The Week in Europe
By David Jessop

On August 30 in Cartagena, Colombia, Bill Clinton, the US President,
announced a US$1.3billion package of measures aimed at wiping out over five
years the narcotics producers and the groups of guerrillas who have plunged
that nation into a catastrophic war. In doing so he was responding to the
concerns of Colombian leaders who argue that without such help their
democracy and economy would collapse.

The internal situation in Colombia is chaotic. There, guerrillas and the
drugs cartels act together, the one providing protection in return for
funding from the other. In response the Colombian military have been
fighting a vicious and unconventional war against both parties and in which
no side observes any rules. As a result, within Colombia's borders vast
swathes of the country have ceased to be under government control. More than
one and half million people are displaced. Violence and death are
commonplace and crime is endemic.

The US and Colombian decision to escalate dramatically an unconventional war
into one using conventional and other means is a gamble. It offers no great
certainty as to its outcome. There is no exit strategy.

The prospect is that the war will escalate and the astonishing levels of
expenditure just announced will have to be followed by yet more money.
Unfortunately, the most likely outcome is for the guerrillas and the
narcotics producers and traffickers to be displaced to regional neighbours
with unpredictable consequences. Plan Colombia, its critics suggest, will
lead to greater human rights abuses and criminality and at worst to another
Vietnam, this time destabilising not some distant part of the world but many
of the United States southern neighbours.

The conversion of the US Congress and administration to supporting a
programme with unpredictable consequences is a part of a pattern now well
known to the Caribbean. What began in this case as a campaign by the
Colombian Government and its friends in the US Congress and administration
was soon joined by others. Defence contractors, US companies with security
forces for hire, the US oil industry and others powerful commercial
interests all became part of the lobby that convinced US legislators and
doubters in the US administration that a massive military led response was
the answer to Colombia's problems. 

The decision effectively bypasses any chance for Latin and Caribbean
neighbours to try to broker a peace deal in Columbia. It places action ahead
of trying to first exhaust all possibilities for regional co-ordination.
Worse, there is also a real danger that the type of military excesses
normally seen in such campaigns will divide Latin America and the Caribbean
from the US. Already, concerns have been raised about human rights,
sovereignty and the dangers of environmental degradation resulting from
solutions that will involve defoliation of coca plantations. If the war
drags on political parties throughout the Americas may come to see electoral
advantage in encouraging further an already strong anti US sentiment. 

The US decision to escalate the war against drugs in Colombia presents a
number of paradoxes for the Caribbean and Europe. 

While the US spends US$1.3 billion on trying to end narcotics production in
Central America, trade policies continue to weaken economies in the
Caribbean making them susceptible to narcotics led destabilisation. US trade
policy on bananas, OECD attempts to dismantle the region's legitimate
offshore financial industry and the potential for new threats to tourism and
sugar create instability, making regional economies more attractive to the
narcotics industry.

If and it is a big if, the US action in Central America succeeds,
displacement will occur. The drugs traffickers and guerrillas will migrate
across Colombia's borders. While production may well move further south
there is then the likelihood that certain larger nations in the Caribbean
will become indispensable for transhipment to markets in Europe and the US.
Moreover, if Colombia becomes a battleground the growing trend to arms for
drugs deals being brokered in the region will most probably escalate, as
will payments in hard drugs and weapons to those who facilitate such deals.
Whatever happens, the vast riches the narcotics traffickers accumulate will
continue to be laundered through banks, dubious investments in hotels, the
construction of apartments and other projects in the Caribbean region.

Destroying cocaine production in Colombia may also have the paradoxical
short-term effect of increasing crime in Europe, North America and the
region as a whole. It may also result in the rise of violence as groups in
certain parts of South America and the Caribbean begin a war to control
everything from production to new supply routes. 

The decision to attack drug production at source suggests that the US and by
extension Europe has run out of interest in curbing demand. Seemingly the
trend in the case of the US is to cede responsibility in the case of the US
to draconian laws and a network of privately owned jails. A further paradox
may be that any severe restriction in supply will be to push up the price of
hard drugs and increase levels of crime and violence amongst a narcotics
dependent urban underclass in Europe and North America. 

This is not to suggest in any way that the evil and corrupting trade in
narcotics should be tolerated. But to argue that the latest actions are the
beginning of a slippery slope of displacement and the institutionalising of
a vast international industrial complex in whose interests it will be for
narcotics trafficking to continue. It is also to express deep concern that
Colombia's most vulnerable neighbour nations, namely those in the Caribbean,
will suffer whether US policy succeeds or fails.

The Caribbean desperately needs to increase the velocity of its development
in a manner that brings benefit to many. Construction booms in economies
where fiscal deficits are high very frequently tell a story of corruption.
The real danger of events in Colombia and the absence of any holistic
approach by the US and Europe to drugs and trade policy issues is that those
in the Caribbean engaged in honest business may soon find themselves
swimming in an ever-widening sea of corruption and criminality. 


David Jessop is the Executive Director of the Caribbean Council for Europe
and can be contacted at [log in to unmask]
September 1st, 2000 



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