U.S. designates Colombia as failing to cooperate in the drug war for first time in nearly 30 years

MIAMI — The Trump administration has added Colombia to a list of nations failing to cooperate in the drug war for the first time in almost 30 years, a stinging rebuke to a traditional U.S. ally that reflects a recent surge in cocaine production and fraying ties between the White House and the country’s leftist president.

Even as it determined that Colombia had failed to comply with its international counternarcotics obligations, the Trump administration on Monday issued a waiver of sanctions that would have triggered major aid cuts, citing vital U.S. national interests.

Nonetheless, it is a major step against one of the United States’ staunchest allies in Latin America, which analysts said could hurt the economy and further hamper efforts to restore security in the countryside.

President Gustavo Petro, who has said on several occasions that whiskey kills more people than cocaine, lamented President Trump’s decision during a televised cabinet meeting Monday, saying Colombia was penalized after sacrificing the lives of “dozens of policemen, soldiers and regular citizens, trying to stop cocaine” from reaching the United States.

“What we have been doing is not really relevant to the Colombian people,” he said of the nation’s antidrug efforts. “It’s to stop North American society from smearing its noses” in cocaine.

The U.S. last added Colombia to the list, through a process known as decertification, in 1997 when the country’s cartels — through threats of violence and money — had poisoned much of the nation’s institutions.

“Decertification is a blunt tool and a huge irritant in bilateral relations that goes well beyond drug issues and makes cooperation far harder in any number of areas,” said Adam Isacson, a security researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America. “That’s why it’s so rarely used.”

The president at the time, Ernesto Samper, was facing credible accusations of receiving illicit campaign contributions from the now-defunct Cali cartel and a plane he was set to use for a trip to New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly session was found carrying 4 kilograms of heroin.

A remarkable turnaround began once Samper left office. Successive U.S. administrations — both Republican and Democrats — sent billions in foreign assistance to Colombia to eradicate illegal coca crops, strengthen its armed forces in the fight against drug-fueled rebels and provide economic alternatives to poor farmers who are on the lowest rungs of the cocaine industry.

Cocaine production surges

That cooperation, a rare U.S. foreign policy success in Latin America, started to unravel following the suspension a decade ago of aerial eradication of coca fields with glyphosate. It followed a Colombia high court ruling that determined the U.S.-funded program was potentially harmful to the environment and farmers.

A 2016 peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the nation’s largest rebel group known as FARC, also committed Colombia to rolling back punitive policies likened to the U.S. spraying of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War in favor of state building, rural development and voluntary crop substitution.

Since then, cocaine production has skyrocketed.

Goodman and Suarez write for the Associated Press. Suarez reported from Bogota, Colombia. AP writer Manuel Rueda contributed to this report from Bogota.