To what extent has ‘ El Plan Colombia ’ succeeded in combating Colombian drug cartels and left-wing insurgent groups in Colombia?
Luke Townsend
Colombia’s History with drug trafficking started in the 1970s when the Medellin Cartel, a group of drug suppliers and smugglers based in Medellin, Colombia, started to smuggle cocaine. Conflict between Colombia’s drug cartels and the Colombian and US government arose after ‘The Medellin Massacre’ , where the cartel murdered 40 people in retaliation to the seizure of 600 kilos of cocaine. This event led to years of violence and the current unstable relationship between Colombia and the United States. In order for the US government to stop this conflict they enabled ‘El Plan Colombia’. Bill Clinton and Colombian president Andrés Pastrana signe d ‘El Plan Colombia’ in 2000, commencing the ‘War on Drugs’. To enable this war on drugs to happen the US government gave an initiative of $1.3 billion to support the Colombian government’s counter -insurgency and counter-narcotic efforts. This initiative w as based on the US government’s policy to fight the ‘ w ar on drugs’ using a supply -side perspective. Seventy one percent of the funds given by the USwent tomilitary aid in order to train Colombian troops, supplymilitary technology and weapons, and to support a controversial aerial fumigations programme to destroy Coca crops. From 2001 to 2016 the US government gave $10 billion in aid in order to combat Colombia’s drug problem. In fact, on the 4 th of February 2016 Juan Manuel Santos visited the White House to promote US support of peace negotiations developing between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, which is Colombia’s most notorious left-wing rebel group and one of the richest guerrilla armies in the world. O ne of the biggest successes in ‘El Plan Colombia’ was that it enabled the Colombian government to combat rebel groups such as FARC and the AUC, a far-right paramilitary umbrella organization, who had become a far greater contributor to the drug trade than their Marxist rivals FARC. By 2001 both FARC and the AUC were on the US terror list. Moreover, through security gains in important regions of Colombia, significant amounts of economic growth were facilitated which was critical in taking down FARC guerrillas and in negotiating an end to more than half a century of guerrilla warfare against the Colombian state. ‘El Plan Colombia’ has undisputedly contributed to strengthening Colombia’s security and economic growth. A result of this is a major drop in violence. And, despite not disrupting the flow of cocaine from Colombia to the US, ‘El Plan Colombia’ helped to reduce coca cultivation by 18% from 2000 to 2014. However, most importantly the policy has helped create the conditions for peace talks between the Colombian government and the various rebel and terrorist groups in Colombia. In military t erms, ‘El Plan Colombia’ could be classed as a great success. With the assistance of ‘El Plan Colombia’, state security forces in Colombia were able to expand their reach to almost all municipalities in the country, which allowed FARC’s ranks to drop from 17,000 to an estimated 8 , 000 fighters. ‘El Plan Colombia’ was a military success because it was able to supply aid to Colombia so that Colombian state security forces could gain the tools, they needed to combat the FARC, AUC and ELN, the National Liberation Army. In fact, US secretary of State John Kerry said that Plan Colombia ‘ helped to transform a nation on the verge of collapse into a strong institutional democracy with historically low levels of
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