THIS PLAN ISN'T WORKING

"Plan Colombia" Has Become A Policy Many People And Governments Love To Hate.

The $7.5 billion aid program was conceived jointly by U.S. and Colombian
officials in September 1999 to deal with Colombia's deterioration into a
lawless state fueled by the drug trade. Recently the plan has generated a
strong backlash among some of the very governments and private groups whose
support is critical if the Colombian government is to regain control of the
country.

The Colombians expect that $3.5 billion will come from foreign donors, the
rest from Colombian sources. But so far the foreign pledges have been
disappointing. The exception has been the United States, which approved a
$1.3 billion aid package in June. The result is that Plan Colombia is now
seen strictly as a U.S. package. For some governments and organizations,
particularly in Latin America and Europe, it has become a convenient
target, a rallying cry of anti-Americanism. Barely off the ground, the plan
risks falling apart.

While much has been written about the concerns of U.S. opponents to the
plan, far less attention has been paid to opposition in Colombia's
backyard. Although supportive of Colombian President Andres Pastrana's
peace effort, leaders throughout the region have, since late summer, become
increasingly critical of the plan and its possible consequences beyond
Colombia's borders.

"The [Colombian] problem is a domestic problem," Brazilian President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso said in October. "We are not interested at all in
any kind of Brazilian intervention in Colombia."

Ecuador's Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller objected in September to "the
cancerous tumor being removed from Colombia and metastasizing in Ecuador."

Alberto Fujimori, until recently Peru's president and a strong ally of the
U.S. anti-drug war, nonetheless said in late August, "the regional security
and that of the Andean community is in peril before a $3 billion military
project that Colombia plans to implement along the next two years."

Large-scale aid to Colombia should be an easy decision. South America's
oldest democracy and second-largest country, Colombia has a civilian,
constitutional government that is under siege from several threats,
including guerrillas on the left, paramilitary forces on the right and
criminal groups, all largely fueled by illegal drugs. Lawlessness is
rampant; roughly 70 percent of the world's kidnappings take place in
Colombia. There is already spillover to other countries, and it could get
worse.

Why, then, are there such strong objections to assisting a well-intentioned
government in dire need?

The U.S. package is aimed at fighting drugs, but about three-quarters of
that aid is in the form of military assistance. Thus the contribution
evokes an earlier period of military intervention in Latin America. Despite
the end of the Cold War and a supposed new era of cooperation in
hemispheric relations, there is concern that the U.S. could turn Colombia
and the region into another Vietnam.

Many Latin Americans see the United States as having a tendency to
overshoot. They distrust its ability to keep its military impulses in check
and wonder whether U.S. officials are truly interested in the negotiated
settlement they say they seek.

Latin leaders' reactions to Plan Colombia tend to mirror their relations
with the United States. Hugo Chavez, who has often defied Washington since
becoming Venezuela's president in February 1999, has led the charge against
the Plan. He warned in late August that it could "generate a
medium-intensity conflict in the whole of northern South America."

Plan Colombia now regularly provokes heated discussion at hemispheric
gatherings. A declaration issued at the end of the first summit of South
American heads of state on Sept. 1 in Brasilia was instructive. It
expressed support for the "peace process in Colombia," "the president of
Colombia," and the "government of Colombia." But there was, quite
deliberately, no mention at all of Plan Colombia.

Moreover, Latin Americans, particularly in those countries where illegal
drug production or trafficking is flourishing, deeply resent U.S. drug
policy, which is a source of irritation in inter-American relations. Since
1986, the United States has issued an annual report card grading Latin
American governments in their fight against drugs. The comeback--that U.S.
demand and consumption are responsible for the drug crisis--is never far
behind. Throughout the region, many people who follow the issue closely
wonder why the United States has clung for so long to an anti-drug formula
that has yielded so few results.

The leaders of several governments in the region also object to the way the
aid package was devised, with little consultation with neighboring
countries bound to be affected by the policy. That approach was reminiscent
of a earlier era, when the United States asserted its power to advance its
security interests when it felt it had to do so. That mind-set was captured
by a Pentagon official quoted at a meeting of the region's defense
ministers in Manaus, Brazil, on Oct. 19, in response to resistance to Plan
Colombia expressed by some of his Latin American counterparts: "Our
position is: We're going to take a stand. If you're with us, fine."

European governments and non-governmental groups have joined the chorus of
criticism of Plan Colombia. Europeans worry about U.S. policy being too
militaristic in light of the Colombian armed forces' troubling human rights
record. Like Latin Americans, Europeans are careful to make the distinction
between the "peace process" in Colombia, which they support, and "Plan
Colombia," which they oppose. In July, Spain committed $100 million, and
Norway $20 million, in social and development projects. But the European
Union's offer of some $280 million in aid, made in October, was well short
of Colombia's $1 billion target.

The critics have a point. The U.S. aid package is not a policy that
responds to Colombian realities, but a spasm that is the product of U.S.
domestic political pressures, namely the determination to combat illicit
drugs. Because it's so heavily skewed toward military assistance, the
U.S.-driven plan runs the risk of escalating violence, contributing to
larger refugee flows and widening drug-related activity. U.S. officials
defend the aid by pointing to funds designated for non-military programs,
both in Colombia and in neighboring countries, to deal with the effects of
the American policy. That support includes alternative economic development
programs to discourage the cultivation of coca plants.

The backlash among the plan's opponents poses a serious problem for
Pastrana, who sees Plan Colombia as the vehicle for pursuing the highest
priority of his administration--ending his country's decades-old insurgency
and reaching a peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia. Making his stumbling peace effort work without the support of
other Latin Americans and Europeans would be difficult.

Pastrana finds himself in an impossible position, with the United States
applying pressure on one side and potential supporters backing away on the
other. At the end of a summit meeting of Latin leaders in early November,
Panama called for a January 2001 meeting of defense ministers from the five
nations bordering Colombia to talk about the fallout from the growing
instability in that country. To its chagrin, the Colombian government was
not invited.

The backlash is also bad news for the United States. It is hard to see how
a policy so strongly opposed abroad--and widely questioned in the very
country it is meant to assist--can succeed. And Plan Colombia is not
exactly generating a lot of enthusiasm in the United States. In a sign of
growing doubts about the plan, Rep. Benjamin Gilman (R-N.Y.), chairman of
the House International Relations Committee and formerly one of the plan's
strongest advocates, withdrew his support last month, saying U.S. aid
should be directed to the Colombian national police and not the armed forces.

The transition to a new U.S. administration, coupled with the controversy
over the vote count, is likely to compound uncertainties about Plan
Colombia. This after all, is a policy not yet on track; it is unlikely to
get the kind of attention it needs from the next administration, which
because of its inauspicious start is likely to be distracted early in its term.

With a more sensible U.S. policy on Colombia, the United States would have
less trouble gaining support from Latin America and Europe. But that would
require reversing what has been a myopic approach in fighting drugs by
military means. The American policy should instead seek to help Colombia's
beleaguered government restore authority and control so that it can better
protect its citizens and so that it can achieve a negotiated political
solution.

U.S. policy should be geared toward professionalizing Colombia's security
forces, including its military and police--not just training a few select
anti-drug battalions. Professionalization, in this sense, has to include
strict adherence to human rights standards. The United States should also
vigorously promote other institutional reforms in Colombia, including
social, political and especially judicial reform. U.S. engagement in
dealing with a range of complex problems--over at least a half dozen
years--will be essential to begin to reverse the downward spiral.

The main obstacle to adopting such a course is likely to come not from
Latin America or Europe, which understand the importance of addressing
Colombia's security crisis, but from the United States. The pressures to
devise an anti-drug policy--on the part of Democrats and Republicans
alike--are hard to resist. To change course will require sustained and
committed political leadership from the highest levels of the U.S.
government--and a policy that grapples with Colombian realities. Whether
the United States will be able to do this is the next big question.

Michael Shifter, senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a forum of
leaders from the hemisphere, recently directed an independent task force on
U.S.-Colombia policy, co-sponsored by the Dialogue and the Council on
Foreign Relations.