The War on Drugs to the War on Terror Evolution of US Foreign Policy in Colombia since 2001 Jason Michael McCann ABSTRACT The purpose of this work is to explore the evolution of Plan Colombia from an incipient peace initiative to a US-backed expansion of the War on Terror. By examining a number of leaked US documents and other critical material it will be seen how the US, eager to tap Colombia’s oil resources, used the opportunity presented by Plan Colombia and the global political climate after September 2001 to gain greater access to the country and, in the process, seriously aggravate a conflict that had been developing for almost half a century. ANDRÉS PASTRANA, a survivor of a 1988 kidnapping by the Medellín Cartel, was elected president in 1998 of a deeply fractured Colombia. Under the banner of the Gran Alianza por el Cambio, and initially in response to state corruption and an endemic national drug problem, he instigated peace negotiations with insurgent leftist guerrillas.1 After almost fifty years of conflict peace talks themselves had become tactical instruments, and through the 1980s and 90s various governmental negotiations with the FARC, ELN, M-19, and others had come to nought. Colombian state violence and indeed the perpetuation of the conflict in general has been attributed to state weakness, which Hristov successfully argues to be illusory; limiting this weakness to the state only insofar as it is incapable of disentangling itself from the interests of the wealthy social élite.2 Following the Marxist analysis that “the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie,”3 she delineates the state’s complicity in the creation of a counter-revolutionary coercive apparatus including paramilitary death squads4 with the help of US military aid.5 Such paramilitaries, which sought the illumination of left-wing guerrilla forces, organised labour, and peasant leadership (among other things), resulted in countless human rights abuses including torture, murder, disappearances, and mass population displacement6 – a catalogue of activity which Hristov refuses to attribute to state weakness, but rather to a “restructuring of the J. Šrámková, “The US Foreign Policy towards Colombia: Its Impacts and Motivations.” (PhD diss., Palacký University in Olomouc, 2012), 66 2 Jasmine Hristov, “Self-Defense Forces, Warlords, or Criminal Gangs? Towards a New Conceptualization of Paramilitarism in Colombia.” Labour, Capital and Society 43, 2 (2010): 34 3 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Verso, 1998), 37 4 Hristov, 35 5 Hristov, 34 6 Hristov, 15 1 state’s coercive apparatus.”7 It was within this context, where even the discourse of human rights had been appropriated by the powerful,8 that Pastrana hoped to deliver peace with US assistance. Having secured western hemispheric political and economic dominance, 9 along with its long relationship with Colombia, and in light of its position on Latin America vis-à-vis the Monroe Doctrine, the United States was the Pastrana Administration’s obvious choice for a peace-building partner. Since the Nixon Administration the US had an expressed interest in Colombian stability, 10 and with the Leahy Amendment in place11 the conditions looked right for Colombian-US cooperation. The US’ approach to Colombia, however, remained heavily focused on addressing the narcotics question, and tackling the insurgents funded by illicit crop production and trafficking. 12 Notwithstanding these differences both sides worked together on the Plan Colombia package that resulted in a $7.5 billion US support structure favouring the US’ foreign policy objectives. Latin American suspicion of US intervention is not at all unfounded. The United States has supported numerous military juntas and political coups in South America, and this assessment is by no means limited to the past. As recently as 2008 Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, could legitimately label Álvaro Uribe’s governments as a “Narcogobierno,”13 completely shackled to the whims of US foreign policy and military aid.14 Yet regardless of this reality the US felt by the 90s that the failure of Colombia had produced a “drug state” that gave rise to movements which posed a serious risk to its own national security.15 By 2000 Colombia had become the world’s greatest producer and exporter of cocaine, accounting for 48% of the global coca harvest. 16 From the outset of Plan Colombia the Clinton Administration held that the solution would be in the US’ support of the Colombian government in the destruction of the FARC and other guerrilla outfits who it saw behind the narcotics industry.17 As Pastrana’s idea was reworked under negotiations in Washington the US threefold Law and Order agenda of addressing the drugs problem, promoting justice (social and economic), and restoring the rule of law, came to the fore.18 Ultimately peace was side-lined. Arguably this preference for a military solution chimed with the growing US perception through the 80s that globalisation’s 7 Hristov, 35, 36 Paul Chambers, “The Ambiguities of Human Rights in Colombia.” Latin American Perspectives (2013): 126 9 E. Örn Þórarinsson, “The Impact of US Foreign Policy on the Colombian Conflicts.” (M.Sc diss., University of Iceland, 2011), 16 10 Örn Þórarinsson, 23 11 Oeindrila Dube and Naidu Suresh, “Bases, Bullets and Ballots: The Effect of US Military Aid on Political Conflict in Colombia.” Center for Global Development Working Paper 197 (2010): 7 12 Šrámková, 66 13 El Mundo, 2008. “Chávez cierra la embajada de Venezuela en Bogotá y moviliza tropas en la frontera” El Mundo, [online] 2 March. Available at: [Accessed 10 December 2015]. 14 Örn Þórarinsson, 21 15 Örn Þórarinsson, 18 16 U.S. Department of State, 2002 IV-29 17 Winifred Tate, “No room for peace?: United States’ policy in Colombia.” Accord: An International Review of Peace Initiatives, 14 (2004), 70-73 18 Örn Þórarinsson, 19 8 effect on the drugs trade had transformed it into an international security issue, 19 the result of which was the formulation of a six-year counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency aid package amounting to $1.2 billion in its first year20 – making Colombia the biggest recipient of US military assistance in the West.21 What is noteworthy at this juncture is the States’ understanding of USAID as having “the twofold purpose of furthering America’s interests while improving lives in the developing world [emphasis added]”22 at a time when the United States was already identifying Colombia’s oil as one of its principle interests in its relations with the country.23 Al-Qaeda’s 11 September attacks changed everything regarding US foreign policy. President Bush made it abundantly clear that “Defending [the United States] against its enemies is the first and fundamental commitment of the Federal Government,”24 and ‘counter-terrorism’ became the new watchword of his Administration; a language Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe (inaugurated in August, 2002) was quick to adopt.25 With this shift in policy some expected the US to lose interest in Colombia, but this did not happen. Instead the link was made between narcotics and international terrorism,26 and of course comparisons were made between Colombia and Afghanistan.27 Given the growing influence of Chávez and Uribe’s support of the US’ invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration was more than willing to overlook the fact that under Uribe extrajudicial killings in Colombia had almost doubled.28 In fact globally, as shall be discussed below, the US was casting human rights by the wayside in the application of this policy shift. What had been a war on drugs in Colombia changed rapidly to become a theatre of the expanding globalised war on terror as leftist and rightist non-state militaries were designated “Foreign Terrorist Organisations (FTOs)” by the US government.29 On the one hand this suited Uribe who could now avail of more US money and hardware to tackle the guerrillas with whom peace talks had collapsed,30 and on the other it presented him with the problem of what to do about the paramilitary death squads. As this was strictly a war on terminologies, it allowed Uribe to pursue an aggressive military policy against the guerrillas qua narco-guerrillas and terrorists,31 and allowed him to rebrand the rightist paramilitaries out of existence. Officially the AUC 32 disbanded after peace talks, when in Šrámková, 48 Dube and Suresh, 7; also see Rise and Fall, 12 21 Örn Þórarinsson, 24 22 Šrámková, 60 23 US General Accounting Office Report, GAO, 2009; see also Šrámková, 56 24 The White House, 17 September, 2002 25 Fellowship of Reconciliation, “The Rise and Fall of “False Positive” Killings in Colombia: The Role of U.S. Military Assistance, 2000‐2010.” A Report by the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Colombia ‐Europe‐U.S. Human Rights Observatory (May 2014): 12 26 Šrámková, 48 27 Šrámková, 49 28 Fellowship of Reconciliation, 15 29 June S. Beittel, “Colombia: “Background, U.S. Relations, and Congressional Interest.” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress (November 28, 2012): 3 30 Fellowship of Reconciliation, 12 31 Chambers, 126 32 This is the “Colombian Union of ‘Self-Defence’ (or Paramilitary) Organisations.” 19 20 reality their continued operations were re-classified as mere criminality, and Uribe himself in a 2007 address to the National Police Commanders Summit, asking the police to no longer speak of paramilitarism33 – no longer a force of armed insurgency, no longer “terrorists.” Now that the USbacked Colombian counter-terrorism measures were defined as an escalation of the war against leftist guerrillas it is interesting that the principle focus of anti-terrorism steps were directed towards the defence of the Caño-Limón and other oil and gas pipelines.34 On the surface the United States’ change in direction apropos of its involvement in Colombia reads to be consistent with the Bush Administration’s policy on international terrorism, but classified US Congressional Reports and other related documents recently leaked via WikiLeaks (2009) shed more light on the US’ long-term strategy in Colombia. Focussing on three documents in particular, which effectively frame the first half of the Bush Administration; RS21242,35 RL31383,36 and RL32337,37 a picture emerges of the US adopting a Problem-Reaction-Solution tactic by which it instrumentalised its war on terrorism as a means of furthering its resource interests in Colombia. The first of these (RS21242), the Congressional Research Service’s report the then Presidentelect Álvaro Uribe, is extremely valuable in that it removes any possibility that US foreign policy decision-makers did not know the character of the man who they would later be arming and financing. Nina Serafino, the analyst responsible for the report, describes him as a “hard-liner” with family connections to the Ochoa family cocaine-traffickers (member of the Medellín Cartel), and his support for the neighbourhood CONVIVIR associations and other paramilitaries which were widely believed in Colombia to have backed his election. Documents RL31383 and RL32337, addressing the Andean Regional Initiative (ARI) and the Andean Counterdrug Initiative (ACI) respectively, chart the development of US policy in Colombia between 2002 and 2005. This is a period which saw counter-narcotics funding total $1,890.8 million, and Foreign Military Financing (FMF) explode from $6 million to $99.2 million (an increase of 1,653% in just three years). During this time the US in-house language mutated; “terrorism” was of course a feature of RL31383 (where “guerrillas” and “paramilitaries” were the norm prior to 11 September 2001), but by 2005 in RL32337 this had evolved into a greater emphasis on “terrorists” and “counter-terrorism measures.” As an active agent in these counter-terrorism measures and as the funder of Colombia’s efforts, in both of these documents, the Bush Administration repeatedly couples this activity with infrastructure protection – again the Caño-Limón pipeline, where as early as FY (financial year) 2002 acquisitions totalling $537 million (i.e. almost a quarter of the overall five-year ACI and FMF expenditure) had been spent supplying the Colombian army for its defence. 33 Hristov, 20 Beittel, 18 35 WikiLeaks. “Congressional Research Service Report RS21242,” https://file.wikileaks.org/file/crs/RS21242.pdf 36 WikiLeaks. “Congressional Research Service, Report RL31383,” https://file.wikileaks.org/file/crs/RL31383.pdf 37 WikiLeaks. “Congressional Research Service, Report RL32337,” https://file.wikileaks.org/file/crs/RL32337.pdf 34 Perhaps the most damning sentence of the three reports is the candid acknowledgement in RL31383 (2002-3) that US funds and military aid would be used by the Colombian army, a military force with an appalling human rights record, in human rights violations. The Leahy Amendment (1997) had been introduced into US foreign operations legislation as a means of stopping human rights abuses and was an adjunct to the terms and conditions of Plan Colombia, however Serafino was eager to point out to the readers of her report that: The new proposed military activities, i.e., infrastructure protection and antikidnapping assistance, are not, however, “Plan Colombia” activities. Towards a conclusion, so far as Plan Colombia as a war on drugs is concerned, it can be said that the project was largely a failure. Between 1999 and 2002 the traffic in illegal narcotics, for the most part originating in Colombia, increased to about a hundred metric tons per year,38 and this was at a time when the CIA was being investigated for assisting Colombian traffickers in exchange for favours.39 At the height of US counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism involvement in Colombia in 2005 the amount of cocaine reaching the United States rose to two-hundred tons,40 but the US public was losing interest. Throughout the 80s almost half of the United States’ citizens felt that the greatest threat facing their country was drugs. By 2012 this sentiment barely registered at five percent.41 Any reasoned reading of the evidence points to drugs not being a priority policy concern (foreign or domestic) for the US at the time Plan Colombia was created, and rather than being purely altruistic, it is probable that Plan Colombia was a US Trojan horse to achieve other foreign policy objectives. After the 1991 US invasion of Iraq it had become patently clear to the United States that the Middle East was no longer a sure bet as a petroleum supplier, and that other sources of oil and gas should be exploited in the West. In 1997 one White House report stated that the oil of both Colombia and Venezuela had become of “vital interest” of the US.42 It is this vital concern that must provide the background to the willingness of the Clinton Administration to get in on Pastrana’s plan for Colombia. This would certainly provide some context as to why peace was not on the US’ final version of Plan Colombia, and for why so much US-backed so-called counter-terrorism measures were directed towards protecting the oil pipelines in the north. In 2013 Colombia was rank fifth on the United States’ global oil suppliers list,43 and with an estimated 2.6 billion barrels of untapped petroleum 44 it stands to reason that the US would have a vested interest in defeating “terrorism” in Colombia. Analysis of US Congressional hearings between 1999 and 2004 has found that “terrorism” was part of their lexicon before and after the 11 September 2001 attacks, but its increase – pointing to the Problem-Reaction-Solution policy approach mentioned hereinabove – since then has been suggested 38 Örn Þórarinsson, 24 Šrámková, 62 40 Örn Þórarinsson, 24 41 Šrámková, 49; see also Open Society Foundation, 2012 42 Šrámková, 57 43 Where the US got its oil in 2013: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Where-The-US-Got-Its-Oil-in2013.html, accessed 4 December 2015. 44 Šrámková, 56 39 to simply justify a previously agreed foreign policy agenda. This would imply that the rhetoric of counter-terrorism vindicated the US government’s massive spending increases in Colombia from this time.45 Analogous to the United States’ militaristic and expansionist incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq at this time, the US’ vital interest in securing petroleum resources in Colombia has triumphed over the more vital global interests of peace and human rights. Nearly five million human beings were displaced internally in Colombia in 2010, and Uribe’s artful reclassification of pro-government terrorists and his rightist programme of neoliberalism to ensure the extraction of oil for export to the United States,46 together with the US’ willingness to overlook human rights violations in the country, has transformed this humanitarian situation from crisis to critical. In the final analysis when Colombia asked the United States for bread, it was given stones instead. From the time of George Bush Senior’s Administration the United States was looking for a key to the door of Colombia, and Pastrana offered it in his plan. In the aftermath of Plan Colombia and its eventual transformation into an extension of the War on Terror José Obdulio Gaviria, an Uribe aide, could hide behind the same twisted rhetoric of the fight against terrorism and decry human rights organisations and activists as supporters of the FARC.47 For his part, Álvaro Uribe was awarded the Medal of Freedom by no less a person than George W. Bush.48 45 46 47 48 Šrámková, 50 Hristov, 15 Chambers, 127 Hristov, 16 BIBLIOGRAPHY Beittel, June S. “Colombia: Background, U.S. Relations, and Congressional Interest.” Congressional Research Service Report for Congress (November 28, 2012). Chambers, Paul. “The Ambiguities of Human Rights in Colombia.” Latin American Perspectives (2013) 192, 40, 5: 118-137. 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