May 19-25, 2005

slant

Bad Traffick

The disturbing ways our foreign aid money is being spent in Colombia.

by Alisa Giardinelli

"Five American soldiers detained for trafficking cocaine from Colombia to USA." "Senators ask for extradition of American soldiers caught with 16 kilos of cocaine."

During my almost three weeks in Colombia last month, headlines like these dominated the Colombian press. When I returned to the U.S., I hoped to share my outrage over this embarrassing and criminal behavior. Surely, I thought, this incident will have triggered some meaningful media coverage, maybe even a little discussion over why our tax dollars support the presence of American soldiers in Colombia in the first place.

Of course, no one I talked to had heard anything about it. A Lexis-Nexis search confirmed the obvious: Except for just two short wire stories that were filed a couple days after the arrests, American media ignored this story. So, here is a little background.

On March 29, five U.S. soldiers were arrested at an El Paso airbase for trying to smuggle 16 kilos of cocaine, using military aircraft, into the country. American authorities have since refused demands from Colombian officials to extradite the accused, citing an old agreement that grants the soldiers the same diplomatic immunity as embassy workers. In response, one Colombian columnist wrote, "diplomatic immunity does not mean mockery of the law."

William Wood, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, admitted to El Tiempo, Colombia's national newspaper, that this isn't the first time the United States has had to face this type of situation. But as troubling as they are, "los soldados narcotraficantes" are not the main problem. At best, they are an ugly symptom of the real issue — why more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and government contractors are there in the first place.

The culprit is Plan Colombia, which was originally presented to Congress in 2000 as a plan to reduce drug crop cultivation, improve human rights and the rule of law, and promote a peaceful end to a decades-old war. Since then, it has funneled $4 billion into the country, making Colombia the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid outside the Middle East. The Bush Administration wants the amount of aid to continue unchanged in 2006, and Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia three weeks ago as a further sign of support. But at a March conference at Swarthmore College, Adam Isacson, a senior associate at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., characterized current American foreign policy in Colombia as an "awful failure." Why?

Aerial fumigation of coca plants, the raw material for cocaine, destroys food crops and endangers the health and environment of the people who live in those regions. In 2003, a record number of hectares were sprayed with herbicide; the affected area is equal to the entire greater Philadelphia metropolitan region. Yet today, coca production in Colombia remains steady.

U.S. policy has also failed to reach the human rights goals that, on paper, must be met as conditions for Colombia to receive the aid. The United Nations found that in 2003, human rights violations by the Colombian military were on the rise. Those violations include a massacre in San Jose de Apartado on Feb. 21. The military battalion accused of committing the attack receives funding from Plan Colombia.

And that's the crux of the problem. A whopping 80 percent of the aid money — our tax dollars — has gone to Colombia's security forces. And I saw those forces everywhere: the young men patrolling downtown Bogota with German shepherds on short leashes and grenades on their belts, the two dozen cops in storm trooper riot gear regularly posted just outside the university's gates. Rather than instill a sense of safety, these "men with guns," barely old enough to shave, just made me feel more at risk.

One night at a bar in Bogota, I shared a bottle of rum with a group of university students. They asked me earnestly, and with some concern: "What do Americans think of us Colombians?"

Even then, I knew the real truth. I apologized profusely and replied, "Most don't think of you at all."

Alisa Giardinelli is a freelance writer living in Philadelphia. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (750 words), contact Duane Swierczynski, editor in chief, City Paper, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail Duane Swierczynski.