WASHINGTON – In 1999 Colombia became the biggest benefactor of US military aid in the world. It was the biggest supplier of cocaine with the worst human rights record in South America.
Today, Colombia remains one of the biggest world suppliers of cocaine—95 percent of the drug seized in the U.S. originates in Colombia—and human rights are still an issue. Plan Colombia, which started off as a two-year program, became an institution of the last decade.
If it’s a losing war, why is the U.S. still there? Colombia, the top recipient of U.S. aid in 2010 after Haiti (since the Hatian earthquake in January 2010), is only one step on the journey of cocaine trafficking.
U.S.
“We have terrorists in our backyard that operate with impunity each and every day,” Rep. Steve King, R – Iowa, said, with chilling affects in our country as a whole.
He spoke with a group of representatives from the National Sheriffs Association in September about their plight with criminal aliens inside U.S. borders. They asked for support, both the authorization and funding, to combat a rise in the influence of Mexican cartels in communities far from the border.
Sheriff Terry Johnson of Alamance County, N.C., drew a connection between criminal illegal immigrants and narcotics crimes in his county. Of 35 individuals arrested in the last several months in his county, nine were illegal criminal immigrants connected with the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico.
Central America
In 2008 Congress approved $400 million in aid to Mexico and $65 million to Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti to train local law enforcement to combat organized crime. This resulted in increased information sharing and training programs with Mexico.
But Mexican policy against organized crime isn’t working. The Mexican Government is attempting to take out major cartel leaders and it’s creating a vacuum, said Vanda Felbab-Brown, an expert in counter-narcotics at the Brookings Institution. Many more, smaller cartels are eager to step up, creating territory disputes over trafficking routes arriving into Central America by plane, boat and now submersibles.
One such port feeding into Mexico is Honduras. In 2010 there were 18 murders per 100,000 people in Mexico, compared to 77 murders in Honduras, according to a Senate report on Central American violence published in September.
“Like Mexico, Central America’s location between the world’s largest producers of illicit drugs in South America and the world’s largest drug consuming nation in the U.S. makes it particularly vulnerable to drug traffickers,” the report said. This is partly due to a crackdown by Mexican President Felipe Calderon, squeezing drug trafficking organizations into neighboring states.
It’s a similar story in the Andes region.
South America
Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., of the Senate Caucus on International Drug Control called Colombia a success story at a recent hearing. She said cooperation with U.S counter-narcotics strategy received mixed messages from Peru and Ecuador, while Bolivia was disappointing, and Venezuela showed only sporadic support.
The idea is to stabilize the region and puts Colombia in a position to train neighbors in South and Central America in a position to stabilize not only the Andes, but Central America and the U.S. border as well. Colombia has been groomed into a strong ally since 2000.
But problems remain. The country struggles to wean poor farmers from quick-return coca crops without the roads and infrastructure to support a market for alternative crops, said Sanho Tree, an expert in drug policy at the non-governmental organization Institute for Policy Studies. Not to mention the many groups still involved in drug trafficking, said Felbab-Brown.
For now, the U.S. is still distracted by the 2012 budget. Should the federal government offer more support to local sheriffs? How about invest it in Mexico and the Merida Initiative? Or Honduras, where human rights issues are pressing? How about the root of the problem in Colombia and the Andes?
Who gets the money?
