John Coté

March 2, 2001. U.S. military aid to combat narcotics production will "de-intensify" Colombia's internal conflict by cutting drug profits that finance a war involving leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the government, a former Colombian cabinet member said during the Colombia in Context conference.

"We have to de-intensify the conflict in order to find a solution," said Mauricio Cárdenas, transportation and development minister from 1998 to 2000. "For that you need to reduce the amount of dollars that are fueling the conflict. The thing that Colombia cannot do is to wait until the U.S. solves its consumption problem in order to solve the internal conflict in my country. We have to act."

Cárdenas, a Berkeley alumnus who now is a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, co-authored the controversial Plan Colombia, a $7.5 billion program designed to revamp the country's economy and judiciary while smashing cocaine and heroin production. The latter funds armed drug cartels and two guerrilla insurgency groups. Under the plan, the United States has provided $1.3 billion in aid, including $900 million in military assistance to fight narcotics trafficking. The military package includes Black Hawk helicopters, advanced radar systems, and training for Colombian combat troops. Former President Bill Clinton approved the U.S. aid package last year.

Plan Columbia also calls for political negotiations between the government and the two leftist guerrilla groups - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) - while the anti-drug initiative is being carried out.

Cárdenas, speaking during the conference's second panel at Berkeley's Bancroft Hotel, came under fire from another conference participant, who said using troops and helicopters to eradicate fields of illicit crops would strengthen rather than weaken the guerrillas and paramilitaries.

"This type of plan, if pursued and successful, is going to displace beyond the 1.9 million displaced people in Colombia already perhaps another 200,000, who inevitably will seek ways of surviving," said Bruce Bagley, a professor of international and comparative studies at the University of Miami. "What is the most logical choice for them to survive? To either join the guerrillas or the paramilitaries. It's not an ideological choice. It's a choice of survival."

Bagley said Plan Colombia lacked three key elements necessary for success: reducing U.S. demand for drugs, constitutional reform to strengthen political parties and social institutions, and military reform to strengthen civilian control of the army.

"Without it, Plan Colombia has no chance," said Bagley.

Andrew Miller, Latin American advocacy director for the human rights group Amnesty International, also said the Colombian army needed to be reigned in. Miller said that Amnesty International does not oppose Plan Colombia per se, but he blasted U.S. military aid under the plan.

"We are opposed to military support for the Colombian military given its long history of violations and collaborations with paramilitary groups," Miller said. "It's my contention that helicopters are not the solution."

There are widespread allegations of ties between the Colombian army and paramilitary groups. Miller noted the case of two army officers convicted in February of not preventing paramilitaries from massacring dozens of civilians. Brig. Gen. Jaime Humberto Uscategui and Lt. Col. Hernan Orozco were each sentenced to 40 months in prison. The case marked the first time Colombian courts convicted a Colombian general for allowing paramilitaries to murder civilians. But Miller said that while the sentences "might look like a victory for human rights and an end to impunity," they failed to convince him that the civilian leadership would prosecute human rights violations by the military.

"Forty months is not a commensurate sentence for the massacre of dozens of people," Miller said. "Another problem of course is that this was carried out in military court, which contravenes any notions of actually carrying them out in civilian courts."

After the conference, Cárdenas disagreed and said the Uscategui case was an example of President Andrés Pastrana's commitment to curb human rights violations by the military. He also denied any links between paramilitaries and the government.

"This administration in Colombia has made very clear its total rejection and opposition [to] - and has declared a war against - the paramilitary groups," Cárdenas said. "The presence of the paramilitary groups is clearly an obstacle to finding a political settlement to the internal conflict."

Cárdenas said the paramilitary groups began as bands of armed mercenaries hired by drug lords to protect fields of coca and poppy, the crops used to produce cocaine and heroin, respectively. During Colombia's 37-year civil war, the groups have been accused of massacring thousands of civilians that they allege supported leftist guerrillas.

Cárdenas said the government was committed to pursuing negotiations with the guerrillas, even while U.S. advisors trained soldiers for the "Push Into Southern Colombia," a $441.9 million component of the U.S. aid package that includes sending soldiers into territory controlled by the FARC to destroy coca fields.

President Pastrana reached an agreement with FARC leaders in February to resume peace negotiations and to work on resolving the country's civil war. He has also proposed creating a 1,120-square-mile demilitarized zone in northern Colombia, similar to the one controlled by the FARC in the south. He hopes that this move would start peace talks with the country's second-largest guerrilla faction, the ELN.

Speaking at the Berkeley conference, Eduardo Pizarro, a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, stressed the importance of international mediation in the peace negotiations.

"The conflict has already overwhelmed the ability of Colombians," Pizarro said. "We urgently need the presence of the international community, which was decisive in the negotiations in El Salvador and Guatemala."

President George W. Bush turned down President Pastrana's request for U.S. participation in negotiations with the FARC or ELN ­ which are both on the State Department list of terrorist organizations ­ when the two met in Washington last month. A state department spokesperson edged away from that stance March 8, saying future U.S. participation was possible. The move came after United Nations representatives and diplomats from two dozen countries held talks earlier that day with the FARC and the Pastrana administration.

"What Colombia requires most," Pizarro said, "is tolerance."

John Coté is a first-year M.A. student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.