P L A N* C O L O M B I A
BEFORE
PLAN COLOMBIA
Situation
in the U.S.
Situation in Colombia
Policy Before Plan Colombia
PLAN
COLOMBIA
Role
of the U.S.
Military Mission
Coca Eradication
RESULTS
OF PLAN COLOMBIA
Ecological
Devastation
Socio-Economic Devastation
Cultural Devastation
A
CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE
Plan
Colonia
Parallels: Colombia and Vietnam?
By.
Carmen Guhn-Knight
cmguhnkn@mtholyoke.edu
Updated 05.05.06.
With Thanks To Mount Holyoke College
and Thanks to the Beehive
Design Collective
for the Black and White Cartoons
Plan Colombia:
President Pastrana worked closely with President Clinton to produce Plan Colombia, resulting in overpowering input from the U.S. In fact, the final draft of Plan Colombia was written in English and a Spanish copy was not made available until months after the plan had been implemented.[6] Initially, funds for plan Colombia were supposed to come from a variety of sources, including a large donation from the EU. However, the EU backed out because it disapproved of the U.S.’ militaristic donations.[9]
Plan Colombia was supposed to address narco-trafficking, the civil war in Colombia, and economic underdevelopment. Intense neo-liberal privatization, peace talks with insurgency groups, and manual coca eradication were advertised as the means to accomplish the plan. In reality, U.S. funds were allocated to the Colombian government’s autodefensas and Plan Colombia became a coca fumigation and anti-FARC (misnamed ‘narco-guerillas’) endeavor.
The Clinton administration developed Plan Colombia as a harsher continuation of historical U.S. involvement in Colombia. Although this administration was not convinced that the Colombian government’s autodefensas had ended their human rights abuses, the military aid continued to flow.[2] The Leahy Provision, designed to forbid military aid to countries with human rights abuses, was waived by President Clinton in 2000.[11]
Under the Bush administration, Plan Colombia has expanded to Bolivia and Peru and has been renamed the Andean Counterdrug Initiative. The new rhetoric of ‘terrorism’ has explicitly expanded the role of U.S. involvement beyond a counter-narcotics program. This new phase of Plan Colombia also includes a program to reform and increase military security of oil pipelines.[9]
Courtesy
of www.prensarural.org
"As part of the new 'war on terror', the Bush administration has committed itself to an increasingly unilateral and overtly militarized policy of imperial policing throughout the globe." Doug Stokes[11]