I recently read an
article published in The
Irish Times published on August 23, 2000 which raised some
disturbing questions concerning the real agenda behind U.S. Plan Columbia.
I have read similar views of Plan Columbia in the international press over the
past year, but I have not seen these views reported in the U.S. main-stream
media.
I
believe that it's important for addiction and mental health professionals to be
aware of the international controversy over Plan Columbia and other aspects of
America's Drug War. It's also important to recognize that Plan Columbia
and other the supply reduction programs of the war on drugs are draining money
that would be better spent implementing drug courts and expanding the
community-based addiction treatment programs needed to support them.
<Click
here to review the proposed budget and government rationale for Plan
Columbia>
Plan Columbia is the
biggest aid package every offered to a Latin American country. This money
is being made available for paramilitary antidrug activities at time when
treatment funding is inadequate to meet the needs of the addicts who want
treatment.
When it was launched by
President Clinton in 2000, he said it would combat drug abuse in the United
States while underscoring America's support for Colombia's efforts to seek
peace, fight illicit drugs, build its economy, and deepen democracy.
International critics, however, see Plan Columbia as a vehicle to permit the US
to enter the counter-insurgency war against the guerrilla factions in Columbia
under the cover of "counter-narcotics". Plan Colombia is.
The plan is opposed by
many in Colombia who believe it will escalate and prolong 30 years of armed
conflict. Far from bringing peace, they believe it will drag the country deeper
into bloodshed. In July of 2000, a
coalition of 37 Colombian human rights and other NGO groups signed a statement
rejecting Plan Columbia citing ethical and political difficulties in receiving
aid from this program. Their message to Europe: withhold support from Plan
Colombia and become actively involved in the search for alternatives.
Far from helping
Colombia to "strengthen its democracy", U.S. policies may have done
the opposite. Much of the US Military Aide could end up in the hands of an
army with a record of human rights abuses that refuses to disengage from drug
trafficking and from the notorious "paramilitaries" - Colombian jargon
for right-wing death squads. American
involvement has not and probably will not end the reign of terror being imposed
upon Columbian citizens who continue to be terrorized, driven into exile and
slaughtered with impunity. There were 402 reported massacres involving the
slaughter defenseless villagers in 1999 attributed to
"paramilitaries".
There are three
revolutionary forces that threaten the elected government in Columbia: the FARC
(the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), the ELN (Army of National
Liberation) guerrillas, and the newly emerging "paramilitaries".
Plan Columbia will supply arms and military training that will probably
escalate rather than end the blood shed related to the military operations of
these three groups. The U.S. could
very well become entrapped in a Viet Nam style no-win civil insurgency.
When the Communist
threat vanished with the collapse of the Soviet Union, justification for funding
US international paramilitary operations was lost.
A new threat emerged justifying these operations.
That threat was narco-terrorism. The
response to that threat was the expansion and redirection of the War On Drugs.
Domestically, the war
on drugs has become a war on addicts that is fought by police and has resulted
in the long-term incarceration of over 500,000 non-violent drug offenders.
Internationally the war on drugs has become a vehicle to support US
paramilitary intervention in third world countries.
The War on Drugs has
not been effective in reducing drug abuse in the United States.
There is strong evidence that implementation of Public Health Addiction
Policy based upon treatment alternatives to incarceration would be far more
effective and less costly.
Click
Here To Review Gorski’s Slide Show That Presents The Most Recent Research
It's
important for the providers of addiction, mental health, and social
service programs to recognize that Plan Columbia
and other the supply reduction programs of the war on drugs are draining money
that would be better spent implementing drug courts and expanding the
community-based addiction treatment programs needed to support them. It
would be wise to start lobbying to direction War On Drugs dollars into community
based treatment and social programs.