Andean Counterdrug Initiative

DISAM Journal, Wntr, 2003 by Richard Armitage

[The following is a reprint of the speech presented to the U.S. Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Washington, D.C., September 17, 2002.]

We asked for $731 million in fiscal year 2003 for this program and we in turn owe you a discussion and demonstration that this is a wise investment that will be well-spent. As a Vietnam veteran, I consider it crucial to start off with this point: this is not our war. It is not our war in the sense that we have no intention of putting American soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines into combat in the war on drugs. The Byrd Amendment does give us the ability to have up to 400 military and 400 civilian personnel in the field at any given time, and as of July 2002, we had 170 U.S. military personnel and 228 U.S. civilian contractors in Colombia in support of Andean Counterdrug Initiative. These individuals are providing advice, support, and training of human-rights vetted military units and that is all.

Make no mistake, this is our war in the sense that it is the U.S. domestic appetite for illegal drugs that helps sustain the Andean region's misery. According to Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Americans consumed about 259 metric tons of cocaine and 13 metric tons of heroin at a cost of more than 45 billion dollars in the year 2000. Almost 90 percent of the cocaine and over half of the heroin trafficked to the United States that year came from Colombia alone. We have a responsibility to address our own substance abuse problem in this country, but we also have a responsibility to address the problems our people help create in the Andean countries that are the major sources of supply. And the problems are serious and extensive. The narcotics trade imposes a very high cost on the ordinary citizens of the region, particularly in Colombia. Moreover, the cost to ordinary citizens has risen dramatically as organized, armed groups have joined the drug trade.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and also to a lesser extent the National Liberation Army (ELN) may bill themselves as opposition or anti-guerrilla movements, but over the last decade they have increasingly made the leap into criminal activity. These are narcotics traffickers, plain and simple. We estimate that the FARC and the AUC derive as much as 70 percent of their income from the drug trade whether it is protection money paid by cocoa leaf growers or direct involvement in cultivation and sales. And these groups use terror as a tactic to keep the money flowing and the population and politicians in line. They have earned the label this nation has given them as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

Having said that, I do not mean to suggest that these groups are terrorist organizations with global reach; they are not. This is not al Qaeda or Hizballah. But the reach of their drugs is certainly global, and their nefarious means and ends to protect that trade are consistent with the methods of other terrorist groups. And it is the civilian population that has borne the brunt of these methods. Last year, more than 3,000 Colombians lost their lives in the crossfire; another 3,000 were kidnapped and held for ransom, including children. A far greater number by more than a factor of ten fled the violence and left their homes, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Of course, the FARC and the AUG have singled out politicians for special intimidation the FARC has threatened to kill every mayor in the country. But consider what the actions of this group mean to ordinary citizens: all it takes is to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to become a victim in Colombia. It is not safe to drive down the roads outside of any city you can be kidnapped anywhere, at any time. It is not safe to be in the same city as a political leader: last month, the FARC fired mortar shells in an attempt to assassinate President Uribe at his inauguration; all missed the mark and killed 21 people in a poor neighborhood of Bogota. It is not safe to live in your own town: in May, a FARC-fired mortar shell landed on the roof of a church in Bojaya, killing 119 villagers who had taken refuge there in an attempt to escape the fighting.

It is understandable that the people in the region are tired of this, and no place more so than in Colombia. So it follows that in the last elections, the people of Colombia gave Alvaro Uribe and his party a large margin of victory and a strong mandate for change. The United States, in turn, needs to give President Uribe the opportunity and the tools to be successful not because we owe it to him or because we like him, but because success is our goal.

In turn, the Government of Colombia has to meet its own obligations. Quite simply, U.S. funds cannot be a substitute for a commitment on the part of the people of Colombia. And indeed, the government of Colombia has put in place key reforms and spent or mobilized $3 billion dollars-worth of projects in support of Plan Colombia, everything from building roads to providing humanitarian assistance to supporting local eradication efforts.