PLAN COLOMBIA II: EMPHASIS ON ECONOMY

Colombia Is Making A Significant Shift In Priorities In Its War
Against Drugs And Guerrillas, But Critics Wonder If It Will Be Implemented

BOGOTA -- With all the hoopla surrounding President Bush's recent
visit to Colombia, few seemed to notice the arrival the next day of
German President Horst Kohler, on the first visit since 1971 by a
German head of state.

But Kohler's visit symbolized a tenuous but nevertheless significant
European nod of approval for a shift in Colombia's anti-drug policy,
criticized here and abroad over the years as being too much military
stick and not enough economic carrots.

In an ambitious six-year plan designed to break the still-firm
control by illegally armed groups over large swaths of drug-producing
areas, Colombian authorities have outlined a $43 billion strategy
that for the first time focuses more money on economic development
than military force and the aerial spraying of coca and poppy crops.

Colombian authorities said the so-called Plan Colombia II is the
result of the government's own critical analysis of its predecessor,
which received $4.5 billion in U.S. aid but had mixed success.

But analysts said the government also realized it needed to package
its anti-drug efforts in a different way to secure European as well
U.S. aid from a Democratic-controlled congress.

"It's smart: you give people a menu of options and you let them
choose what they want to fund," said Diana Rojas, a political science
professor at Bogota's National University, in referring to efforts to
highlight human rights and funding for displaced populations.

Colombia is the largest provider of cocaine in the world, which is
why it began the first Plan Colombia in 2000. The U.S. aid to that
plan through six years has made Colombia the largest recipient of
U.S. assistance outside of the Middle East and Afghanistan.

However, European aid for the first phase was piecemeal, largely
because of concerns over its heavy emphasis on the military side.

Military Efforts

About three-quarters of the U.S. aid has been directed to military
efforts to break the leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries
enmeshed in Colombia's 4-decades-old civil war and to spraying
herbicides on fields of coca and poppies, the raw material for
cocaine and heroin. The two efforts -- counterinsurgency and
counternarcotics -- often overlap, and have been the focus of
Colombia's own effort to break the cycle of drug trafficking and war.

But Plan Colombia's success has been mixed. The Colombian military
pushed armed insurgents from some strongholds only to see them
trickle back. Coca acreage has dropped under the massive aerial
spraying across the countryside, but total cocaine production has not
dropped as much as farmers garner higher yields on smaller plots and
shift production to other areas, like national parks and border
areas, that are less vulnerable to spraying.

Plan Colombia II hopes to break this stalemate with an emphasis on
creating new economic and educational opportunities for residents in
war and coca-producing zones.

"What we want is to clear areas forever," Defense Minister Juan
Manuel Santos told The Miami Herald. "If not, it's not possible to win."

As outlined in a draft copy of the plan obtained by The Miami Herald,
58 percent of the money would go toward economic and social projects,
including programs to strengthen human rights and the justice system,
long thought to be weak points in the Colombian government.

It says that at least $600 million would go to help some of the
estimated three million internal refugees in Colombia, as well as an
unspecified amount of money and attention to the 45,000 paramilitary
and guerrilla fighters demobilized in recent years.

These areas, human rights and demobilization, appear to have garnered
the most attention from the Europeans. After his visit, Kohler
applauded the Colombian government's "realistic vision."

"Germany is interested in continuing to cooperate intensely with
Colombia, [and] cooperating more," Kohler said.

Plan Colombia II is also a break from the past in that it speaks in
global terms, talking about integrated chains of development that
will help the country break the cycle of war. It calls for everything
from strengthening free trade agreements between nations to
developing 200 infrastructure projects in war-torn areas to further this goal.

"The success of this plan depends on an integrated action," said
Mauricio Santa Maria, assistant director of the government's Planning
Department. "We know that if we don't accompany all our actions with
an effective government presence and an effective social policy,
nothing else matters."

The plan pays particular attention to the success of the citizen-led
"park rangers" program -- the 51,000 families being paid to stop
growing coca and to preserve the nature around them; it hopes to add
80,000 more families to the program and expand manual coca
eradication efforts -- a slight break from the emphasis on aerial eradication.

To be sure, the plan has a strong military component. It would
include the purchase of more heavy and mid-size airplanes and
helicopters to transport troops, as well as fighter planes. The
government also would increase the number of army troops by 14,000,
the navy by 1,500, the air force by 1,000 and the police by 20,000.

But the plan also calls for "engineering battalions" to start public
works projects once combat troops have pushed the enemy out of an area.

Initial Praise

The draft has received some initial praise by international
observers. On a recent visit, U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas
Shannon said the plan was "right on."

The director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime for Colombia,
Sandro Calvani, agrees.

"The plan has the correct balance between the fight against the
cultivation of the crop and the assistance to the farmers who
cultivate it," Calvani said.

Still, skeptics remain, mostly because of the Colombian government's
history of not following through on its proposals. Plan Colombia
began with high hopes and more emphasis on social spending, but ended
up withdrawing funding from programs when they hit critical stages.
Some analysts fear it's a matter of time before the government shifts
the weight of the funding back toward the military side of the equation.

And even if the plan went ahead as laid out, Rojas wonders whether
the Colombian government can make it work.

"They're putting all the ingredients on the table," she said.

"But to be able to make a good dish, you don't just need ingredients.
You have to know how to mix them together."

Miami Herald Special Correspondent Jenny Carolina Gonzalez
contributed to this report.