Crisis?  What Crisis?   Security Issues in Colombia

INTRODUCTION: One of the perennial complaints in this type of program is that there is never enough time in the schedule for an adequate discussion on the topic of the panel, and I have overheard the same complaint about yesterday’s schedule. I have participated in many such programs and share that concern. As the workshop organizer, I made the decision of reducing the number of panel speakers in today’s schedule to allow for more discussion time. Therefore, you now have no excuses; there is enough time for all your questions and time to hear answers. Please do not abstain, and do not limit yourselves to the topic of international issues. It is of great value to hear your questions, your comments, and your doubts on any of the presentations we’ve heard since yesterday morning. The only limit I have is our break at noon for lunch.

Having said that, however, I must add that we have a lot of material before us, a lot of viewpoints from which we can draw conclusions and elaborate solutions. Some of these viewpoints are conflictive, and cannot be resolved easily, such as Dr. Sherman’s view of the value of the "faceless judges" as opposed to the reality of the powerful criminals in Colombia. I have a similar fear of COL Spracher’s presentation of the civil-military relations: can these two actors get their act together, so to speak, and work together effectively enough to achieve some kind of operating plan or policy? Another such problematic view is the picture presented by Dr. Thachuk of the reactive nature of Colombian politics (which is very similar to how things operate inside the beltway) as opposed to the solution she presents. Can Colombia find a way to reduce the corruption and violence? Is it possible to step back and outline a plan that can be followed to resolve the problems? Can such a plan be elaborated that addresses all the issues, and yet succeeds in not offending a majority of the actors, least of all the major source of assistance (and critique) which is the United States? In reviewing Dr. Robinson’s presentation, a question comes to mind about the region’s ability to overcome its history of suspicion and hostility to help a neighbor in need, or is the neighbor seen as one that can help itself and will not? With these comments in mind, I open the panel for your questions.

QUESTION: Is it accurate to state that the Colombian practice of having trials by faceless judges is a violation of human rights? The history of the use of judges without revealing their faces started in Italy to combat the mafias. The justification was the law of necessity, which assumes that it is the obligation of the state to protect the citizens and its own personnel from criminals accustomed to operating with such impunity that they think nothing of killing judges and their families, witnesses and their families, guards and their families. The state has to do something to establish rules and procedures. There is a higher order of obligation that justifies this commitment -- that’s why we call it the law of necessity. Do you feel that in evaluating the Italian process of judging people without revealing their faces of judges we have been as severe in our condemnation of Italy as we are with the same practice in Colombia? And if you feel we have not, I would like to know why do you think this is so?

ANSWER: Yes, the use of faceless judges violates the basic right of the accused to face his accusers. I think that we haven’t been as vociferous in condemnation the use of such courts in other countries, although I’m not sure who you mean by "we" because the United States government has spoken out against these faceless courtrooms in Colombia. To the extent that there is one single human rights community, I certainly can’t claim to speak for them, I can only speak for myself. I think that the use of such courts in any country is a violation of basic due process for the person being accused of a crime. The person being accused of a crime and led through a criminal justice process should at least be very clear about whether there is a neutral and detached magistrate judging him or her. This is sort of a central principle of the rule of law — neutrality, uniformity, predictability, application of the laws in the same way every time, and if a person, a country, or a society can’t have those basic things, then how can anyone be expected to obey any laws? They’re not confident that the same rules are being applied to them are also being applied to everybody else. I understand the terms of necessity but I don’t think that justifies a certain basic deprivation of rights, which is about helping to build a society that can conduct itself according to the rule of law , which ensures the principles of neutrality, predictability, and equality toward the law.

QUESTION: You know the old English saying that the best is always the enemy of the good, and wherein the pursuit of the best in a situation such as that of Colombia, which is in many ways not different from that of southern Italy when dominated by the Mafia, that we somehow have to settle for the good instead of the best. Or is it your argument that we can’t achieve good, and in the final analysis we have to go for the best?

ANSWER: The pursuit of the best is the only objective worth pursuing. But you seem to be assuming that there is some good that’s coming out this. What is it?

Comment: If the faceless courts were not available, Colombia could never try anybody. You see, when you have nice criminals, which is an oxymoron, you can have nice criminal law. When you have criminals being criminals you can’t assume that you can use the same order of law.

QUESTION: How do we know they’re mean criminals?

ANSWER: Good grief! Are we blind to what is going on in Colombia? Are we blind to what is going on in southern Italy? How could we be so immune from our realities, so enclosed in our legal temple? The law does not exist that way for the society in which it operates. I don’t think the best is possible in Colombia, so in the interest of law and order, we might have to accept the good, and later work for the best.

Comment: I’d like to speak as a former member of the human rights community, to try to put some shades of gray into this discussion. I think it would be a grave mistake to underestimate the threat to judges and members of the legal profession in Colombia by narcotraffickers and guerrillas. There were dozens if not hundreds of judges murdered in the 1980s , which gave rise to what was seen as the necessity for the Public Order court. There are two fundamental objections in the Colombian and international human rights communities. One line of thinking is the one being debated here -- that the use of faceless judges is a basic violation of due process and should not be used -- there should be other means. A second line of thought is the more important one in the case of Colombia, and that is that once you put extreme measures at the disposal of the state, the potential for abuse and the inability for recourse against those abuses is enormous. People who have looked very closely at the kinds of cases the Public Order courts handle find that in many instances they do not involve the drug kingpins who would blow away a judge or the guerrilla terrorists who would set their comrades to assassinate someone. A large number of these cases involve a phenomenon that people have described as the criminalization of social protest. There are repeated cases and many that are not well known that are cause for concern because the accused don’t have access to the evidence that’s being presented against them, they don’t know who the witnesses are, there’s no ability to challenge, and the sanctions are quite severe. The critique of lack of due process is particularly relevant when the state is coming down hard on people who are basically without other forms of defense.

Comment: I’d like to interject another argument here, because these are very bad people that we’re talking about, very powerful criminals. In reality, the faceless judges are not faceless at all. The money available to the drug mafias allows them to find out who the judges are. So as a measure to protect judges from the drug mafias, it has been completely ineffective. It only takes a hundred thousand dollars to find out exactly who would be the judge in a specific case, so supposedly the mafias are the least affected by the anonymous nature of the judges. Thus, the only effective use of these judges has been in the cases where the defendants can’t afford to buy information, and thus mostly against social protest. But in Colombia today nobody protects the public judges, nobody. Judges need to be protected, or else justice fails as badly as when defendants cannot face their accusers. And now that the faceless judges law will expire in 1999, the debate is over how to bring those public judges some measure of protection. The idea was that these faceless judges would be more effective, but practice has shown that they have, in fact, been very ineffective.

QUESTION: How do we get around this plomo o plata (bullet or bribe) thing? Basically the extortionists say take the money or the bullet, but we will kill you if you don’t try this case the way we want you to. You can’t take a holiday, and we know where your children are. You have to sit in judgment and try this case and you have to try it to our satisfaction or we’ll kill you. Or take this bribe, we don’t care which option you take. How can Colombia get around this?

ANSWER: Well, I don’t know if you want to know what I think. What I think is that there is a need to separate drug trafficking from the larger political problem that is going on in Colombia. Drug trafficking organizations are political actors in Colombian society. Let’s try to detach ourselves from the fact that they are engaging in criminal enterprise and compare them to the way organizations that are legal in the United States operate. Organizations similar to drug traffickers in the United States that are legal (like the tobacco industry or the alcohol industry) are part of the political framework and therefore have to be dealt with in a political way. This means dealing with them as is happening in the United States through the state courts and the Congress on negotiations regarding the control of tobacco. Although drug trafficking is a criminal enterprise and is recognized as such in Colombia in the law, I’m not so sure that it is outside the law. The law recognizes it as a criminal offense, but does the society recognize it and embrace it as a criminal offense? How do we deal with the fact that drug trafficking organizations conduct themselves in a political way almost like the political factions in U.S. society? That’s why I’m saying it is difficult to approach this as a purely criminal problem, although it would make things a lot easier if we could make that separation. I think that that is not possible , and therefore we have to come up with both political and legal strategies in order to reach an equitable solution. The problems of drugs and justice are different, but Colombia cannot deal with each in a vacuum. They must be dealt with together.

Comment: I think that the drug business is a problem equally of supply and demand. It is true, all the countries where drugs are produced, transferred, and consumed share the blame equally for the evils of the drug business. I think that we need to be very, very honest with ourselves about how we deal with drug trafficking both in Colombia and in the United States, Europe, and other countries as a policy priority. The United States devotes about two-thirds of its money to supply reduction and about a third of its money to demand reduction. I think that should be reconsidered. Let’s talk about some basic economics. We don’t have a market without demand, so of course you need somebody or something to satisfy that demand; but you have to treat the demand or reduce the demand in order to get results. I think that U.S. official policy has been to restrict the supply but not adequately deal with the demand. When you restrict the supply of a commodity but you don’t address the demand, the price of the commodity rises and people are increasingly willing to pay that price. It drives the price up by restricting the supply, and you make the suppliers wealthy, increasing their political power. I agree that the demand side has to be addressed to a much greater extent than it has been, and if it is adequately addressed we’ll see less of a problem. So it doesn’t matter to a significant extent how much we tinker around with chemicals and all these sort of other details if we’re not willing to acknowledge the center of the problem, which is that markets don’t exist without demand.

Comment: First of all, I would like to say that three percent of the U.S. national counterdrug budget goes to international programs. If you count what is spent in the transit zone that whole figure goes up to eleven percent, so no one should get the impression that two thirds of the U.S. national counterdrug budget is spent overseas, or that the U.S. advocates that the problem is one entirely of supply. For the U.S., the most important priority is demand reduction. The Office of National Drug Control Policy has published statistics showing that there has been a lot of success, in that the demand for cocaine has gone down more than 75 percent since 1985. So to say that the U.S. has not reduced the demand and is not addressing demand is neither true nor fair. There is a big media campaign going on now precisely targeting the use of drugs among the youth of the country. So using the criteria presented by the previous speaker, the U.S. has its priorities straight: It is addressing demand, working hard to increase the availability of treatment, and working on prevention programs as well. But people don’t understand when you say that two thirds is spent on supply reduction that the greatest amount of supply reduction budget is local law enforcement, including the prison system. The rhetoric in the debate over strategies to fight the scourge of drugs needs to stay away from finger-pointing. Policy makers in the U.S. understand that there is a demand problem. But all of us need to also understand that demand is growing in every country in the Hemisphere, though not every country in the world. And while that means demand is going down here in the United States, the demand for cocaine is going up in Brazil, Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, and any place where they have any kind of money. And maybe the drug mafias can’t make the huge profits that they make in the United States, but they still make a profit. The demand in the United States is not the only driving force. You also can’t apply the rules of supply and demand to a product that can create its own demand. It is not that only demand drives the supply. Supply can also drive the demand for this product (i.e., the development of crack cocaine, basuco, and other drug variants). The U.S. is trying to deal with that on the regional level as well as within the United States.

Comment: I really want to return the discussion to Colombia, rather than discussions of the war on drugs, because this will always be essentially a contested topic. What was said about stigmatizing Colombia I thought was an important insight, and I’d like to just draw your attention to the news reports of the Houston II session in Cartagena yesterday.¹⁰⁹ I think this is a relatively objective overview of the redirection in U.S. strategy with regard to Colombia, to build on the national internal certification concept. It positions the U.S. to be able to deal properly with the next government of Colombia without falling into the trap of stigmatization, which has not been a very productive part of the bilateral relationship. So I think there is some important insight to be learned from the quantity and quality of U.S. diplomacy with Colombia. A systematic dialogue that Ambassador Kaman has initiated in Colombia with the presidential candidates and government, to find a fresh look at some of the important problems. And I’d just like to make a comment on dealing with the mass media. This is something that is always difficult. We can’t have our cake and eat it too in terms of dealing with the mass media. We can’t complain if they misrepresent issues, as for example in the weekly magazine Semana, discussing the topic of U.S. involvement in terms of being just another excuse for U.S. intervention or as they put it, "Vietnamization."¹¹⁰ They’re really trying to deal with it in a fairly objective way, despite the title. What’s going on is something that we have to deal with. I know the temptation is to spend an hour or two a day dealing with the public relations and the public diplomacy aspects of the relations between Colombia and the Department of State. It’s something that can be very frustrating and difficult but I see it as absolutely essential: None of us can do our job without public support. I know that these are the same perceptions of my colleagues in the Colombian government.

Comment: I was very much struck by Dr. Thachuk’s presentation of the role of crisis management and the decision-making process in Bogotá. I think much of what she said actually can be applied to the decision-making process inside the beltway in Washington, not just in Colombia. I don’t want anybody to think that the U.S. is stigmatizing or singling out Colombia. I’m not being controversial here, but the presentation does talk about the role of choices and how these end up taking an enormous amount of time by decision-makers. Colombia is no different in that respect. The decision-making process in Colombia is driven by many of the same kinds of dynamics as can be found anywhere else. It makes me wonder perhaps if our distinction between what is crisis and what is normal is a little bit suspect.

QUESTION: Colombian analysts coined the phrase "coercive diplomacy" when describing U.S.-Colombian relations since 1993. A change in U.S. diplomacy precipitated the changes. For instance, no one took to the letter of the law on drug issues more than Samper. The policy of pressuring through refusing visas to government officials is hated in Colombia, but for different reasons. This policy is quite different from others, and I think it is important in that it maintains U.S. pressure, as this type of pressure is not being applied from within Colombia. What is the panel’s opinion of such coercive diplomacy? Are there any options? Does this trend in demonizing Colombians reflect a change in strategy, from the point of invasion rumors to the point of actual invasion? What are the limits to coercive diplomacy?

Comment: There is something that caught my attention about the Samper administration being the one that probably will follow the advice and recommendations of the U.S. better than recent administrations. However, it seems to me that the U.S. government has treated the Samper administration quite differently and has increased the ante. The pressure has gone up tremendously. But this is not a new problem, it is one with long historical roots. I was conducting some research in the archives of the Colombian Foreign Ministry, in Bogotá, and I found a letter from the U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull to Gabriel Turbay, the Colombian ambassador here in Washington. I think it was 1944, complaining that Colombia was not taking the drug problem seriously and not dealing with the criminals engaged in the drug problem. He was not talking about cocaine, of course, he was talking about quinine, which was being used extensively in the European war effort as a painkiller. It was produced in the Amazonia region of Colombia, and there were drug dealers producing and selling it illegally. But anyway it’s deja vu all over again. But given that this type of problem goes on all the time, why is the United States almost in an arbitrary and capricious manner dealing with the Samper government when in fact he has been trying to follow U.S. guidance and recommendations much more so than previous administrations?

QUESTION: I want to talk a bit more about how Colombia’s relations with its neighbors are affected by this. Obviously there are serious problems on the Venezuelan border and I’ve talked about these with Venezuelan military officers, with political officials in Venezuela. The violence obviously cannot be confined within borders. There have been numerous attacks on Venezuelan military posts. During a recent visit to Venezuela I discovered a divided attitude. On the one hand, obviously they are quite unhappy with Colombia’s inability to secure its borders and with a spillover of conflict into Venezuela. But they are also concerned about the spread of corruption within Venezuela itself, especially within some elements of the public security forces. There is a massive volume of trafficking across the Venezuelan border in which Venezuelans are involved. They’re also concerned very much with migration, some of which is simply Colombians trying to flee the violence, some of which is obviously establishing cross-border links between criminal enterprises. At the same time I think they understand in many ways the dilemma of the Colombian military; as thinly stretched as it is and given the nature of the forces arrayed against it, you cannot expect the Colombians to devote great resources to static border defense. This has got to be a low priority, and so you have on the one hand a source of tension, on the other hand a motive for cooperation, a realization that you’re both facing the same problem.

Along the Panamanian border there is a difficult situation in part because of the total incapacity of Panamá to do anything about securing its side of the border after the abolition of the Panamanian defense forces following "Operation Just Because" [Operation Just Cause] in 1990. Along this border there have been a multiplicity of problems, including drug trafficking, guerrilla groups using the region for R and R, the destruction of the forest by illegal timber enterprises, indigenous groups and the violation of their rights, and environmental concerns. I think these situations will resonate more and more in the Congress as we approach Panama Canal transition era in 1999, because the fact is that this clearly demonstrates the limitations of Panamá’s security forces. So that creates a set of problems. The problems of maritime jurisdictions in the Caribbean are obviously immense, and the problems of who controls the air and sea space and who controls passage through them are equally significant. But I think one of the areas to talk about is the problem of the financial links that go into the Caribbean from all the drug business and the way in which the money laundering and other enterprises begin to distort the economies, undermine the politics, disrupt international relations, and seriously affect the administration of justice throughout the region. So we have a real multiplicity of kinds of conflict here, without getting into what goes on in the Leticia region, the tri-border region. I knew the commander in Leticia for a while, and we talked about the networks across the border, the fact that the drug traffickers knew exactly where there were air bases in Peruvian territory but also knew about the inability of the Peruvian forces to move against them. The Sendero Luminoso was disrupting internal order of Peru at that time. There is a huge security problem in this region, and part of my observation and question regards the extent to which multilateral institutions or organizations such as the Inter-American Defense Board (IADB) and the Organization of American States (OAS) are able to deal with this problem. Is it better to have a series of bilateral relations to deal with these problems?

ANSWER: Well, I guess others may want to answer the question from the OAS or the IADB standpoint but I think you’re right, the point I was trying to make is that the multiplicity of current problems you pointed out has prevented Colombia from exercising any kind of the leadership that it had sometime back in the 1970s or 1980s. In effect there has been a definite leadership vacuum in the area, and I think either Venezuela or Colombia is going to step in to do something in that area. But as long as you have this very complex problem involving the U.S., not much is going to happen.

COMMENT: Colombia has suffered a lot of problems, but there is no need to stigmatize it. Colombia does not bear the responsibility for the drug business alone, but thus far only Colombia has been blamed for most of the problem. I do not agree that the military is responsible for 70 percent of the human rights violations, as has been stated elsewhere. The insurgents and paramilitary groups are responsible for many more violations. The military does have in place measures to deal with the problem of human rights violators, something few other institutions in Colombia can boast of, and these are central to the commanding general’s strategy. The actions of individual members of the armed forces in this regard have been reduced significantly.

On the topic of extradition, as related to the problem of drugs, I believe that the only solution is extradition, a solution that has been debated for a long time. I believe that a majority of people in Colombia are in favor of extradition. However, the laws and procedures have limited its use. For instance, the current law passed by Samper makes extradition possible, but not retroactively, and thus allows all the cartel leaders currently in jail to avoid extradition to the U.S. Similarly, bills have been submitted to Congress to confiscate the lands of the narcotraffickers, at least those for which they cannot prove a legal origin. Expropriation with retroactivity is an important measure that should be implemented in Colombia.

On the topic of drugs, it is easy to say that the origin of the problem is Colombia, and I’d like to return to the discussion of demand or supply for a minute. I believe it is an integrated problem, a problem for all. For instance, the law of supply and demand applies in precursor chemicals as well: Legal businesses produce chemicals, and the drug mafias buy them. Colombia does not produce the precursor chemicals required to process cocaine. These precursors are produced in the U.S., Argentina, Brazil, and Europe and are currently not controlled by anyone. I would like to raise the question of what’s being done by the international community to limit the flow of these chemicals. In like manner, one of the means of maintaining the level of violence in Colombia involves the use of small arms. Colombia does not produce these weapons, so the question remains, where do they come from? I’d like to raise the question of what the international community is doing to stop the flow of these weapons. Likewise, money laundering is a large problem for Colombia, because its economy is not big enough to recycle or launder such large quantities of money. This money, despite some of it being laundered in Colombia, is primarily laundered elsewhere (in the Caribbean, in Central and North America) and later relocated to Colombia.

My final point is that we must all find a few points of consensus that can become the basis to form a plan to resolve the crisis in Colombia. It is not useful for everyone to pile onto Colombia and stigmatize it for the problems it suffers. More positive and objective ideas are required to deal with the root problems of the crisis. It is important to have workshops such as this one, where we can talk openly about possible alternatives that cannot be discussed elsewhere.

Comment: I wish to comment on the issue of stigmatization. It is quite possible that Colombian policy on drugs has been pressured by both the drug mafias and the U.S. government. But we should not fall into the trap of underestimating or misconstruing domestic pressure, either. I fear we have underestimated the political context internal to Colombia, where the different visions of governance answer to different pressure groups. For instance, the lack of support for extradition does not translate into support for the drug mafias. Not everyone who opposed extradition is in the pay of the Cali narcotraffickers. Nor do I believe that those who supported the refusal to extradite criminals are anti-U.S., just as those who supported the extradition are not necessarily in favor of Yankee imperialism. There are elements within our discussion where nationalism and sovereignty are antiquated values, because they do not correspond to the reality of today’s criminal elements, who are genuinely globalized. But these are not completely antiquated values, because they are integral to the concept of globalization. The solution to any of these problems must be analyzed in terms of the specific context, which necessarily makes it more complex.

A second comment I have refers to the lengthy discussion we’ve had over the problems of drugs and human rights, though we’ve not talked much of the social and political consequences of these problems on the reality in Colombia. We’ve not discussed, for instance, the social impacts of counterdrug programs. It is possible that spraying defoliants increases opposition to the U.S. overall. But the fact remains that despite being the country where the most eradication takes place by aerial fumigation, the program has not succeeded in reducing the volume of coca and poppies under cultivation. Either way, the social consequences of the program have not been taken into account adequately.

Yesterday I was talking with one of my colleagues about the war on drugs. We discussed Colombia’s efforts to torpedo the insurgents’ source of income through aerial spraying of the coca cultivation. But the spraying has eroded support in the target zones for the program, and indeed has increased support for the social movement advocated by the insurgents. I personally believe that the aerial spraying has not worked to reduce the cultivation of drugs, and in addition it has increased Colombia’s internal instability through social unrest. I bring this up to add to the discussion in terms of increasing the visibility of the domestic pressures Colombia faces. There are Colombian interests that coincide with U.S. interests, but there should be no illusions that Colombia does not have its own agenda and interests, its own concerns, its own vision. I suspect that most of these include the problem of drugs under the heading of consequences of instability, not causes of instability.

I understand that in terms of the war on drugs the U.S. occupies a very important position, but it must be understood that from the Colombian perspective the problem is much more complicated. I congratulate Dr. Sherman for his brave stance on the issue of human rights, because it points out the complexity of the problem and the ease with which each party can be stigmatized. It is easy, though illogical, to assume that those opposed to aerial spraying are receiving funds and support from the Cali cartels. The image portrayed by that analysis is very negative, and it illustrates the problem of not understanding the local conditions in which the opposition grows.

Another similar case is that of extradition. I believe the decision of the Colombian Congress accurately reflected the opinion of a majority of Colombians. In 1991, most of the population opposed extradition, and not only because they feared the car bombs of Pablo Escobar. It is just as easy to translate support for Colombian justice (a desire to see justice carried out in Colombia) into a fear of terrorism from the drug mafias (stop the bombing). But I suspect the opposition to extradition existed because of many varied reasons inherent in being Colombian. There is a nationalistic effervescence that believes the nation’s institutions of government were undergoing a renewal, and the feeling in ’91 was that Colombian criminals should be tried in Colombia. This feeling is much more important, in my opinion, than the easy analysis that Colombians only act when there’s U.S. pressure to act.

I also believe that the decision of the Colombian Congress reflects the fact that extradition is much more popular now than it was earlier. I offer these comments as an element of our discussion, because I fear that, as has been mentioned once or twice, the coercive nature of U.S. diplomacy toward Colombia can be interpreted as a positive force in some issues, but not in all. The national dialogue on these issues within Colombia cannot be taken out of context, because the resulting conclusions will be disastrously wrong.

Comment: I agree that trying to make a quick fix solution does not take into account the big picture. An integrated study needs to be done that takes into account all the social factors. Nationalism is certainly spurred by this kind of problem. Well, what about the problem of poverty, what about the problem of criminality, what about the problem of a justice system that doesn’t work, what about the problem of prisons that don’t have enough resources to house all their prisoners, what about all of the other problems I don’t have time to list? It’s an integrated problem that needs to be studied on an integrated basis. You can’t just pick one aspect and hope for a solution to everything. Dealing with only one problem tends to spur on other problems, like nationalism. So I think what’s needed is a long-term, integrated, cost-benefit analysis plan, where people look at all of the impact and the possible consequences of doing only one thing or even one thing at a time.

Comment: I’d like to raise a question about the possibility of large migrations moving across the borders of Colombia, linking those possibilities to the lack of law and the internal conflict. The view from outside of Washington and Bogotá is that the issue is not as large as it looms and is linked to historical and economic migrations. Venezuela has assimilated several hundreds of thousands if not millions of Colombians who live across the border because they migrated there when Venezuela had peace and stability. But my impression is that the migration has nothing to do with internal armed conflict or the drug trade, or at least not to the extent that it’s being presented. The U.N. Committee for Refugees speaks of tens of thousands of Colombians supposedly going over into Panama in the Darien; but that simply does not correspond to any reality. Some surveys have been conducted in the Darien, finding that maybe several hundred Colombians have crossed the border because of insurgent and paramilitary group activity. But not tens of thousands of people as some have reported. Generally speaking, I think that the danger of these migration flows into neighboring countries is being overdone by some people to justify creating a new building block for an international intervention.

Comment: Migration has been going on for so long, and, during the time period of La Violencia when a lot of internal migration took place, Colombia used to be a rural country. But within a relatively short period of time it has become essentially an urban country, and now the problems are concentrated in smaller areas. The rural areas have always been sparsely populated, and there are not that many people to move. And the reason for migration has always been economic: Potential for higher income has always made migration to urban centers attractive. Let’s presume for a second that the eastern part of the United States becomes a separate country, and see if an understanding of the problem within the U.S. increases tremendously. That picture in a recent news magazine overlapping the maps of Colombia and the U.S. eastern seaboard and the image it presented really caught my attention: More than half of the country, according to the picture and story, is where the narcoguerilla activity takes place. And most of the areas, except for the Cordillera Central, and maybe toward the Guajira and the Magdelena, are really sparsely populated. But I could see people moving out of Cali, Medellín, and Bogotá like they used to during the Violencia, moving to the interior of the country. I can see them moving away to Venezuela, particularly as there’s a peaceful situation today in Venezuela. Today’s migration is just not that great as to cause serious problems.

Comment: I have several comments covering a range of everybody’s presentations. One of the things that people used to ask a lot, especially when the big cartels were present in Colombia, is why Colombia, why did they bring the product up from Bolivia and Peru instead of processing it there? My answer has always been that this activity goes on in Colombia because it can. The environment is right in Colombia for this kind of activity, and this touches on something discussed yesterday regarding corruption in the society. The narco traffickers did not corrupt Colombian society. They merely took advantage of an already corrupt system. The increase in coca cultivation has a lot less to do with eradication efforts and their success or failure than it has to do with the success of programs in Peru. The traffickers made a very conscious decision to move coca production from Peru into Colombia, where they would have more control. Where eradication took place in Colombia, coca fields were reduced by 25 percent. Unfortunately, the growth of areas under cultivation took place in regions largely controlled by the guerillas, and this more than compensated for losses of cultivation areas elsewhere. It’s unfair to say that eradication doesn’t work and that eradication has somehow fed the guerrilla movement. There were multiple factors in the increase in coca cultivation in Colombia, and it’s not fair to throw that blame on the eradication program.

The problems brought on by the illegal drug business are not the result of isolated incidents. There is an economic aspect, there is an administration of justice aspect that is huge, there is a social aspect, and Colombia needs to work with the international community to create alternative developments. But in many ways everyone’s hands are tied because the Colombian government has no national strategy, no national drug strategy, no national defense strategy, no national strategy for anything. Colombia does run its government by crisis management: Whichever wolf is closest to the sled, that’s the one that gets attention that day, which results in a very dispersed effort spread out in a very incoherent manner. Until national priorities are set and the national goals and objectives are elaborated into a national strategy es supported by the Colombian population, all the money and machinery that could be thrown at Colombia won’t do any good. At the very least, the Colombian government needs to write its own national strategy goals and objectives so that the international community will have something to work with.

On the topic of why the U.S. is picking on Ernesto Samper even though he’s done so much that we’ve asked for: The problem of working with Colombia during this administration is one of a split personality, like working with two governments. There have been very good relations, very good cooperation at the tactical level with the police and the military. At the strategic level, however, it has been necessary to watch Congress like a hawk. Congress has tried to slip narco micos (narco monkey wrenches) into every bill possible: to undo the illicit enrichment laws, to undo the asset forfeiture laws, to undo sentencing laws. I mean everything possible has been tried to help the narcotraffickers. The whole Congress was not corrupt, because saying that would be unfair as well. It’s been a very difficult balance, having to work very hard at the strategic level of any government, and when things fail, sanctions unfortunately hurt most people with whom there has been the best working level (the tactical level).

Someone talked about Colombia having passed the extradition law to placate the U.S. government. If the Colombian government does anything on the basis of how it will play in the U.S., that’s the wrong reason, and it is not serving the Colombian people or its own interests well. Either way, I don’t think that’s why the law was passed. I think it passed because it is best for Colombia and will serve the long-term interests of the Colombian people. Now, looking at it from the perspective of Washington, a convergence of mutual interests is always desirable. But Dr. Thachuk’s presentation is accurate in portraying the lack of clarity and long-range planning on the part of the Colombian government. The problems we’ve discussed in this workshop just cannot be resolved through the plan du jour; there has to be real commitment to a solution, based on a clear statement of Colombia’s national interests.

Comment: Just let me complicate your question of why is the United States picking on Samper. The whole angle of domestic policy in this country -- the end of the Cold War, for example, and the ideological or political conflicts between the Republicans and the Democrats in a presidential election -- all these have something to do with the fact that U.S. concern for Colombia increased so much. The difference is that the drug traffic under the Samper administration and under the Barco administration is so vast that it finally was noticed. I would propose that the end of the Cold War and the issue of east/west conflict had something to do with this increased attention. The U.S. finally has the time and lack of conflict elsewhere to notice Latin America and the problems that have been going on there for some time.

Comment: The issue of why the U.S. sanctioned President Samper is a matter of public record. The biggest difference that I can see as far as the Samper regime and previous regimes is in the kind of activities that have gone on. Yes, there has always been corruption, and this administration has been stigmatized by the United States, and other countries I might add, as the worldly bank robber or whatever term you want to use. But in reality, Colombians all accepted the label attached to Samper of being worse than the usual or at least genuinely corrupt. The U.S. acted on that reality. Even the guerrillas have said that they will not come to the peace table as long as Samper is in power, because they did not accept him as a legitimate president. Maybe Samper hasn’t done anything worse than any other president, but he’s been labeled as worse than the others. As long as this label sticks, people will automatically associate Colombia with corruption, narcotics trafficking, with total ineptness to deal with guerrillas or whatever other things come to mind.

In an effort to move the agenda forward, I think the United States is looking ahead now, hoping that a new regime can change this stigma. And probably the United States is hoping for a new administration that has more staying power and will be able to work toward the long-range planning capability we’ve been talking about. But I agree with the comments I’ve heard here this morning, the lack of a national strategy inhibits any long-range solution in Colombia. If you can’t agree upon what the objectives are for your country, you can’t write a strategy. Is the strategy to destroy all the guerrillas, is it to kill all the drug traffickers, or to just hope for a situation where all of the actors will want to come and see a solution? In reference to the war against the guerrillas, I don’t believe either side can win on the battlefield right now, with or without a strategy. The Colombian government, and Colombian society in general, has no consensus on what objectives to pursue. Until someone clearly states a set of objectives, nothing will happen. At any rate, I think it’s too late for the Samper government. But we’re not going to get anywhere in this workshop simply complaining about the lack of policy. One of the stated objectives was to find new solutions, new ideas. There should be a follow-up session, bringing together the politicians involved, to discuss ways to develop such a strategy for Colombia.

Question: May I ask an obvious question? Why, after dealing with this subject for about twenty years, do you think that the Colombian government hasn’t developed a national strategy?

ANSWER: I’m not sure I can answer your question. I lived in Colombia for a long time, and I watched politics like anyone else and talked to a lot of people. One conclusion I can reach is that there is no accountability in Colombian politics. People are elected supposedly to represent the people, and what they wind up representing in most cases are their own interests. So most politicians in Colombia spend a lot more time figuring out how to stay in power, or get reelected, or line their own pockets.

QUESTION: I must say that I don’t like your answer because I don’t think it’s right. My answer would be that politicians do not write such national strategy because it’s not in their domestic political interest to do so. So then the question becomes, how do we make it in their domestic political interest?

Comment: I would just like to throw in something that we talked about yesterday. Many of the reforms that the guerrillas say they are seeking were actually written into the 1991 Constitution. As anybody who follows their Colombian history knows, a lot of the assembly convened to reform the constitution were folks who had come in from the M-19 insurgent group. They had a sizable contingent at that constitution assembly, and some would argue that they had a stronger voice than they earned either on the battlefield or at the ballot box. But they inserted into the 1991 Constitution a lot of reforms similar to the ones being demanded by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) today. In reality, a lot of the reforms exist already, but they’re not being implemented, and presidential decrees and policies have reversed some genuine reforms. Well, Colombia does not need a peace process to implement a constitution that’s already on the books. In many cases, the tools for resolving Colombia’s instability already exist, but they’re not being used. There is no real need to develop a new plan of governance, only to implement what is already in place. There are many visions of what constitutes good governance for Colombia, but not all are applicable. The main thing lacking is accountability.

Comment: You cannot look at Colombia today and say that it’s been well managed. The key to understanding the question is the management of the economy. While the economy was well managed, politicians could get away with anything, as long as they made sure the economy was good, Colombia never defaulted on the national debt, the middle class grew, unemployment was reasonable, inflation never reached the level of hyperinflation that seriously damaged other countries, trade agreements were in place, and there was such a nice diverse economy and a plethora of other nice things. While things were fairly reasonable, politicians could get away without having to commit to much and didn’t have to be accountable to anybody. Now that unemployment is up and inflation is a problem, and the guerrillas are no longer staying in their box, and the paramilitaries have raised their ugly heads as they sort of ebb and flow throughout the history of Colombia -- when things get bad, this is when the flaws of the crisis management style become really apparent. This is the time when you can look at another short-term solution or even a long-term solution. But when nearly half of the people in a poll say that they would leave Colombia if they had the chance, you can’t say that their interests have been represented well. And I don’t think that Colombians want to leave because they don’t love their country, because I know they do. The police, the military, the human rights non-governmental organizations (NGO) are dying every day because they love their country. So what is the problem? And part of the problem is that it’s a democracy issue and it’s a democracy education issue. I think there are a lot of people who don’t understand that politicians are supposed to be accountable to the people who elected them. This is a long-term problem, one based on the lack of a national strategy that brings in all of the aspects involved, attempting to deal with them together instead of in isolation. And it’s frustrating for all of us who study Colombia, where we have so many friends and it’s painful to watch what they’re going through right now. It’s painful to see the headline about the latest twenty-two people killed in the latest massacre. It’s painful to watch elections being disrupted by intimidation, kidnapping, or assassination. It’s painful to watch the longest-standing democracy on the continent go through these contortions, realizing that there is not anything that can be done from the outside. I mean there really isn’t anything we can do. That doesn’t mean standing by and allowing human rights violators to get away with things, or working to help friends in their difficulties. But in the larger sense, the long-term solution has always has been firmly in the hands of Colombia.

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Last Update:  September 30, 2002