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DATE:  June 22, 2005
TO: Foreign Policy, Appropriations Aides
RE: FY2006 Appropriations for Colombia

RETHINKING PLAN COLOMBIA:
FUMIGATIONS STRATEGY FAILS TO ACHIEVE STATED POLICY GOALS 

In 2000, the U.S. Congress passed a multi-billion dollar initiative known as Plan Colombia. Initially, the $1.3 billion package was passed as a counter-narcotics plan. Its goals were to support the Colombian government’s efforts to strengthen democracy, promote respect for human rights and the rule of law, foster socio-economic development, and reduce coca cultivation in Colombia.[i] Today, with nearly 90% of all cocaine and 50% of all heroin entering the U.S. from Colombia,[ii] leaders in Congress have argued that the U.S. will only be able to address its own drug abuse problem by fighting drugs at their source. All indicators taken into account, there is still no evidence to prove that this policy has moved us towards any reduction in cocaine on U.S. streets. 

After five years of extensive on-the-ground research and experience in Colombia’s southwestern province of Putumayo, a primary receptor of Plan Colombia aid and operations, Witness for Peace (WFP) concludes that five years and $4.5 billion of taxpayer dollars [iii] for Plan Colombia and continued U.S. military aid have not proven successful in providing real socio-economic development alternatives for Colombian farmers, strengthening democracy in Colombian regions like Putumayo, or decreasing drug-consumption in the United States. 

In the spring of 2005, when WFP asked a high-ranking U.S. Embassy official in Bogotá about new U.S. government data regarding coca acreage in Colombia in 2004, the official told WFP he is not sure where the policy’s “goal line” is. He said what he does know is that the U.S. government is making “first downs” in Colombia and that if they make enough “first downs,” eventually they will reach the “goal line.”  If the goal line is eradicating hectares of coca in one department of Colombia in the short term, perhaps the policy can claim a few “first downs.” But the data conclusively show that Plan Colombia has done little to bring us closer to the U.S.´s ultimate “goal line” of drug reduction in the United States.  

• The most recent figures from the White House drug office found that the total area under coca cultivation in Colombia remained "statistically unchanged" from 2003 to 2004, despite record levels of fumigations.[iv] While large expanses of coca have indeed been eradicated in Putumayo, heavy fumigations in Putumayo have not translated into an overall reduction in coca production on a national level.

• Cocaine on America’s streets continues to be as pure, available and affordable as it was before fumigations began in Putumayo. As White House Drug Czar John Walters mentioned in an AP interview after his August 2004 flyover of Colombia, seizing cocaine, destroying coca crops and locking up drug traffickers in Colombia has had little impact on the availability of cocaine on American streets.[v]

• Growers are moving crops to areas harder to detect and more hazardous for fumigation planes to spray. In addition to this "atomization" of large coca fields, production is intensifying, with an average increase of 6,000 to 30,000 plants per hectare.[vi] This means that fewer hectares could in fact mean more coca. As Putumayo´s Human Rights Ombudsman explains, “Fumigations are no longer affecting a large percentage of coca crops because they are now situated deep in the jungle and are more difficult for pilots to detect.”[vii]

• Even after a record year of fumigations in 2004, 114,000 hectares of coca (which can be processed into approximately 430 metric tons of pure cocaine) remain in Colombia alone.[viii] The Andean region produced a total of 640 metric tons in 2004[ix] while the U.S. cocaine demand is only 250-300 metric tons.[x] At this rate, we are unlikely to ever see the results necessary to impact drug availability in the U.S.

“I have never liked the idea of producing coca. I was one of the few, from the very beginning, who opposed the trade and lobbied my fellow farmers to not get involved. Later, I encouraged my neighbors to voluntarily eradicate at the time of the social pacts. My whole life I have been an enemy of coca. But they fumigated me too, three times. The fumigations program has ruined my life, my legal dairy business. I want you to ask your government what they gain by fumigating an honest cattle farmer like me?” said Roger Hernandez.[xi]  

Mr. Hernandez´s story is not new news. WFP estimates that there are dozens, possibly even hundreds, of coca-free farmers like Mr. Hernandez who believed in good faith that the government would compensate them after their legal crops were fumigated who have received no compensation to date. In Colombia, over the last five years, over 8,000 farmers have filed complaints of licit crop damage due to erroneous fumigations. Of these only eleven farmers in the entire country have been compensated and only one Putumayan farmer.[xii] Hundreds of farmers who filed complaints in 2002 and 2003 still have not received a response to their fumigation claim.[xiii]  

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) financed alternative development projects have not been immune to fumigations either. “Just here at COMFAMILIAR (an NGO) there are 20 or 30 cases of people who were fumigated, went through the complaint process, had no coca and have yet to receive a response from the government. All of these people are participating in Chemonics (a USAID contractor) alternative development projects,” said one contract manager in La Hormiga, Putumayo in May 2005.[xiv]

Local government officials in coca growing areas are also critical of the failed compensation program and disenchanted with the U.S. and Colombian governments. One Ombudsman told WFP, "People are tired of waiting for responses from the government. I estimate that 50-60 of every 100 cases filed in this municipality were justified and should have been compensated; people who had no coca. The problem is they [U.S. and Colombian governments] never follow through. As local Ombudsman and a citizen of this country, I can tell you this is a mistaken policy. I am not alone in my thinking; all the local Ombudsmen in this region think the compensation program has been a definitive failure.”[xv]

The failure of the U.S. directed compensation program for farmers who have been wrongly fumigated has stripped the Colombian government of its credibility in coca growing regions of the country and has called the U.S. government’s role into question. A local Ombudsman tells WFP, “I represent the Colombian state here in this municipality and now that no one has received responses or compensation for their damages to their legal crops due to fumigations people believe that I’m not doing my job. This office and the Colombian government have lost credibility with the people of Putumayo.” The failure of the compensation program aggravates already existing problems of food security and basic human rights. Even worse, the failed compensation program of the U.S. funded fumigations anti-drug strategy is breaking down Colombia’s democracy and failing to promote respect for human rights and the rule of law in Putumayo.
 

Witness for Peace believes it is time to rethink our fumigations policy in Colombia. We recommend an immediate halt on aerial sprayings and encourage Congress to invest in a long-term, comprehensive rural development strategy for Colombia.  For more in-depth policy recommendations please see “Blueprint for a New Colombia Policy” on the Latin American Working Group’s website at http://www.lawg.org/docs/Blueprint.pdf.

Witness for Peace (WFP) is a politically independent, nationwide grassroots organization. We are people committed to nonviolence and led by faith and conscience. Our mission is to support peace, justice and sustainable economies in the Americas by changing U.S. policies and corporate practices which contribute to poverty and oppression in Latin America and the Caribbean. We stand with people who seek justice. Since 2000, WFP has maintained a program office in Colombia and has monitored U.S. policy in Colombia’s southwestern province of Putumayo, a primary receptor of Plan Colombia aid and operations. WFP brings on-the ground testimony and local analysis directly from Putumayo to the United States.

Since 1983, more than 10,000 people have traveled to Latin America with WFP including over 500 to Colombia. For more information on Witness for Peace or this report, contact WFP at (202) 547-6112 or visit www.witnessforpeace.org

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