National Office
3628 12th Street NE
1st Floor
Washington, DC
20017
202.547.6112
202.536.4708 fax

“What’s Your Plan on Colombia?”

Reducing drug supply? Despite a record in the area fumigated in 2004, coca cultivation was basically unchanged from 2003. According to the CIA, overall coca cultivation in 2004 (281,700 acres) was only 7 percent below the 1999 level (302,704 acres), before Plan Colombia began.
Curbing violence and restoring rule of law? The Colombian military, to which U.S. military aid flows, has been implicated in serious abuses of human rights, particularly in peace communities like San Jose de Apartado. The government has made little headway in investigating these charges, sending a signal to abusers of human rights that they can operate with impunity.
Strengthening democracy? Colombia’s hard-line government has cracked down on basic democratic civil rights, allowing arrests and searches without a warrant and limiting freedom of assembly and movement.
Peace and stability? Colombia has the second largest population of internally displaced people after Sudan. According to expert estimates, in the past three years more than 3 million people have been displaced in Colombia due to the perpetual violence that racks the country.

Plan Colombia has not achieved its stated goals, and has left devastation in its wake. It’s time to ask your member of Congress:

What’s your plan on Colombia?

It is extremely important for us to keep Colombia on our Senators’ and Representatives’ radar screen. Bush has recently released his budget request for 2007, which maintains the high levels of military funding for the Colombian military. We must tell our senators that we don’t want our tax dollars to be used for military aid to the Colombian military or for crop fumigation.

ACTION

Call, write or visit your representative and senators in your home district.

Tell them your concerns about military aid and fumigation in Colombia—Plan Colombia is a failed policy—and ask them for a concrete commitment to work for a change in policy.
Most importantly, help lay the groundwork for a relationship for the coming year when we will need their support on legislation to change harmful policies toward Colombia.

Congressional switchboard: 202-224-3121. To find out who your rep is, go to www.house.gov/writerep and enter your zip code. You can get the address and phone number of their local and DC offices.

TALKING POINTS

Do we want to be supporting another war? Anti-terrorism efforts are taking place world-wide, and the US is already bogged down in the war in Iraq. Do we want to expand our military involvement in Colombia at this moment? What resources are being diverted to keep up a military campaign that has not shown positive results?

Escalating the war in Colombia is not going to help protect civilians. US military aid at this point will not end the war in Colombia. Instead, it will act like fuel on a fire, increasing the violence against Colombian civilians by all armed actors. The violence disproportionately impacts AfroColombians, indigenous groups, human rights and peace workers, union leaders, teachers and journalists. Moreover, the Colombian military continues to work closely with brutal paramilitary groups, who are on the US terrorist list and commit the majority of civilian killings in Colombia each year. It makes no sense to send anti-terrorism aid to a military that collaborates with a terrorist group.

Sending military aid to Colombia brings the US into another Vietnam quagmire. This civil war has been going on for 40 years with thousands of civilians dead. Colombia is 53 times the size of El Salvador, where US counterinsurgency efforts in the 1980s cost $6 billion and 70,000 Salvadoran civilians lost their lives. The amount of money necessary to defeat the FARC is incalculable. Instead, US support for internationally-mediated negotiations between rebel groups and the government can help to bring an end to violence—and address the root causes that fuel it.

Fumigation is a cruel, inhumane and ineffective tactic to reduce drug production. Fumigation was supposed to reduce drug supply, but the rash of spraying without alternative development programs has led to widespread displacement, hunger, and health problems among coca-growing communities, and environmental problems in the areas sprayed. The spraying has disproportionately impacted small farmers, whose food crops as well as illegal cash crops are affected. The current trend of massive fumigations without alternative development aid is not helping families switch from illegal to legal crops; rather, it is forcing them to move or replant in order to make a living. Coca production increased 25% in 2001, according to the ONDCP.

Real Solutions. US support for the UN High Commission on Human Rights, and real pressure on the Colombian government to break ties with the paramilitaries, will do much more to protect civilians than an escalated war. Alternative development programs to help farmers transition from growing drug crops, and expanded treatment programs in the US, will do more to reduce the violence that surrounds drug production and drug abuse. And support for judicial reforms encourages the rule of law and combats corruption.