The Twilight Struggle over Fumigation in Colombia
The U.S. government has spent billions since 1994 on a program that eradicates coca—the plant used to make cocaine—by having Colombian police and contractors fly over it spraying herbicides.
This “fumigation” program has been controversial. The spraying destroys legal crops, and restitution is very hard to obtain. It has generated many health and environmental complaints. It sends a terrible message to people in poorly governed parts of Colombia: “we will spray you overhead, but will not provide you basic services.” And it has done little to reduce coca-growing.
After 20 years, the fumigation program could be coming to an end. Its termination is a main demand of the FARC guerrillas, who are negotiating a peace accord with the Colombian government in Havana, Cuba. Since November, the negotiations have been discussing drug policy.
The Colombian government appears likely to concede on fumigation. Colombian officials have begun to break to U.S. officials the news that it is preparing to end or cut back the program—a step that newly confirmed Ambassador Kevin Whitaker said would be “a great mistake” during his December confirmation hearing.
- Two non-governmental Colombian sources who have met with President Juan Manuel Santos say that when Santos visited Washington in early December, he raised with U.S. officials the possibility that Colombia might stop the spray program.
- On a mid-March visit to Washington, where he met with Attorney-General Eric Holder, Colombia’s minister of justice, Alfonso Gómez Méndez, proposed that funds used for the spray program be applied for other purposes. “As we need less spraying, it would be ideal if these resources could be directed toward what we call attacking the causes of illicit crops,” Gómez Méndez explained in an interview. “That proposal was accepted for review.”
U.S. officials may be a bit confused, though, by mixed messages from the Colombian government. The country’s powerful Defense Ministry appears to be set against ending the spraying program, which it administers through the National Police Anti-Narcotics Directorate.
- When Defense Minister Juan Carlos Pinzón visited Washington in February, his staff accidentally leaked a briefing book to press. According to this document, among Pinzón’s talking points with U.S. officials was “State the importance of continuing the Counternarcotic programs as aerial spraying.” (The document was written in English.)
- In an interview Sunday with Colombia’s most-circulated newspaper, El Tiempo, the chief of Colombia’s National Police, Gen. Rodolfo Palomino, emphatically opposed the Justice Minister’s proposal to curtail U.S. aid for fumigation. “Fumigation is fundamental because while there’s pressure from illegal armed groups, especially the guerrillas, to stimulate and force illicit crops, we have to keep hitting hard, counteracting it with full rigor. And that implies continuing with fumigation.”
Meanwhile, inside the Obama administration, the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), which runs the fumigation program, is planning to forge ahead with spray operations. The program was halted after guerrillas shot down two spray planes shot down, for the first time in a decade, in September and October. This resulted in a more than 50 percent reduction in spraying last year, to 47,000 hectares—the lowest spray acreage since 2000.
The fumigations began again in February, though, and last week the long-serving assistant secretary for INL, William Brownfield, had his picture taken (above) visiting the Air Tractor, Inc. plant in Olney, Texas where the spray planes are produced and maintained. “The people who work for Air Tractor here in Olney have played an important role in forcing this repulsive, repugnant, violent, homicidal terrorist organization to come to the table,” Brownfield said, referring to the FARC.