Plan Colombia is the USA’s foreign policy strategy to cut off the drug supply in Colombia through military, political and humanitarian means.
Since 2000, the US has plowed over $4 billion into Plan Colombia and the drugs are still flowing.
Perhaps part of the problem is the sheer scale of drug production in the country - enough to support several major cartels, 2 major rebel groups including an ongoing anti-government insurgency and countless bit players.
Jeffrey Koffman recently went down to Colombia to report on the frontline activities of the anti-drug comandos that have been trained with funds and US military support under Plan Colombia.
Koffman spent a day out on operations with the comandos in their search and destroy missions against the coca fields and drug laboratories close to the Venezuelan border and it’s certainly an interesting read.
One thing that struck me was that the comandos would be dropped off by helicopter before manually destroying the targets rather than simply detroying them with air to surface missiles. The reason given was that they don’t wish to kill or injure any civilians or farmers involved in the trade - supposedly under direction from their US backers who are keen to avoid any negative human rights issues.
It’s a little difficult to assess whether that reasoning was mentioned for the benefit of the journalist or not.
Neverthless, the article is very much worth a read to gain a perspective of the war on drugs from the coal face.