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Testimony by Mark L. Schneider, Senior Vice President, International Crisis Group on "U.S. Colombia Relations"
Before the Committee on Foreign Affairs' Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere
24 April 2007, Washington, DC

I want to express my appreciation to Chairman Rep. Tom Lantos of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Chairman Rep. Eliot Engel of the Western Hemisphere Affairs Subcommittee and Ranking members Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Dan Burton for the opportunity to offer testimony today on U.S. policy toward Colombia and the future of U.S. assistance toward Colombia.

The International Crisis Group is a non-governmental organization dedicated to the prevention of conflict, to its resolution when conflict already is underway, and to the sustaining of post conflict institutions in a democratic framework as an institutional bulwark against a recurrence of conflict and inevitably of human rights violations.

We have issued 16 reports on the civil conflict in Colombia over the past six years, on the factors driving the conflict, on the policies of the Colombian government and key international actors, including Plan Colombia. We strongly believe there is a need today to re-examine and change key elements of current policies-because Plan Colombia is failing to achieve many of its goals.

Plan Colombia

Plan Colombia is now nearly eight years old, if you date it from President Pastrana's announcement in 1999 of a proposed comprehensive plan to promote democracy in Colombia. U.S. support for Plan Colombia was signed into law in July 2000 as part of the FY2001 Foreign Operations appropriations bill with funds fully flowing in calendar year 2001. Since then the lion's share of aid has been directed to support Colombian police and military in combating drug trafficking.

With the election of President Alvaro Uribe and at the request of the new Uribe government, funds were authorized to be used for both counter narcotics and counter-insurgency objectives. Some $5 billion now has spent for those purposes. For FY2008, the Administration is seeking another $715 million, still with 80 per cent going to the police and military, when you add DOD funding. We consistently have argued for re-setting the balance between economic and military/police aid to a 50/50 balance.

I should add that the Crisis Group has never objected to U.S. economic and military support for the Government of Colombia so long as the latter was conditioned on breaking the links between the paramilitary and Colombian security forces, on respect for human rights by Colombian state forces, and on pursuit of a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Recently the only area where negotiations appear to be seriously engaged is with the smaller leftwing guerilla group, the ELN (Spanish acronym for National Liberation Army). Those discussions in Cuba give at least some encouragement that agreement may be possible with this guerrilla movement, however small it now may be in military terms-buffeted by armed forces, paramilitary and now the target of the FARC as well. It would be to the advantage of all concerned to pursue these talks to a successful conclusion. Unfortunately the humanitarian exchange long pursued with the FARC appears stalemated and that failure underscores the limited hopes for progress on more substantive peace negotiations with them-although every opportunity should be explored. At some point, a negotiated solution is realistically the only viable solution to end the conflict in Colombia.

Our judgment, however, is that Plan Colombia's counter narcotics goals have not been achieved. The goal was to cut the hectares in half; instead as many hectares of coca are being cultivated today as in 2002 and Colombia still supplies some 90 per cent of all the cocaine coming into the U.S. Also, more of Colombia, 20 of 21 departments versus nine in 2002 are enmeshed in the violence of drug cultivation and counter drug activities. In fact, if you look at the Andean ridge-Colombia, Peru and Bolivia-there is barely a 10 per cent difference in the total area under cultivation going back to 1988---some 200,000 hectares---year-in and year-out. Unless more is done to reduce demand in the U.S., Europe and other consumer countries, U.S. counternarcotics programs are doomed to a Sisyphus-like existence.

Partial progress has been seen on the counter insurgency front with the Colombian military and police enlarged and strengthened. However the conflict continues and with it vast human suffering. The FARC (Spanish acronym for the leftwing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) military strategies have had to change, but they still have substantial capacity to operate in guerrilla fashion across wide areas of Colombia and there has not been sufficient priority aimed at reducing rural poverty or increasing state governance and development in rural indigenous and Afro-Colombian regions.

Despite the demobilization of some 32,000 paramilitary related individuals, thousands of those re-armed, newly armed or never disarmed paras still seek to control, and effectively do in some places such as Nariño department to the south-west or the Sierra Nevada to the north-east, swathes of Colombian territory, largely linked to drugs. The combination of pushing the FARC deeper into Colombia's mountains and jungles and the removal of many of the paramilitary from the battlefield has seen a reduction in homicides, kidnappings, and forced displacements. Colombia still remains among the world's leaders in each and, according to the latest UNHCHR report on Colombia released 5 March 2007, its armed forces continue to engage in extrajudicial executions and human rights abuses. The government points to steps it has taken to respond to these violations, but far more needs to be done.

Colombia's civil conflict has endured for more than four decades. Until recently, the three illegal armed groups; the rightwing paramilitary, the leftwing FARC and the National Liberation Army (ELN) were the key adversaries in that conflict. The latter two still battle the state and its security forces, and engage in violations of international humanitarian law. The former, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and its paramilitary leaders, most of whom demobilized as of last August, if anything have been guilty of the most ghastly atrocities, in their scorched earth conflict with the guerrillas and for control over drug trafficking. Their lingering networks and the re-armed, newly armed or never disarmed "re-paras", together still constitute a deadly threat to Colombian democracy itself.

"Parapolitica" scandal

It is precisely that threat which has embroiled the Uribe Administration in its most serious political crisis since President Uribe's first election in 2002 and shaken perhaps permanently his hopes that his second term, after a 62% re-election win a year ago, would be crisis-free.

Part of the reason for his political success is that Uribe made urban Colombians feel safer. When he was inaugurated in 2002, make-shift mortar-like rockets were fired at the celebration from working class areas in Bogotá by the FARC (Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Ironically underscoring part of Colombia's reality, they exploded in the same poor neighborhoods, killing several civilians.

Those who suffer are virtually always the poor, particularly the rural poor from this conflict which supposedly began to bring them revolutionary change. Uribe has largely succeeded in pushing the FARC from the major cities and recently seeing reductions in homicides and kidnappings there, although Colombia still remains among the world's leaders in both categories. The reductions occurred nearly simultaneously to the demobilization of the paramilitary forces that now are being exposed as having a network of linkages to Colombia's political and military elite.

These recent disclosures of paramilitary financing of political campaigns, of a written 2001 political pact between paramilitary commanders and regional politicians, of joint military, police and paramilitary killings and disappearances, and of directed killings by paramilitary forces of labor leaders, human rights activities and others with intelligence supplied by the government's CIA/FBI-like internal security intelligence police known as the DAS (Spanish acronym for Administrative Security Department), have to raise enormous questions about the character of the U.S. aid relationship with Colombian security forces-and whether existing U.S. law is being upheld.

"What did he know" and "when did he know it" are the questions being asked in Colombia at this time of virtually every high-level official in relation to the "parapolitica" scandal. The Los Angeles Times reported last month in a report not disputed by the CIA, according to the paper, that the CIA had intelligence that the current head of the Colombian Army, General Mario Montoya and I quote, "and a paramilitary group jointly planned and conducted a military operation in 2002 to eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor areas around Medellin.At least 14 people were killed.dozens more disappeared.." Subsequently paramilitary forces under an AUC leader known as Don Berna (Diego Fernando Murillo) reportedly took control of those areas along with drug trafficking and other criminal operations. Don Berna, I might add, is in a Colombian jail; together with a number of other former paramilitary commanders; but the government has temporarily suspended the US government's extradition request on drug trafficking charges, supposedly until the Justice and Peace trials have finished.

In recent weeks, President Uribe has been forced to accept the resignation of his foreign minister, and to watch as eight Senators and five Members of Congress from his or allied parties along with two governors, and his former campaign manager in Magdalena who he later named to head the DAS, have been suspended, charged, arrested or identified as under suspicion by the Attorney General's office or the Supreme Court for links to the paramilitary. In addition at least three other members of congress are currently being investigated.

These paramilitary forces, along with the FARC and the ELN, have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the United States government. Together, they are responsible for a substantial amount if not a majority of the drug trafficking of cocaine into the U.S. and are responsible for massacres, kidnappings, assassinations forced displacement and land grabbing. Their direct actions, along with the military strategy of Colombia's armed forces, have been responsible for the continuing displacement of nearly 3 million Colombians over the last two decades, more than 200,000 last year alone. (Colombian government officials report 201,623 displaced and the Colombian human rights NGO CODHES reported 219,886, with the differences related to the government only counting those who register as displaced.) Their situation remains a major humanitarian tragedy and the Colombian constitutional court continues to find the government to have failed in adequately protecting the rights of the displaced.

Aid conditionality

Congressionally imposed human rights conditions on the use of a portion of Plan Colombia funding for Colombia's police and military require the dismantling, disarming and demobilization of the paramilitary. They also require the breaking of any links between the paramilitary and the armed forces and the prosecution of officials. And they require respect for human rights by the recipients of U.S. funding. It is particularly disturbing to note that the UNHCHR reported last year and again this year that extrajudicial executions by units of the security forces have increased. They cited the reports of more than one military unit killing individuals, at times in league with the paramilitary, then dressing them in FARC uniforms to raise the body count.

The investigations now underway by the Attorney Generaland the Supreme Court demonstrate important institutional strengths of the Colombian democratic system. Without a conclusion to those investigations, it is extremely difficult to understand the basis for the recent certification by the State Department that the Colombian government has met fully those human rights conditions on a portion of U.S. military assistance to Colombia.

I make that comment somewhat sadly because in many ways, the certification justification sent to the Congress was the best the Department has produced. For the first time, it included reference to the Colombian government's failures to address human rights abuses brought to the Department's attention in its consultations here and in Colombia with the NGO community. It referred to the rise in extrajudicial executions. With these recent findings by the UNHCHR, and still unresolved allegations against the head of the army and other high officials, the certification should have been delayed. Congressional committees have appropriately placed a hold on the release of the affected $55.2 million until those questions have been clarified.

It is somewhat ironic that the Bush Administration has credited the Uribe Administration with the investigations and the disclosures concerning these paramilitary forces. It was not the executive branch which undertook the investigations. Instead it has been the independent Attorney General's office (fiscal general), the human rights ombudsman (procurador general) and the Supreme Court which, along with Colombia's press, uncovered the involvement of the DAS chief and are pursuing the "parapolitica" scandal only because Colombia's constitutional court, over the objections of the Uribe government, put in stiff requirements that they confess before they received any judicial benefits. The executive branch has not been a proactive collaborator in the process, although President Uribe and other officials have stated publicly that the investigations should be pursued to their conclusion. President Uribe also has denied any personal complicity with the paramilitary.

Justice and Peace law

Several of the investigations now also are being conducted in relation to the implementation of the Justice and Peace law (JPL), Law 975, signed into law on 25 July 2005, and the regulations imposed by the country's constitutional court. That legal framework essentially provided benefits in the form of reduced sentences to those who otherwise would be liable for stiff prison sentences in exchange for their disarming, demobilization and dismantling their forces and their being held somewhat accountable for their crimes. It is substantially more demanding than the original bill submitted by the Uribe government but still is likely to mean even less than the eight year maximum found in the law. The regulations also are substantially different from those initially proposed by the executive branch.

In each instance, the constitutional court has rejected many of the government's arguments and demanded key changes to reflect the rights of the victims and of society at large for some accountability.

Last month, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, herself a former judge of the Canadian Supreme Court, summarized those changes which her office, the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Crisis Group, and other international and Colombian NGOs had urged. The constitutional court, her report noted, has required that "confession must be complete and truthful; the accused must declare, jointly or severally, all their legally or illegally acquired assets; and classification as a victim must be broader than that originally established in the law. However, with regard to the legal framework applicable to demobilization and reintegration, concerns persist regarding actual guarantees of the rights of the victims to truth, justice and reparation, the cumulative nature of penalties, and the determination of an alternative penalty. Effective implementation of the law would require greater resources and mechanisms that guaranteed the rights of victims."

An estimated 31,689 troops, according to the OAS Monitoring Mission, (MAPP), as of last August, have demobilized of which some 2695 are seeking to be prosecuted under the JPL. To handle these investigations the Attorney General's office has 20 prosecutorial teams, woefully shy of the numbers needed; a data base which is entirely inadequate; and minimal travel and support funds for investigating the veracity of the "confessions" of paramilitary seeking reduced sentences. In Santa Marta, where our Colombia analysts visited the justice and peace unit (JPU) of the Attorney General's office a few weeks ago, the JPU attorneys took down information from witnesses and victims but their data base does not permit them to cross-reference the information with the "confessions" they have received from the demobilized paramilitary. They have to do it by hand going through mountains of dossiers.

The demobilizations took place over the course of some 18 months (as shown in a chart which was in our report a year ago Colombia: towards Peace and Justice). Despite the obligations to abide by a ceasefire and not to engage in additional crimes, the paramilitary leadership, initially in a form of house arrest and then, following the revelation of continuing commission of murders (in the case of one paramilitary leader, Jorge 40, several hundred murders disclosed in his own computer) they were moved to a maximum security prison in Itagui near Medellin where they remain today. Trials or preparations for trials have only begun recently in Barranquilla and Medellin, involving Salvatore Mancuso, Ernesto Baez and Ramon Isaza and several less prominent commanders. Information is being published on those trials including names, alias of the demobilized paramilitary so that victims are informed and can attended trials.

The problem with the demobilization process includes the limited capacity on the part of the fiscal general to pursue those who have demobilized under previous law without seeking to get reduced sentences and to investigate and judge the veracity of the confessions of those who are seeking reduced sentences under JPL.

In addition, a serious problem includes what the OAS/MAPP described on February 14 as "violations to demobilization commitments" and noted "with concern" rearmed groups, non-demobilized holdouts and the appearance of other armed groups in the same areas previously controlled by the paramilitary. The OAS/MAPP stated it had "identified 22 units, with the participation of middle-ranking officers-demobilized or not---the recruitment of former paramilitary combatants and the control over illicit economic activity." Essentially the OAS is saying that some 22 armed gangs of approximately 3,000 members, part of whom belonged to paramilitary units, some run by mid-level commanders, are now controlling drug trafficking and other criminal activities. Government officials say they are combating these new phenomena actively with some 500 or so killed and others captured; however, the armed gangs appear to have grown substantially in recent months. In fact a high Ministry of Defense official has now identified some illegal armed 24 groups with closer to 5000 troops.

Reinsertion:

Since the establishment of the High Counselor for Reintegration's (HCR) office on 9 September 2006, and the naming of respected businessman Frank Pearl, economic aid has been extended to all ex-combatants who have gone through the initial 18 months or who have for any reason quit the program and wish to return. Pearl has attempted to move away from reinsertion to longer reintegration but the challenges are nonetheless formidable. Income generation schemes have so far proven unsustainable. Only 26 per cent of demobilized fighters have either formal or informal employment; only 22 out of 152 productive projects managed by the High Commissioner for Peace office are considered viable; only 28 per cent of the collectively demobilized fighters have received psycho-social counseling, 46 per cent have access to basic health coverage, 23 per cent have had access to occupational training and only 10 per cent to higher education.

Victims and reparations:

However compared to what currently is available for the victims of the paramilitary the ex-combatants are doing extremely well. Virtually no funding has been made available to the National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (NCRR). The NCRR came into being as a way to assist victims of paramilitary violence and of the conflict itself. Its focus has been on discovering the truth and ultimately to make that available to Colombian society. It has available only the assets that have been confiscated or acquired from the paramilitary, and very little is yet available. At this point there is no coherent plan or fund to guarantee anything resembling adequate compensation to the vast victims including the displaced, restoring them to their lands or assuring that they have some new hope for the future. The NCRR has established regional commissions and a regional care network and is compiling a register of victims. But its work is just beginning.

Counter drugs initiatives:

Let me briefly raise some of my concerns with respect to the counter narcotics side of Plan Colombia. The policy goal was to cut in half coca cultivation in Colombia and to significantly reduce the flow of cocaine coming into the U.S. Those goals have not been achieved.

There have been four elements to the counter narcotics strategy for some time in Colombia and the Andes: aerial or manual eradication (voluntary or enforced) of hectares under cultivation; interdiction on land, river, water and air of the coca leaf, paste and cocaine shipments; law enforcement efforts to identify and arrest those engaged in trafficking or elements linked to that process such as money laundering; and alternative development designed to provide alternative economic support for the campesinos enticed or forced into coca cultivation. I should add one complementary goal was to reduce the flow of funds into the coffers of the FARC and other illegal armed groups. It probably has had some minimal effect in that regard because it has forced the FARC to pay, threaten or coerce a larger group of farmers to grow coca, knowing that a substantial portion will be eradicated or interdicted. It has made it more expensive for the FARC, paramilitary and other traffickers to get the same production.

First, Plan Colombia has funded each year a rising level of eradication of hectares of coca, largely through aerial spraying in Colombia. However, at the end of the spraying, there is no difference between the number of hectares of coca harvested in 2005 (and reportedly in 2006 as well) and the number of hectares of coca harvested in 2002, according to the U.S. In both cases, some 144,000 hectares of coca were harvested.

The U.S. government states that the reason we see the higher number of hectares is because the satellite coverage is covering a larger part of Colombia. Perhaps. But if so, then the earlier reports also were faulty. And the UNODC reports also show similar percentage increases from 2004 to 2005 and likely in 2006 as well although they use a system different from the U.S. in measuring cultivation.

There is a strong view that the increase in the cultivated areas and the presence new coca fields is due to high mobility of coca cultivation in Colombia. Illicit crops continue to proliferate in Nariño, Putumayo, Meta, Guaviare, Vichada, Caquetá and Antioquia departments, regions that have been sprayed for years. And coca cultivation now extends virtually throughout the country.

After initial success with aerial spraying and reduction of hectares of coca cultivated areas, the coca growers have adapted to this new environment by reducing the size of their fields and by cultivating coca inside yucca, banana and other staples plantations. Now they present a more difficult target for aerial spraying while yield per hectare has also increased due to intensive cultivation and the use of fertilizers. Aerial spraying also has environmental issues and too often indiscriminately hits food crops or neighboring lands where farmers have opted against coca cultivation. Finally, it has raised serious concerns with Ecuador and made it more difficult to obtain the kind of bi-national cooperation against trafficking which is essential.

Second, the amount of cocaine estimated to be produced was actually slightly higher in Colombia in 2005, some 640 metric tons versus 580 metric tons in 2002, according to the UN. The State Department estimates according to the Crime and Narcotics Center in the National Drug Threat assessment in 2007 show again a bare 10 per cent difference, although it is 2005 at 545 metric tons which is slightly lower than the 585 metric tons produced in 2002.

Third, while there is no question that there were some significant non-police/military benefits in the Plan Colombia funding, including strengthening the Attorney General's office and support for human rights and alternative development, the reality is that a bare 20 per cent of the funds was available for those purposes. If there is really going to be an alternative to drug cultivation in Colombia and in the Andes, there needs to be a major joint investment by the countries and by the U.S. and other donors and the international financial institutions in reducing rural poverty. The rural infrastructure of electricity, water, sanitation, roads and government social services remains vastly under funded.

Finally, the need to strengthen law enforcement and interdiction, particularly in the transit countries is clear. At the recent drug summit in the Dominican Republic, the Presidents of the Dominican Republic and Haiti were quite unhappy at the lack of support from the U.S. on interdiction citing reduction of air cover of some 62 per cent in the Caribbean between Colombia and Venezuela and one-third reduction in Coast Guard and naval coverage, apparently stemming from the competing demands of Iraq. The situation in Central America apparently is equally disturbing with Guatemala now barely keeping its head above ground in the fight against the influence of drug traffickers.

Proposed changes in U.S. assistance:

  • A ceiling of no more than 50 per cent of U.S. funding for Colombia from all sources to the police and military with at least 50 per cent going to the "other" equally important side of security-justice, human rights, rural development, rural governance, micro credit, environmental assistance, and support to indigenous and Afro-Colombian particularly in poverty reduction activities.
  • With respect to existing human rights conditionality, expand the targets of concern to specifically include rearmed paramilitary, new paramilitary groups and new illegal armed groups. Insure that judgments as to the adequacy of Colombia military and civilian government cooperation with efforts to prosecute complicit officials should include direct consultation with the Attorney Generaland the Supreme Court of Colombia.
  • To the Attorney General's office provide $30 m. with $10 m. specifically aimed at multiplying and reinforcing the justice and peace unit prosecutorial teams charged with the paramilitary investigation, $5 m. for its human rights unit, and a combined $5 m. victim and witness protection program.
  • Similarly there needs to be much stronger support for the public attorney for human rights (procuraduria general) and the ombudsman (defensoria del pueblo), perhaps $10 m. aimed at protecting human rights activities and protecting the communities at risk. Separate funding should continue to support Colombian human rights NGOs and the organizations of victims.
  • With respect to human rights as well the Congress should clearly support the extension of the UNHCHR mandate for the full term of the Uribe government with full responsibility to report, analyze, and make recommends for the improvement of human rights conditions. Last year, it only received a bare one year extension after the Uribe administration sought to limit its mandate. President Uribe told the Secretary General a few weeks ago in New York that he would agree to the continued work of the UNHCHR office to 2010. The U.S. also should support the rapid implementation of the National Action Plan for Human Rights and International Humanitarian law. Reverse the funding cut for the displaced ($25m to 21 m in the "08 budget) by increasing that program to $35 m.-recognizing that they are among the most vulnerable of the victims of the conflict, and targeting more funding on the indigenous and Afro-Colombians.
  • While maintaining the support to alternative development as part of the counter narcotics strategy but expand into a national sustainable rural development strategy in which up to $100 m. will be available for the broad range of participatory rural development activities including infrastructure investment in electricity, water, farm to market roads, sanitation as well as social services along with local governance and citizen safety. These activities in rural Colombia can demonstrate an alternative to drug cultivation and an integrated governance/development option for communities when the FARC or AUC are removed. This program should be matched by Colombian government investment and the World Bank, EU and Inter-American Development bank should be encouraged to participate.
  • With respect to demobilization, continue support for the OAS MAPP but emphasize the need to improve its capacity for independent verification of the dismantlement of the financial, criminal and armed structures of the paramilitary with an invitation to the IACHR to assess the judicial proceedings and the adequacy of participation of the victims and the cooperation of the executive with the Attorney Generaland Supreme Court investigations.
  • Finally with respect to counter-narcotics, finance two bi-partisan comprehensive review commissions of counter drug policy. The first would be an international review of the supply side of counternarcotics policy in the Andean region in concert with CICAD, UNDCP, and both supply and transit countries. The second would examine what other consumer countries are doing to reduce demand and bring together the national academies of sciences, particularly with its institute of medicine, to bring together both the expertise of health and social sciences to determine how to further explore the most effective demand reduction strategies.
  • Initially, consider initially a much greater shift away from aerial to manual eradication linked to alternative development, expand substantially support for interdiction including river, maritime and ground and using DOD counter-narcotics funding restore greater interdiction capacity between Colombia and Venezuela and the Caribbean islands, starting with the placement of at least two DEA Blackhawk helicopters permanently in Haiti to work with MINUSTAH and the Haiti National Police to intercept drug traffickers. Additional attention and resources are needed as well with respect to the D.R. and Eastern Caribbean countries, and in Central America.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify before the Committee.



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