What is Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative?
Colombia’s 35 year old civil war has created the third largest refugee population in the world, produces over 4,000 politically motivated murders every year, and has contributed to the 1.5 million internally displaced people within its borders.1 Approximately 55 percent of all Colombians live below the poverty level. Plan Colombia was a $1.3 billion dollar military aid package given by the Clinton administration to the Colombian military in 2000-2001. The stated objective of the aid was the eradication of coca plantations and what the US termed “narco-guerrillas” who were said to be explicitly involved in the coca trade. Democrat Senator Joseph Biden, stated in 2000 that never “before in recent history has there been such an opportunity to strike at all aspects of the drug trade at the source…Helping Colombia is squarely in America’s national interest. It is the source of many of the drugs that are poisoning our people.”2 To this end there have been a number of joint Colombian and US
