Andean Update: Peru's Fujimori and Coca Eradication
Gone,
Colombia's Peace Talks on Hold as Country Braces for Drug
War
http://www.drcnet.org/wol/161.html#andeanupdatePeruvian
President Alberto Fujimori resigned this week, bringing
to an end an
authoritarian regime that made its reputation by
repressing two strong
insurgencies in the mid-1990s. Fujimori,
however, proved more adept at
defeating guerrillas than working
within the constraints of a genuine
democracy.
The Peruvian strongman appeared invincible as recently as a
few
months ago, but his popularity began to erode in the wake of a
hotly
contested presidential election in the spring. Then, after
his leading
advisor and head of the national intelligence
service, Vladimiro Montesinos,
was linked to a bribery scandal
and to a guns-for-drugs deal with the
Colombian FARC, Fujimori's
approval ratings went into
freefall.
Fujimori resigned long distance, notifying Peruvian
authorities
of his decision from Japan, where he had stopped after a
global
economic conference in Brunei. He remains in Japan.
New
elections are scheduled for April, and while the political
picture is
muddied, Fujimori's Second Vice Presdent Ricardo
Marquez has been sworn in as
a caretaker pending the elections.
The congressional opposition, however,
stands ready to replace
Marquez with a centrist elder statesman, Victor
Paniagua.
Fujimori garnered assistance and accolades from the United
States
for his tough stance on drugs. Aided by US troops manning
radar
stations and transmitting intelligence to Peruvian
authorities,
Fujimori okayed the shooting down of suspected drug
smuggling
planes, which helped to erode the Peru-Colombia coca
connection.
He also engineered a tough coca eradication program
that
succeeded in cutting Peruvian coca production in half since 1995.
But
in a shining example of the law of unintended consequences,
total Andean coca
production remains roughly unchanged, with
large scale production shifting
from Peru and Bolivia to
Colombia, where it is fueling a brutal civil
war.
But Fujimori outlasted his coca eradication program. Early
this
month, as Fujimori struggled to maintain his grip on power,
farmers
in Peru's coca growing heartland, the Upper Huallaga
Valley, rose up in
protest. Some 35,000 growers blocked highways
in the region for a week,
forcing the embattled government to
give in.
"We have been able to
arrive at a consensus... in which the
eradication is stopped," Health
Minister Alejandro Aguinaga, who
also heads Peru's anti-drug efforts, told
local radio news.
Aguinaga said that any future eradication of coca
bushes would
occur only with the agreement of farmers.
Protests are on
hold, according to farmers' groups, pending
government proposals to assist
with alternative crop development.
In Colombia, to which much of the
Peruvian and Bolivian coca
production migrated, political violence continues
to increase in
anticipation of the US-sponsored Plan Colombia. Under
that plan,
US-trained and -equipped troops will attempt to
invade
strongholds of the leftist FARC guerrillas to wipe out
coca
production. The first anti-drug brigade is expected to roll
into
conflicted Putumayo province as early as next month.
Right-wing
paramilitaries effectively allied with the Colombian
military
have entered the province in large numbers in recent months,
as
have hundreds of FARC guerrilla reinforcements.
Twenty-eight people
died in fighting early last week, and the
month-long FARC blockade of the
province remains intact.
Although the military airlifted some 300 tons of
food into Puerto
Asis, the provincial capital, earlier this month,
local
authorities are bitter and depressed.
"The government has
abandoned Putumayo," Mayor Manuel Alzate told
the St. Petersburg Times.
Neither does Alzate think Plan
Colombia will make a difference. "The
government would have to
station its troops every 50 yards along the
highways, and they
lack the manpower to do that. And even if they did,
the rebels
could creep up and kill them."
In a further sign of trouble
to come, last week the FARC
guerrillas announced they were withdrawing from
slow-moving peace
talks. The FARC statement pointed to Colombian
government
tolerance of the paramilitaries and accused the government
of
choosing the US-inspired war plan over negotiations.
Meanwhile, in
a an indication of problems for Plan Colombia in
Washington, a leading
Republican hawk, Rep. Benjamin Gilman of
New York, has broken with the
administration. In a letter last
week to Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey,
Gilman called Plan Colombia "a
major mistake" and criticized the Colombian
military's human
rights record.
But the Gilman move is not a case of
sudden enlightenment.
Instead it is partly a partisan attack on the
Clinton
administration and partly an effort to shift US
military
assistance from the Colombian armed forces to Gilman's
favored
National Police. Still, Gilman's defection from the
Plan
Colombia consensus on the Hill means the plan will be an even
tougher
sell in Congress in the coming session. Administration
officials are
preparing to ask for an additional $400 to $600
million to prosecute the war
during the next budget year.
Undaunted by the virtual collapse of Plan
Colombia before it even
begins, McCaffrey, in his Colombian swan song,
touched down in
Bogota to cheerlead one last time before retiring.
Although he
predicted heavy fighting and an increase in Colombian
cocaine
production, McCaffrey said he could see no alternative to
Plan
Colombia.
McCaffrey repeatedly told his audiences that US aid was
not
designed to influence the country's decades-long civil war,
but
instead aimed at suppressing the drug trade. But in a
remark
that cuts to the heart of US confusion over its goals in
Colombia,
McCaffrey repeated his claim that the FARC is "the
principal organizing
entity of cocaine production in the
world."
================
And, from the same part
of the world...
.
US Anti-Drug Aid Endangering Indigenous Communities and
Amazon
Biodiversity, Experts Charge http://www.drcnet.org/wol/161.html#amazonIn
a Washington, DC press conference held last Monday, an
international
coalition of indigenous, environmental, human
rights, and policy
organizations have warned that escalation of
the US-funded Colombian
government's herbicide spraying program
to eradicate illicit crops could
seriously harm the health of
indigenous and peasant communities, endanger the
biodiverse
ecosystems of the Amazon Basin, while failing to reduce
overall
drug production and use in the US. The Colombian
National
Police, assisted by US government spray aircraft, fuel,
escort
helicopters, and private military contractors, will
significantly
increase aerial fumigation operations in December in the
southern
state of Putumayo.
Fifty-eight indigenous peoples are among
those affected by
fumigation in the Colombian Amazon. Their territories
cover
almost half of the region. Emperatriz Cahuache, President of
the
Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon,
stated
"Fumigation violates our rights and territorial autonomy.
It has intensified
the violence of the armed conflict and forced
people to leave their homes
after their food crops have been
destroyed."
"Aerial eradication, and
the thousands of US-trained soldiers
deployed in the region, are escalating
social tension and
political violence," added Bill Spencer, Deputy Director
of the
Washington Office on Latin America. "These operations force
many
peasants to join the ranks of the guerrillas or to flee the
region --
adding to the hundreds of thousands of Colombians
displaced internally or
abroad."
The Human Rights Ombudsman offices at the national and
local
level have also registered hundreds of complaints from
peasants
throughout Colombia that aerial eradication has caused
eye,
respiratory, skin, and digestive ailments, destroyed
subsistence
crops, sickened domesticated animals, and contaminated
water
supplies. These complaints, and other occupation health
data
warning against direct human exposure, suggest that the impact
on
human health could be extremely detrimental.
According to Linda
Farley, American Birds Conservancy Science
Officer, "While glyphosate's
direct toxic effects on the
ecosystem may not be as extreme as those seen
with other
herbicides, the indirect, long term ecological effects
are
severe. Aside from non-target plant species killed by
aerial
"drift" during spraying operations, glyphosate has well-
documented
deleterious effects on soil micro-organisms, mammalian
life including humans,
invertebrates, and aquatic organisms,
especially fish." This represents
a major cause for concern
since a significant portion of coca cultivation
occurs alongside
rivers in the Colombian Amazon that flow directly into
Ecuador
and Brazil. Moreover, the ecosystems of Colombia
contain
approximately 10% of the world's terrestrial plant and
animal
species.
"Deforestation has also increased as farmers whose
coca crops
have been sprayed move deeper into the rainforests,"
Farley
continued. In this sense, glyphosate spraying is already
having
a significant detrimental effect on the endemic and
threatened
birds of Colombia, as 95% of the 75 plus threatened species
are
forest-dependent. Colombia is one of the richest areas in
the
world in terms of birds diversity."
On top of these concerns, drug
policy experts argue that source-
country counternarcotic strategies will
never be successful at
decreasing overall drug production because cultivation
will shift
to other regions and countries around the world. Coca and
opium
poppy production in Colombia tripled from 1994 to 1999,
despite
fumigating over 240,000 hectares of illicit crops with more
than
two million liters of glyphosate. Experts argue that the
stated
goal of the $1.3 billion US aid package for Plan Colombia --
to
reduce drug use in the streets of America -- will never be
achieved by
aerial fumigation or other supply-side strategies.
"Until we admit the
drug economy is driven by three problems we
refuse to seriously address --
poverty in drug producing
countries, demand in rich countries, and the "value
added" to
these relatively worthless crops by prohibition policies --
we
will never get a handle on the problem," stated Sanho Tree,
Director of
the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy
Studies.
Bill
Piper, Associate Director of Public Policy and Legislative
Affairs for the
Lindesmith Center-Drug Policy Foundation echoed
his concerns, adding, "When
Congress chose to spend over hundreds
of millions of dollars on risky
counter-narcotic efforts in
Colombia instead of closing the treatment gap
here at home, the
door was closed on thousands of Americans needing help,
while
innocent Colombians were made to pay a horrible price for
our
country's addictions."
Visit
http://www.usfumigation.org for
statements and other
information related to Monday's press
conference.