Writing over at Znet, David Martin has an article on the failures of America's anti-narcotics strategy in Colombia to achieve its stated aims:

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Last week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia, the region's largest recipient of US aid, where she praised Plan Colombia as "very successful." In 2000, Congress passed "Plan Colombia" with the stated purpose of reducing the supply of cocaine to the US. Five years and $4 billion later (80 percent, or $3.2 billion, of which went to Colombian military), Plan Colombia is set to expire. But the Bush Administration has already requested $600 million in the budget to continue funding it. As Rice said on her visit to Colombia, "You don't stop in midstream on something that has been very effective."

But exactly how "effective" has Plan Colombia been? Before the American people are asked to continue spending $2 million a day on aid to Colombia, they should take a closer at the Plan.

If Plan Colombia was intended to reduce the supply of cocaine, raise its cost, and therefore, cut the numbers of users, then the program has been a costly failure. After five years, the price of cocaine is lower, and the number of cocaine users is growing. According to a recent unclassified report from the National Drug Intelligence Center, "key indicators of domestic cocaine availability show stable or slightly increased availability in drug markets throughout the country."

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American soldiers, in fact, have been tied to the same drug trade the US is supposed to be fighting, according to this Guardian story.

And today comes word some US soldiers may be involved in shipping amunition to right-wing paramilitaries, according to this story in the Toronto Star.

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CARMEN DE APICALA, Colombia — Colombian police arrested two U.S. soldiers for alleged involvement in a plot to traffic thousands of rounds of ammunition - possibly to outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups, authorities said today.

The two soldiers were detained during a raid Tuesday in a gated community in Carmen de Apicala, 80 kilometres southwest of the capital and near Colombia's sprawling Tolemaida airbase, where the detained soldiers worked and where many U.S. servicemen are stationed.

[snip]

The Colombian Attorney General's Office said the arrested American soldiers had been in contact with a former Colombian police sergeant, Will Gabriel Aguilar, who has been linked to paramilitary groups. Aguilar, another retired policeman and two other Colombians were also arrested, the police official said.

The cache was composed of more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition sent to Colombia by the United States under its Plan Colombia aid program, aimed at crushing a leftist insurgency and the drug trafficking that fuels it, officials said.

[snip]

The Attorney General's Office has formally opened an investigation into arms trafficking against those arrested. However, Colombian Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio said the two Americans will not face Colombian justice because they are protected under a 1974 treaty that gives U.S. servicemen working here diplomatic immunity status.

Jairo Clopatofsky, a member of the Colombian Senate's foreign relations committee, said the treaty is allowing U.S. soldiers to commit crimes here with impunity. He is leading a move to amend the pact.

"Colombia's hands are tied by this treaty, which prohibits us from bringing any of these U.S. military members to justice," he said.

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The same immunity protects those charged with the drug smuggling from being extradited to Colombia, btw.

But the Army is the paramilitary.

Note they were to have been dealing with a retired soldier with paramilitary connections.

Retired my ass.

It seems they think that there may be a policy wherein the US government surreptitiously supports the paramilitaries, and don't want the Colombian government to have any control of it.

That would be pretty amazing, since supposedly the US is supporting "democracy" and the paramilitary are drug dealers and mass murderers on a scale of Saddam-plus.

So, today, when these two guys were released and handed over to the US, there was an outcry in Colombia. It is almost impossible for the government to find out what's really going on.

Here's a US take on this:

This certification will permit some temporarily withheld funds to flow to the Colombian military; although, as the press release indicates, "75 percent of assistance to the Colombian Armed Forces [pledged in FY 2004 and 2005] has already been obligated without conditions."

Contradicting Rice's finding, Human Rights Watch found in its 2005
report that

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The government has yet to take credible action to break ties between the military and paramilitary groups. Impunity, particularly with respect to high-level military officials, remains the norm.

[snip]

Paramilitary groups maintain close ties with a number of Colombian military units. The Uribe administration has yet to take effective action to break these ties by investigating and prosecuting high-ranking members of the armed forces credibly alleged to have collaborated with paramilitary groups.

Credible reports indicate that some of the territories from which the military has ejected the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionarias de Colombia, FARC) are now under the control of paramilitary groups, which continue to carry out indiscriminate attacks on the civilian population.

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Human Rights Watch has a report on the Colombian demobilization efforts here: Link.

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And the country’s paramilitaries and guerrillas are far more than a collection of armed individuals fighting for a political cause. They are extremely sophisticated and powerful mafia-like organizations, largely motivated by profit. The paramilitaries have well-entrenched networks that increasingly exert local political control through threats and extortion, and they continue to have close ties with units of the Colombian security forces, which the Colombian government has yet to make meaningful progress in breaking.

In this context, simply disarming paramilitary or guerrilla troops will do little, if anything, to put an end to the violence and abuses of these groups. As long as these groups keep their wealth and power intact, it will be very easy for them to purchase new guns, and replace demobilized fighters with new recruits.

To be effective, demobilization of Colombia’s paramilitaries must advance the larger goal of dismantling the political power, underlying criminal structure, and wealth of these groups. To put an end to their activity, the government needs effective tools to find and seize their wealth and investigate the financing streams and criminal networks with which they may hire new killers. Recent developments described here confirm that the Uribe government has not even sought these tools, let alone put them to use.

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Uribe's requests to visiting members of Congress are specific. To equip an additional aerial drug eradication base will require four Air Tractor fumigation planes, six Huey II helicopters and two Black Hawk helicopters -- costing $120 million. The wish list also calls for two Patrol and Intercept Aircraft at a cost of $22 million. An extra $5 million is needed to extend the Colombian National Police's intelligence intercept program.

[snip]

Today marks the third anniversary of Uribe's presidency. On that day in 2002, guerrillas bombed the Casa Narino presidential palace. A life and death struggle continues against the narco-terrorists in Colombia. With the United States spending $4 billion for Plan Colombia, Uribe may wonder what kind of government he is dealing with that experiences so much trouble approving a small but desperately needed $147 million arms package.

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A lot of the article was the usual nonsense, ie, "the struggle against narcoterrorism" (by the forces of narcogovernment?) and so on.

But this line really caught my attention:

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Uribe has kept his country from becoming filled with global terrorists as the Afghanistan or Iraq of the Western Hemisphere.

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Presumably, he doesn't mean that Saudis could just kinda blend in with Colombians. So, I presume he means Latin Americans.

But Colombia's war has been going on for fifty years. There has never been a foreign contingent there, because it is far too much of a national resistance movement. Colombians don't want Chileans or Bolivians telling them what to do; it is to laugh.

Soldiers of Fortune 500

I'm sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.

Frankly, I think Narco-war is just as worthy a goal a non-aligned Banana republic reduction. Don't you agree?

[ 08 August 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

edited to add

I jsut couldnt resist doing the number thing when I saw you posted last

[ 08 August 2005: Message edited by: Bacchus ]

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Originally posted by Bacchus:
Anything Albright did, does not surprise me in the least actually

edited to add

I jsut couldnt resist doing the number thing when I saw you posted last

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It was funny. I deserved it.

[ 09 August 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Is the Narco war being handled direct by Washington now or are they still ourtsourcing terror to multinationals?

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There's a combination of American troops and private contractors in Colombia handling the counterdrug/counterinsurgency effort. Cuirrently, Dyncorp is the most important player in the aerial fumigation business, as I understand things.

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Colombia is a laboratory experiment for the new wars in Latin America. Last October, the United States Congress authorized an increase of 400 to 800 soldiers on Colombian soil, while there are 600 civilians employed by private military businesses, estimated by some sources at 1,000. One of the most important PMCs in the world, DynCorp alone manages 88 U.S. helicopters and light aircraft, and it has between 100 and 335 employees, a third of whom are U.S. citizens.16

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In the aftermath, the Church has offered to play a mediating role between the government and the armed factions.

Also, the FARC has been accused in the deaths of more than a dozen coca farmers this week.

Meanwhile, Newsweek is questioning the efficacy of 'Plan Colombia' to wipe out coca production in the country:

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[Adam] Isacson [of the Center for International Policy] and other critics say Plan Colombia should redirect the bulk of its resources toward promoting alternative economic-development schemes that give farmers incentives to abandon coca and building more infrastructure to improve their market access for legal crops like yucca and sugar. But that isn't likely to happen any time soon. The head of aerial-fumigation operations at the Colombian anti-narcotics police says he wants an additional six spraying planes and 10 more helicopters to go with the 17 fixed-wing aircraft and 26 helicopters already furnished under Plan Colombia. "We need more aircraft so we can fumigate those crops at least twice a year," says Lt. Col. Henry Gamboa. "We eliminate one harvest with a spraying operation, but each field of coca has the potential to produce at least four harvests each year." If the history of Plan Colombia is anything to go by, the men in uniform will be standing at the head of line when the next batch of U.S. anti-drug assistance is handed out.

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[ 26 August 2005: Message edited by: sgm ]