{"id":95740,"date":"2017-07-24T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-07-24T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=95740"},"modified":"2017-07-21T15:41:16","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T14:41:16","slug":"16-years-after-onset-of-u-s-plan-colombia-cocaine-profits-reach-record-highs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/07\/16-years-after-onset-of-u-s-plan-colombia-cocaine-profits-reach-record-highs\/","title":{"rendered":"16 Years after Onset of U.S. Plan Colombia, Cocaine Profits Reach Record Highs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S.-Colombia drug war alliance has failed to stop the country\u2019s drug trade, with last year\u2019s coca yield breaking records. The record harvests can be traced to the country\u2019s government, right-wing paramilitaries and wealthy individuals who are sympathetic to U.S. business interests. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A man mulches coca leaves with a weed eater at a small makeshift lab in Puerto Bello, Colombia. Coca cultivation surged last year and now covers more territory than it did when a multibillion U.S.-led eradication campaign began 16 years ago. (AP\/Fernando Vergara)<\/p><\/div>\n

20 Jul 2017<\/em>\u2013 <\/strong>Ever since Colombia descended into civil war more than 50 years ago, the country\u2019s notorious drug trade has largely been blamed<\/a> on the leftist insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), rather than the government-connected right-wing paramilitaries who have also sold illegal drugs to fund their operations.<\/p>\n

The habit of laying the lion\u2019s share of the blame at FARC\u2019s feet came into its own following Colombia\u2019s partnership with the United States in the latter\u2019s war on drugs, particularly when the highly-publicized alliance failed to make any headway in halting cocaine production.<\/p>\n

Official cooperation between the two nations began in 1999, when then-President of Colombia Andr\u00e9s Pastrana Arango showed he was willing to cooperate in the U.S.\u2019 drug war by endorsing a U.S.-funded aerial fumigation program<\/a> in which glyphosate was indiscriminately sprayed<\/a> on small family farms in areas that were allegedly producing cocaine. Years later, it emerged that glyphosate, a Monsanto product, is a likely carcinogen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Related:\u00a0Colombia To Return\u00a0 To Attacking Coca With Glyphosate<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Instead of admitting failure due to short-sighted, ineffective policies and the Colombian government\u2019s mishandling of funds, FARC became the scapegoat, as other sources of cocaine production, namely right-wing paramilitaries, were connected to powerful international corporations<\/a> and the Colombian government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But now, the FARC-blaming narrative is falling apart, exposing the uncomfortable truths of Colombia\u2019s drug trade and the decades-long conflict that has come with it. According to the United Nations<\/a>, Colombia\u2019s cocaine crop yield for last year broke all previous records, increasing by 50 percent from the year prior \u2013 which was itself a record-breaking year.<\/p>\n

However, as part of a highly-publicized peace deal between FARC and the government \u2013 which even netted Colombia\u2019s current president a Nobel Peace Prize<\/a> \u2013 FARC gave up their role<\/a> in the drug trade following the finalization of the deal last year. Thus, this record-breaking cocaine yield cannot be traced back to FARC alone.<\/p>\n

There have long been plenty of other players in Colombia\u2019s drug trade, namely paramilitaries and the Colombian military. Even the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP) has described<\/a> the Colombian military as being among \u201cthe biggest heroin and cocaine trading institutions.\u201d The military is armed and trained by the U.S. under Plan Colombia.<\/p>\n

The Colombian government has also been intimately involved, particularly during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe, who allegedly served<\/a> as the \u201chead of Colombia\u2019s paramilitary groups\u201d both before and while in office. Uribe was once ranked by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency<\/a> as number \u201c82 on a list of 104 important narco-traffickers contracted by the Colombian narcotics cartels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related: How US Corporations Used Personal Armies To Uproot, Terrorize Colombians<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are also indications of the U.S. government\u2019s own involvement in the Colombian cocaine trade. Colombia\u2019s most notorious drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar, at one point worked for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency<\/a>, according to Escobar\u2019s own children. Escobar allegedly sold cocaine for the CIA to help the U.S. government finance its fight against communism and left-wing governments in Latin America.<\/p>\n

As pointed out in the book \u201cCocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperalism and Class Struggle in Colombia<\/a>,\u201d the U.S.\u2019 anti-drug efforts in Colombia were never intended to eradicate cocaine, but instead alter the market share by ensuring that allies of the U.S. in Colombia \u2013 the Colombian government, paramilitaries and the wealthy elite who are favorable to U.S. business interests \u2013 could monopolize the drug trade with no competition from outsiders. Now, with FARC out of the picture, the true end game of the U.S.-Colombia drug war alliance is becoming harder to cover up.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 mintpressnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S.-Colombia drug war alliance has failed to stop the country\u2019s drug trade, with last year\u2019s coca yield breaking records. The record harvests can be traced to the country\u2019s government, right-wing paramilitaries and wealthy individuals who are sympathetic to U.S. business interests. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}