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ROA 2006 Part IV-A Colombia The Reality of Aid 2006 Latin America Part IV Latin America 143 The Reality of Aid 2006 Latin America 144 The Reality of Aid 2006 Latin America Security, Cooperation for Development and Conflict: Elements for Analysis of the Colombian Case Mauricio Katz Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD) Introduction their efforts for a counter-reform to cut For at least four decades Colombia has been back on and limit the rights consecrated in facing a complicated socio-political situation the constitution and to bring the nascent characterized by armed conflict between political regime back, in some ways, to the organizations of the extreme left and the centralist, authoritarian, exclusivist model of government’s armed forces. Towards the end 1886. This is the movement to which of the 70s this confrontation expanded in President Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s proposal scope and complexity with the entry of belongs. His strategy proposes to clear the extreme right groups. Known in different way “Towards a Communal State”1 which re- sectors as paramilitary groups, these groups concentrates and recentralizes many have links to criminal groups, especially functions, its strengthening being an end in organized drug traffickers, and have been itself and not a result of increased legality accused of collusion with government and growing legitimacy. players. This government promotes a model that The 1991 constitution made the building de-institutionalizes the state structure, setting of a modern democracy possible, since it up parallel administrative mechanisms and established the foundations of biodiversity, ignoring the established mediation system. It individual freedom, the separation of church uses nation-centered patriotic discourse and and state and the strengthening of civil symbolism, dividing Colombian society in a society. This political scheme strengthened Manichean manner. Its proposal for immediate the process of decentralization, provided for reelections will strike a sharp blow against broader social and political participation of constitutionally-designed mechanisms for individuals and established a more or less maintaining a balance among government balanced separation of the different branches. branches. In short, for the first time in The essence of the communal state has to history citizens were effectively drawn closer do with the state’s efforts to achieve a to the state. strategic victory in the conflict through setting From the moment this constitution was in motion the so-called Democratic Security proclaimed, its opponents have not rested in Policy, which hopes to gain territorial control 145 The Reality of Aid 2006 Latin America and counteract and eliminate the risk to the armed forces for its operation and represented by the FARC. It is still too early modernization, in the framework of the anti- to assess the real impact of this policy’s drug and counter-insurgency struggle. On strategic goal, but it can be said that it has another front is help in dealing with the brought about a reconfiguration of the growing humanitarian crisis, with its dramatic Colombian conflict that has meant, on the effects on a migrant or isolated population. one hand, its worsening and intensification, And, finally, there are efforts to support a and on the other, an expansion and political solution to the conflict, in particular aggravation of the so-called humanitarian by strengthening the different expressions crisis. organized by civil society. One of the most striking aspects of this This paper intends to analyze the current policy has to do with the way in which it situation of security, cooperation for intensifies US intervention in Colombia. This is development and conflict in Colombia. To this evident in Plan Colombia’s evolution into Plan end, it will first refer very generally to the Patriot, and in particular, in the latent risk foundations of international cooperation with that this military offensive might become the country by both the United States and the financially dependent on foreign aid. European Union, and then look at their US intervention has been facilitated by relationship with some essential aspects of the the recurring coincidence of President Uribe Colombian political context. The analysis will Vélez’s discourse with the war on terrorism also rapidly weigh the contributions of the so- proclaimed by President Bush after September called Plan Colombia and the results of the 11. Indeed, for the nation’s leader, Colombia is war on drugs. Finally, some conclusions will be not experiencing a social and political conflict presented for discussion. but rather is host to terrorist groups threatening society. He is making this pivotal Diplomacy for war to his domestic policies and international The consequences of the Colombian conflict relations. have become acute as the conflict intensifies Thus Colombia’s foreign policy has aligned and worsens. The concerns of the international itself with unilateralism, contributing to the community are to provide attention to the deterioration of international law and ignoring dramatic humanitarian crisis, whose maximum the recent tradition that led the country to expression is the internal migration over the preside over the Movement of Unaligned last decade of at least 2 million people, as Nations in 1996. As a result, Colombia has well as to violations of human rights and become the most steadfast, reliable ally of international humanitarian law. the United States in the Andean region, a Until 1998 the Colombian guerrillas looked region characterized today by some as to the international community for support, as unstable and at risk, and by others as in long as the Colombian state stuck to its search of independently constructed doctrine of self-determination and non- development alternatives. involvement in internal affairs in order to In spite of the current government’s wish claim its right to deal with the conflict under to expand its agenda, Colombia’s international its own authority. With the start of the cooperation has three basic, closely- dialogue on January 7, 1999, between interacting dimensions, much against the will President Andrés Pastrana’s administration and of its contributors. Thus, on one front is aid the FARC (Fuerzas Revolucionarias de 146 The Reality of Aid 2006 Latin America Colombia), a strategy called diplomacy for approaches prevalent during the Cold War peace was put into motion which sought the and declared a head-on war on terrorism. international community’s backing for the This doctrine would be first used in March, negotiations. 2003 in the war against Iraq, where the At the same time the same administration United States abandoned the international initiated Plan Colombia in 2000 with financing order that had emerged from the end of the from the United States — a plan that was Second World War and dealt a death blow to denounced from the start by the FARC as the fragile security system of the United proof of US intervention in the domestic Nations. conflict, even though at the beginning the The new paradigm that Washington is plan did not include direct counterinsurgency trying to impose is characterized by growing action. unilateralism, profound subversion of The panorama changed radically with international norms, and systematic the September 11, 2001 attacks and the militarization of disputes. A legitimate election to the presidency of Álvaro Uribe question worth asking is whether the Vélez, who put into motion diplomacy in underlying truth of this paradigm is not a support of the domestic war, adopting as his strategy to seize the world’s energy own President Bush’s new security doctrine resources, as illustrated by the desire to and declaration of war on terrorism. At the seize Iraqi oil at any cost. Although the same time Plan Colombia evolved from an principles of non-intervention and non- anti-narcotics strategy into Plan Patriot, a recourse to force are still the bases of the counter-insurgency and anti-terrorist international order, the United States strategy — a US priority for its cooperation appears not to feel any obligation to respect in Colombia. them when they represent a threat to its With the September 11, 2001 attacks, interests. security once again took on another The preventive war doctrine and the war meaning. The fear occasioned by the against Iraq signify a consolidation of the attacks, in both the US and the rest of the unilateral perspective, with a unipolar world world gave credence to the theory that vision, as opposed to multilateralism and normal mechanisms for dealing with security multi-polarity. This concept of security has threats are not effective against terrorism. had a permanent impact on state public Individual liberties and the legitimacy of order policies, placing domestic security democratic institutions were weakened and above other priorities such as democracy, a tendency for exceptional measures was human rights and economic and social generalized throughout the world. State welfare, and giving sufficient legitimacy to security acquired first priority to the the restriction of individual liberties, as seen detriment of human security and in the Patriot Act. acknowledged civil liberties and guarantees, Colombia was the only South American with the added complication that individuals country to back the United States, and were agreeing to this change. although it did not form part of the military The United States established a new contingency under the coalition, it declared its security and national defense doctrine, full support for military intervention in Iraq. defined as a preventive war doctrine, with The domestic agenda was related directly to which they definitively abandoned the the American agenda and Plan Patriot evolved 147 The Reality of Aid 2006 Latin America Graph 5. US Military Aid to Colombia, 1998-2005 (e) (millions US$) 900 AyudaMilitary Militar Aid 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 from Plan Colombia as a stronger intervention initiated their new war tactics with mechanism.
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