The "Drug War" in Colombia: Echoes of Vietnam

Abstract

NJuly 2000, President Clinton signed into law a $I.3 billion aid package to set up the "war on X 2 drugs" in Colombia and neighboring countries in South America. Of this sum, $86o million is designated for Colombia itself, mainly as aid to the mili>#cX4.5 tary (i). For three decades Colombia has been torn by civil war, and the Colombian military has a well-documented record of human rights abuses including disappearances, arbitrary detentions, kidnappings, and torture of civilians [z, pg. 20]. The U.S. Congress made its "drug war" military aid dependent upon the Colombian government improving its human rights profile, but in August President Clinton waived this requirement so that funds could begin to flow south. For a number of years the U.S. has sponsored herbicide spraying in Colombia, intending to curb illegal drugs at their source. Starting in January zoOI under U.S. oversight, the Colombian government escalated its "crop eradication" activities, in which aircraft spray herbicides containing glyphosate to kill opium poppy and coca plants. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the well-known herbicide called Roundup. Opium poppy and coca are the raw materials for making heroin and cocaine. Representatives of Colombian indigenous communities recently traveled to Washington, D.C. to explain how they have been affected by spraying that has already occurred. Glyphosate, they said, kills more than drug crops-it also kills food crops that many rural Colombians depend on for survival. In some places, the spraying has