Author
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Topic: As predicted, Plan Colombia has failed
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'lance
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1064
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posted 05 August 2003 11:38 AM
quote: Three years ago this summer, President Clinton signed a $1.3 billion spending bill for "Plan Colombia," aimed at curbing violence in Colombia and drug abuse in the United States. Don't expect festive anniversary celebrations this summer, though, in either the barrios and rural villages of Colombia or the overburdened drug rehab centers here. The Bush Administration has invoked the ubiquitous terrorism justification to try to keep this floundering policy going, but concerns are mounting. The bulk of the 2000 aid package paid for helicopters and training for a Colombian counterdrug brigade, as well as spray planes to fumigate fields of coca, the raw ingredient in the cocaine that provides some of the guerrillas' funding. The policy objectives have not been met, but Congress has provided hundreds of millions of dollars more each year and extended the plan's mission. ... Today, the guerrillas and paramilitaries continue to participate in the drug trade and kill, kidnap and torture civilians, particularly in the Putumayo and Arauca regions targeted by US policy. Since last summer, an average of nineteen people have been killed every day for political reasons, compared with an average of fifteen each day during the year before Plan Colombia. The United Nations and State Department both report that Colombian security forces are still working with the paramilitaries and directly committing abuses of their own. Last year, the FARC killed nine local mayors and forced hundreds to resign, while the paramilitaries were responsible for most of the 184 assasinations of trade unionists--by far the highest rate in the world. The number of internal refugees increased sharply, with some estimates showing nearly a million people fleeing their homes during the three years of Plan Colombia. The Justice Department reported in January that cocaine continued to be "widely available" in the United States. Efforts to combat drugs at the source have only managed to shift coca to new regions and back to old ones, as the law of supply and demand has kept total coca cultivation in the Andean region at around 200,000 hectares (540,000 acres) for fifteen years.
And so forth.
From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001
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DrConway
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 490
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posted 05 February 2004 04:53 AM
Well, Plan Colombia certainly hasn't helped one whit to deal with what is now being called an incipient humanitarian 'crisis' by the United Nations. quote: A senior UN official has said Colombia is facing the world's worst humanitarian crisis outside Africa.The Assistant UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Kamel Morjane, said the situation was only worse in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. Between two and three million people have been forced from their homes in Colombia's 39-year civil war. The UN official urged the international community not to ignore the crisis and pledged to press donors for more aid. "Internally displaced people in Colombia are one of, if not the worst humanitarian crisis in the western hemisphere," Mr Morjane said after a trip to Colombia and Ecuador. "I felt I was in one of the most impoverished African countries, it was shocking to see the conditions they live in," Agence France Presse news agency quoted him as saying.
From: You shall not side with the great against the powerless. | Registered: May 2001
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