The Foreign Service Journal, April 2006

administration was becoming alarmed at the prospect that a coun- try so close to the United States and so large might fail, and sought ways to stabilize it, whatever the compli- cations. Helping a country with the his- tory and size of Colombia is a for- midable task, even under the best of circumstances. It is as large as the southern United States minus Florida, with three distinct Andean ranges and the vast, lightly-popu- lated Amazon plains. It was often incorrectly said during this period that the guerrillas controlled half the country. Perhaps the more accurate assertion is that to this day no one controls large stretches of the countryside, in part because of the long tradition of weak government. Complicating matters, the weakest instrument of the government is the judiciary, reflecting a sad national record of lawlessness. Smuggling has a long history, with the emerald trade, for example, being a law unto itself. Colombia has long been known to law enforcement offi- cials around the globe not just for various forms of nar- cotics trafficking (first marijuana, then cocaine and hero- in) but also as one of the world’s major currency counter- feiting centers. Some analysts contend that Colombia is violent and lawless because it is poor, and point to economic assis- tance as the key. Sadly, nearly a quarter of the population falls below the $2-a-day poverty line. But there is solid evidence that the strongest explanatory factor for pover- ty in Colombia is the level of violence. The World Bank estimates that if Colombia had just the rate of violence that is average for Latin America as a whole, it would be 50 percent richer. Two-and-a-half-million Colombians are refugees in their own country. The Bank’s studies also point to a close correlation between the rise of the nar- cotics trade, the rise of violence and the decline of eco- nomic growth. While its goal was stabilizing a country just two hours by air from Miami, the Clinton administration bought the narcotics explanation of the country’s plight. Pragmatically, it also calculated that it could only gain congressional support for massive assistance to Colombia by anchoring its assistance in counternarcotics programs. Thus, “Plan Colombia” was born in 1999 as a multilateral aid package worth $7 billion over five years. Of this, $2.5 billion came from the United States, $1 billion from other countries and the rest from Bogota. A third of the U.S. money, all of the European funds and most of the Colombian component went to improve the efficiency of govern- ment and expand social programs. But from the beginning it was understood that two-thirds of U.S. funding would be directed to the police and armed forces, with much of that used for helicopters and other aircraft to support a large-scale aerial fumigation effort against coca and heroin poppies. While some in the U.S. Congress were happy that “the Clinton administration was finally getting serious about narcotics,” most critics in the United States and Europe believed Plan Colombia was wrong-headed because it focused on drugs and not poverty and it gave aid to mili- tary and police institutions accused of human rights vio- lations. In fact, the plan’s early efforts were largely dedi- cated to vetting the units that would be trained and sup- ported for human rights violations. Colombians, for their part, were grateful for the assistance but anxious to get started. A New Sheriff Comes to Town In 2002, Alvaro Uribe ran for president to succeed Andres Pastrana. An ambitious, highly goal-oriented for- mer governor of the Antioquia department, he had twice taken time out of his political career to study at Oxford and Harvard. His father had been murdered by the guerrillas, and as governor he promoted the then-legal community-protection organizations. Many deduced from that background that he was a conservative, though the views he exhibited in his rise through various elected and appointed government positions seemed to reflect the Liberal Party’s views. Colombians have historically chosen weak govern- ment over strong and, perhaps for that reason, have con- sistently sought negotiations rather than confrontation. Following that tradition, the other candidates in the race followed in Pastrana’s footsteps and continued to pro- F O C U S A P R I L 2 0 0 6 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 President Alvaro Uribe’s approach, “democratic security,” means all citizens have a right to be free from violence —- and a duty to help make their communities safer.