- We’ve done a lot of work on the new CIP-WOLA-LAWGEF “Just the Facts” site, which monitors U.S. aid and other security issues in the region. Since the last time we mentioned it here, we’ve added reams of data, an image gallery, a calendar of events, legislative updates, and much else. There are still a few blanks to fill in, and it will get a design facelift before we launch it formally, but it’s already a resource that we ourselves are using several times a day. Pay a visit at www.justf.org; comments at this stage would be very helpful.
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In 2007, the UN measured more coca in Colombia than it had since 2002. |
- This morning’s El Tiempo has the first solid official statistics for Colombian land area under coca cultivation in 2007. The news is not good. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, whose 2006 figure of 78,000 hectares (193,000 acres) was half the U.S. government’s estimate, detected 98,000 hectares (242,000 acres) in 2007 – 20,000 hectares or 26% more coca. While some of this increase likely owes to methodological adjustments, the figures make clear that narcotrafficking is one area where Colombia has made no progress since the “dark days” of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The UNODC data are not public yet, but will eventually appear here. No final word yet on when the U.S. government will release its (normally higher) coca-cultivation estimates for 2007.
- John McCain will be visiting Colombia sometime in early July. For McCain, this is a smart political maneuver, currying favor with swing Latino voters – including more recently arrived Colombians and Venezuelans, who tend to be fervently “Uribista” – in key states like Florida. For the Colombian government, it’s a risky gamble. If Obama wins in November, the new administration might not easily forget that President Uribe held what amounted to a campaign rally with the opposing candidate. It will be interesting to see how the Uribe government handles the visit. “More doors must be opened,” warns former foreign minister Augusto RamÃrez Ocampo. “All the eggs can’t be put in one basket.”
- On Tuesday, the House of Representatives debated and approved a bill authorizing expenditures for the “Mérida Initiative” aid package to Mexico and Central America. It is important to note that this is not the bill that will send any money to Mexico and Central America. That is a separate bill: the 2008 supplemental appropriations bill, which would provide piles of money for Iraq and Afghanistan, includes the Mérida aid in a few pages. The bill that passed the House this week, by contrast, only authorizes this use of funds for Mexico and Central America, laying out a statement of policy and adding provisions to permanent law.
In Congress, it is considered good practice to “authorize” appropriations like this before laying out money for them. But it doesn’t happen all the time; where foreign aid is concerned, in fact, “unauthorized” appropriations have been the norm since the mid-1980s. Though the House made the effort to pass authorizing legislation, the Mérida Initiative aid will be no exception: the Senate has no similar authorizing bill, so the bill that the House passed on Tuesday is unlikely ever to become law.
The supplemental appropriations bill that will actually “write the checks,” on the other hand, is on a separate track: the House and Senate both passed it in May, and now they are working out the differences in the two bills. This bill would give Mexico less money, and include stronger human rights conditions on military aid, than what this week’s House authorization bill recommends. The Mexican government has loudly complained about these human-rights conditions, especially the more specifically worded ones in the Senate’s version of the appropriations bill.
The New York Times reported – very briefly – on Wednesday that the House and Senate had worked out their differences and rewritten the conditions in a way that leaves them “intact, although softened.” The new text has not been made publicly available, but would appear here when it does.
- Meanwhile, back in Colombia: another unpleasant chapter has been opened in the two-year-old scandal surrounding Jorge Noguera. For more than three years, Noguera headed President Uribe’s powerful presidential intelligence service (DAS). Today, he stands accused of using his position to help paramilitary leaders, including passing them lists of labor leaders and activists to be killed. For the second time, Noguera’s lawyers have managed to get him out of prison on a slim technicality (something involving the fact that a delegate of the prosecutor-general, and not the Prosecutor General himself, filed the charges – look it up yourself and try to understand it).
Noguera is free, and prosecutors now have to file charges all over again. And once again we see how hard it is to prosecute the powerful and well-connected in Colombia, even when the charge is aiding and abetting mass murder.
- We haven’t been paying close enough attention to the scandal involving allegations that President Uribe offered favors to an obscure regional congresswoman, Yidis Medina, in exchange for a crucial committee vote that allowed him to run for re-election in 2006. But it certainly turned weird this week, with Uribe, brandishing cellphone call records and posting a flurry of releases on the Colombian Presidency’s website, claiming that Medina had been trying to blackmail his family. “The confusion increases when President Uribe himself heads the curious media crusade,” notes a sober editorial in today’s El Tiempo.
- In our 2006 report on MedellÃn [PDF], we discussed many analysts’ view that the city’s newfound social peace owed in part to the monopoly on organized crime enjoyed by former paramilitary leader Diego Fernando Murillo, alias “Don Berna.” From his jail cell, many believed that Murillo continued to exercise control over much gang and narco activity in the slums tha surround the city, enforcing a sort of “pax mafiosa.”
A month ago, however, Murillo was extradited to the United States. With the paramilitary “Leviathan” out of the country, the “pax mafiosa” hypothesis is now being tested. An article in this week’s edition of the Colombian newsmagazine Cambio is not encouraging. It notes that violence took ten lives in 24 hours on Monday, the highest single-day total since 2002 – which in MedellÃn was an especially grim year marked by daily battles between guerrilla militias and two paramilitary groups.
- Rumors of an impending FARC hostage release – under varying possible circumstances – were raised several times this week. President Uribe says that guerrillas have called the current DAS chief to discuss conditions, such as a no-extradition guarantee, in exchange for releasing captives. Former hostage Luis Eladio Pérez told reporters Monday that “the country will soon hear the news†that the FARC are to release four more hostages unilaterally, including the son of “peace walker†Gustavo Moncayo. Journalist Jorge Enrique Botero, who has interviewed FARC leaders on numerous occasions, told a policy forum on Monday that the FARC may be reconsidering the whole idea of hostage-taking. Senator and former dialogue facilitator Piedad Córdoba said, “Ãngrid [Betancourt]’s liberation is closer today. … But the next liberations are going to be absolutely difficult.” And even a Washington Post editorial speculated that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s new attitude toward the FARC may be relevant: “Perhaps, too, Mr. Chávez hoped to take credit for what some Colombian sources say may be an imminent move by the FARC to free hostages.”
- Here are two videos worth viewing: an investigative report from Ireland’s RTÉ network on the drug war’s failure, and a vivid look at Barrancabermeja, and the brave members of that city’s Popular Women’s Organization (OFP), from former Peace Brigades International volunteer Taline Haytayan.
- Many congratulations to Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), who was named yesterday to replace the late Rep. Tom Lantos as co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.
