How the U.S. Is Quietly Undermining Colombia's Fragile Peace Process

[Judi Lynn]

Through its reckless war on drugs, the U.S. is escalating tension and violence.

CRUZ BONLARRON MARTÍNEZ AND EVAN KING DECEMBER 23, 2020



Thousands march in support of the Colombian government-FARC peace deal on October 7, 2016 in Medellin, Colombia.
FREDY BUILES/VIEWPRESS/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Colom­bia made an unex­pect­ed entrance into the 2020 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion when its far-right politi­cians endorsed Pres­i­dent Trump, and Biden defend­ed his role in craft­ing Plan Colom­bia in an op-ed in El Tiem­po, one of the largest news­pa­pers in Colom­bia. Even still, the role of the Unit­ed States in Colom­bia, the fourth largest coun­try in the West­ern Hemi­sphere, remains large­ly a mys­tery to most North Americans.

But in Colom­bia, the role the Unit­ed States plays in the coun­try is part of the dai­ly news cycle?—?and is a top­ic of inter­est in the every­day lives of Colom­bians. This role has been most pro­nounced in the U.S. coun­ternar­cotics pol­i­cy in the coun­try for the past few decades. Under the Trump admin­is­tra­tion this pol­i­cy has been mixed with ani­mos­i­ty toward the 2016 peace agree­ment between the Colom­bian Gov­ern­ment and the country’s largest left-wing guer­ril­la group, the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia (FARC).

Entrap­ping Peace Negotiators
After more than 50 years of civ­il war, the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment and the FARC agreed to put an end to a dead­ly armed con­flict that left over 262,000 peo­ple dead and rough­ly 7 mil­lion inter­nal­ly dis­placed. The agree­ment con­sist­ed of sev­er­al key points aimed at begin­ning the process of build­ing real and sus­tain­able peace. One of these points includ­ed basic con­di­tions for the polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion of the for­mer FARC guer­ril­las and their lead­ers. The agree­ment guar­an­teed 10 seats in Colombia’s con­gress to for­mer FARC guer­ril­la lead­ers, and ded­i­cat­ed an entire chap­ter to a nation­wide project to allow small-scale coca, pop­py and mar­i­jua­na farm­ers to vol­un­tar­i­ly sub­sti­tute their illic­it crops in exchange for social invest­ment and gov­ern­ment-spon­sored sub­sti­tu­tion programs.

The most direct inter­fer­ence of the U.S. gov­ern­ment is still being uncov­ered in the form of a Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion (DEA) oper­a­tion that involved top FARC peace nego­tia­tors and Colom­bian Vice Pres­i­dent Óscar Naran­jo, and even led to the tap­ping of then-sit­ting Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Juan Manuel San­tos’ phone.

More:
https://inthesetimes.com/article/colombia-war-on-drugs-peace-process-trump-biden-dea

[Judi Lynn]

1. More from the article:

Forced Erad­i­ca­tion
Harm­ful inter­ven­tion is also evi­dent in the U.S. government’s sup­port for forced Coca erad­i­ca­tion. The Nation­al Com­pre­hen­sive Pro­gram for the Sub­sti­tu­tion of Illic­it Crops is one of the cor­ner­stones of the Colom­bian peace agree­ment, aimed at putting an end to the country’s 53-year armed con­flict. The sub­sti­tu­tion pro­gram is part of a broad­er rur­al devel­op­ment agree­ment aimed at alle­vi­at­ing the social and eco­nom­ic inequities that led to the armed con­flict in the first place. This alter­na­tive strat­e­gy sought to work hand-in-hand with small grow­ers and rur­al com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­try to man­u­al­ly erad­i­cate coca plants. The vol­un­tary sub­sti­tu­tion pro­gram has proven far more effec­tive than the heavy-hand­ed, mil­i­ta­rized approach­es being pushed by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Despite the lack of polit­i­cal will by the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Iván Duque Márquez, the nation­wide pro­gram has already led to the vol­un­tary erad­i­ca­tion of over 100,000 acres of coca by fam­i­lies enrolled in the pro­gram, with a stag­ger­ing­ly low 0.4% rate of recidi­vism, accord­ing to a recent UN report.

But the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has tak­en steps to under­mine this pro­gram. On Sep­tem­ber 13, 2017, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion threat­ened to place Colom­bia on a ​“black­list” of coun­tries deemed to not be doing enough to counter the glob­al drug trade. Coun­tries that are decer­ti­fied face a range of U.S. sanc­tions, includ­ing the sus­pen­sion of all U.S. for­eign assis­tance not direct­ly relat­ed to anti-nar­cotics pro­grams. This would also include sus­pen­sion of all assis­tance relat­ed to the peace accord implementation.

The threat of ​“de-cer­ti­fi­ca­tion” was made to put extra pres­sure on the right-wing Duque admin­is­tra­tion to dou­ble down on forced erad­i­ca­tion poli­cies, which send U.S.-trained mil­i­tary com­man­dos to man­u­al­ly erad­i­cate coca crops in rur­al areas. These kinds of oper­a­tions vio­late the vol­un­tary sub­sti­tu­tion pacts signed by near­ly 125,000 coca-grow­ing fam­i­lies. They have also led to hor­rif­ic human rights vio­la­tions, as hap­pened in 2017 in Tandil, Tuma­co when state secu­ri­ty forces opened fire on demon­stra­tors, indis­crim­i­nate­ly killing at least eight pro­test­ers and injur­ing at least 50 more.

A month after his elec­tion in 2018, under pres­sure from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Pres­i­dent Duque announced plans to go even fur­ther by rein­stat­ing aer­i­al glyphosate fumi­ga­tions. This tac­tic involves crop dust­ing entire vil­lages with an indus­tri­al-grade weed killer known as RoundUp?—?a Mon­san­to prod­uct declared in 2015 to be ​“prob­a­bly car­cino­genic” by the Inter­na­tion­al Agency for Research on Can­cer (IARC), which is part of the World Health Organization.