

However, this established division between drug dealers and rebels is blurring rapidly as events inside and outside Colombia threaten to make any distinction between the two irrelevant. Both the leftist insurgents and the far-right paramilitary groups that have risen to counter them rely increasingly on proceeds from the drug trade to feed and equip themselves. Recent estimates have placed the revenues that such groups receive from protecting drug crops, taxing drug cartels, and running their own growing and trafficking networks somewhere between $100 million and $900 million a year.1 In addition, the terror tactics that these groups engage in, including bombing, kidnapping, and indiscriminately killing civilians, hold a new significance to the US government as it sets off on its global "war on terrorism." All three of the major guerrilla groups in Colombia are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, and for the first time, the 2003 US aid package to Colombia includes funding to train special Colombian army units to counter rebel terrorist attacks, as opposed to conducting anti-drug operations.2

With past policies falling to new realities, an epochal moment looms in US-Colombian relations. The US must reevaluate not only its commitment and approach to fighting drugs in Colombia, but also its stance toward Colombia's domestic, and terroristic, strife.

An Unsteady Course: US Colombian Policy, Past and Present

Since the early 1980s, US policy towards Colombia has been focused almost entirely on diminishing the flow of illegal drugs from dealers in Colombia to markets inside the US. Yet, the United States' single-issue focus on drugs in Colombia has not led to a consistent approach to US involvement in the country. Instead, US counternarcotics efforts have long been influenced more by political interests in Washington than the realities of the international drug trade in Colombia and elsewhere.

Large-scale drug trafficking from Colombia to the US began in earnest during the 1970s. The first organized drug cartels were founded in Colombia during this period and, with them, came the first US law enforcement presence in the country. In 1972, the US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the predecessor to today's Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), opened an office in Bogotá, Colombia.3 The main duty of the first US drug enforcement agents in Colombia was to train the Colombian police in narcotics interdiction techniques in order to improve the government's ability to stop illegal drugs from leaving Colombia for shipment to the US.4 However, the Colombian establishment tended to view the growing drug problem in the US as largely a US domestic issue caused by the demand for drugs of American addicts.5 This attitude contributed to the Colombian government's predisposition to focus on its own domestic troubles and caused a climate of apathy and inaction in Colombia toward the country's burgeoning narcotics industry.6

Nonetheless, the US continued what counternarcotics efforts it could in Colombia until a more hard-line administration came to power in 1978. President Julio César Turbay was the first Colombian President to aggressively campaign against the drug interests in his country.7 Turbay's anti-drug measures included an extradition treaty with the US that made Colombia drug traffickers liable to prosecution in American courts.8 These efforts precipitated a violent reaction from the increasingly powerful drug lords in Colombia, which forced Turbay to seek heightened support from the US.9 In 1981, the US Congress took the first step toward American military involvement in the international drug war by amending the Posse Comitatus Act of 1897 so that the military could provide equipment, intelligence, and training to the counternarcotics personnel of various law enforcement agencies.10

The next escalation in the US government's commitment to fight international drug cartels came in April 1986 with the Reagan administration's issuance of National Security Directive 221.11 The Directive identified drug trafficking as a "lethal" threat to the United States and authorized the use of US military personnel in drug interdiction operations in foreign countries.12

With "crack" cocaine use rampant in American inner-cities and Colombian drug barons growing richer and more powerful by the day, the Bush administration and the US Congress hammered out two measures in 1989 that further focused US anti-drug policy on seizing illicit drugs before they reached the US. First, Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act, making the Defense Department "'the single lead agency' for the detection and monitoring of illegal drug shipments into the United States."13 Second, the Bush administration lent unprecedented financial support to the international drug war with its five-year, $2.2 billion Andean Initiative.14 This program aimed to debilitate the drug organizations in Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru by funding military and law enforcement operations to arrest their members, eradicate coca crops in all three countries, and wipe out the facilities and chemicals that the drug dealers used to process coca leaves into cocaine.15

The staunch US commitment to fighting international drug trafficking appeared to payoff richly in Colombia during the mid-1990s. Two major cartels controlled the Colombian drug trade at that time: the Medellín and Cali cartels. In 1993, American-trained Colombian police units killed the nefarious leader of the Medellín cartel, Pablo Escobar, when he tried to violently resist arrest.16 Then in 1995, Colombian law enforcement officers captured a major player in the Cali cartel, Gilberto Rodríguez Orejuela.17 These decapitation operations, coupled with extensive assaults on the lower ranks and infrastructure of the cartels, soon put both organizations out of business.

However, neither organization's dissolution created any long-term decrease in the flow of illicit drugs from Colombia to the US and, thus, represented a false summit in the US battle against drugs in Colombia.18 Following the demise of the cartels, the Colombian narcotics industry decentralized into the hands of scores of smaller organizations, whose limited size and increased numbers have proved an even greater challenge to law enforcement agencies than the big cartels were. Additionally, the power vacuum left by the collapse of the Medellín and Cali cartels allowed both the FARC and the AUC to expand their involvement in the drug trade, and as we have seen, this development laid the financial foundation for the increases in power and size that both groups have enjoyed recently.

In 1994, US counternarcotics assistance to Colombia was cut short abruptly by the election of Ernesto Samper to the Colombian Presidency. One of the conditions that the US Congress often places on countries receiving American aid is that they be certified by the US government as being in compliance with a certain set of rules aimed at insuring that all US aid is used for its intended purposes. Thus, in Colombia, the US government has always conditioned its counternarcotics assistance on the country's compliance with various US standards, including some governing the integrity of elected officials and respect for human rights. In 1994, the US suspected Colombia's newly-elected President Ernesto Samper of receiving seven million dollars in campaign contributions from the Cali cartel.19 Though these charges were never proven absolutely, the Clinton administration still labeled Colombia as non-compliant with US requirements for aid and placed sanctions on the country that blocked almost all US aid from reaching the Colombian police and military forces.20 Rather than compel Samper to resign, this move increased regional animosity in Latin America toward the US and undermined American counternarcotics efforts in Colombia.2122 An additional, unintended consequence of the US repudiation of Samper was that it left Colombian authorities without vital US support just as the guerrilla groups were deepening their connection to the international drug trade.

Upon the election of Andres Pastrana to the Presidency in 1998, the US immediately recertified Colombia and not only restored the flow of counternarcotics aid to the country, but also raised the US financial commitment to eliminating drugs in Colombia to dizzyingly new heights. Between 1988 and 1996, the US donated roughly $765 million in assistance to Colombia.23 In 1999, the US counternarcotics commitment to Colombia jumped to over $200 million for that year alone.24 Finally, in July 2000, the US government authorized the transfer of $1.3 billion to the Colombian government as part of an international aid package.25 "Plan Colombia," as the package was called, aimed at bolstering a wide range of government services and capabilities, ranging from the provision of new military hardware to the Colombian military to programs designed to improve human rights and economic development in the country.26

An important stipulation placed on all US aid to Colombia since the 1980s has been that US aid could only be used to fight drug organizations, unless otherwise directed, and that, under no circumstances, could such aid be used for counterinsurgency purposes.27 Though not always strictly observed, this official separation provided the most important distinction in US policy towards Colombia, namely that the US considered Colombia's drug and insurgent problems as separate challenges and that the US only wanted to be associated with the former and not the latter.

As noted at the beginning of this work, both the US-led "war on terrorism" and the increasingly blurred line between rebels and drugs in Colombia make the traditional US policy of trying to fight Colombia's drugs without engaging its insurgents practically impossible. The efficacy of this narco-focused strategy requires serious review at this epochal juncture in US-Colombian relations. For even with massive increases in the financial, intelligence, and coca eradication commitments of the US in recent years, Colombian drug exports have only increased. Not only does Colombia now supply over 90 percent of the cocaine coming into the US, but also drug interests there have rapidly expanded their heroin market share to two-thirds of total US consumption.28 Similarly, according to the US State Department, coca cultivation in Colombia more than doubled between 1995 and 1999, from 125,700 acres to 302,500 acres; current estimates of coca acreage reach well over half a million acres.29 Perhaps the most compelling evidence that US Colombian policy has failed to impact domestic drug markets is the fact that the street prices of drugs in the US have consistently decreased over the last decade, even as American counternarcotics efforts have increased.30

So far, the George W. Bush administration is clearly riding a fine line concerning its plans and intentions for future US involvement in Colombia. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush identified both drugs and rebels as forces to be countered through US aid. The Candidate declared that US assistance "will help the Colombian government protect its people, fight the drug trade, [and] halt the momentum of the guerrillas."31 The attacks of September 11 and the subsequent "war on terrorism" appeared to strengthen the administration's commitment to an expanded role for US forces and finances in Colombia. Three significant moves by the Bush administration since September 11 reinforce this conception.

First, the administration lobbied hard between the fall of 2001 and the fall of 2002 to get Congress to override the long-standing laws that 1) prevented US military aid from being used for purposes other than counternarcotics operations and 2) required that all aid be attached to particular pieces of equipment or geographic regions.32 In September of last year, Congress acceded to the first of these demands and passed a law allowing US aid to be used for both counternarcotics and counterinsurgency purposes.33 Similarly, safeguards against the abuse of American aid, like the earmarking of all US funding to specific hardware and programs, have also been loosened.34 As a consequence of these changes, the Bush administration's 2003 budget now includes $35 million to support an anti-kidnapping police effort and $98 million to raise and train a brigade of Colombian soldiers to protect an important oil pipeline that is currently under near-daily attack from the ELN. The attacks are costing the Colombian government roughly $430 million annually in lost oil revenues, which happens to be nearly equally to the current annual totals of US aid to Colombia.35

A second move by the Bush administration to blur the separation of the drug and insurgency problems in US policy towards Colombia came last fall when the US Justice Department indicted a series of FARC and AUC leaders on federal charges ranging from kidnapping to drug trafficking.36 In September 2002, the AUC's commander, Carlos Castaño, was indicted in Washington, D.C. on drug trafficking charges, and in November, three high-ranking members of the FARC were indicted on both drug trafficking and kidnapping charges.37 In addition, a number of lower-ranking members of both organizations have been indicted on similar charges.38 When asked about the Bush administration's motivations for bringing such indictments, an aide to Attorney General John Ashcroft described the move as "a two pronged approach" in which "We're going after the drug traffickers and the terrorist groups at the same time."39

A third, and final, indication that the Bush administration sees a larger role for US financial aid and military advisers in Colombia is the rhetoric of the administration's leaders. Many high-ranking officials in the executive branch have pushed their public rhetoric in the direction of increased involvement in Colombia. In an October 2002 speech at the Heritage Foundation, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Ambassador Otto Reich articulated the Bush administration's attitude toward the Colombian conflict stating:

Colombia can defeat this combination of narcotics traffickers and terrorists, but it needs help from its friends to do it. They need training, arms, equipment, and intelligence to implement a successful military strategy. Our national security and the safety and health of our people depend on their success.40

Likewise, Secretary of State Colin Powell, on a December 2002 visit to Colombia, listed "combating drugs and terrorism" as a "common goal" that the Bush administration shared with the Colombian government.41

However, even as it has moved aggressively to adapt US policy to the post-September 11 environment, the Bush administration has drawn a hard and fast limit to US involvement in Colombia. The administration has aggressively denied any accusations that it seeks a combat role for American troops in Colombia, either against drug dealers or rebels. In fact, the administration has pushed hard on President Uribe to "Colombianize" the fight against both narcotraffickers and insurgents by: 1) increasing Colombian citizens' financial contribution to the war effort through new taxation and 2) expanding the military and intelligence capabilities of the Colombian armed forces through American training and arms.42 With the current US government presence in Colombia now at its highest level ever at 411, Marc Grossman, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, was adamant when questioned at a news conference on March 5, 2003 that the US was not interested in bringing more people down to Colombia. Grossman insisted, "We're not looking to put more people in here . . . . This is a Colombian problem that the Colombians will have to solve."43

Whether the Colombian government can solve the many, dire challenges currently threatening its legitimacy remains an open question. Similarly, the Bush administration's delicate perch between a limited, advisory role in Colombia's new narco-insurgency and an all-out combat commitment remains equally uncertain. It is hard to imagine that the administration will not be pulled further into the conflict if US citizens continue to be kidnapped and imprisoned by the FARC and ELN, if the Colombian drug trade continues to boom, or if the civil strife in Colombia begins to destabilize the region.

Nonetheless, as one veteran diplomat has reflected, "foreign policy is often a matter of picking from a number of less-than-ideal options."44 The Bush administration's current policy towards Colombia appears to provide the best protection for American interests in that country's hellish struggle. By recognizing that America's Colombian policy can no longer focus on counternarcotics efforts to the exclusion of Colombia's other grave problems, the Bush administration has made a fundamental, and essential, leap forward in US understanding of Colombia's situation. By recognizing that the Colombian civil war must ultimately be won by the Colombian government alone in order to preserve the democratic regime's legitimacy, the administration has avoided a dangerous pitfall to date. With these conditions in mind, the best, though far from ideal, US policy at the moment appears to be exactly the one that the administration is pursuing: minimize the direct involvement of US citizens in the Colombian civil war while maximizing US aid for the government's fight against the narcoterrorists of the FARC and the AUC, the terrorists of the ELN, and narcotraffickers throughout Columbia.

Gregg Webb is a student at Princeton University, USA.

Bibliography

1. Cato Handbook for 107th Congress. "The International War on Drugs." Chapter 56. 28 March 2003 586 and Johnson, Stephen. "Helping Colombia Fix Its Plan to Curb Trafficking, Violence, and Insurgency." Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #1435. 26 April 2001. 28 March 2003 8.
2. The 2003 US aid package to Colombia includes $93 million for the training of a special Colombian army unit that would be used to protect a major oil pipeline from the frequent rebel attacks currently plaguing it. US State Department Fact Sheet on Designation of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. 5 October 2001. 3 April 2003 and Wilson, Scott. "U.S. Seeks to Avoid Deeper Role in Colombia." washingtonpost.com. 9 March 2003. 28 March 2003 3 and Sweig, Julia. "What Kind of War for Colombia?" Foreign Affairs. 81 (Sept./Oct. 2002): 135.
3. Information taken from table on DEA website. 10 April 2003 .
4. Drexler, Colombia and the United States, 96.
5. Ibid., 98.
6. Ibid., 89-111.
7. Ibid., 112.
8. This sentence paraphrases a similar construction in Pardo, Rafael. "Colombia's Two-Front War." Foreign Affairs. 79 (July/Aug. 2000): 67.
9. Drexler, Colombia and the United States, 112-113.
10. Drexler, Colombia and the United States, 82 and Sweeney, John. "Tread Cautiously in Colombia's Civil War." Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #1264. 25 March 1999. 28 March 2003 22.
11. Ibid., 23.
12. This sentence paraphrases similar constructions in Ibid., 23 and draws on points made in both the previously cited document and Carpenter, Ted and Channing Rouse. "Perilous Panacea: The Military In the Drug War." Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 128. 15 February 1990. 28 March 2003 .
13. The statement in quotations appears in Drexler, Colombia and the United States, 82 and Sweeney, John. "Tread Cautiously in Colombia's Civil War." Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #1264. 25 March 1999. 28 March 2003 23 along with the rest of the information in this sentence.
14. Ibid., 23.
15. This sentence expands on similar points and constructions in Ibid., 23.
16. Drexler, Colombia and the United States, 161.
17. Ibid., 162.
18. This paragraph extends from the author's research on this topic.
19. Crandall, Russell. "Plan Colombia: Should We Escalate the War on Drugs?" Cato Institute Policy Forum. 13 March 2001. Transcript of speech. 28 March 2003 3.
20. Sweeney, John. "Tread Cautiously in Colombia's Civil War." Heritage Foundation Backgrounder #1264. 25 March 1999. 28 March 2003 15.
21.
22. Ibid., 15.
23. This sentence paraphrases a similar construction in the US State Department's Background Note on Colombia. April 2002. 11 March 2003 9.
24. Ibid., 9.
25. Ibid., 9.
26. Ibid., 9.
27. This paragraph extends from Sweig, Julia. "What Kind of War for Colombia?" Foreign Affairs. 81 (Sept./Oct. 2002): 134 and the author's general research on this topic.
28. There is clearly some dispute over what percentage of cocaine in the US comes from Colombia, with estimates ranging from roughly 80 percent (Sweig) to 90 percent (State Department) of the total; however, I chose to use the State Department number in this paper. See US State Department's Background Note on Colombia. April 2002. 11 March 2003 8 and Sweig, Julia. "What Kind of War for Colombia?" Foreign Affairs. 81 (Sept./Oct. 2002): 123 and Carpenter, Ted. "Plan Colombia: The Drug War's New Morass." Cato Institute Policy Report. September/October 2001. 28 March 2003 12.
29. US State Department's Background Note on Colombia. April 2002. 11 March 2003 8 and Wilson, Scott. "U.S. Seeks to Avoid Deeper Role in Colombia." washingtonpost.com. 9 March 2003. 28 March 2003 5. I obtained the "well over half a million" figure by adding together the acreage that the Washington Post article cited officials as accounting for in their 2003 projections. The exact total from this analysis came to 520,000 acres of coca being cultivated this year in Colombia.
30. Cato Handbook for 107th Congress. "The International War on Drugs." Chapter 56. 28 March 2003 586.
31. Carpenter, Ted. "Plan Colombia: The Drug War's New Morass." Cato Institute Policy Report. September/October 2001. 28 March 2003 12.
32. Sanchez, Marcela. "Getting in Deeper." Editorial. washingtonpost.com 7 February 2003. 28 March 2003 1 and Wilson, Scott. "U.S. Seeks to Avoid Deeper Role in Colombia." washingtonpost.com. 9 March 2003. 28 March 2003 3.
33. Sanchez, Marcela. "Getting in Deeper." Editorial. washingtonpost.com 7 February 2003. 28 March 2003 1.
34. This sentence paraphrases a similar construction in Wilson, Scott. "U.S. Seeks to Avoid Deeper Role in Colombia." washingtonpost.com. 9 March 2003. 28 March 2003 3.
35. Ibid., 3 and Sweig, Julia. "What Kind of War for Colombia?" Foreign Affairs. 81 (Sept./Oct. 2002): 135.
36. Forero, Juan. "U.S. Strategy in Colombia Connects Drugs and Terror." New York Times 14 November 2002: A12.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Reich, Otto. "U.S. Interests in latin America." 31 October 2002. Transcript of speech given at the Heritage Foundation. 28 March 2003 2.
41. Johnson, Stephen. "Turning the Corner in Colombia." 19 December 2002. 28 March 2003 1.
42. Wilson, Scott. "U.S. Seeks to Avoid Deeper Role in Colombia." washingtonpost.com. 9 March 2003. 28 March 2003 2-3.
43. Ibid., 2.
44. Statement by Professor Jack Matlock of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs as recorded by the author in a meeting on March 11, 2003.