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Colombia: On the Problems of Confusing Drug Policy and Security Policy

Colombia: On the Problems of Confusing Drug Policy and Security Policy
January 2005

Por TNI

Perhaps one of the most tragic consequences of associating the 'war on drugs' with the 'war on terrorism' in a country like Colombia is that the failure of the former could end with the failure of the latter.

Despite officials' fantastic manipulation of figures from anti-drug campaigns, the failure of the war on drugs is a fact that only those at the highest levels of government - in both Colombia and the United States - continue to deny. Apart from them, there is no longer any academic institution, think tank, department of official drug policy experts, etc., in the northern or southern hemisphere that has not presented convincing arguments. 'The worst blind person is the one who refuses to see,' as an old Spanish proverb says. This blindness has a high cost, not only financially, but in terms of human, social and economic development in the region.

When talking about security in the country, Colombian officials present figures that seem quite positive at first glance. But those numbers, which appear to demonstrate the triumph of the Uribe administration's so-called democratic security policy, conceal a sinister reality.

As the next meeting of Colombia's Donor Group, scheduled for February 3/4 in Cartagena, approaches, it is worthwhile to take a look at the drug and security situation in the country. In making their contributions, donor countries should consider what the investment of US$3 billion during these
past four years (of Plan Colombia) has meant. Despite that investment, the country has registered only a relative decrease in the number of hectares under coca cultivation; hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people; a few crop substitution plans, most of which are not yet showing results; enormous environmental contamination and associated health problems because of the expansion of illicit crop areas and aerial spraying; and the massive movement of troops into the jungle in an effort that the government hopes will eliminate, with a single stroke, a 40-year-old insurgency and all drug production in the area.

During a U.S. congressional report on Plan Colombia in June 2004, Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio stated that 'Plan Colombia is a $3.2 billion failed foreign operation.' These four years will go down in donation history as the waste of a gigantic investment. Let's hope the
same will not be said of the next four.

Available in PDF version at:
http://www.tni.org/policybriefings/brief9.pdf
Copyright: TNI