Adam Isacson

Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view.

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Illicit Crop Eradication

July 19, 2018 — 0

Video: “The Origins of Cocaine” book event

Here is video of yesterday afternoon’s WOLA event with Paul Gootenberg and Liliana Dávalos of Stony Brook University. They’re the editors of The Origins of Cocaine, a new book that finds a striking overlap between today’s South American coca-growing areas and the zones where governments carried out failed development and colonization projects 50 years ago. I wrote an epilogue to the book looking at the present moment.

The discussion was lively and well informed. Paul is a historian, and Liliana is an evolutionary biologist, which made for a novel combination.

June 26, 2018 — 0

24 years of coca and eradication in Colombia

Over the years I’ve been inadvertently building a big collection of “graphs that need periodic updating, which makes them more complicated.”

This one depicts coca cultivation in Colombia, and efforts to eradicate it, since 1994. There are two measures of coca cultivation, from the United States and the UN. Eradication has mostly occurred through aerial spraying of herbicides (which stopped in 2015) and through manual uprooting or spraying of plants.

New U.S. data came out yesterday, with a stern scolding from the White House. The UN hasn’t issued its 2017 estimate yet, but local media have reported 180,000 hectares last year.

This chart tells quite a story if you stare at it long enough. But my main takeaways are:

  • Aerial herbicide fumigation—the cruelest of the strategies because it anonymously dumps herbicides over small farmers’ legal crops and homes while leaving behind no government presence—is able to reduce coca cultivation from “insanely high” to “moderately high” levels, after which growers adjust and bring cultivation back up to “high” levels.
  • Manual eradication seems to correlate more strongly with reductions in coca growing, and it requires at least some on-the-ground government presence. But it’s dangerous for the eradicators, generates conflict with communities, and growers replant if the government disappears once the eradicators vacate the area.
  • What hasn’t been tried is actually having a functioning government presence on the ground providing public goods (security, roads, land titles) necessary for a legal economy to exist. The FARC peace accord offers one version of a blueprint for how to make that work, and has improved security conditions, for now. But with the accord’s critics waiting to take power on Colombia’s August 7 inauguration day, that blueprint’s future is in doubt.
May 26, 2018 — 0

The past week in Colombia’s peace process

(Week of May 13-19)

Transitional Justice System Suspends Santrich Extradition

The case of FARC leader Seusis Pausias Hernández alias Jesús Santrich, arrested on April 9 with the possibility of extradition to the United States for narcotrafficking, grew more complicated this week. The Review Chamber of the new Special Peace Jurisdiction (JEP, the transitional justice system set up by the peace accord) ordered his extradition suspended. Other entities within Colombia’s government contended that the Chamber doesn’t have the right to do that.

Santrich, a hardliner who represented the FARC at the negotiating table during the entire Havana process, is currently confined at a Bogotá facility run by the Catholic Church’s Episcopal Conference. His health is precarious, as he has been on a hunger strike since his arrest. Santrich is charged by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York with conspiring to send 10 tons of cocaine to the United States.

As he allegedly committed the crime after the peace accord went into effect, Santrich’s case could go to Colombia’s regular justice system, where he would face long prison terms or extradition. First, though, the JEP must determine that the crime did indeed take place after the peace accord’s December 1, 2016 ratification.

That is the task of the JEP’s Review Chamber, which must fulfill it within 120 days. This chamber contended, by a unanimous vote, that fulfilling its duty required a temporary suspension of Santrich’s extradition. The Chamber asked for more evidence of the allegations against the FARC leader, and instructed the “regular” justice system’s Prosecutor-General’s office (Fiscalía) to provide, within five days, information about the extradition process.

Prosecutor-General Néstor Humberto Martínez responded with a strongly worded 16-page letter alleging that the JEP has no authority to freeze an extradition process, adding that the newly formed body’s action “has left democratic institutionally threatened.” And in fact, the director of another body of the JEP, its Investigations and Accusations Unit, tweeted “I separate myself from the extradition suspension decision.”

The Colombian government’s Justice and Interior Ministries responded with a communiqué arguing that the JEP could not suspend Santrich’s extradition because the United States had not formally requested it yet. Colombian law gives countries requesting a citizen’s extradition 60 days to issue a formal request after that citizen has been detained. That would give the U.S. government until June 8 to issue the request. It has not done so, perhaps out of a desire not to appear to be influencing the May 27 presidential election campaign.

The JEP Chamber, however, stated that in its view, “the extradition process has already begun, because a detention for extradition purposes has been requested.”

There is no sense of when the Chamber may issue its determination of when Santrich committed a crime, or whether the Chamber may seek to determine whether there is even enough evidence that a crime took place. “Still, the political effect of the decision is immediate,” wrote Juanita León, director of La Silla Vacía.

Above all when the JEP issues it a few days before elections in which the candidate with the best chances of making it to a second round and reaching the Presidency [Iván Duque of the right-wing Centro Democrático party] proposes to make “adjustments” to the JEP that, in practice, would do away with it.

Debate over whether to extradite Santrich continues. Rodrigo Uprimny, founder of the judicial think-tank DeJusticia, believes Santrich should be tried in Colombia so that he may answer to his victims. An analysis in Semana magazine worries about the effect on ex-guerrillas’ desertion:

In the end, the consequences won’t be those of an ideal transition to peace or a return to the open war of the last decades. The scenario in play is intermediate, and has to do instead with the size of the dissidences that may return to the jungle. In other words, if Santrich’s possible extradition creates uncertainty among guerrillas that increases the number of dissidents, it may be best to allow him to serve his sentence inside the country.

An El Tiempo editorial contends that “rules are rules,” despite Santrich’s victims’ right to learn the truth from him.

It could be proposed that, without leaving aside at any moment the importance of the truth, the precept must come first that whoever doesn’t comply with the agreed rules must pay for it.

This, the editorial clarifies, only applies if the evidence against Santrich “leaves no doubt about his criminal conduct.” If so, “there would be no reason to insist that this [his extradition] poses an insurmountable obstacle to the implementation of what was agreed in Havana.”

Government Will Miss Its Coca Substitution Target

The Colombian government recognized on May 15 that it will not meet its target, set for this month, of 50,000 hectares of coca eradicated by growers voluntarily destroying their crops in exchange for economic assistance. That was the one-year goal the Presidency had set for its implementation of chapter 4 of the Havana peace accord, which establishes a national crop substitution program.

In fact, the program fell significantly short. Eduardo Díaz, the director of the crop substitution program, announced that families participating in the program had eradicated 36,000 hectares, of which 11,700 have actually been verified by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The U.S. government measured 188,000 hectares in Colombia in 2016, and media have reported that the U.S. estimate for 2017 could be as high as 230,000. (UNODC’s 2016 estimate was 146,000, and media reports point to 180,000 in 2017.) The government forcibly eradicated 53,000 hectares in 2017.

Díaz blamed security conditions for the shortfall. He told CNN en Español, “In different zones where there are crops, narcotraffickers’ networks have advanced, have killed communities, have killed leaders, have threatened government officials and UN officials.”

Independent analysts place more blame on the slow performance of the Colombian bureaucracy. The idea of the government’s National Comprehensive Illicit Crop Substitution Program (PNIS, the main focus of the accord’s chapter 4) was to provide small-scale coca-growing households with two years’ worth of payments and help with productive projects in exchange for eradicating their coca. The economic benefits for each household would total about US$12,000 over two years. This week, the Ideas for Peace Foundation released a detailed report and dataset (Excel file) laying out the progress of the PNIS program as of March 31. In sum:

  • 123,225 families had signed collective framework community accords agreeing in principle to substitute crops.
  • 62,181 families (50.4 percent of above) had signed specific accords committing to a timetable of voluntary eradication and receipt of benefits.
  • 32,010 families (51.4 percent of above) had received at least one monthly payment.
  • 7,009 families (11 percent of the 62,181) had received any technical assistance to pursue an alternative productive project.
  • UNODC had found (in 2106) 22,025 hectares of coca in the municipalities (counties) where families had begun receiving payments.
  • UNODC had verified and certified the eradication of 6,381 hectares of coca (28.9 percent of above). (This is far fewer than the 11.700 hectare figure that the government substitution program’s Eduardo Díaz had given CNN.)

The report concludes,

The greatest advances of PNIS are found in the signing up of campesinos and the disbursement of payments, while it is falling most behind in technical assistance and in the supply of goods and services. Under those conditions, three months before the end of President Santos’s government, it will be difficult for the program to meet the goal of 50,000 voluntarily eradicated hectares.

The Ideas for Peace report notes that while homicides across Colombia have increased by a troubling 8 percent over this time last year, they are up by a very alarming 57 percent in the municipalities with crop substitution programs.

The Verdad Abierta website visited Briceño, Antioquia, where the PNIS began as a pilot project in 2015. In the coming weeks, the national government is to announce that the municipality’s residents will have eradicated all of their coca, about 567 hectares.

However, Briceño’s farmers told the site that “the campesinos complied, but the government has not.” While monthly payments have come on time, assistance for productive projects has hardly begun. “They did give us the payments, but in the agreement it said that as the payments arrived, then the productive projects to implement them would also arrive, so that we wouldn’t end up the way we are now: with our arms crossed and worried because the money has run out,” said a Community Action Board president.

“The state has a great responsibility with respect to the families who expressed their will to abandon the coca crops and who took part in the substitution process,” the Ideas for Peace report reads. “In the zones where the PNIS began to be developed, the link between populations and the state has been re-established. However, the lack of compliance with what was agreed not only has implications for institutions’ trust and credibility, it generates a risk of re-planting and a possible increase in hectares of coca.”

ELN to Cease Fire During Presidential Voting

The ELN announced that it will cease military activities for five days, from May 25-29, “to contribute to favorable conditions that might permit Colombian society to express itself in the elections” that will take place on May 27.

This raised hopes for a more permanent bilateral cessation of hostilities between government and guerrillas. However, the ELN’s chief negotiator in Havana, Pablo Beltrán, intimated that the group would be unlikely to agree to a ceasefire as long as social leaders continue to be killed at a rapid pace around the country: “We are fully disposed to do a cessation, but what about all the others? It’s not just a call on the military forces, but on paramilitarism, on all these attacks that different popular sectors are receiving.”

Asked about President Juan Manuel Santos’s hope that the ELN talks will leave behind a framework agreement—which, for the next president, would increase the cost of pulling the plug on the talks—Beltrán said that the ELN wants “to leave the accords at such a point of consolidation that any incoming government would have to respect them.” Any advancement, Beltrán added, would have to include more civil society participation; he did not specify what that might look like.

Timoleón Jiménez to Uribe: Let’s Go To the Truth Commission Together

Maximum FARC leader Timoleón Jiménez alias Timochenko published a lengthy communiqué about the status of the peace process on the eve of Colombia’s presidential election. “The peace accord is shielded,” it reads.

That’s what the Constitutional Court understood when it upheld Legislative Act 02 of 2017. The UN Security Council recognizes it. The community of nations accepts it and applauds it. We’re not going to force absolutely anything, the issue is simply to honor what was agreed when the Colombian state and our former insurgency gave our word. The beautiful dream of peace could be an irreversible reality if you [President Santos] decide to act.

Timochenko’s tone contrasts with that of the FARC’s de facto number-two leader, Iván Márquez, who said that if his close collaborator Jesús Santrich dies of a hunger strike while awaiting a possible extradition, his death “would also be the death of the peace process.”

In his statement, Timochenko asked forgiveness of Ingrid Betancourt, Clara Rojas, Sigifredo López, and other civilians whom the FARC held hostage for years. He called on former President Álvaro Uribe to join him in appearing together before the newly established Truth Commission to show the country “what the search for truth and the clarification of the truth look like.” Uribe led an intense military offensive against the FARC during his 2002-2010 presidency, and enjoyed the political support of many backers of right-wing paramilitary groups.

The presidential candidate of Uribe’s party, poll frontrunner Iván Duque, rejected the FARC leader’s invitation. “He can’t come here like a shameless person trying to appear as the equal of a good citizen. Instead, they should give reparations to their victims, tell all the truth, and pay their penalties.”

Military Operations Against FARC Dissidents

A joint Colombian Army-Air Force-Police operation killed 11 members of the FARC’s 7th Front dissident group in Putumayo. Among the dead was a commander named alias “Cachorro,” reportedly a close collaborator of Edgar Salgado, alias “Rodrigo Cadete,” who commanded the FARC’s 27th Front and abruptly abandoned the demobilization process last September. The 7th Front dissidents are a recent presence in Putumayo; they have been most active in Meta and Caquetá.

In Bello, just north of Medellín in Antioquia, an operation carried out by the Army and the Fiscalía captured Henry Arturo Gil Ramírez alias “el Feo” (the Ugly One), a top commander of the 36th Front dissident group.

In-Depth Reading

May 1, 2018 — 0

The past week in Colombia’s peace process

(Still catching up. This is the week of April 15-21.)

Ecuador Will No Longer Host the ELN Negotiations

The president of Ecuador, Lenin Moreno, announced April 18 that his country will no longer host the ongoing peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the ELN. Government representatives and guerrilla leaders had held five rounds of talks in Quito since February 2017. Moreno’s announcement came days after the murder of two Ecuadorian journalists and their driver, whom a group of re-armed FARC guerrillas had abducted in late March on Ecuador’s side of the border with Colombia.

“I have asked the foreign minister of Ecuador to put the brakes on the conversations and put the brakes on our role as a guarantor of the peace process while the ELN does not commit to ending terrorist actions,” Moreno told Colombian cable news network NTN24.

“President Santos understands the reasons why President Moreno has decided to move away from his role as guarantor and host of these negotiations,” Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguín responded, adding that Colombia will seek a new foreign country in which to hold the talks, which have made only very modest progress on their agenda. The candidate leading polls for Colombia’s May 27 presidential election, rightist Iván Duque, endorsed Ecuador’s move: “President Moreno was completely right to suspend the dialogues with the ELN. What President Santos did not do, the Ecuadorian government did well.”

The talks’ remaining five guarantor countries are Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Norway, and Venezuela. Analysts asked by Colombian media coincided in the view that Cuba or perhaps Chile is the best choice for a new venue: Brazil is about to have elections, Chile just inaugurated a new conservative government, Norway is too far away, and Venezuela is roiled by political and economic instability. Another option would be to continue the original vision of “itinerant” negotiations that move from country to country, which poses logistical challenges.

Moreno’s decision came after the journalists’ kidnapping-murder, another kidnapping of two Ecuadorians who remain in custody, and several attacks on Ecuador’s security forces in the border region, mainly in the Pacific province of Esmeraldas. All of these actions were perpetrated by the so-called Oliver Sinisterra Front, a grouping of ex-FARC members headed by Walter Arizara, an Ecuadorian-born former FARC member who goes by the alias “Guacho.” Though the ELN has nothing to do with Guacho’s group’s actions, the attacks on Ecuadorian soil have soured public opinion in the country toward Colombian armed groups in general.

The Colombian journalism website Verdad Abierta adds that Ecuador’s government was also probably miffed at the “lack of diplomatic tact” with which Colombia’s government handled the reporters’ kidnapping and murder.

For more than two years, annoyance has been incubating within the Ecuadorian Defense Ministry over their Colombian counterparts’ lack of commitment to the design of a joint border security strategy that would include contingency plans. Since that time, it was known that some FARC units wouldn’t accept the accords signed with the Colombian government.
… A researcher who has studied the armed conflict dynamic in that border region for several years, and who asked not to use his/her name, affirmed… “The Ecuadorian government has always felt undervalued by the Colombian government. The situation intensified with President Juan Manuel Santos’s response to the situation with the murdered journalists. This had several elements, for example that he did not go to Ecuador to meet with Moreno at a moment of intense pain for Ecuadorians. This was seen as an affront.”
That atmosphere became even tenser after President Santos’s clumsy statements saying that “Guacho” was Ecuadorian and that the reporters were killed in Ecuador. Those statements were interpreted by many Ecuadorian people, including by international bodies as saying “that’s Ecuador’s problem.”

On April 15, two days after President Moreno announced the reporters’ death, President Santos recognized that the reporters were killed on Colombian soil. The bodies remain there, unrecovered.

On April 19 someone—the Colombian military said the ELN—bombed a power pylon in Nariño, Colombia, shutting off electricity throughout the border region, including the troubled port city of Tumaco. The peace talks, meanwhile, continue to seek a new venue at which to resume their fifth round.

Aftermath of the Arrest of Jesús Santrich

Seusis Pausias Hernández alias Jesús Santrich, the FARC ideologist and negotiator arrested April 9 on charges of conspiring to traffic cocaine, was transferred to southern Bogotá’s La Picota prison, where he will remain as Colombian judicial authorities determine whether he should be separated from the peace accords’ transitional justice process and extradited to the United States. Colombia’s Supreme Court denied a habeas corpus motion seeking his release; his lawyers contended, unsuccessfully, that the transitional justice system (Special Jurisdiction for Peace or JEP) should have executed the arrest order instead of the regular criminal justice system.

From his confinement, Santrich gave an interview to Colombia’s W Radio news station. He confirmed that he had spoken to Mexican traffickers —who were either undercover DEA agents, or had one or more DEA agents embedded in their group—but thought that they were potential investors in post-conflict agricultural projects. Santrich had been put into contact with the Mexicans by Marlon Marín, a lawyer who is the nephew of chief FARC negotiator Iván Márquez, a close associate of Santrich’s on the FARC party’s hardline wing.

Santrich said his relationship with Marín “is a working relationship about ideas for productive projects, specifically about farms growing native crops, to implement in zones where the accord on integral rural reform will be carried out.” He said that he did not know the name of Rafael Caro Quintero, the top Mexican drug trafficker whom his intermediaries claimed to be representing. “It’s very hard for me to keep in mind who could be a narco or not. Many people came to my house with the idea of contributing to moving the peace process forward, and all of the people who came were registered with the National Police.” Asked about the ink drawing he gave the Mexicans, dedicated to Caro Quintero, he said that he thought Caro was a potential investor, and that he had given similar drawings to Vice-President Óscar Naranjo and presidential post-conflict chief Rafael Pardo.

“You will never hear words like ‘cocaine, payment, five-kilogram packages’ come out of my mouth,” Santrich said. “This is like an Indiana Jones movie, everyone adding special effects and the setup is right around the corner.” He added, “It’s more likely that cocaine passed through the nose of the chief prosecutor of the nation than through my hands.” Recordings of Santrich’s conversations with the Mexicans, currently in U.S. authorities’ possession, may give a clearer idea of to what extent Santrich knowingly discussed a plan to send 10 tons of cocaine to the United States, or how he reacted when Marlon Marín—who had urged Santrich to meet the Mexicans—discussed the plan in his presence.

Yezid Arteta, a former FARC member turned columnist for Semana magazine’s website, called Marín “the typical lizard that one finds in all political parties and institutions, who seems to be one of the planners of the trap laid for Santrich.” On April 16, Marlon Marín boarded a flight to New York, where he has agreed to testify against Jesús Santrich as a cooperating witness. Asked about his relationship with his nephew, FARC leader Iván Márquez only said he was a “gentleman” whose “conduct will have to be investigated.”

On April 19 Márquez, who is slated to take a seat in Colombia’s Senate on July 20, notified Colombia’s Police and National Protection Unit that he was leaving Bogotá, moving “temporarily to the territorial space [FARC demobilization site] in Miravalle,” in the southern department of Caquetá, “due to the situation and until there is greater clarity and certainty about what comes next.” Santrich, on a hunger strike in La Picota, said he would rather starve to death than be extradited.

Aftermath of Revelation of Peace Fund Irregularities

A week after Colombian media reported on letters from European ambassadors and from Colombia’s Prosecutor-General’s Office (Fiscalía) voicing concerns about the management of special peace accord implementation funds, President Santos announced a “crash plan” to improve monitoring of resources and administrative steps to restructure management of resources from international donors.

The concerns center around the “Colombia in Peace Fund,” which concentrates a few hundred million dollars in resources for peace accord implementation projects, most of them from foreign donors. Though the fund is subject to close oversight and reporting, in order to speed delivery of aid it is largely exempt from often cumbersome procedures in regular Colombian law designed to prevent corruption in contracting.

The government found that 97 percent of the fund’s resources so far have gone to 40 contracts. “That’s why the denunciations and suspicions that persist about supposed poor management are so concerning,” reads an editorial in El Espectador. “In synthesis, it seems that the corrupt political bureaucracy that is so rooted in our country has also tried to stick its hand in the investments that should be consolidating the accord’s implementation.”

The concerns led to the dismissal of Carlos Fidel Simancas, a contractor of the International Organization for Migration who worked in the Presidency’s Post-Conflict Secretariat. “In that Secretariat,” El Tiempo reported, Simancas

was the manager of former Green Party congressional candidate Sonia Elvira Veloza Mogollón, who last Friday was called for questioning at the Fiscalía as part of the “group of people who played specific roles” in the presumed irregularities in the management of productive projects for demobilized FARC.
Another eight people—a list that does not include Simancas—were also called to the Fiscalía, and their offices and homes were searched on suspicion of being part of the network of Marlon Marín Marín, who according to the investigative body was a sort of articulator of a network that sought to enrich itself with peace contracts.
Marlon Marín first sought to obtain a cut of the contracts for basic healthcare at the demobilized combatants’ concentration sites.

This is the same Marlon Marín involved in the arrest of Jesús Santrich, the FARC leader’s nephew whom columnist Yezid Arteta referred to above as a “lizard.” Before discovering his efforts to strike a cocaine deal with Mexicans, Colombian authorities were already monitoring Marín because they suspected he was mishandling these health contracts.

Vice President Óscar Naranjo said that the government will seek “to accelerate the accords’ implementation, especially with relation to productive projects.” Treasury Vice-Minister Paula Acosta said that the government has contracted the accounting firm Ernst and Young to audit the contracts awarded so far.

Naranjo promised a detailed review of post-conflict productive projects. He said there are 214 such projects so far, in different states of development. Among them, 35, involving 1,533 ex-FARC members, are in the “formulation phase” and will cost about COP$22.764 billion (US$8.081 million).

“This is no reason, certainly, to slow implementation” of the peace accord, concluded El Espectador’s editorial. “The accord has already faltered too much for the government to keep delaying compliance with its promises. The money is there precisely to be spent as soon as possible and to put in motion everything that was promised. Can’t we do this with transparency?”

UN Secretary General Reports on Peace Process

The UN Security Council convened on September 19 to hear the Secretary General’s latest report on the peace process and the work of the UN Verification Mission. The ambassadors in attendance gave supportive statements and celebrated the progress away from conflict that Colombia has made. Some, most notably Russia, voiced concerns about the pace of implementation.

“While it is obviously too early to take stock of a peace process that has set ambitious and long-term goals,” UN Mission Head Jean Arnault told the Council that there is reason for optimism.

[W]e have already observed that it has achieved a notable reduction of violence in the context of the congressional elections. Similarly, it has created a series of institutions dedicated to overcoming patterns of social, economic and political violence in the conflict areas. …Throughout the implementation phase of the Peace Agreement, circumstances have occasionally tested the commitment of the two parties to stay the course. They have stayed the course.

Nonetheless Arnault, and the Secretary-General’s report, warned of problems. “[T]he resurgence of violence in several of the areas most affected by the conflict and the persistent pattern of killings of community and social leaders are the main subjects of concern at present,” the report emphasized.

The report highlights the slowness with which Colombia is reintegrating former FARC combatants.

Socioeconomic reintegration is lagging behind. The transition from early reinsertion to sustainable reintegration has not yet been completed, and this uncertainty continues to undermine the confidence of former members of FARC-EP in their reintegration and in the peace process itself.

Lack of progress in this respect is in good part responsible for the movement of former FARC-EP members outside the territorial areas, hence the growing importance of access to land, the design, funding and implementation of viable productive projects linked to local development and the creation of cooperatives to implement them.

Remarkably, Colombia still does not have a plan in place for reintegrating ex-combatants, violating a cardinal precept of how a peace accord should be implemented.

I reiterate the need for the National Reintegration Council to adopt, as provided for in the Peace Agreement, its national reintegration plan linking reintegration to development.

The Secretary-General’s report also voices concern for the security of former FARC members located outside the former concentration zones, and of threatened social leaders throughout the country.

I am concerned that, by all accounts, the killing of community leaders and human rights defenders has continued unabated in the past three months, despite several measures to address the alarming number of killings registered in 2017. This trend and the proliferation of illegal armed actors associated with it should be brought under control as a matter of urgency, as has been acknowledged by the President and top officials of his Government.
Of particular concern are the attacks against persons working to implement government programmes related to coca substitution and land restitution. Members of local community boards, the governance mechanism established in rural districts, are among the main targets of violence.

A Supportive Statement From U.S.-UN

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, read a statement that was significantly more supportive of the peace effort than has been customary for the Trump administration. It calls for greater government presence in territories, reintegration of former combatants, and action on land tenure. The expected exhortation to “accelerate its counter-narcotics effort” doesn’t appear until the 11th of 15 paragraphs.

The agreement that ended five decades of war in Colombia has created the conditions for the just and lasting peace that Colombians deserve. It was a historic achievement. But peace in Colombia remains an unfinished project. All of us have a role in ensuring that it succeeds.
…We cannot allow formerly FARC-controlled areas to fall into the hands of criminals and illegal armed groups. That would undo much of the progress of the peace accord. We encourage the government to continue efforts to eliminate Colombia’s ungoverned spaces. The United States also urges the government to continue the full implementation of the comprehensive peace plan. This includes efforts to reintegrate former combatants into civilian life.
The peace accord provides an important opportunity to address historical land issues that have driven conflict and violence in Colombia. We welcome President Santos’ landmark decree meant to formalize land ownership for more than 2.5 million farmers. Improving access to land is essential in transforming rural livelihoods. Criminal groups and narco-traffickers have dominated rural areas of Colombia for decades. With secure land titles, the Colombian people can provide for their families without feeling beholden to these groups.

DEA Investigating Corruption Allegations Against Agent

A story by BuzzFeed reporter Aram Roston, later picked up by the New York Times, reveals that the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating veteran agent José Irizarry, who had been stationed in the agency’s field office in Cartagena, Colombia. The nature of the now-resigned agent’s misconduct is not clear, but three anonymous sources told Roston “the scope of the case is believed to be unprecedented in the agency’s history.” One source said that Irizarry is also being investigated by the Justice Department’s Inspector-General and the FBI.

Proposal To Eradicate Coca With Drones

El Tiempo reported that the U.S. government’s estimate of the amount of coca planted in Colombia in 2017 reached a new record of between 220,000 and 230,000 hectares, up from 188,000 in 2016. The White House has not yet published its 2017 figure. Nor have Colombian authorities published their estimate, but the same article cites a Colombian estimate of 170,000-180,000 hectares, up from 146,000 in 2016. This apparent increase occurred even though Colombian government, police, and military eradicators uprooted, cut down, or directly applied herbicides to 53,000 hectares of coca bushes last year, and worked with farmers for the voluntary eradication of about 20,000 more.

As a result, the same El Tiempo article revealed, the Colombian National Police Anti-Narcotics Directorate (DIRAN) is pursuing the possibility of employing drones to spray herbicides on the coca fields. Each would fly a meter or less over the bushes, spraying the herbicide glyphosate.

In 2015, Colombia suspended the U.S.-funded practice of spraying glyphosate from aircraft after the UN World Health Organization published a literature review finding that the chemical “is probably carcinogenic to humans.” Glyphosate is still commonly used in Colombian (and U.S.) agriculture, and eradicators still kill coca with the more precise method of applying it from backpack-mounted dispensers, which presumably minimizes spray drift to populated areas and destruction of legal food crops. The drone proposal would enable similar close-proximity spraying without the risks that sharpshooters, ambushes, landmines, and booby traps have posed to human eradicators working in the fields.

On April 13, the DIRAN began testing drones from five companies. It is prepared in 2018 to spend COP$21 billion (US$7.5 million) on drones that meet a series of standards:

  • Ability to fly between 50 centimeters and one meter above the plants.
  • Ability to operate in temperatures ranging from -5 to 40 degrees Celsius.
  • Two GPS systems to guarantee precision of spraying.
  • An anti-collision sensor.
  • An automatic recording system that records the drone’s location at every second.

The DIRAN expects that each drone would be able to spray between 10 and 15 hectares per day, whereas a human eradicator can only destroy 3 to 5 hectares of coca per day. In an absence of government presence in coca-growing zones, though, it remains unclear what would prevent farmers with limited economic options from replanting the crop.

Fighting Between Armed Groups in Bajo Cauca and Catatumbo Has Displaced Thousands This Year

In addition to the Colombia-Ecuador border region, where the FARC dissident group commanded by alias “Guacho” has drawn much attention, two other regions saw intensified violence during the week between groups that remain active, and are growing, in post-accord Colombia.

The Bajo Cauca region in northeastern Antioquia, a coca production and cocaine transshipment zone a few hours’ drive from Medellín, is the scene of frequent combat between two organized crime groups. The Urabeños (also known as Gulf Clan, or Usuga Clan, or Gaitanistas), the largest organized armed group in the country, is battling a regional group called the “Caparrapos” (also known as the Virgilio Peralta Arenas Front). Both groups can trace their lineage back to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia paramilitary network that terrorized much of Colombia, and enjoyed some support on the political right, in the 1990s and 2000s.

So far this year, fighting between the two groups has displaced at least 2,175 people in the Antioquia municipalities of Cáceres, Caucasia, Tarazá, and Ituango. Violence has also been intense across the departmental border in southern Córdoba. Fighting on April 13-15 killed five people and displaced 210. In the sports complex in Tarazá’s town center, 120 of the displaced are currently taking refuge.

Sergio Mesa Cárdenas of the Medellín NGO Corpades told El Colombiano that the warring groups are getting support from the Mexican cartels that buy their illicit product.

The “Caparrapos” gang, led by alias “Ratón,” has alliances with Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel and Medellín’s “Los Triana” gang. Regarding the “Gulf Clan,” led by alias “Gonzalito,” the investigator says they have the support of the “Pachelly” gang from [the Medellín suburb of] Bello and the “Zetas” cartel.

The situation is arguably worse in Catatumbo, a poorly governed coca-growing region in Norte de Santander department, near the Venezuelan border. This zone had a longtime presence of the FARC, the ELN, and the EPL. The latter group, the People’s Liberation Army, is descended from the dissident remnant of a larger group that demobilized in 1991. (The Colombian government often calls them “Los Pelusos.”) The EPL remained active in Catatumbo, profiting from the production and transshipment of drugs into Venezuela; today it has about 200 members and appears to be growing.

With the FARC’s exit from the scene—the 33rd Front concentrated in a demobilization zone in Tibú municipality over a year ago—the EPL and ELN began to compete for control of its previous territories of influence. A longstanding non-aggression arrangement broke down in mid-March, and combat has intensified ever since. “According to voices in the region who spoke to reporter Salud Hernández-Mora,” El Tiempo noted, “it is all because the ELN believes that the ‘Pelusos’ violated accords to share the business that the FARC left behind.”

After a month of tensions and sporadic combat, the situation worsened April 15 with the EPL’s declaration of an “armed stoppage”: a several-day prohibition on all road travel, and often a requirement that local businesses shut their doors. Residents of several Catatumbo municipalities received pamphlets informing them of the stoppage, and many of the region’s population centers became “ghost towns.” Schools closed all week, “affecting about 45,000 children and 2,000 teachers,” according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Norte de Santander Governor William Villamizar declared a state of humanitarian emergency in Catatumbo, and asked the national government to authorize a dialogue between ELN and EPL leaders at the ELN negotiating table. The commander of the Colombian Army’s “Vulcan” Task Force, stationed in the region, said that “a special deployment has been done.”

Civil society groups in Catatumbo, along with the Catholic church and local governments, have joined in calls on the armed groups to leave the civilian population out of the fighting. Business owners tried to open their establishments for half-day periods, but, according to El Colombiano, were met by armed people “who obligated them to close with the threat: ‘we’re the ones who have the weapons here.’”

The UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs says that 2,500 people have been displaced by Catatumbo’s violence since the situation deteriorated in mid-March. A government source told El Colombiano that the actual number is probably higher, as many displaced are fearful of registering and may be staying with relatives and friends. If the situation continues for another week, the source said, food could start running out in some communities.

In-Depth Reading

April 28, 2018 — 0

Coca in Colombia: what are the options?

Revised 9:00AM on 4/29/18: I added two more options to the table based on a suggestion from Twitter user @gabrielvc.

Colombia’s government, faced with record-high levels of coca cultivation, is considering using drones to spray herbicides over the fields.

This is less indiscriminate and risky to public health than spraying from aircraft, a program the U.S. government paid for between 1994 and 2015. It’s safer for the eradicators, who would be less vulnerable to snipers, ambushes, landmines, and booby traps in the fields.

But ultimately even a billion-dollar swarm of drones wouldn’t solve Colombia’s coca problem. Here’s a really simplified matrix I threw together today illustrating why, by looking at all the main options.

As you can see here, in my view, only one of the options promises to bring coca cultivation under control in the long term. That’s the one where Colombia actually governs its territory effectively with a minimum of corruption or abuse. That’s the hardest of these options to pursue, and the least immediately rewarding. But all of the others are just partial fixes.

Here it is at Google Sheets.
And here’s a PDF version, which is probably easier to read.

(This matrix leaves out the “legalize cocaine” option, which isn’t a near-term possibility. Because the drug is more addictive than most, legalization advocates confront a widespread belief that legalized use would carry too high a social cost.)

August 16, 2017 — 0

Peace-ocracy

Colombians complain constantly about their government’s ossified bureaucracy. But when they get a chance to approach a problem in a new way—with a sweeping peace accord—this is what happens:

In the executive branch, there are at least six entities or authorities with competencies related to the illicit crops issue, including the Defense Ministry. In addition, there are three different “directorates” with similar functions—in the Vice-Presidency, in the Ministry of Justice, and in the High Presidential Ministry for the Post-Conflict. To these must be added the challenges of effectively articulating the PNIS [National Integral Program for Substitution of Illicitly Used Crops] with the Territorial Renovation Agency in the framework of the implementation of the Development Programs with a Territorial Focus (PDET), as well as with the Land Agency, the Rural Development Agency, and the Agriculture Ministry itself.

That’s from page 14 of a July report from Colombia’s Ideas for Peace Foundation think-tank.

Colombia’s peace accord provides a huge opportunity to reverse generations-old failings that hold back the country’s development. Especially the lawlessness and abandonment in the countryside that enable coca cultivation.

But if this soup of agencies with unclear mandates and poor coordination is what’s going to implement the accord’s coca provisions—well, we can predict the outcome, can’t we.

August 4, 2017 — 0

The U.S. government’s strident approach to Colombia’s coca boom

The “answers” in this imagined dialogue are direct quotes from Wednesday’s Senate testimony of Amb. William Brownfield, the longtime assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs. This “imagined conversation” format is a bit goofy, but it illustrates how knotted and constrained the U.S. approach to coca is right now.

Q: Colombia’s government says it plans to manually eradicate 50,000 hectares of coca plants this year, the most since 2009. As of early July, it was at 20.297 hectares, up from 18,000 hectares in all of 2016. Is that effort robust enough?

A: Colombian leadership must find a way to implement a robust forced manual eradication effort to create a disincentive to coca cultivation and an incentive to participation in the government’s crop substitution effort.

Q: So the U.S. view is that Colombia needs to step up manual eradication even further. What about Colombia’s ambitious (perhaps too ambitious) program to work with coca-growing families to voluntarily eradicate another 50,000 hectares?

A: We are strongly encouraging the Colombian government to limit the number of voluntary eradication agreements they negotiate and sign to make implementation feasible.

Q: So the U.S. view is that Colombia should scale back voluntary eradication and crop substitution? But this program was foreseen in the peace accords, and former FARC members are supposed to be helping once they leave their disarmament zones.

A: To be successful, the Colombian government’s voluntary eradication and crop substitution program needs adequate financial and human resources as well as a clear implementation plan to succeed.

Q: Sure. Then, if Colombia is short on voluntary eradication funds, why doesn’t U.S. assistance help fill the funding and expertise gaps?

A: The United States is not currently supporting the Colombian government’s voluntary eradication and crop substitution program because the FARC is involved in some aspects of the program and remains designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under several U.S. laws and sanctions regimes.

Q: We could debate whether a demobilized FARC member participating in coca substitution is really still a “terrorist.” But never mind that.

In the end, if Colombia carries out so much forced eradication that it outpaces economic assistance for affected communities, what happens to the families who live in ungoverned, abandoned coca-growing zones? The UNODC estimates that 106,900 Colombian households depended on coca last year, earning an average of only US$960 per person per year. If you take their main income source away and don’t replace it with anything, won’t these families go out and protest?

A: Making manual eradication work includes overcoming the persistent social protests that disrupt forced eradication operations. Without a permanent solution to the social protest issue, forced eradication efforts are unlikely to have a significant effect on coca cultivation levels in 2017. In 2016, 675 attempted eradication operations were cancelled in the field due to restrictive rules of engagement that prevented security forces from engaging protestors. In 2017, the protests continue.

Take these responses together, and the U.S. approach to Colombia’s coca boom appears to be:

  • Increase the pace of forced eradication.
  • Do less to help coca-growing families in ungoverned areas.
  • If the families protest, unleash the security forces so they can “engage” them.

Wow.

July 18, 2017 — 0

UNODC’s Colombia coca estimate is out

Chart of coca and eradication in Colombia since 1994

On July 14 the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) released (PDF) its 2016 estimate of coca cultivation in Colombia (the dark blue line). It shows a lower estimate than the U.S. government’s (the green line), but a sharper rate of increase over 2015.

UNODC identified four reasons for the increase:

  1. Some coca farmers “have a perception of reduced risk associated with illicit activity due to the suspension of aerial spraying and the possibility of avoiding forced [manual] eradication through blockades of the security forces.”
  2. Increased expectations of receiving compensation for substituting coca within the framework of the peace accord.
  3. “A general reduction of alternative development efforts in all of the country due to transition to a strategy centered on the elimination of crops to a strategy centered on transformation of territory.”
  4. Coca-leaf prices shrunk somewhat, but remain “at a high level.”

In an interview with Colombia’s daily El Tiempo, UNODC’s representative in Colombia, Bo Mathiasen, made clear that renewing aerial herbicide spraying—the preferred strategy of many in the U.S. government—is not the solution.

It’s a sovereign issue for Colombia. But the past impact of glyphosate [the herbicide that is sprayed] could be analyzed. Did it really work for anything and give the desired results? I don’t believe so. In the medium term, there was always replanting in these zones. Spraying happened, and they planted again. The desired change was not achieved.

July 11, 2017 — 0

Podcast: “U.S.-Colombia Relations ‘in a Challenged Place'”

It’s nice to put one of these out again, for the first time in 2 1/2 months.

Relations between the United States and close ally Colombia have hit their roughest patch in years. The situation is aggravated by the Trump administration’s much darker view of the FARC peace accord, and open disagreement about how to deal with coca eradication. Messages from Washington, meanwhile, have been confusingly mixed. A better-briefed Secretary of State could deal with this more effectively, but that doesn’t seem to be Rex Tillerson’s style.

April 18, 2017 — 0

Response to Álvaro Uribe’s whopper-filled “Message to U.S. Authorities”

(This was just posted to WOLA’s colombiapeace.org site and will go up at wola.org in a little while.)

Álvaro Uribe’s Questionable “Message to U.S. Authorities” About Colombia’s Peace Effort

By Adam Isacson and Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli

Inaccurate=pink. Debatable=orange.

On Easter Sunday Colombia’s former president, Álvaro Uribe, wrote a blistering attack on Colombia’s peace accords with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas. He sent it in English as a “message to the authorities and the Congress of the United States of America.” It went to every U.S. congressional office, as well as to Washington’s community of analysts, advocates and donors who work on Colombia.

Uribe, now Colombia’s most prominent opposition senator, is the most vocal critic of the peace process led by his successor, President Juan Manuel Santos. The ex-president’s missive leaves out the very encouraging fact that 7,000 members of the FARC, a leftist guerrilla group, are currently concentrated in 26 small zones around the country, where they are gradually turning all of their weapons over to a UN mission. One of the organizations most involved in the illicit drug business has agreed to stop using violent tactics for political purposes and to get out of the drug economy. The process currently underway is ending a bloody conflict that raged for 52 years, and holds at least the promise of making vast areas of Colombia better governed, and less favorable to illicit drug production.

Colombia’s peace accord implementation is going slowly, and faces daunting problems. There is a responsible, fact-based critique that a conservative analyst could make. Uribe’s document is not that critique. It suffers from numerous factual inaccuracies and statements that are easily rebutted. Its fixation on the FARC, a waning force, deliberately lacks important facts regarding other parties to the conflict and it does little to explain how the United States can help Colombia address post-conflict challenges.

Here is WOLA’s evaluation of several of the points made by Álvaro Uribe in this document, and evaluations of their accuracy. The vast majority of his claims are either inaccurate, or debatable.

Statement:

“Coca plantations were reduced from 170,000 ha to 42,000 ha, now there are 188,000 ha according to the lowest estimate.”

Inaccurate. Two sources estimate Colombian coca-growing: the U.S. government and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (working with the Colombian government). Their highest, lowest, and most current estimates of Colombian coca-cultivation are as follows.

Source Highest before current Lowest Most current
U.S. government 170,000 (2001) 78,000 (2012) 188,000 (2016)
UNODC 163,300 (2000) 48,000 (2012-13) 96,000 (2015)

No estimate shows a drop from 170,000 to 42,000 hectares. Both show the lowest estimate in 2012, two years after Uribe left office. 188,000 hectares is not the “lowest” current estimate, it is the higher of the two. Using the 188,000 hectare (U.S.) figure yields an increase from a baseline of 78,000, not 42,000.

Nobody denies that Colombia’s post-2012 coca boom is a problem, but Uribe’s statement exaggerates its severity still further.

Statement:

“THE CAUSE OF THIS DANGEROUS TREND: The government has stopped spraying illicit crops to please the terrorist FARC.”

Inaccurate. First, the October 2015 suspension of “spraying illicit crops” with herbicides from aircraft is one of seven causes for the boom in coca cultivation, which WOLA explained in a March 13 report. (The other six are a decline in manual eradication, a failure to replace eradication with state presence and services, a drop in gold prices, a stronger dollar, a promise that people who planted coca would get aid under the FARC peace accords, and an increase in organized coca-grower resistance.) Giving all explanatory weight to the suspension of herbicide fumigation is misleading, as even the State Department recognized that the program’s effectiveness was “significantly reduced” by “counter-eradication tactics” like swift replanting and pruning sprayed plants.

Second, the suspension of aerial spraying had nothing to do with the FARC. Colombia’s Health Ministry pushed to end spraying with the herbicide glyphosate after a 2015 World Health Organization literature review concluded that the chemical is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” (In March 2017, California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment came to a similar conclusion.)

Third, the FARC-government peace accord (PDF) does not prohibit aerial spraying. It reads, “If crop substitution does not prove possible, the government does not renounce the instruments it believes to be most effective, including spraying, to guarantee the eradication of crops of illicit use.” And today, government personnel continue to spray coca fields with glyphosate from the ground, even though this may “displease the FARC.”

Statement:

“Manual eradication was reduced and it moves forward preferably with communities’ consent, that is, with FARC’s consent.”

Debatable. The equation of rural “communities” with “the FARC” exaggerates the FARC’s power—many if not most of these communities’ members are not FARC supporters (PDF). By implicitly tying them to what until recently was a violent, radical group, this formulation also marginalizes and endangers these communities’ residents.

Statements:

“FARC has designed its own justice.”

“FARC’s kingpins and their aides have been granted impunity”

Inaccurate. If the FARC were allowed to design its own justice, its members who violated human rights would be amnestied, and their denials of their crimes’ severity would go unchallenged. Also the transitional justice system established by the accords, the “Special Jurisdiction for Peace,” would include the full participation of international judges. Instead, FARC members accused of war crimes must provide full confessions, a full accounting of their assets, and carry out reparations to victims. An independent tribunal will issue sentences of up to eight years of “restricted liberty,” to be served in spaces the size of a small village or hamlet. If FARC members do not abide by the conditions stated in the accord, then they will be subject to ordinary justice that includes longer sentences in regular prisons.

The judges will be Colombian. The negotiations between the two parties on the issue of justice were greatly influenced by international jurists, the International Criminal Court, and the current state of practice within international law. Most importantly, the agreed-upon justice system prioritizes the recommendations that truth, justice and reparations prevail over jail time made by the over 60 victims who traveled to Havana to demand that the process respect their rights.

This is not “prison,” as Uribe points out, and the austerity of conditions in the restricted-liberty zones remains to be determined by the sentencing judges in each case. But it is far from impunity, and far from what the FARC would “design” for its members. Given the sheer number of cases of abuses that took place during five decades of conflict, this special jurisdiction for peace will ensure that emblematic cases are tried. This greatly contrasts with the current justice system, which is unable to produce quick and effective sanctions.

Statement:

“Judges will be appointed by people permissive with terrorism and akin to FARC’s alleged ideology.”

Inaccurate. The judges are being selected by a committee made up of a representative of the UN Secretary General, the European Court of Human Rights, the Criminal Chamber of Colombia’s Supreme Court, the non-governmental International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), and the Permanent Commission of the Colombian State University System. (The list of appointing bodies, agreed in August 2016, also included the Vatican, which declined to participate.) None of these institutions, or their representatives, can seriously be considered “permissive with terrorism” or sharing the FARC’s political views. Not only is this statement inaccurate, it stigmatizes judges in a manner that can undermine their security.

Statement:

“These sanctions are inadequate, they lack incarceration, and are inapplicable because those who are guilty will enjoy simultaneous eligibility for Congress or any other political post.”

Debatable. These sanctions are only modestly less “inadequate” than the 5-8 years in prison given to pro-government paramilitary leaders under a process developed under Uribe’s presidency. (The paramilitaries didn’t kidnap, recruit children, or lay landmines as often as the FARC did, but during their years of greatest activity they killed and displaced far more civilians.) It remains to be seen how austere conditions will be in the village-sized zones where FARC members will serve sentences for war crimes. It also remains to be seen whether sentencing judges will even allow FARC members to hold political office in locations outside their zones of confinement.

Statement:

“Narco trafficking is accepted as a political related crime for funding rebellion, with full impunity, eligibility and no extradition.”

Debatable. Narcotrafficking will be amnestied if it can be shown that the demobilizing guerrilla channeled all profits into the FARC’s war effort and did not profit personally. Demobilizing paramilitary group members were held to the same standard during Uribe’s presidency. Each demobilizing guerrilla must declare his or her assets, and if found to be lying, will be kicked out of the transitional justice system and face regular, criminal justice instead.

Statement:

“Simon Trinidad serves a sentence in the United States because of narco trafficking and the kidnapping of three American citizens, however, his accomplices enjoy impunity in Colombia.”

Inaccurate. FARC leader Simón Trinidad, who was captured in 2004, is in a U.S. prison for his indirect role in kidnapping three U.S. citizen defense contractors. He was not found guilty of narcotrafficking. FARC members who participated in kidnapping will not be amnestied, they will serve sentences in the transitional justice system.

Statement:

“Our Constitution has been substituted by the agreement with FARC. This amendment will be in place during 12 years.”

Inaccurate. The peace accord does not substitute for anything, as nothing in it suppresses or substitutes anything in Colombia’s constitution. For 12 years, the accord has a legal standing that prevents Colombia’s Congress from passing laws that might violate or undermine its commitments. That is a sound mechanism, and it’s hard to imagine any peace accord going forward without a similar protection, even if it may resemble a temporary constitutional amendment.

Statement:

“The NO VOTE won the Plebiscite.”

True with a caveat. Uribe’s U.S. audience should be aware that the “NO” victory was not overwhelming: the margin was 50.2 to 49.8 percent. More troubling was the remarkably low level of voter participation: 63 percent of eligible Colombians failed to vote on October 2, 2016. The majority of Colombians in regions currently impacted by the conflict voted in favor of the accord. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, who are disproportionate victims of displacement, violence and conflict, resoundingly voted in favor of peace.

Statement:

“The Government did not include substantial changes, and, with the non-understandable support from the Constitutional Court, did ratify the agreement through a proposition in Congress, in clear contradiction to the Plebiscite outcome.”

Debatable. After the original August 2016 accord was defeated by the October 2 plebiscite, Colombia’s government heard proposals from leading opponents, which it took to the FARC for several weeks of re-negotiation. The resulting November 2016 accord included over 500 changes. Substantial adjustments included severely restricting the size of zones to which FARC war criminals would be confined, requiring FARC members to declare all of their assets and provide “exhaustive and detailed” information about links to the drug trade, and requiring case-by-case consideration instead of blanket amnesty for drug trafficking. One change that Uribe and other accord opponents did not get was a revocation of the 10 automatic seats in Congress (5 in the 166-person House and 5 in the 102-person Senate) that FARC members will occupy between 2018 and 2026.

Uribe’s complaint that the government, the Constitutional Court, and the Congress overruled the Plebiscite outcome is, in fact, a recognition that three branches of government unanimously approved an accord that was significantly amended after losing the October 2 vote by a hair-thin margin.

Statement:

“the current Government has not gone as far as Maduro in Venezuela, but the inheritance will allow the possible weak or pro FARC Governments of the future to adopt the same path”

Inaccurate. The government of Juan Manuel Santos, which will be in office for one more year, has weakened neither free speech nor judicial independence: in fact, the Constitutional Court already struck down one of its first decrees for implementing the peace accords. It is not clear why Uribe thinks that Colombians might suddenly opt for a pro-FARC, pro-Venezuela political path. The latest bi-monthly Gallup poll (February, PDF) gave the FARC a 19 percent approval rating and 2 percent for Nicolás Maduro’s government in Venezuela. (It also showed Uribe’s own rating at 49 percent with +3-point net favorability, down from consistent measures over +40 during his presidency.) This statement is completely unfounded.

Statement:

“Colombia has poverty and unequal income distribution not because of the private sector, but because the lack of many more and robust private enterprises.”

Inaccurate. It is frankly odd to assert that Colombia’s poverty and inequality have a single cause. It is further bizarre not to include corruption and a weak rule of law among the causes. Meanwhile, the World Bank places Colombia in 53rd place, out of 190, among the world’s most business-friendly countries: not a stellar ranking, but not low enough to be the single explanation for poverty and one of the world’s worst rates of inequality (PDF). If anything, peace in conflictive regions would do much to improve security and opportunities for international investment in Colombia.

Statement:

“Only a few children have returned to their families out of more than 11,000 that were kidnapped.”

Debatable/Inaccurate. The statistic refers to all FARC recruitment of minors between 1975 and 2014. Obviously, the overwhelming majority of these children have long since grown up. Many deserted, were captured, or were killed by government forces. Some became guerrilla leaders. As of January, according to Colombia’s Defense Ministry, there were about 170 child combatants still in the ranks of demobilizing FARC; though turnovers to the Red Cross have begun, the process has been too slow.

Statement:

“Our secret services, some years ago, estimated at 40,000 the number of guns in the hands of FARC. The President of Colombia expressed recently that the organization was going to give up 14,000, however, FARC ́s members have announced that 7,000 guns will be let down.”

Debatable. There is no way to verify a statistic that comes from “our secret services,” but since the FARC are demobilizing about 7,000 fighters, a statistic of more than five guns per combatant seems laughably high.

Uribe’s statement doesn’t refer to FARC “militia” members: part-time, non-uniformed guerrilla supporters who operate mainly in urban areas. About 6,000 militia members—nobody knows the true amount—are expected to report to disarmament sites, where they are required to spend a few days registering and handing over whatever weapons they possess. This may increase the final weapons count beyond the 7,000 of which the UN mission is currently aware.

Statement:

“Nothing has been informed about the missiles and other dangerous weapons owned by FARC.”

Debatable. If the FARC have, or had, missiles, they did not use them during the conflict. The only evidence we’ve seen is in a 2012 video of a single unsuccessful use of a SAM-7 shoulder-fired missile.

Statement:

“Chavez and Maduro have been the supporters of terrorism in our country.”

Debatable. The Venezuelan government has done very little about the freedom with which Colombian guerrilla groups operate on the Venezuelan side of the common border. However, Colombian organized crime and paramilitary groups have also operated with great freedom in these poorly governed territories. Captured guerrilla communications indicate that FARC leaders discussed financial support with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, especially during a 2007 period when Uribe authorized Chávez to serve as a go-between in a failed effort to free guerrilla hostages. We don’t know whether any financial support was actually delivered.

In their contacts with guerrillas, Venezuelan leaders encouraged them to negotiate peace and to win power, as they did, through non-violent electoral politics. Venezuelan diplomatic and logistical support, too, contributed importantly to the success of Colombia’s peace talks with the FARC. If Venezuela was trying to promote “terrorism” in Colombia, why did it so robustly support peace negotiations?

March 23, 2017 — 0

Colombia’s coca problem, in less than 300 words

From Monday’s edition of the Inter-American Dialogue’s Latin America Advisor (PDF).

Q: The U.S. State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released in March said Colombia is the world’s top producer of cocaine and that the cultivation of coca has increased by record amounts for the past two years. What is the reason for the increase in coca cultivation and cocaine production in the country? How will cocaine eradication strategies change as the government and the FARC rebel group implement their peace agreement? What will cooperation with the United States against drugs look like during the Trump administration? How are policies toward coca cultivation and drug trafficking in neighboring Bolivia and Peru likely to affect Colombia’s role in illicit drug production and trafficking?

A: Adam Isacson, senior associate for the regional security policy program at the Washington Office on Latin America: “Colombia has a bumper crop of coca. The U.S. government estimate of 188,000 hectares planted in 2016 is the fourth increase in a row, and is 141 percent more than in 2012 (78,000 hectares). I see seven reasons why this is happening. Colombia halted aerial herbicide spraying, citing health concerns, in 2015, and did not replace it with a new strategy. It slowed forced manual eradication, too, due to costs and dangers. But until this year, it has not increased investment in governance and alternative development. Meanwhile, the price of gold dropped, making illicit mining a less enticing alternative to coca. The dollar rose, making farm-gate prices appear greater in pesos. Word spread that farmers with coca would receive benefits under the FARC peace accords, creating a perverse incentive to plant. And in the middle of peace talks, the government was less willing to use force to confront coca growers. Today, the Colombian government has a plan for new investment and voluntary eradication in the stateless areas of the countryside where coca is grown. The November 2016 peace accord commits former FARC members to help carry out this plan. The U.S. government should support Colombia’s new effort with patience, avoiding an aggressive push to resume policies, like fumigation, that did not solve the problem before. While waiting to see if this can work, though, we must closely monitor the Colombian government’s effort. We must verify it is getting the resources, inter-agency coordination and high priority that bringing governance to coca-growing zones requires. Coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia has been stable in recent years, ranging around 50,000 hectares in Peru and 35,000 in Bolivia, including legal coca. Trends in those two countries won’t have as much impact on Colombia’s coca boom as the seven factors discussed above.”

March 14, 2017 — 0

Does Colombia have more coca now than before Plan Colombia?

Colombia’s Defense Minister let spill last night that the U.S. government’s 2016 estimate of illicit coca grown in the country is 188,000 hectares (465,000 acres). That is the most coca the USG has ever measured. Here’s what the chart looks like:

Updated coca chart

188,000 hectares is an 18 percent increase over 2015. That’s a lot, but the 2014-2015 increase was 42 percent, and the 2013-2014 increase was 39 percent. I wouldn’t call this progress—it may indicate that coca is starting to reach levels at which farmers no longer find it profitable to grow.

In an article posted last night to WOLA’s website, I review seven reasons for these big increases. It’s complicated.

But there’s a simpler question that I’m already being asked: is there more coca in Colombia today than there was when Plan Colombia started in 2000-2001?

The answer depends on whom you ask.

  • The U.S. government would say “yes.” 2016 broke the record. The U.S. government doesn’t publicly discuss its measurement methods in detail.
  • The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), whose annual reports discuss methods used, will probably say “no” when it releases its next Colombia survey in June or July. That report will almost certainly find an increase, although the UN measure tends to be smaller than the U.S. figure. If the UNODC estimate also grows by 18 percent, that would be 113,000 hectares—well below the pre-Plan Colombia high of 163,000 measured in 2000. The UN measure would need to have grown by 70 percent to break that record.
March 13, 2017 — 0

At WOLA’s website: Confronting Colombia’s Coca Boom

Title image of WOLA "Confronting Colombia's Coca Boom" post

Looks like everything I’ve written over the last few days about Colombia’s coca bonanza is coming out today. This new analysis just got posted to wola.org.

Here, I find 7 reasons why Colombia’s coca crop has increased so quickly.

  1. Suspending aerial herbicide fumigation and not quickly replacing it with anything else.
  2. Reducing forced manual eradication and not quickly replacing it with anything else.
  3. Not increasing government presence or alternative development in coca-growing zones.
  4. A drop in the price of gold, making illicit mining less attractive than coca.
  5. A strengthening of the dollar, making farm-gate prices appear higher in pesos.
  6. Word spreading about the benefits coca-growers could obtain in the 2014 FARC accord, incentivizing some people to become coca growers.
  7. Coca-growers’ increased organization and skill at blockading and stopping manual eradication, while the government avoided violent confrontations with them during peace talks.

Those are complicated reasons. What to do about it, then? I argue: let Colombia pursue the plan it has put together within the framework of the FARC peace accords. This plan is barely underway. But constantly monitor and verify that Colombia’s government is doing what it says it is going to do, because after repeated betrayals of trust, “implementation” is almost a swear word in the Colombian countryside. We must “trust, but verify” that Colombia will keep up its end of the bargain with farmers who live in the country’s vast, abandoned coca-growing areas.

Read the whole thing here.

March 13, 2017 — 0

New coca estimate may come tomorrow: looks high, but lower than I expected

Tomorrow, the Wall Street Journal reports, the White House will release its estimate of how much coca was planted in Colombia in 2016.

WSJ excerpt: 695 square miles to be announced tomorrow

695 square miles is 180,000 hectares. This would be the highest U.S. measurement of Colombian coca cultivation ever.

On the other hand, it would represent the smallest increase in Colombian coca-growing in three years.

180,000 hectares is just 13 percent greater than the 159,000 the U.S. government measured in 2015. That’s robust growth, but lower than I had expected. It’s nothing like the 42 percent increase from 2014-2015 or the 39 percent increase that preceded that (2013-2014).

(The data comes from the Obama White House’s legacy website.)

Amid reports that coca-growers in the Catatumbo region are burying their coca paste instead of selling it amid a price collapse, we may be seeing a glut in the coca market that could discourage new planting. If there’s a glut, though, traffickers may be actively seeking new markets, in the United States and elsewhere.

March 13, 2017 — 0

New piece up at Razón Pública

Screenshot from Razon Publica

The Colombian news-analysis website Razón Pública asked me last week whether Colombia’s relationship with the Trump administration will “narcotize” because of huge recent increases in the country’s crop of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

In my submission (in Spanish), I argue that “narcotization”—drugs becoming the number-one central issue in the bilateral relationship—probably won’t happen this year. There’s no appetite for a throw-down fight with Colombia over coca right now, nor does the Trump administration have officials in place, or a big enough foreign aid budget, to pursue it aggressively.

I don’t see a narcotization of the relationship in 2017. While there may be silence and a certain distancing, I don’t believe that there will be a withdrawal of U.S. support for implementing the FARC peace accord. In 2018, however, I’m not so sure. It all depends on the results achieved this year.

Read more at Razón Pública.

March 10, 2017 — 0

Latest chart of coca production and eradication in Colombia

Coca and eradication in Colombia since 1994

I’ll probably be updating this soon, when the U.S. government releases its grim estimate of how much coca was planted in the country last year. That statistic will show a large increase, perhaps over 200,000 hectares for the first time.

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