Plan Colombia has seen the United States provide approximately $8 billion worth of aid to Colombia since 2000.
Over the course of three articles I will look at how (and the what extent) Plan Colombia has worked to strengthen democracy, combat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and in this first piece, reduce coca cultivation and trafficking.
When President Pastrana presented Washington the original version of Plan Colombia in 1999, the Colombian state was at a breaking point. The internal conflict had pushed the economy into crisis with the unemployment rate at a staggeringly high 18.2% and GDP retreating by 4.2%. The worst figures this side of the Great Depression.
Pastrana saw Plan Colombia as a way of reviving Colombia and issues such as coca cultivation were secondary concerns that would resolve themselves after peace had been achieved. The American Congress however had a different idea and reformed Plan Colombia into an anti narcotics initiative, focusing aid on reducing the production and trafficking of cocaine from Colombian fields into major American cities.
Has it worked?
There are inconsistencies between the figures the United States and the United Nations have on coca cultivation but it´s clear Plan Colombia has reduced cocaine production. The UN shows that in 1999, 680 tonnes of cocaine were produced in Colombia; by 2011 (the latest figures available) this had reduced almost 50 per cent, to 345 tonnes. The US reports even more favourable results, suggesting a reduction from 520 to 195 tonnes over the same period.
Despite these positive results, initial efforts to stem cocaine production were not so successful. When Plan Colombia began, aerial eradication campaigns saw over 380,000 hectares of coca fields fumigated between 2000 and 2003.
The strategy was successful in reducing the hectares of land cultivated with coca crops, yet it failed to stem cocaine production throughout this period. In 2007 for example, after seven years of continuous spraying increases, the UN statistics showed that cocaine production had risen to 600 tonnes per annum.
Why? Colombian coca farmers played the game and knew how to compensate for the effects of the aerial eradication campaign – they reduced the size of their fields, made their plots harder to find, and increased their per hectare crop yield. In short, innovation delayed the success of aerial eradication.
Farmers were forced to innovate, as for many there was no viable economic alternative to coca production. Worse, the attempts to resolve these economics have been weak, and played second fiddle once Alvaro Uribe was elected in 2002. Uribe undeniably achieved great success using Plan Colombia in his fight against the FARC, but his relentless focus on tackling the security issues meant economic development plans were something of an after thought. Military funding and action eclipsed efforts to resolve the socio-economic factors behind illicit crop production.
Positive inducement schemes were introduced by Alvaro Uribe however, and ran from 2005 -2009. The objective was to create jobs with economic potential for rural families in conflict prone areas.
Despite the USAID mission in Colombia reporting ‘significant progress’ through 2010, the scope of the success has been limited by both the (restricted) size of the programme and security concerns.
In 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the alternative development programmes were – unhelpfully – not located in areas where the majority of coca is grown. And US experts, Jason Spellberg and Morgan Kaplan argue coca farmers have not been taught how to generate wealth independently.
But production has reduced in more recent years
Yes; analysts attribute this to a switch in focus from aerial eradication campaigns to more intensive, manual eradication. This strategy is more effective than aerial fumigation as it both kills the plant directly, and has the knock on effect of building a more significant government presence on the ground.
Risks, are however, higher as the military are more exposed. FARC and ELN guerrillas work to sabotage efforts, routinely laying mines and IED’s in coca fields. Such dangers may explain why manual eradication has been on a downward trend since 2010, despite its proven success.
Production is also down because of the increase in the presence of the security forces and the fact the guerrilla groups have been pushed back from areas they once controlled.
Statistics compiled by the US and the UN suggest Plan Colombia has been effective in reducing the production and trafficking of cocaine. The discrepancy in figures between the two bodies however, troubles us. To understand the full success a more transparent and detailed methodology for data collection is needed.
Of course Plan Colombia has other aims too…We´ll look at those over the coming days.
Photo, Open Briefing
