U.S. Ambassador-Designate to Colombia on Aerial Fumigation
A matter which has come up with respect to counternarcotics is the FARC's insistence- this is a publice insistence, we don't know what they're saying at the table- but publicly, they're insisting on the elimination of the aerial eradication program, which in our view would be a great mistake.
This is from the testimony yesterday of U.S. Ambassador-Designate to Colombia Kevin Whitaker, at his nomination hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, starting at about 2:27:00 in the video.
We’ve discussed elsewhere recently why it makes sense to abandon the 20-year-old “aerial eradication” program, to which the U.S. government still devotes over US$40 million each year to spray herbicides from aircraft over Colombia’s coca-growing areas.
What’s interesting about what Kevin Whitaker said yesterday is what it portends. The fumigation program threatens to be the first issue on which the peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas clash with official U.S. policy. The two sides in the Havana talks may be closer to each other on the fumigation issue than either is to the United States.
There is some probability that the negotiators will agree to end the aerial herbicide spraying program. The FARC, in a December 3 statement, included “the immediate suspension of aerial spraying with glyphosate” among its ten proposals for drug policy, the topic currently on the negotiators’ agenda.
In its coverage of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s visit to Washington last week, Colombia’s principal newsmagazine, Semana, didn’t seem to think the “banning fumigation” demand would be controversial at the peace talks.
"The guerrillas presented their ten points. Among them stand out some that probably will be agreed without much discussion: crop substitution, non-criminalization of consumers, and suspension of fumigation. [My emphasis.]”
This is the first time I’d heard that ending the fumigation program would be something on which the two sides might quickly agree. I asked a reporter who writes about security for Semana. While that reporter did not write this particular story, the reply I received noted, “Truly, the sensation here after the [World Court] settlement with Ecuador is that something has to change with the fumigations.”
If that’s correct, then the negotiators may be about to do something that the incoming U.S. ambassador views as a “mistake.” Still, if they choose to stop fumigation, the Obama administration will need to be flexible and respect that outcome.
This blog was written by Adam Isacson and first appeared here, on his personal blog