Joe Biden has the chance to cut the purse strings to Colombia’s most unaccountable institution
Last month, US presidential candidate Joe Biden wrote an op-ed in the Miami-based South Florida Sun Sentinel newspaper, in which he lauded the success of Plan Colombia in eradicating coca crops, shoring up security, and even protecting human rights.
Of the plan, Biden wrote: “Both Colombia and the United States made a real investment in taking on narco-trafficking, and also in strengthening the country’s judicial institutions, cleaning up corruption and promoting economic opportunities for Colombians.”
The former vice president is confusing intentions with results, and his assertions are so patently false that they’re laughable. After almost two decades and more than $10 billion USD in mostly military aid, Plan Colombia is an abysmal failure. Long term, the plan has not achieved its purported aim of reducing coca production and cocaine trafficking. It is true that between 2000-2013, Colombia succeeded in reducing coca crops from 160,000 to 48,000 hectares, but since then cultivation has been climbing steadily, and by 2017, the area used for coca crops nearly doubled, and now occupies 209,000 hectares of the country.
A Colombian National Police plane sprays glyphosate herbicide in the jungle near San Jose del Guaviare to kill an illegal coca crop, on January 6, 1998.
Plan Colombia has a long and well-documented history of failure, and by holding it up as a success story, Biden risks damaging his foreign policy credentials. It is a billion-dollar boondoggle that has achieved little more than enabling the Colombian military – the country’s least accountable institution – to carry out a myriad of illegal activities. This makes the United States an accomplice in many of the crimes committed here. Crimes such as murder, the gang-rape of minors, and spying on journalists (some of them US civilians), judges, lawyers and opposition politicians.
Under normal circumstances, Biden’s delusional assessment wouldn’t be a problem. Just another US politician who is big on rosy platitudes and short on facts and figures. But he is been consistently 8-10 points ahead of President Trump in the polls, and if those polls are to be believed, he will be elected president tomorrow.
With that in mind, Biden’s stance on Colombia is disconcerting. If he really wants to strengthen the bilateral relationship (and not just win over a large chunk of the one-million Colombian-American voters), then he needs to confront Colombia’s cold and bloody reality, and his nation’s hand in it.
In 2015, Plan Colombia was reworked by the Obama administration into a newer policy called “Peace Colombia,” in preparation for the ratification of the peace accord with the former FARC guerrillas. The peace deal is now largely dead, and we have the Duque administration to thank for that. The United States nonetheless continues to give hundreds of millions of dollars a year to Colombia in military aid.
Growing Concern Over Military Abuses
Members of Biden’s own party have recognized the Colombian army’s bad behavior and have made some headway in trying to rein it in. In late July this year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) added a pair of amendments to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as a warning to Colombia to get its shit together on human rights and a more sustainable coca eradication strategy.
US and Colombian soldiers seen during a joint exercise at Tolemaida Air Base in central Colombia.
Ocasio-Cortez’s amendment prohibits the use of NDAA funds for the aerial spraying of cancer-causing glyphosate herbicide to kill coca crops, and McGovern’s amendment requires the State Department to investigate and report on whether US aid to Colombia is being used for illegal activity.
While these amendments are a step in the right direction, they don’t go nearly far enough, and Jim McGovern knows it: “If it was up to me, I would end security assistance to Colombia right now,” he was quoted as saying. “Those who are responsible for illegal acts ought to be held accountable … Clearly that doesn’t happen in Colombia.”
Mr. McGovern, we couldn’t agree with you any more.
The NDAA and two amendments have been passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but won’t be signed into law until after the election, according to reports.
The lawmaker from Massachusetts was also behind the letter sent to Mike Pompeo in July this year, requesting that the Secretary of State urge the Duque administration to do more to stop the killing of social leaders, and for the government to follow through on its obligation to implement the peace accord.
Related: Peace in Colombia? What Peace?
“Colombia is now the most dangerous country in the world for human rights defenders,” the letter, which was signed by 92 members of congress, stated. “The Colombian government’s slowness in implementing the peace accords, its failure to bring the civilian state into the conflict zones, and its ongoing inability to prevent and prosecute attacks against defenders have allowed this tragedy to go unchecked.”
Surely Biden is aware of these initiatives by his fellow Democrats, but if he is, then why didn’t he mention Colombia’s inability to protect its citizens in his op-ed? Likely because ugly truths must be brushed aside when you’re pandering to Colombian-Americans for their votes.
The Colombian Right Campaigning Against Biden
In another silly point in Biden’s article – which was translated into Spanish and published in El Tiempo – he raved about how Plan Colombia has always had bipartisan support. But the fact that a policy is supported by both Republicans and Democrats is not a measure of success.
What’s more, Biden cannot count on the same bipartisanship here in Colombia. Senior figures within President Duque’s Democratic Center party – Senators María Fernanda Cabal, Carlos Felipe Mejía, Rep. Juan David Vélez, and possibly even Colombia’s ambassador to the US, Francisco ‘Pacho’ Santos – have been actively campaigning for Donald Trump’s reelection. They have done so in the battleground state of Florida using their tried-and-true tactic of evoking the Castro-Chavista boogeyman. Biden is a closet socialist hell-bent on turning the United States into the next Venezuela, they moan.
A supporter of US President Donald Trump rallies outside a Latinos for Trump event in Doral, Florida.
Yet the former vice president went on with his mythical horseshit. “(Plan Colombia) became an important tool for the defense of human rights,” Biden wrote.
What the fuck are you talking about, Joe? I can’t even think of one instance where human rights were even considered relevant under Plan Colombia. Were human rights the goal when the US insisted that Colombia dump harsh carcinogenic chemicals on poor farmers in a bid to kill coca crops? Were they a priority when a Plan Colombia-propped up army kidnapped and murdered at least 5,000-10,000 young men and dressed their corpses up as guerrilla fighters, in order to inflate combat kill numbers?
One could be forgiven for thinking that Joe Biden has Colombia confused with another country, or that he has no idea what human rights are.
Keeping Guns Out of the Killers’ Hands
If the man who is likely to be elected president of the United States tomorrow really cares about Colombia (which is highly doubtful), he will take a long-view on the country and not kowtow to the current government, which is actively working against him.
(We wonder if Duque et al. are worried about the repercussions of overtly backing the wrong horse in this election).
If human rights, or at least the reduction of human suffering, are important to him, a good place for Biden to start would be to take Rep. McGovern’s advice and suspend all funding to the Colombian military, and begin a moratorium on arms sales – at least until human rights indeed become a priority.
Cutting the purse strings to the institution that has committed thousands of atrocities is probably the only way to help those in power understand that the impunity-party must come to an end. It’s high time that Colombia start acting more like a democracy and less like a neo-feudal fiefdom.
Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz urges the crowd to vote for presidential candidate Joe Biden during a Latinos to the Polls event in Weston, Florida.
In courting Colombian-American voters, Biden shouldn’t have been afraid to speak about Colombia’s problems openly – so long as he has a vision to address those problems with bold new ideas that are based in reality. He and the Democrats don’t have the luxury of pitching the same kind of delusional hyperbole that the Trumpites readily employ. Admitting that money has been squandered under Plan Colombia won’t turn off Colombian-American voters (at least those who haven’t been lost to the fantasy-world of right-wing extremism), and those voters would in all likelihood be receptive to his forthrightness.
Cutting off funds to Colombia’s military is a reasonable policy shift, given the litany of crimes they have committed with US funding, equipment and weapons. And who knows? Maybe keeping guns and money out of the hands of the killers, rapists and spies would be the spark that sets Colombia’s most unaccountable institution on a path toward some much-needed reforms.
Journalist. Misfit. Malcontent. Provocateur. Is a better Colombia is possible? We’re starting to have doubts.
I have lived in Colombia for over a decade, travelled extensively within the country and spent a lot of time in the deeply impoverished rural parts of the country where most of the fighting was taking place. After feeling a brief moment of hope in about 2014 for the future of Colombia, all I have seen is the country become progressively worse and the political leadership increasingly out of tune with reality and what is required to change the country. Colombia is destined to remain essentially a partially failed neo-feudal state, propped by the US in return for being an erstwhile regional ally and useful bulwark against Moscow’s and Beijing’s intentions in South America. In return for that US support Colombia will remain the “the dirty finca” for angry midlife crisis poorly educated lower middle class American men to play out their unachieved adolescent fantasies. Might as well get it all over with and change the country’s name to Shitombia.
We couldn’t agree with you more Juan… so much so that we’re thinking of removing the “Colombia Deserves Better” from our logo.
You write quite well. Would you considering expanding on your comment here and turn it into a full-fledged blog post? Let us know!