DRUG WAR TO DEEPEN COLOMBIA'S MISERY

35,000 people died violently in Colombia last year. But US attempts to
eradicate the country’s drug trade, will only lead to more deaths,
argues Eamonn Meehan, Trocaire’s Head of Overseas Department

Colombia is a country at war. The conflict which has gone on for over
50 years has recently intensified and is set to become even more
vicious with new plans to attempt to forcibly eradicate the production
of the coca plant, the main source of cocaine on the US market.

As the war intensifies around the attempt to destroy the coca crop,
those who have suffered most in this war - the peasant farmers and
urban poor - will again pay a heavy price.

Decades of conflict have left Colombia a divided country.

In 1999, 35,000 people died violently. Approximately 7,500 of these
died as a direct result of the armed conflict. The other 27,500 were
victims of urban gang violence, murder, family violence, even road
rage.

The militarisation of the country has meant that most conflict is
resolved violently. Much of the country is now unsafe for travel by
road with guerrilla groups and paramilitaries controlling expanding
pockets of territory.

Decades of political mismanagement, corruption and the denial of basic
rights to millions of poor Colombians has left a polarised society
where political power is in the hands of a complacent and self
interested elite.

As a result of the failure of political activity, guerrilla groups
sprang up to claim by force what was unavailable through politics.

The three main guerrilla groups currently at war with the state have
an estimated 37,000 armed men. The largest, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has 10,000. A paramilitary force of about
10,000 has emerged to fight the guerrillas and, as they see it,
protect their property and their country.

The current reality is that neither the guerrillas nor the
paramilitaries have significant support among the population. Both
have caused the displacement of over 1.9 million people (275,000 in
1999 alone), they do not respect the neutrality of civilian
populations and murder those suspected of supporting the other side.

Both also profit significantly from the illegal drugs trade.
International human rights organisations have documented serious human
rights abuses by all sides, including the Colombian army.

There is evidence of the army and the paramilitaries acting together
and of the army allowing the paramilitaries to carry out massacres and
then allowing them to slip away.

A Human Rights Watch report published in February this year documents
cases of army officers setting up paramilitary groups, of army
officers and army units working in collaboration with paramilitaries
including providing weapons and helicopter support, and of army
intelligence providing information to paramilitary groups on those
involved in human rights protection and peace talks.

An entire political party, the Union Patriotica, has been wiped out
through the systematic murder of thousands of its members and
supporters while massacres of peasants and urban dwellers are now a
weekly occurrence. Hundreds of community workers, human rights
workers, trade unionists and lawyers have been murdered.

Hundreds of thousands of displaced people live in wretched conditions
with little assistance from the state, having been forced from their
small farms into the already over crowded and violent slums which
surround all of Colombia’s cities.

Rural communities close to contested areas live in constant fear. In
one case which was recounted to me, an allegation of having sold eggs
to a group of guerrillas led to a massacre of five people by
paramilitaries in a small rural community.

International humanitarian law is flouted on a daily basis with
civilians intimidated, displaced and murdered without regard for their
non combatant status. More people have died in the last five years in
Colombia than in Central America’s wars of the 1980s.

The increase in coca production to over 100,000 hectares has prompted
the US and Colombian governments to propose the “Plan Colombia”, a so
called “assistance” package worth $1.7 billion with $1.4 billion of
this for military equipment and three new army battalions which will
be used in an attempt to eradicate the coca crop and eliminate any
opposition.

It is hoped that this will remove a key resource from the guerrillas
and weaken their ability to fund a war. Many believe that the plan
will not work having more to do with internal US politics on drugs
than with ending the violence in Colombia.

It will certainly lead to more displacement - figures of between
50,000 and 200,000 are quoted - and to an intensification of the conflict.

Previous experience indicates that if coca production is reduced or
eliminated in one place it springs up in another.

Throughout the 1990s, the US has attempted to eliminate the production
of coca in the Andes with no success. All it has achieved is the
shifting of production from country to country with no reduction of
the availability of cocaine on the US market.

This latest effort will be unlikely to reduce the amount of cocaine
available in the US, but it will certainly increase human suffering in
Colombia and cause significant environmental and health problems.

There is no real strategy to promote crop substitution to support
those peasant farmers who will lose their sole means of supporting
their families and no targeting of the drug traffickers. Eradication
efforts on their own will only lead to coca production spreading to
new areas and possibly to other South American countries such as
Venezuela and Brazil.

The second element of this “Plan Colombia” calls for the countries of
the European Union to come up with an additional $1.7 billion for
development and humanitarian assistance.

While Colombia needs development assistance, it needs to be carefully
planned and with a significant chance of sustainability.

EU countries thinking of supporting the Plan must ensure that this
assistance is not just to pick up the pieces after a military campaign
of doubtful benefit and certain suffering for innocent civilians. It
should also be noted that there has been no public debate on the
strategies proposed in the “Plan Colombia”. Colombians have had no
opportunity to hear the Plan presented in detail.

A chink of light on the horizon are the peace talks which began
between the government and the FARC on April 9. These are likely to
make slow progress and could take years to reach a conclusion. In the
meantime, the war continues to intensify.

Those in the middle, campaigners for peace, community organisations,
human rights activists try to promote alternatives to violence.

Despite recent visits to Europe by both the FARC leadership and the
Colombian government there is, unfortunately, little international
mediation support in the peace process. It is urgently needed as
otherwise this attempt at a peace process may run into the sands like
others before it.

I returned from Colombia in time to attend the a lecture delivered by
Nelson Mandela. During his lecture, Mr Mandela said that before you
can contemplate changing your opponent you need first to change yourself.

What a pity this simple but important message does not seem to be
understood by those who control the economy and politics of Colombia.

They do not yet seem willing to accept that the violence which has
devastated their rich and beautiful land is caused by poverty and exclusion.

Blaming it on the coca plant is just the latest reason to deny
reality.