Time to Change Plan Colombia

April 18, 2006

Over the past five years, Congress has spent billions of taxpayer dollars to fight a ‘War on Drugs’. A significant portion of that money has been contributed to a program meant to combat drug production and terrorism in Colombia. While the intentions behind this program are admirable, the results so far have been disappointing. Congress was sold a simplistic solution to a complex equation and the American public is paying the bill.

In 1999, after decades of internal armed conflict, the government of Colombia unveiled a broad strategic plan to restore peace and economic stability to their nation. Through their “Plan Colombia” the Colombian government aimed to end armed conflict with guerilla forces, demobilize the country’s independent paramilitary forces, put an end to cocaine production (which more than doubled from 1996 to 1999), and reduce poverty on a national scale. Plan Colombia was to be implemented over a six year period at a cost of US$7.5 billion. The Colombian Congress approved $3.5 billion of state funding for the plan, and called upon the international community for assistance with the remainder. Seeing an opportunity to expand a key partnership in the War on Drugs, the United States pledged nearly $3.3 billion toward specific elements of Plan Colombia. Since the year 2000, the US Government has spent approximately $2.8 billion of the promised funds to combat drug production and terrorism in Colombia, achieving questionable, and sometimes negative, results.

Each year, over half of Congress’ $463 million appropriation for Plan Colombia is dedicated to the fumigation of coca fields. The bulk of the remainder is applied to interdiction efforts (along with substantial Department of Defense funding), with the last few tens of millions earmarked for alternative economic development programs. The impact of these activities has been closely monitored, not only by the State Department, but also by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). While progress reports from these various organizations generally agree on the numbers, there is substantial disagreement regarding their interpretation.

In order to accurately gauge the success of the United States’ participation in Plan Colombia, the motivation behind that participation must be clearly understood. According to Connie Veillette, the analyst responsible for annual Congressional progress reports on Plan Colombia, the primary objective of US participation in Plan Colombia is “to prevent the flow of illegal drugs into the United States” (2). Her most recent report cites findings by both the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Justice Department which indicate that cocaine availability is stable, with prices steady or falling in major metropolitan areas and about 90% of the product coming from Colombia (3), as opposed to 80% in 1998 (Dudley 211). If US activities in Colombia are successful then we should expect a reduction, rather than an increase, in cocaine traffic from Colombia. While there is some time lag to be expected between production and street sales, the largest reductions in coca leaf cultivation occurred from 2001 to 2002 (UNODC 11), with effectiveness of eradication efforts diminishing thereafter, so at least some results should have been evident by now. But the flow of cocaine into the US from Colombia has been neither stemmed nor slowed, leaving the Congressional mandate unsatisfied. Since current methods fail to meet the objective, spending allocations for Plan Colombia should be changed, before another dollar is wasted on failed drug eradication efforts in Colombia.

From the beginning, US involvement in Colombian affairs has been misguided. Errors in calculation and unintended changes to local politics and economies have complicated the situation and reduced the role of the United States to that of one more sorry combatant in a foreign civil war that has seen open hostilities for decades. These mistakes began even before Plan Colombia was officially adopted.
Early military involvement in Colombia began with an extension of the extradition treaty between the US and Colombia to include active interdiction efforts by US forces operating in Colombia. These counter-narcotics efforts garnered public support for the program, largely due to many high-profile arrests of narcotics traffickers, and the breaking of the Cali and Medellín drug cartels, which held an almost monopolistic grip on cocaine traffic into the United States. Unfortunately, this action created a power void which was eagerly filled by Colombia’s several organized militant groups (Dudley 211). Foremost among these are the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who assumed control of major plantations and today control more than 50% of the world’s cocaine supply, according to BBC News (1).

With most of the cocaine supply dominated by relatively powerful militant groups occupying mountain or jungle strongholds, the supply chain adopted a new model. The cocaine trafficking industry was divided among dozens of smaller enterprises. Dr. Marina Chumakova, of the Center for Politological Studies, Institute of Latin America, estimates there may be as many as 160 of these “mini-cartels” (102). Today’s drug traffickers maintain a much lower profile than their predecessors, making them harder to find and capture. Dealers make rounds through areas controlled by the FARC or paramilitaries, and purchase from individual growers who then pay a tax (as much as 30%) to local military commanders (Villalón 44). With so many traffickers, further arrests have a negligible effect on the supply chain. By breaking up the monopolies, US interdiction efforts created a more competitive market for cocaine trafficking, with an ease of entry that assures there will be no shortage of enterprising individuals willing to take a little risk for a lot of money.
US efforts at drug interdiction in Colombia continued from 1996 to 2001, during which time cocaine production in Colombia more than tripled (Vaicius 11). In August of 2002, following the failure of interdiction strategies, Congress broadened the counter-narcotics program to include counter-terrorism activities that are now primarily directed by the Department of Defense (Vaicius 2). This reassignment of forces amounts to a passive admission by Congress of the disastrous consequences of the US’ attempt at military interdiction in cocaine trafficking. Military support today is limited to a training and advisory capacity. While counter-terrorism action in Colombia has significant implications for the cocaine industry, further military action in Colombia no longer follows the main objective of US participation in Plan Colombia and so falls outside the purview of this paper and must be debated elsewhere.

Following the move of counter-narcotics forces from the War on Drugs to the War on Terror, efforts to eradicate cocaine at the source were dramatically increased, with fumigation of coca fields reaching a peak in 2004. Significant increases were also made to alternative development programs, although they remained at a marginal level when compared to the $240 million annual fumigation budget. This overall shift in focus certainly demonstrates hindsight regarding interdiction, but also shows a continued failure to understand the true nature of cocaine production in Colombia. Fumigation is an inadequate and wholly inappropriate weapon in the War on Drugs, yet accounts for over $240 million in annual spending. Meanwhile, alternative development programs are neglected, save the occasional token budgetary allotment in the name of political expediency.

Fumigation then, is Congress’ favored program in Colombia. Federal reports routinely cite “record levels of spraying” as a means to measure the success of the fumigation program in Colombia. Encouraged by early successes in spraying the massive plantations of the Cali and Medellín cartels, bureaucrats have increased the number of acres sprayed every year through 2004, and maintained a similar level in 2005 (Veillette 6). In 2004, over 337,000 acres of coca plantation were sprayed, but overall cultivation decreased by fewer than 14,000 acres, or just over 4% (UNODC 11). The United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC) attributes this low success rate to replanting and expansion by coca farmers (11).

In order to avoid aerial spraying, farmers have used several tactics. Cultivated field size has been reduced, and about 40% of coca farmers reportedly grow mixed crops to alter the appearance of their fields from the air (54). The UNODC report for 2004 gives an average field size of less than 7.5 acres, too small to be effectively identified from aerial and satellite imagery (Veillette 7). Farmers are also moving deeper into the jungle each year. The FARC estimates an expansion rate of nearly 30,000 acres per year just within the confines of their Caquetá stronghold (Villalón 48). The Human Rights Ombudsman for Putumayo (Colombia’s most heavily sprayed region) said in an interview with the Witness for Peace program that “fumigations are no longer affecting a large percentage of coca crops because they are now situated deep in the jungle and are more difficult for pilots to detect” (WFP 2). Finally, map plots of UNODC surveys taken from 2000 through 2004 show a clear consolidation of coca fields into areas controlled by rebels and paramilitaries, including 13 out of Colombia’s 50 National Parks (UNODC 40). In addition to increasing mobility and decreasing field size, farmers are planting more plants per acre, averaging an increase of between 2,400 and 12,200 plants (WFP 2), as well as planting a higher-yield variety of coca, which has increased their productivity from 4.0 pounds of pure cocaine per acre to nearly 5.8 pounds, according to estimates from the Colombian Anti-Narcotics Directive (UNODC 520). This potential increase in productivity of nearly 45% per acre easily compensates for the reported decrease in acres cultivated between 2003 and 2004. The farmers appear to be winning. As they expand their coca plantations in small fields, which are difficult to locate and destroy, under the protection of armed militant groups, fumigation becomes increasingly ineffective.

The continued funding of fumigation programs in light of their ineffectiveness is regrettable. Continued funding of these programs in spite of the harm they do is reprehensible. The fumigation program uses a broad-spectrum, general herbicide called glyphosate. The UNODC, as well as the US and Colombian governments have all performed human toxicity tests on glyphosate and unanimously found it to be safe for humans (UNODC 63). However, glyphosate kills plants indiscriminately. Applications of less than 10 micrograms per plant have been shown to be toxic to many wild plant species, but the concentration used per acre in coca fumigation is calculated to apply well over 100 times that amount to every plant in the spray zone (UNODC 63). Aerial sprays have also been shown to give average drifts of 1200 to 2500 feet, and even ground spraying can damage plants up to 300 feet away (Greenpeace 1). After the farmers are driven further into the jungle, burning as they go, the airplanes fumigate a wide swath of vegetation around them and the result is accelerated destruction of the tropical rain forest.

In areas closer to civilization, aerial spraying has caused significant “collateral damage”. In 2002, the US Ambassador to Colombia warned, “There is no longer any distinction between ‘small’ and the ‘industrial’ plots. If you grow coca, the Colombian Police will spray it” (Vaicius 7). During that same year, the Center for International Policy (CIP) declared a humanitarian emergency in the department (similar to state) of Putumayo, where thousands of peasants were either going hungry or joining a mass exodus from the region after having their food crops destroyed when smaller coca fields in the area were fumigated. CIP quotes one local leader, “They [the government] broke their promises to us and now there is hunger. Many of us believe they want to expel us and take our land” (Vaicius 7). In 2005 the US Agency for International Development (USAID) reported that dozens of participants in one of their alternative development projects were sprayed, even though coca had already been eradicated from the area (WFP 3). Rancher Roger Hernandez told Witness for Peace (WFP):

I have never liked the idea of producing coca. I was one of the few, from the very beginning, who opposed the trade and lobbied my fellow farmers to voluntarily eradicate at the time of the social pacts. My whole life I have been an enemy of coca. But they fumigated me too, three times. The fumigations program has ruined my life, my legal dairy business. I want you to ask your government what they gain by fumigating an honest cattle farmer like me. (2)

In anticipation of the damage that would be caused by spraying, the US government established a program to compensate farmers whose legal crops were destroyed by the fumigation project (Vaicius 6). However, WFP reports that by June of 2005, over 8,000 claims had been filed, of which government officials had estimated 50 to 60 percent to be legitimate. Only 11 claims had ever been paid, and only one of those was from the hardest-hit department, Putumayo (3). Farmers whose legitimate crops are deliberately destroyed without compensation have little or nothing left to lose by converting their fields to coca.

During the years I lived in Colombia (1995 to 1997), most of the farmers I knew experienced one or two growing seasons per year, depending on the crop they were cultivating. When a hurricane destroyed most of those crops in 1996, many of the farms along the coast were abandoned. The farmers were devastated financially. Many of my friends fled to the interior of the country seeking a better life, while others succumbed to the offer of easy money from local paramilitary branches and joined the drug guerilla. The destruction of food crops by aerial spraying has the same effect on farmers and their families. Because coca plants can produce as many as six harvests in one year, and can recover from spraying in six months or less (UNODC 63), it should come as a surprise to none that coca is becoming the crop of choice for displaced farmers.

The relative speed with which coca fields are recovered after spraying, coupled with new tactics employed by farmers to reduce the effectiveness of aerial spraying has rendered the practice obsolete. Fumigation is inadequate to combat changing cultivation techniques in the coca fields of Colombia. The financial ruin, hunger, and desperation visited on many Colombian families as a consequence of fumigation are unjustifiable consequences in any cause, and are especially so in relatively ineffective attempts to eradicate scattered fields of illegal crops. Aerial spraying is an inappropriate tactic for a nation that claims to place a high value on individual life and liberty. Congress should render immediate assistance to families whose livelihood has been destroyed, and put a stop to the massive fumigation program that is laying waste to families and rainforest throughout Colombia.

By favoring harmful eradication techniques in their budget allocations, Congress has also managed to obscure the one bright spot in their endorsement of Plan Colombia, the funding of alternative development programs. The UNODC opinion states that “the sustainability of the eradication efforts depends to a large extent on the real alternatives open to the farmers and to the displacement of the cultivation into new and more remote areas of the country” (63). Indeed, in the few areas that have received substantial alternative development funding, the results have been astonishing. Over one million jobs were created in 2003 alone (Chumakova 104). USAID accounts for 40,791 acres of land converted to legitimate food crops in 2004 (suggesting that the overall decrease of approximately 14,000 acres reflects an increase in cultivation under areas sprayed) and over 136,000 acres converted since 2001 (Veillette 6). Under the Families in Action program 710,000 children in 330,000 families spread across 627 rural municipalities received nutritional, medical, and educational assistance (Colombia Informe 3). The Youth in Action program has resulted in a 12% increase in high school attendance among rural teens, and almost 6% among urban youth (3). The program Microempresarias has helped almost 9,000 women across the country to start their own businesses, and looks to expand operations significantly in the coming year (9). All of these programs have real impact on the lives of ordinary people in Colombia, the same people who grow and process cocaine when they have no alternatives available.

Although there is great disparity in the disbursement of alternative development funds compared to aerial spraying of coca fields, a comparison of those numbers with local changes in coca cultivation revealed a strong correlation for both factors over the life of the program (UNODC 49). Every $250 budgeted to alternative development programs has had the same impact on local coca cultivation as one acre sprayed. But alternative development programs have no collateral damage, only collateral beneficiaries. Sadly, such programs also lack powerful lobbyists in Congress, so the politically popular fumigation program has led to the spraying of 594,009 acres at a total cost exceeding $2000 per acre (UNODC 49, Veillette 1), even though alternative development programs eliminate local coca fields permanently at a cost only 1/8 that of fumigation, which at best only relocates farmers to more remote areas. An April, 2006 press release by the ONDCP illustrates the relocation caused by fumigation.

The effect of the coca eradication program was to reduce the amount of production in traditional growing areas and force producers, which include illegal armed groups such as the FARC, to more isolated fields where expenses associated with transportation and start-up increase the production cost and reduce potential profit. (2)

Their statement also showed a 12% increase in areas which have not been sprayed, and 39,000 acres of previously undiscovered coca fields for which they account through the migration of coca farmers displaced by the eradication program, giving a total of 355,680 acres of coca cultivation for 2005 (1). The potential cocaine production of this cultivation is estimated at 545 metric tons of pure cocaine annually, a figure surpassed only by the two highest years of Colombian cocaine production, 2000 and 2001, at the beginning of the fumigation program(1).

While alternative development programs can account specifically for over 40,000 acres of land converted from coca to food crops in each year, fumigation apparently accounts only for the relocation of a similar amount of coca cultivation from existing fields to virgin rainforest. The ONDCP claims success because they have increased the cost of farming coca, but the price of the leaves grown by these farmers constitutes less than 1% of the retail price of cocaine (Veillette 4). The traffickers have adapted to the higher cost of transporting coca by traveling through each area only periodically, buying and transporting product in bulk (Villalón 47). The farmers have adapted to this situation by converting the leaves to cocaine base themselves (40). They can then store their harvests for longer periods of time and transport more coca in less space. This also increases the price they can charge traffickers, who no longer have to handle the first stage of processing. In one remote area of Caquetá, Carlos Villalón, a photojournalist with extensive field experience in rural Colombia, found villages where cash had been replaced with cocaine base, which was measured out in grams as hard currency (40). Before the FARC had moved into that area, the village suffered from poverty and violence, but under their command the cocaine industry has become regulated, social services are provided to a higher degree than in many other, more urban, municipalities, and the streets are quiet and safe at night (43). These farmers have very little incentive to stop producing coca, or to abandon their support of the FARC.

To date then, coca suppliers as a group have successfully countered every attempt to forcibly limit production. In fact, it appears that coca farmers have more incentive than ever to cultivate the illegal crop. While cocaine base sold in Colombia for US$1000 per kilogram in 2003, more recent reports put the price at about US$830 per kilogram (UNODC 56). This decrease in price is a sign that cultivators are actually flourishing under the present system, and that it is time to stop wasting money on current methods of eradication. As Connie Veillette points out, “The interdiction of the final product, rather than the raw ingredients, imposes greater costs on traffickers” (4). The destruction of $1000 worth of coca leaf in Colombia places a hardship on a family without a viable alternative means of support, while that same amount of coca, once processed and smuggled to the United States, carries a street value of approximately $150,000, with actual production costs ranging in the tens of thousands of dollars (4). If a coca farm is sprayed, the traffickers buy elsewhere. If a major shipment of processed cocaine is captured, a trafficker may be out of business. And if the farmers can make a better living growing something else, they will abandon coca cultivation, as demonstrated by the success of alternative development programs in Colombia.

Cocaine production and smuggling will continue so long as an economic incentive exists. That incentive is greatest for those who draw the highest profit, the traffickers. Negligible increases to the marginal production cost of coca farmers does very little to reduce the profit made by traffickers, while late-stage interdiction has a substantial impact on their bottom line. The place to find and destroy cocaine is in our own ports, not the fields of Colombia, if we wish to make a real economic impact on cocaine trafficking. The incentive to farmers who grow cocaine is even easier to remove. Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars to physically harass farmers who receive less than 1% of cocaine revenues, a few well-placed investments to offer viable alternatives can provide all the encouragement they need to abandon the cultivation of illegal drugs.

Congress has spent nearly $3 billion over five years in an attempt to put a stop to drug smuggling from Colombia to the United States. Very little of that money has been allocated to programs that have produced positive results and the majority of funding was given to fumigation programs that have done nothing to limit cocaine production, but have instead caused grievous harm to the environment and population of Colombia. The objective has not been met. The price of cocaine in the US has not increased, nor has its availability decreased, and the proportion of cocaine coming into our country from Colombia is higher than ever before. This experiment has failed. Most of the funding has been wasted. It is time for Congress to stop funding the fumigation of coca plantations and commit to more effective use of our tax dollars in the fight against illegal drugs. It is time to change our involvement in Plan Colombia.

Works Cited

BBC News. US Charges Colombia Rebel Leaders (22 March 2006). <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/Americas/4835042.stm> Last accessed 13 April 2006. 2 pages.

Chumakova, M. “Colombia between Two Fires: Drug Business and Terrorism.” International Affairs 51.2 (2005): 101-108.

Colombia. Presidencia Consejeria Para la Equidad de la Mujer. Informe del Estado para la Trigésima Octava Reunión de CEPAL (September 2005). 9 pages.

Dudley, Steven. Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia. Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2003.

Greenpeace. Glyphosate Fact Sheet (2002). <http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/media/factsheets/glyphosatetext.htm> Last accessed 12 April 2006. 3 pages.

Office of National Drug Control Policy. 2005 Coca Estimates for Colombia 14 April 2006. <http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/news/press06/041406.html> Last accessed 16 April 2006. 2 pages

United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Colombia: Coca Cultivation Survey (June 2005). 96 pages.

Vaicius, Ingrid and Adam Isacson. “The ‘War on Drugs’ meets the ‘War on Terror’” CIP International Policy Report February 2003. <http://ciponline.org/colombia/0302ipr.htm> Last accessed 12 April 2006. 25 pages.

Veillette, Connie. Plan Colombia: A Progress Report (May 2005). 17 Pages.

Villalón, Carlos. “Cocaine Country” National Geographic July 2004: 34-55.

Witness for Peace. Rethinking Plan Colombia: Fumigations Strategy Fails to Achieve Stated Policy Goals (22 June 2005). <http://witnessforpeace.org/campaigns/ rethinking_plan_colombia.html> Last accessed 12 April 2006. 5 pages.

Works Referenced

Colombia. Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace, Prosperity, and the Strengthening of the State (September 1999). 19 pages.

Haugaard, Lisa, et al. Blueprint for a New Colombia Policy (March 2005). 24 pages.

Noriega, Roger F. “Plan Colombia: Major Successes and New Challenges” Statement Before the House International Relations Committee (11 May 2005). <http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/rm/2005/q2/46564.htm> Last accessed 12 April 2006. 4 pages.