Did Plan Colombia work? A look at the numbers Posted by Adam Isacson

Six years ago this week, President Clinton submitted an emergency request to Congress for $1.3 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia and its neighbors. The money – and billions more since – went to “Plan Colombia,” an ambitious Colombian government plan (written with very heavy U.S. input) that was to bring Colombia “peace, prosperity, and the strengthening of the state.”

Six years later, I continue to be absolutely mystified by U.S. officialdom’s capacity to convince itself that Plan Colombia has been a smashing success.

Four recent examples:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, May 11, 2005 [PDF format]: “I am pleased to be here today to report that, with the aggressiveness of Colombian President Uribe and strong backing from President George W. Bush and our Congress, Plan Colombia has made measurable improvements in Colombia.”

Then-Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, May 11, 2005 [PDF format]: “Plan Colombia, by all measurements including those already cited above, has had exceptional success in pursuing the goals it established.”

President Bush, August 4, 2005: “The United States provided critical assistance for Plan Colombia, and the plan is producing results.”

Drug Czar John Walters, August 31, 2005: “[I]f you looked either in the Reagan Administration or frankly in the President's father's Administration and said Colombia was going to be where it is today, that would be considered impossible.”

Don’t believe the hype. Yes, Plan Colombia has had a few limited successes, such as a modest drop in coca-growing. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe – using his own resources almost entirely – has meanwhile improved some measures of security, particularly in densely populated areas. But after $4.7 billion in appropriations since January 2000, the results of U.S. aid to Colombia have been remarkably disappointing.

Rather than explain why with an exhaustive, point-by-point disquisition, as I’ve done in the past (recent example here as a PDF), let’s just look at the numbers themselves. (I apologize in advance to the people behind the Harper’s Index for so shamefacedly stealing their formula.)

U.S. aid to Colombia:

• Total U.S. aid to Colombia over the seven years between 2000 and 2006: $4.72 billion
• Amount of the above that went to Colombia’s military and police forces: $3.84 billlion (81% of total)
• Total U.S. aid to Colombia in 2005: $774.6 million
• Amount of 2005 aid that went to Colombia’s military and police forces: $643.3 million (83% of total)
• Rank of Colombia in the world, in both military aid and total aid: 5th, behind Iraq, Israel, Afghanistan and Egypt
• Colombian military and police personnel trained by the United States, 2001-2004: 34,525
• Worldwide rank of Colombia in total security-force trainees, after Iraq: 2

The drug war:

• Square miles of Colombia sprayed with “Round-Up Ultra” herbicide, 2000-2005: 2,550
• Land area of Delaware, square miles: 1,954
• Square miles planted in Colombia with coca, the plant used to make cocaine, in 2000, the year Plan Colombia began: 526
• Square miles planted in Colombia with coca in 2004: 440
• Ratio of square miles sprayed to square miles of coca reduced: 30 to 1
• Approximate cost of fumigating one square mile, conservative estimate: $162,000
• Reduction in Colombian coca-growing from 2003 to 2004, in acres: 0
• Percentage of coca plots detected by the United Nations in 2004 [PDF format] that did not exist the year before: 62
• Amount per month, according to the United Nations, that a Colombian farmer nets from a hectare (2.5 acres) of coca: $199
• Percentage of Colombia’s rural population living below the poverty line: 82
• U.S. assistance for alternative development programs in Colombia (including opium-growing areas), 2000-2006: $407.2 million (8.6% of total)
• Square miles of coca sprayed [PDF format] in Colombia’s departments of Caquetá, Guaviare and Nariño, 1999-2004: 1,106
• Expenditure on alternative development programs [PDF format] in those three departments, 1999-2007: $17.3 million ($1.9 million/year)
• Price, by one measurement from the Drug Czar’s office, of a gram of cocaine on U.S. streets in 2000: $161.28
• Price, by the same measurement from the Drug Czar’s office, of a gram of cocaine on U.S. streets in 2003: $106.54
• Price, by a second measurement from the Drug Czar’s office, of a gram of cocaine on U.S. streets in July 2003: $210
• Price, by the same second measurement from the Drug Czar’s office, of a gram of cocaine on U.S. streets in September 2005: $170

Colombia’s conflict:

• Months since U.S. Southern Command Gen. James Hill said that Colombia’s FARC guerrillas would be “combat ineffective” by 2006: 18 ½
• FARC attacks on Colombian military and police targets, 2005 [PDF format]: 342
• Colombian soldiers and police killed in combat with guerrillas, 2005 [PDF format]: 271
• Colombian soldiers and police killed in combat with guerrillas, 2003 [PDF format]: 212
• Percentage increase in guerrilla attacks on infrastructure, 2004-2005 [PDF format]: 101%
• Members of FARC secretariat (7 members) and Estado Mayor (25 members) captured or killed since 2000: 0
• Guerrilla bombings of the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline in 2002, the year before the launch of a $100 million U.S. military-assistance program to protect the pipeline [PDF format]: 41
• Guerrilla bombings of the Caño Limón-Coveñas pipeline in 2004: 17
• As of today, number of days in which guerrillas have stopped road traffic in Putumayo, the southern Colombian department where “Plan Colombia” got underway in 2000: 20
• Colombians killed by guerrilla landmines, 2005: 144
• Paramilitary attacks on civilians [PDF format], first quarter of 2003: about 30
• Paramilitary attacks on civilians, second quarter of 2005: over 80
• Civilians killed or disappeared by paramilitary groups since their December 2002 declaration of a “cease-fire” [PDF format]: over 2,300
• Paramilitaries who, as of September 2005, had “demobilized” as part of ongoing negotiation process: 10,383
• Of those, number who turned in a weapon: 6,636
• Of those weapons, percentage determined by OAS verifiers to be “unusable or in poor condition”: 30%
• According to paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, percentage of members of Colombia’s Congress controlled by the paramilitaries: 30%
• Number of candidates for the March 2006 congressional elections expelled this week from two pro-government parties for ties to paramilitary groups: 5

Human rights and impunity:

• “Arbitrary arrests” documented by Colombian human-rights groups [PDF format], 1996-2002: 2,869
• “Arbitrary arrests” documented by Colombian human-rights groups between August 2002 and August 2004: 6,332
• Maximum amount of time, in years, that top paramilitary leaders responsible for massacres might spend in a special jail once negotiations conclude: 6 ½
• Percentage of Colombia’s cultivable land believed to be in the hands of paramilitaries and narcotraffickers, according to the government comptroller’s office: nearly 50%
• Number of houses and farms that top paramilitary leader (and wanted narcotrafficker) Diego Fernando Murillo (“Don Berna”) claims to own, as he prepares to report his illegally obtained holdings to prosecutors in exchange for near-amnesty: 1 of each
• According to the State Department, number of Colombian military and police personnel under detention while being investigated for human-rights abuse, as of August 2005: 23
• According to the State Department, number of Colombian military and police personnel under indictment for human-rights abuse, as of August 2005: 26
• Of the above 49 individuals, number above the rank of sergeant: 19
• Number above the rank of major: 1
• Percentage of murders in Colombia that end in a sentencing [PDF format]: 4%
• U.S. assistance to Colombia for judicial reform, 2000-2006: $43 million (0.9% of total)
• U.S. assistance to Colombia for human-rights protection, 2000-2006: $81 million (1.7% of total)

Humanitarian crisis:

• Rank of Colombia among the world’s most serious cases of forced displacement: 2^nd, after Sudan
• Colombians forcibly displaced from their homes by violence, January 2000-September 2005: 1.8 million
• Increase in number of newly displaced persons, first three quarters of 2004 to first three quarters of 2005: 23%
• Of the displaced population, percentage who are women and children [PDF format]: 72%
• U.S. assistance to Colombia for internally displaced persons, 2000-2006: $214.5 million (4.5% of total)

Economy and poverty:

• Growth in Colombia’s gross domestic product, 2005 est.: 4.5%
• Colombia’s benchmark IGBC stock-market index, as a multiple of what it was when President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002: 6 times
• Worldwide rank of Colombia in GINI coefficient, which measures income equality: 114^th of 124 countries measured
• Of 44 million Colombians, the number who live on less than $1/day: 8 million
• Percentage of Colombians with no access to potable water, 2005: 28%
• Unemployment plus underemployment in Colombia [Excel format], September 2002: 49.4%
• Unemployment plus underemployment in Colombia, 2005: 43.8%
• Colombia’s minimum wage, per month, in dollars, 2006: $177
• Percentage of registered agricultural land, according to a 2002 Colombian government study [PDF format], belonging to 0.4 percent of landholders: 61.2%
• Central government deficit, excluding profits from state-run companies (such as oil), as percentage of GDP, 2005: over 5%

Comments

[Jeff Younger]

Compared to a democratic Columbian government toppled by Maoist insurgents financed by drug money, this looks pretty good to me.

[J Thomas]

Yes, and compared to a USA run by the KKK under a cloned replica of Adolf Hitler, the current USA looks good to me.

Sheesh.

[Jeff Younger]

Adam, since the FARC, AUC, M9 and ELN aren’t imaginary (unlike the Hitler clones in the fantasies of some left-wing idiots), and since the government of Columbia was perilously close to collapse, and since these policies at least staved off that disaster --- to what are you comparing the current situation? Why do these facts present a worse outcome than the alternatives? In fact, could you tell us what the alternatives were?

[Adam Isacson]

- The government of Colombia was never “perilously close to collapse.” At its late-90s height, the most the FARC were able to do was overrun remote military bases and – for about a day – take over the tiny provincial capital of Mitú in the Amazon jungle. (And oh yeah, in 2005 the FARC overran a couple of remote military bases.) The paramilitaries, meanwhile, are just as able to operate, just as wealthy and, arguably, more powerful politically than they were before Plan Colombia.

- The big difference in security is that the FARC are kidnapping less and have been forced away from most zones that are densely populated. This improvement in security in more-populated areas can’t be attributed to U.S. aid. Our assistance has focused overwhelmingly on drug eradication and pipeline-protection (with only modest success) in less-populated areas. Protecting Colombians? Colombia has had to do that with its own money.

- Could $4.7 billion have helped bring about a better situation than the present, which is still an awful mess? Absolutely. Far more could have been achieved if most of the 80% that went to military aid had gone instead to actual governance - which requires much more than military force - and curbing impunity (for corruption as well as HR abuse).

What does that mean? For two very recent discussions of alternatives, see this rather long entry to CIP’s blog two weeks ago about recovering territory from armed groups, or the "Blueprint for a New Colombia Policy" that we and other groups published last year (PDF).

[Jeff Younger]

Thanks for the serious reply Adam. I'll read your "Blueprint" document tonight, and respond later.

[allan]

Excellent Adam! Thanks for the compilation.

Lets not forget Jennifer Odom and crew, eh? And that her commander was Col. James Hiett, caught laundering the proceeds from his wife's cocaine smugling...

Prohibition is the name of this failure.

And gentlemen? It is ColOmbia...

[Robert Mayer]

I'm a bit confused as to the actual target of the argument, because a couple things move in and out. If it's that a lot of money was dedicated to Plan Colombia and more should have been gotten out of it, I think that's probably correct in several ways. It's certainly a lot of money.

But Colombia is so much better off now than it was 6 years ago. You can actually visit Colombia now and not think constantly about a bomb going off. In terms of dealing with insurgencies, one of the most important things is to secure the urban areas. The fact that they were able to do that with such heavy infiltration at the time is amazing.

One thing that doesn't get mentioned is the large extent that the FARC had connections to high government officials, making it one of the most corrupt in the world. Since Uribe came into office, a lot of that corruption has been weeded out which has in turn contributed to the successes made in securing those urban areas and establishing a more stable political regime. I think we'll see more significant progress in the coming years.

So whether or not Plan Colombia can be attributed to this success in any way is actually quite hard to measure. Military cooperation between the two countries has actually been a large part in creating the security which has allowed for renewed investment and greater faith in the Colombian government. But that takes a lot of money. And though something like judicial reform got only 0.9% of the total, $43 million is a LOT of money for such a task.

[Kirk Muse]

Beyond just Plan Colombia, has our war on drugs worked?

According to U. S. District Judge John L. Kane in: "The New Prohibition: Voices of Dissent Challenging the Drug War" edited by Sheriff Bill Masters, our so-called war on drugs began with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914.

Back then, all types of recreational and self-medicating drugs were legally available on grocery store shelves for pennies per dose, with no questions asked. Back then, about 1.3 percent of our adult population were addicted to drugs.

Back then, the term "illegal drugs" didn't exist. Back then, the term "drug related crime" didn't exist either. Neither did drug lords or even drug dealers as we know them today.

Today, after 90 years of fighting our so-called drug war, we still have about 1.3 percent of our population addicted to drugs.

And in the process, we have completely wasted more than a trillion dollars and become the most incarcerated nation in the history of human civilization.

Perhaps we should build more prisons so we can have half of all the prisoners in the world instead of only 25 percent of them like we do today.

Perhaps we should waste another trillion dollars attempting to nullify the immutable law of supply and demand.

[Randy Paul]

One thing that doesn't get mentioned is the large extent that the FARC had connections to high government officials, making it one of the most corrupt in the world. Since Uribe came into office, a lot of that corruption has been weeded out which has in turn contributed to the successes made in securing those urban areas and establishing a more stable political regime. I think we'll see more significant progress in the coming years.

Really? Now Congress is heavily infiltrated by the AUC and somehow I can't regard that as an improvement.

[serial catowner]

So what didn't go according to plan? The U.S. intelligence agencies have always tried to establish a strong narco-trafficker presence in vulnerable areas (cf. Turkey, Laos, Afghanistan, Albania), and making the compliant Uribe President-for-life would also fit the 'profile' of how the U.S. likes to see things. Throw in a little border warfare with Chavez, and what's not to like?

Sounds to me like the same old plan.