U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening that he may decertify Colombia as a partner in the drug war unless it reverses a record surge in cocaine production in the South American nation.
The shock rebuke for Washington's staunchest ally in Latin
America came Wednesday in the White House's annual designation of nations it
deems major drug producing or transit zones.
Colombia, which is source of 90 percent of the cocaine
consumed in the U.S., has long been a fixture of the list, which was unchanged
from last year. But not since the late 1990s, when contributions from the Cali
cartel funded the campaign of Colombia's then-President Ernesto Samper, has its
commitment to fighting narcotics trafficking been called into question by Washington.
Twenty-two countries were designated as major drug transit
zones Wednesday, and only Venezuela and Bolivia were deemed once again not to
be fulfilling their international obligations to combat drug production and
trafficking.
The leftist governments of both those nations are hostile to
the U.S. Yet, in a statement, Trump said he "seriously considered"
also decertifying Colombia because of the "extraordinary" growth of
coca cultivation and cocaine production to record levels over the past year.
He said he ultimately decided against such a designation
because the Colombian armed forces are close law enforcement partners with the
U.S. He also cited improving interdiction rates and the restarting of forced
eradication efforts that were significantly curtailed in 2013, when President
Juan Manuel Santos prioritized reaching a peace deal with leftist rebels
heavily involved in the drug trade. Two years later Santos ended aerial
spraying of chemicals on illicit crops, a program that had been the backbone of
almost two decades and $10 billion of U.S. counter-narcotics work in Colombia.
But Trump warned that he would keep decertification as an
"option" and expected Colombia to make "significant
progress" in reducing coca cultivation and cocaine production.
There was no immediate reaction from Colombian officials.
Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin
America, described Trump's threat as a "huge mistake" that would
likely reverberate throughout a region that has long resented the U.S. drug
certification process as a throwback to the days of gunboat diplomacy.
"The message to the rest of the region is that no
matter how many years you collaborate with the U.S., if you deviate from our
preferred strategy for a moment, we'll publicly humiliate you," Isacson
said. "They're taking the bilateral relationship to its worst place in two
decades."
The drug certification process dates from the days of
President Ronald Reagan's war on drugs and the last time Colombia was
blacklisted was the late 1990s, when cocaine was found on Samper's presidential
plane and he was nearly impeached for campaign contributions from the
then-dominant Cali cartel.
Decertifying Colombia would put the country in the same
rogue category as Venezuela, where several top officials have been indicted on
U.S. drug charges and whose vice president was recently sanctioned by
Washington as a suspected drug kingpin.
Isacson said the threat of decertification was even more
worrisome because the U.S. expressed no similar concern over the lack of help
it was receiving from far more corrupt nations on the list like Honduras, a
major way station for South American cocaine working its way up by land across
the border and into the U.S.
According to the State Department's annual anti-narcotics
report, the Central American nation didn't carry out a single maritime
interdiction last year and seized just 803 kilograms of cocaine nationwide
despite more than 100 instances where the U.S. notified authorities of
suspicious activity.
By contrast, bilateral maritime counter-drug cooperation
between Colombia and the U.S. led to the seizure of more than 146 metric tons
of cocaine in 2016. Overall, Colombia seized 421 metric tons last year, a 42
percent jump over 2015.
But the record drug seizures aren't keeping pace with the
explosion in cocaine production, which the U.S. estimates surged more than 200
percent since 2013 to potentially 710 metric tons last year.
The government's strategy to combat that trend relies
heavily on the cooperation of former guerrillas. Under terms of last year's
peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the government and
former insurgents are working with peasant families to try and voluntarily
eradicate some 123,000 acres (50,000 hectares) of coca this year in exchange
for monthly cash stipends and alternative development projects.
U.S. officials, who still consider the disbanded FARC a
terrorist organization, are skeptical the strategy will work. A senior U.S.
State Department official in Senate testimony this week accused the FARC of
co-opting the peasant groups negotiating with the government and said the peace
accord has had no effect on coca production trends.
"The solution to this problem is to figure out how to
cut the FARC out of having any engagement either as trafficking organizations
or as allegedly supporting the efforts to address the drugs issue,"
William Brownfield told the U.S. Senate's international drug caucus.
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29/03/2008| |
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28/02/2008| |
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25/11/2007| |
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30/03/2007| |
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23/12/2006| |
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29/11/2006| |
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29/11/2006| |
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25/10/2006| |
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11/08/2006| |
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01/02/2006| |
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07/10/2005| |
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28/09/2005| |
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30/11/1999| |
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30/11/1999| |
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