August 2001
Page 1 of 4

Last year, the U.S. Congress approved an unprecedented $1.3 billion for aid to Colombia. This represented the U.S. contribution to the $7.5 billion Plan Colombia, originally designed as a multifaceted, five-year program, aimed at addressing the country’s many ills by promoting peace. It was presented by President Andrés Pastrana in late 1999 and endorsed by President Bill Clinton in early 2000.

However, a year later, while still only in its initial implementation stages, Plan Colombia has already engendered heated political debate, created many negative reactions, and produced severe ill effects on the conflict itself.

The almost exclusive anti-drug focus of U.S. aid, featuring the eradication of coca crops by aerial fumigation of pesticides in the southern departments, gave Plan Colombia a whole new direction and character, essentially erasing its original broad-based approach. Four-fifths of the U.S. resources were allocated to the military and police, making Colombia the Western Hemisphere’s prime recipient of U.S. security assistance. Plan Colombia sent the message to Colombians that, rather than betting on the peace process, the United States was putting its money on escalating the war.

The same message reverberated in Brussels and other European capitals, where Plan Colombia quickly met with opposition, especially to its military component and emphasis on aerial fumigation. For this reason, Europe has fallen far short of the $2 billion that it, along with Canada and Japan, had been targeted to contribute.

But more significantly, Plan Colombia has divided Colombians, contrary to its stated intention to unite them.

The plan was never consulted, discussed, or debated within Colombia before it was presented abroad. Neither the directly-affected local communities nor their elected officials were brought into the decision-making process. While the U.S. Congress has held countless hearings and open sessions on Plan Colombia, the Colombian Congress has yet to hold its first.

In the regional elections of October 2000, all of the southern departments targeted by Plan Colombia elected governors who had run on strong anti-fumigation platforms. Upon taking office, they formed a common front to propose their own version of Plan Colombia, based on gradual, manual, and concerted eradication, accompanied by subsidies and credits to enable peasant farmers to find viable alternatives to coca.

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