[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 46 (Tuesday, April 25, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E596]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      FAILURE OF ``PLAN COLOMBIA''

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. RON PAUL

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 25, 2006

  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the following article 
detailing the complete failure of ``Plan Colombia'' into the 
Congressional Record. As the article points out, despite more than 4 
billion dollars being sent to Colombia to fight the ``war on drugs,'' 
the coca crop grew by 21 percent last year. After six years of massive 
wealth transfers from U.S. taxpayers to the Colombian government, not 
only has no progress been made, but in fact things are getting worse. 
Unfortunately, with the way things are done in Washington, this failure 
of ``Plan Colombia'' will likely result in calls for even more money to 
be tossed in the black hole of the drug war. It would be far better to 
learn from our mistakes and abandon the failed ``Plan Colombia.''

              [From the Houston Chronicle, April 16, 2006]

                    Coca Crop Jumps Despite U.S. Aid

                             (By John Otis)

       Bogota, Colombia.--In a blow to the United States' anti-
     drug campaign here, which cost more than $4 billion, new 
     White House estimates indicate that Colombia's coca crop 
     expanded by nearly 21 percent last year.
       Figures released late Friday by the Office of National Drug 
     Control Policy indicate Colombian farmers last year grew 
     355,680 acres of coca, the raw material for cocaine. That 
     represents a jump of nearly 74,000 acres from 2004 even 
     though U.S. funded cropdusters destroyed record amounts of 
     coca plants in 2005.
       Washington has provided the Bogota government with more 
     than $4 billion, mostly in anti-drug aid since 2000 for a 
     program known as Plan Colombia--which was supposed to cut 
     coca cultivation by half within six years.
       Yet according to the new figures, more coca is now being 
     grown here than when Plan Colombia started. ``This is going 
     to turn heads'' on Capitol Hill, said Adam Isacson, 
     a Colombia expert at the Center for International Policy 
     in Washington and a longtime critic of U.S. counterdrug 
     strategies in Latin America.
       ``You're talking about $4.7 billion spent on Plan Colombia, 
     and this is all we have to show for it?''
       The Bush administration downplayed the significance of the 
     coca crop survey, an annual study of parts of Colombia 
     carried out by the CIA using satellite imagery and on-the-
     ground inspections.
       Rather than an increase in the crop's size, the higher 
     numbers may reflect a more thorough job of surveying the 
     Colombian countryside, the White House said in a news 
     release.
       The statement said the area of Colombia sampled for the 
     2005 coca estimate was 81 percent larger than in 2004.
       ``Because of this uncertainty and the significantly 
     expanded survey area, a direct year-to-year comparison (of 
     the size of the coca crop) is not possible,'' said the 
     statement.
       However, when year-to-year drug crop comparisons have 
     reflected positive trends, U.S. officials have loudly touted 
     the numbers as clear proof of success.
       In 2002, for example, the CIA survey showed a drop in coca 
     production and White House drug czar John Walters declared: 
     ``These figures capture the dramatic improvement. . . . Our 
     anti-drug efforts in Colombia are now paying off.''
       But some U.S. officials and drug policy analysts claim that 
     Colombia has likely been producing far more coca over the 
     past five years than the CIA surveys have indicated.
       ``The cultivation numbers, wherever they seem to be headed, 
     need to be taken with a grain of salt,'' said Joy Olson, 
     director of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think 
     tank. ``In reality, coca cultivation and cocaine production 
     exceed the official estimates, perhaps by wide margins.''
       What's more, she said, cheap, potent cocaine remains 
     readily available on U.S. streets, indicating that the drug 
     war in Colombia is having little real impact.
       Some U.S. officials have forecast a gradual reduction in 
     assistance for Colombia, starting in 2008. This year, 
     Washington will send about $750 million in aid to Colombia, 
     the source of 90 percent of the cocaine sold on U.S. streets.
       The centerpiece of the U.S. anti-drug strategy here is a 
     controversial aerial-eradication program in which crop-
     dusters, escorted by helicopter gunships, bombard coca plants 
     with chemical defoliants. But the program costs about $200 
     million annually and many critics say the money would be 
     better spent elsewhere. The idea of eradication is 
     to persuade peasant farmers to give up growing coca and to 
     plant legal crops. But funding by the U.S. and Colombian 
     governments for crop-substitution programs pale in 
     comparison to the eradication budget and most efforts to 
     develop alternatives have failed.
       Part of the problem is that coca is often grown in remote 
     jungles and mountains that are controlled by Marxist 
     guerrillas, contain few roads or markets, and have almost no 
     government presence. Thus, even as crop-dusters have killed 
     off record amounts of coca, farmers stay a step ahead of the 
     spray planes by pushing deeper into the wilderness to grow 
     more.
       In 2000, Colombian farmers attempted to grow about 450,000 
     acres of coca, about one-third of which was wiped out by the 
     spray planes, according to U.S. government figures. Last 
     year, by contrast, they tried to grow a whopping 780,000 
     acres. ``People with no economic alternatives have not been 
     deterred by fumigation,'' said Isacson of the Center for 
     International Policy. ``Fumigating an area is no substitute 
     for governing it.''
       Despite the rise in coca cultivation, Anne Patterson, a 
     former U.S. ambassador to Colombia who heads the State 
     Department bureau that runs the eradication program, told a 
     congressional hearing in Washington last month that the Bush 
     administration was considering ``stepping up'' the crop-
     dusting campaign.
       Beyond the drug war, Patterson said, the overall U.S. aid 
     program ``has benefited Colombia in ways we had not 
     anticipated.''
       She cited better security conditions in the cities and the 
     countryside, where the number of kidnappings and murders has 
     dropped, as well as recent blows to the nation's narcotics 
     traffickers and guerrilla groups.

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