From: Colombian Labor Monitor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 10:12:23 -0500 (CDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: THE GUARDIAN: US drug war aids Colombian paramilitaries
==============================================
"Since the human-rights waiver was granted",
he said, "the paramilitaries have doubled in
size. The number of massacres have increased."
_____________ ==============================================
THE GUARDIAN [London]
Thursday, 17 May 2001
US drug war aids Colombian paramilitaries
-----------------------------------------
By Julian Borger in Washington
and Martin Hodgson in Bogota
A leading US Democratic senator has denounced Washington's billion-dollar
anti-drug policy in Colombia as an expensive failure which has boosted
rightwing paramilitaries while achieving negligible' results.
Condemnation of the policy came amid reports that the area in Colombia
used for the production of coca, the raw material used to make cocaine,
dramatically increased last year despite extensive crop-spraying and
military operations.
In a broad attack on the US's Plan Colombia, an ambitious anti-narcotics
strategy to which it is contributing more than a billion dollars, Senator
Patrick Leahy criticised the exemptions granted the Bogota government from
human rights conditions on the disbursement of aid.
The senator said: "We give more aid to the military. They give more aid to
the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries are involved with atrocities.
Guerrillas are too. Drug lords seem to flourish, but the paramilitaries
are now working as sort of semi-drug lords too."
"Since the human-rights waiver was granted", he said, "the paramilitaries
have doubled in size. The number of massacres have increased."
Responding to the senator's criticism, the secretary of state, Colin
Powell, denied that the US was supporting paramilitaries, and insisted
that Washington was committed to the maintenance of human rights in
Colombia.
We speak candidly to the Colombian government,' Mr Powell said. And in my
conversations with my Colombian colleagues, I make the point that human
rights are an essential part of our strategy.'
Critics of Plan Colombia say that it is being used to fight leftwing
guerrillas, rather than to solve the underlying social and economic
pressures which push farmers into coca cultivation.
Moreover, a Bogota newspaper, Cambio Revista, said that a survey jointly
commissioned by Colombia and the UN and conducted by satellite, found that
the area devoted to grow- ing coca grew 60% to 162,000 hectares (400,000
acres) in the year ending December 2000.
A spokesman at the UN's Drug Control and Crime Prevention agency in
Vienna, would not confirm the figures.
However, according to several reports from Bogota, the survey found that
far more cocaine was being produced in Colombia than had previously been
thought. If confirmed, it would suggest that the widespread crop-spraying
has dramatically failed to reduce production.
Meanwhile, crop-substitution programmes aimed at providing local farmers
an alternative to coca have yet to get off the ground, according to
Colombian municipal officials and aid workers.
Lisa Haugaard, of the Latin America Working Group, said that the small
number of families who signed pacts with the government agreeing not to
grow coca in return for subsidies had yet to receive any aid.
Our concern is the fumigation part and the military part of Plan Colombia
is moving ahead, but the alternative development part is lagging behind,'
Ms Haugaard said.
Without humanitarian and alternative development assistance, coca-growing
families may soon be facing famine, a local researcher said.
Senator Leahy also questioned the safety of the pesticide being used for
crop-spraying, glyphosate. While its manufacturer, Monsanto, says it is
safe, it recommends that livestock be kept out of the area for two weeks
after spraying and that people stay away until it dries.
Community leaders in the Putumayo region, where much of Colombia's coca is
grown, said that villagers exposed to the pesticide had developed rashes
and fevers, and that it had killed off livestock, fish and birds.
Copyright 2001 Guardian Newspapers Limited
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