Bogotá, Washington Said to See Eye-to-Eye on Goals in Colombia

James Mack,
U.S. deputy assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs
Speech before the Cato Institute

While the U.S. and Colombian governments approach the problems afflicting Colombia somewhat differently, their overall goals remain compatible and complementary. The primary U.S. objective is to dramatically lower the amount of the cocaine coming from Colombia into the United States, while the Colombian government's immediate aim is to bring an end to the country's 37-year civil conflict.

Mack said Bogotá and Washington both believe that anti-government insurgency groups in Colombia will be weakened if they are denied access to the profits of cocaine trafficking, and consequently less able to continue their insurgency. Whatever success the government of Colombian President Andres Pastrana achieves against its opponents, Mack said he did not believe the Bush Administration policy on Colombia will "deviate into counter-insurgency" efforts. Overall, the Bush Administration sees "eye-to-eye" with Pastrana "on the general focus of how things are to move in the future" in Colombia.

The Bush Administration, Mack said, "heartily endorses" the Colombian government's two-year goal of reducing coca production by 30% nationwide, and by 50% in the major coca-producing Colombian department of Putumayo. The ultimate goal, he said, is to achieve a 50% reduction of coca production nationwide over the next five years. Mack said the Bush Administration believes those goals are "achievable," and that it will be possible to "hold the line" simultaneously against the resurgence of coca production in Bolivia and Peru, two major Andean cocaine-producing countries that have instituted dramatically successful coca-eradication programs.

The Colombian government has just begun a U.S.-backed campaign in Putumayo to eradicate coca in that region through aerial spraying. Mack described Putumayo as "ground zero" for coca production, where observers find "coca fields growing as far as the eye can see." Although he could not predict whether the spraying campaign would be entirely trouble-free, Mack said that the people of Putumayo have shown "enormous interest" in the Colombian government's alternative development programs, which aim to reduce coca cultivation by offering farmers incentives to plant legal crops. He indicated that such programs are indispensable, because farmers with no other options will likely return to coca cultivation as a means of survival.

Mack said he respected the efforts of governors of four Colombian departments who recently came to Washington to lobby against the aerial eradication campaign. He speculated that the officials were "responding to their constituents very, very well," but stressed that the aerial campaign must continue to ensure that coca is being destroyed.

Another speaker, Ian Vasquez of the Cato Institute, offered a decidedly negative view of U.S. efforts to help Colombia fight its drug problem. He said the escalation of the drug war has provoked a wave of guerrilla violence that has destabilized Colombia and succeeded in eliminating government control over large parts of the nation. He said efforts against illegal drugs in Colombia and elsewhere have weakened civilian rule, strengthened the role of the military, and generated financial and popular support for leftist rebel groups. He said the Bush Administration should end its "international crusade" against drugs and further open its markets to drug-source countries' legal goods.

Such a change in policy would "hardly affect" the U.S. public's consumption of illegal drugs that are brought into this country from South America and elsewhere, Vasquez said. But a changed focus, he argued, "would at least be a recognition that narcotics abuse is a domestic social problem that foreign policy cannot solve."

Washington, D.C.
March 13, 2001