from the Presbyterian Washington Office:

1st Quarter, 2003

By Tina Hodges, Washington Office on Latin America

[3-26-03]

Especially right now, while a Witherspoon Society/Peace Fellowship delegation is visiting Colombia, this seems worth serious attention ... and action.

"Government officials, you fumigated your own resources - pasture, fruit trees, water sources, fish ponds, cows . . .You make us suffer hunger because our food is destroyed."1 Indigenous communities in Colombia's Amazon basin sent these words in an anguished letter to their government after spray planes employed in the war on drugs dropped herbicides on their food crops.

These communities suffer because of the U.S. taxpayer funded fumigation program in Colombia, which sprays a chemical herbicide over vast areas of the Colombian countryside with the aim to destroy coca crops, the base product for cocaine. Pilots contracted by the company Dyncorp spray a chemical formulation known as "RoundUp," based on the herbicide glyphosate. Other chemicals are added to the formulation to help the herbicide penetrate into the leaves. The herbicide is non-specific, meaning that it will kill any green plant. Massive spray campaigns were launched in December 2000, November 2001, and August 2002.

The United States greatly escalated fumigation in 2000 through the $1.3 billion mainly military counternarcotics aid program known as Plan Colombia. Since then, the large package has received around $625 million each year and has been renamed the Andean Regional Initiative. The money pays for Colombian army counternarcotics battalions, 60 helicopters, and small amounts of social and economic aid. With this primarily military aid, the U.S. inched into Colombia's four decade old internal conflict in which leftist guerrillas fight right-wing paramilitaries and the Colombian State, leaving thousands of civilian dead. Both the guerrillas and paramilitaries finance themselves with drug profits and commit horrible human rights abuses. The Colombian military is directly responsible directly for a much smaller share of abuses, but collaborates with the abusive paramilitaries. The U.S. government posited that fumigation would cut into guerrilla finances by removing drug profits. Yet fumigation has failed to reduce the drug trade and has caused massive damage to Colombian communities.

The communities who wrote the letter mentioned above signed social pacts with the Colombian government agreeing to eradicate coca crops in exchange for assistance in growing other crops and raising livestock. The communities eradicated 3000 hectares of coca by July 2002 and went to the Colombian government alternative development agency to register their plots to ensure that they would not be fumigated. Yet in the massive spray campaign that began in August, planes sprayed their lands anyway -- including areas where complete eradication had occurred, areas where partial eradication had occurred and crop substitution was underway, and areas where coca had never been grown. The herbicide killed food crops and even alternative development projects funded by the U.S. and Colombian governments.

The experience of these communities is not unique. The Colombian government's Ombudsman's Office has documented damage to food crops throughout the areas sprayed and received 6,553 claims of damage.2 No compensation has been granted for food crops destroyed.3 The destruction of food crops has caused many to go hungry.

Over and over again the government has failed to follow through with promises of development assistance. According to the Ombudsman's Office, only 3.45% of the promised aid had arrived by October 2001 and only 24% of the 37,775 signers of the social pacts had received full or partial delivery of promised aid by March 2002.4

Fumigation disproportionately targets poor coca farmers. Farmers are the first link in the chain of drug production and do not see the large profits reaped by those higher on the chain. In fact, 77% of households in Putumayo, Colombia's largest coca producing area, cannot meet their basic needs, according to Colombia's planning ministry.5 Colombia's rural areas where coca is grown have historically seen little to no government presence. The fumigation program brought government presence in the form of spray planes, helicopters, and troops protecting the spray sortees. Damage caused by indiscriminate fumigation of both legal and coca crops destroys any trust in the government and makes social pacts unsustainable.

State Department officials claim that they plan to fumigate the same farmers three or four times to make sure that farmers do no replant coca. One State Department official happily bragged that he could show pictures of abandoned fields. He did not show concern for where the former owners went. Farmers leaving fumigated areas swell the ranks of the one in twenty Colombians already living as refugees in their own country because of violence and become vulnerable to recruitment by guerrillas and paramilitaries, who pay a wage.

Another human impact of this policy is on health. Communities sprayed have reported numerous health impacts including rashes, fevers, and headaches. U.S. State Department officials claim that there are no adverse health affects of fumigation and point out the RoundUp is one of the most commonly used herbicides in the world. However, the type of fumigation going on in Colombia is far from common. The high altitude used for aerial fumigation greatly increases the distance that the sprayed product drifts with the wind. Spray drifts over fields, houses, schools, roads, and people, and even once coated a U.S. senator visiting the country. Additional chemicals of higher toxicity than RoundUp are added to the formulation in Colombia to help the herbicide penetrate into the leaf. There are no studies of the impact of the formulation used in Colombia, nor is the exact formulation and its concentration publicly known. The Environmental Protection Agency was asked to asses the impact on human health and concluded that "A more refined assessment is difficult due to uncertainty regarding the exact formulation of the spray solution."6

The World Wildlife Fund called on the U.S. Congress to eliminate aerial eradication fearing the environmental impact.7 The use of a non-specific herbicide in the Amazon region places this biodiverse ecosystem at risk. Aerial application means that many areas that were not targeted are fumigated. The World Wildlife Fund cites several risks of fumigation -- killing non-target plants and trees, increased potential for soil erosion and stream and river sedimentation, toxicity to aquatic organisms, adverse impacts on wildlife, impacts on diversity and the invasion of exotic plant species. Environmental impact of actions taken by people when they lose their food and cash crops must also be taken into account. Displaced farmers often clear new areas of forest. The State Department estimates that for every one hectare of coca planted, the Colombian farmer clears four hectares of land.8

Fumigation has not decreased drug abuse in the United States. The DEA reported in May 2001 that the price of cocaine had not increased since Plan Colombia began. Despite fumigating some 100,000 hectares of coca in 2001, cultivation increased that year by 25%. U.S. drug crop eradication programs over the past several years show that drug production being moved around while overall production levels rise. Decreases in coca cultivation in Peru and Bolivia were followed by increases in Colombia. Decreases in production in Colombia's Guaviare province were followed by increases in Putumayo province. There are plentiful lands and numerous poor farmers willing to grow coca for subsistence, making a supply-side strategy extremely difficult. On the other hand, treating drug addiction as a public health concern and providing treatment for addicts holds much more promise. A U.S. government commissioned study showed that treatment programs for drug abusers were 23 times more cost effective than eradication.9 Drug treatment programs are severely underfunded and many patients are turned away at the door for lack of space in programs.

TAKE ACTION

In February, President Bush released his budget request for 2004. In it, he requested a continuation of the fumigation program as part of $731 million Andean Regional Initiative. The State Department plans to fumigate upwards of 200,000 hectares this year.

What you can do:

1. Call, write, or visit your representative and senators. Tell them you are concerned about fumigation in Colombia. Tell them that fumigation in Colombia has destroyed food crops and even U.S-funded alternative development programs, leading to food shortages for families dependent on these crops. Fumigation poses severe risks for human health and the environment. Fumigation is ineffective in reducing drug supply. Tax dollars should not be spent on this harmful and counterproductive program. Instead, U.S. resources should focus on creating economic alternatives for farmers, strengthening civilian institutions, and funding drug treatment programs in the United States. Members of Congress are waiting to hear from constituents. Your call, letter, or visit could make a big difference.

The Capitol Switchboard can connect you with your congressional offices: 202/225/3121. To locate your member of Congress, go to www.house.gov/writerep and enter your zip code.

2. Join the Colombia Mobilization to protest U.S. policy in Colombia.

Protests are organized for March 24 this year in four cities:

For more information see www.colombiamobilization.org

Notes

1 La Organización Zonal Indígena del Putumayo (OZIP), Letter to Colombian government authorities, Putumayo, Colombia, September 7, 2002.

2 Colombian government Ombudsman's Office, Resolution no. 026, October 9, 2002, p.24.

3 For more information on the failure of the compensation system, see "Blunt Instrument" cited below.

4 Haugaard, Lisa, "Blunt Instrument: The United States' punitive fumigation program in Colombia," Washington, DC: Latin America Working group, Fall 2002, pp.5-6.

5 Isacson, Adam and Vaicius, Ingrid. "Plan Colombia's Ground Zero: A Report from CIP's trip to Putumayo, Colombia, March 9-12," Washington, DC: Center for International Policy, April 2001.

6 Environmental Protection Agency. Report on fumigation in Colombia, Washington, DC, September, 2002, p 6.

7 Fuller, Kathryn, Letter to U.S. House of Representatives regarding fumigation, July 13, 2001.

8 U.S. State Department, "Report on the Effects on Human Health and Safety of Herbicides used in the Colombian Aerial Spray Program," January 23, 2001.

9 RAND Corporation study commissioned by the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the U.S. Army quoted in Massing, Michael, The New York Times Magazine, September 6, 1998.

General Assembly

Efforts to stamp out Colombian drug operations by destroying coca crops are ineffective. Colombian Christian sources report that in 1999, 16,000 hectares of coca were destroyed by herbicides - but the estimated area of total plantings increased to 22,000 hectares in 2000. This statistic illustrates a cruel irony of the Colombian "war on drugs" - that crop destruction does not reduce the coca supply, but merely disperses coca growing into increasingly remote areas. In addition to the war's human rights abuses, this raises concerns about rainforest destruction and spread of the problem to neighboring countries. Furthermore, military aid does nothing to alleviate the problems of poverty and social injustice that encourage peasants to resort to coca growing in the first place.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has a history of speaking out in favor of peace and justice in Colombia. In 1998, Overture 98-20 encouraged all Presbyterians to pray for the people of Colombia, to become aware of the issues in greater depth than the standard "war on drugs" rhetoric, to support the ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, to engage in advocacy with the U.S. government by "insisting" that members of Congress demand that the Colombian government abide by human rights requirements, and to support ecumenical efforts to work for peace and justice in that troubled nation. The 205th General Assembly (1993) called for the demilitarization of U.S. drug war policies in foreign countries and an emphasis on drug prevention and treatment at home. The General Assembly has also called on the U.S. government to provide strong support for human rights through its international economic policies, especially foreign assistance and trade policies ("Hope for a Global Future: Toward Just and Sustainable Human Development," Minutes, 1996, Part I, p. 102). (Minutes, 2001, Part I, pp. 471-472.)