A Plan B for Colombia

Human rights activists in Colombia have long accused their government of a horrific war strategy: In order to prove it is making progress against leftist rebels and criminal gangs, the military inflates its body count by killing innocent civilians, mostly impoverished young men, and attributing their deaths to combat. Now we know it’s true. President Alvaro Uribe has fired 27 soldiers and officers, including three generals, and the commander of Colombia’s army, Gen. Mario Montoya, recently stepped down.

These atrocities, however, are not the work of a few rogue soldiers. More than 1,000 civilians are believed to have been killed outside combat since 2002, and human rights groups have reported that almost half of the extrajudicial killings were committed by army units. Worse, these units had been vetted by the U.S. State Department and, under the Plan Colombia aid package, cleared to receive U.S. funding.

We need a new plan for Colombia. The bi- national goal was to halve drug production and diminish the power of drug-trafficking rebels and paramilitaries. But according to a General Accountability Office report issued last month, coca cultivation actually rose about 15% between 2000 and 2006. Uribe has employed U.S. military aid to successfully fight the rebels, but that has not offset the failings of the larger plan.

This is the result of President Bush’s foreign policy, a jumble of economic incentives, relentless coca eradication and military aid. What’s needed now are new goals for U.S. involvement in Colombia and new standards by which to measure progress -- not to mention a revision of the military vetting process. And with a Democrat in the White House and a more solidly Democratic Congress, Plan Colombia is surely headed for an overhaul.

The military atrocities should prod the Obama administration toward more streamlined, effective policy; human rights abuses should be addressed through Plan Colombia, and economic development through the proposed (and stalled) free-trade agreement. That Colombia is still struggling to create a culture subject to the rule of law is inarguable. But during that process, the U.S. should provide meaningful help to its ally, not rubber-stamp its dysfunction in pursuit of an outdated, ineffective drug policy.