Better lead than bread? A critical analysis of the US's plan Colombia
Colombia's continuing 35‐year civil war has claimed over 300,000 lives. Plan Colombia is a $1.3 billion dollar US military aid package to the Colombian military. It is the largest international intervention into Colombia's civil war and will make Colombia the third largest US military aid recipient in the world today. The US government claims the aid will be used to wage a war on drugs against Colombia's ‘narco‐guerrillas’ as 90 per cent of all cocaine entering the US originates from Colombia. However, the US's own agencies state that while the guerrillas tax the drug traffickers for operations on their territory they are not involved in drug trafficking or transshipment to the US. These same agencies identify the paramilitary ‘death squads’ as being far more heavily involved in drug trafficking and yet the US completely ignores these groups. Furthermore, the US is using a military with an atrocious human rights record. If Plan Colombia is not about a war on drugs then what is it about? Additionally, how does the US justify using an infamous military which continues to employ clandestine paramilitary ‘death‐squads’ in the prosecution of counter‐insurgency warfare? This article argues that Plan Colombia is designed to eliminate insurgency movements which threaten US interests in South America and the US's war on drugs is a selective targeting on crops which are controlled by groups opposed to US interests. Furthermore, Plan Colombia forms part of a long term strategy of regional containment of a newly emerging radical opposition which encompasses Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Bolivia and which poses a serious threat to US corporate interests.1