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Friday, May 2, 2003
12:57 a.m.
US to restart air interdiction policy in Colombia
As part of the goodie-bag he collects for making the trip to Washington (Powell appreciates the gesture!), President Alvaro Uribe gets to announce (according to El Tiempo (May 1 1700 EDT)) that the US has agreed to revive the policy of shooting down planes transporting narcotics from Peru to Colombia.
The policy of Air Bridge Denial was apparently successful in securing significant reductions in the areas of coca cultivation in Peru [1].
ABD operations were suspended following the shooting down on April 20 2001 by the Peruvian air force of a Cessna containing missionaries [2], rather than narcotics.
Only a few days later, Robert Brown of the Office of National Drug Control Policy was praising the ABD policy before a Congressional committee (some useful history in his statement) [3]; every indication that the suspension would be short-lived.
On March 20 2002, USG was reviewing the findings and recommendations of the joint U.S.-Peruvian accident investigation report and a separate investigation of the overall air interdiction program.
By March 24, however, Powell was saying [4] We want to restart these air interdiction flights. Let there be no doubt about that...And I expect that we will finish the various review elements ... in the near term. I don't expect this to linger too much longer.
Quite what has held things up for another year my researches to date have not revealed. Is it Congressional doubts on Colombia's human rights record? Uribe spent May 1 shmoozing on the Hill - and getting patted on the back for being an Ikette (Georgette?) on the Iraq business: la carta mejorada que tiene Uribe ahora la mencionó Frist en su bienvenida. Dijo que había sido no sólo un aliado de Estados Unidos en el hemisferio occidental en la campaña contra el narcoterrorismo, sino que fue más allá con su apoyo a la guerra contra Irak.
The connect-the-dots interpretation would be that certain legislators who had bellyached in the past on Colombia and human rights needed a fig-leaf to support the resumption of ABD [5]: and cheerleading Bush on Iraq is that fig-leaf. I doubt it's anything like as simple as that, though.
(Not only does troubled Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist get namechecked in the Tiempo piece: no less a luminary than Rep James Moran (March and April archives passim) had already pooped the party (not invited?), saying: que Estados Unidos ha comprometido más de 2.000 millones de dólares en ayuda para Colombia en los últimos tres años, pero aun así el 80 por ciento de la cocaína que se consume en el mercado nacional sigue proviniendo de ese país.
Ornery to the last...)
[Whilst my attention is South of the Border: Tiempo also reported yesterday an AFP investigation which found that FARC and the ELN had a thousand guerillas over the border in Venezuela - and dozens of hostages with them [6].]
- A GAO paper from August 1994 was seriously doubting the effectiveness of interdiction. Times change, evidently.
- Jim and Roni Bowers; Mrs Bowers and her daughter were killed. A gallimaufry of stuff related to the case here.
- The statement from a guy from the National Business Aviation Association to the same meeting is also not without interest - such mistreatment of the product is bad for industry image...
- In Air Force One bound - for Peru! I guess they felt pretty safe, interdiction-wise...
- The ABD operations formed part of the Andean Regional Initiative: CRS Reports (PDF) on the ARI updated in July 2001 (RL31016) and January 2003 (RL31383) are available on Rep Mark Green's page - you have to download via a browser window, rather than using Save Target As - because of the way the PDF files are fetched, I suppose.
- My earlier pieces on Colombia-Venezuela relations: April 25 and April 16.
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