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"All men make mistakes. According to the UN's latest World Drug Report, the United States anti-drug strategy is doomed to fail. The report also claims that coca production within the Andean sub-region, far from seeing a decrease - had in fact risen by 1% (from 159,000 hectares to 159,600 hectares) between 2004 and 2005. Despite a phenomenal effort by the Colombian government to eradicate illicit crops by spraying liquid toxin glyphosate, figures show that Colombia remains by far the worst affected area - with a well above average increase of 8%. The country accounts for 54% of global coca production and of Colombia's 32 departments, a staggering 23 continue to suffer in the wake of its destruction. The fact that this increase occurs just as the government exceeded its crop eradication targets - a total of 170,780 hectares was destroyed (80% via aerial spraying) - makes these figures all the more worrying. Ironically, despite being the focus of the Colombian government's Plan Patriota 1 , the departments of Putumayo and Vichada have seen the sharpest increase, which only adds insult to injury. Its US counterpart Plan Colombia 2 suffered a similar fate. Over the last four years, more than 3,500 million US dollars have been ploughed into both projects to no avail, not to mention the enormous drain each has been on national budget resources. Colombian newspaper El Tiempo 3 criticizes Plan Patriota, claiming that it represents a strategy whose cost/benefit is - to say the least - extremely debatable. The effectiveness of the plan has come under scrutiny with analysts calling for a re-evaluation [2] . What's more, Plan Colombia's 6-year goal was to reduce coca-leaf production by at least half, and whilst this period is rapidly approaching its end we are increasingly further from achieving this target. Sabas Pretelt de la Vega -Colombian Minister of the Interior & Justice- states that the problem lies in having to repeatedly fumigate the same areas, whilst crops continue to multiply and criminals become increasingly sophisticated in their methods [3] . Recent studies have warned us of the havoc wreaked by the "balloon effect": that is, when crops are eradicated as a result of fumigation, they simply migrate to other regions of Colombia and its neighbouring countries. According to Sergio Calvani, Colombian representative for the UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention , 65% of eradicated crops are being resown and often mutate to form a higher resistance to glyphosate. Former US-Ambassador in Colombia, and current Director of the state Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL), Sergio Calvani, says that the fierce campaign perpetrated by drug-traffickers last year has effectively replaced the entire quantity of coca that had been destroyed via eradication . In spite of failed attempts over the last five years to counteract the devastating effects of eradication, Minister Sabas believes the only solution - as with the SISIFO 5 project - is to "redouble efforts". Calvani, on the other hand, addresses the need to "fund alternative development into ensuring that eliminated crops are replaced with other varieties that are conducive to sustainable farming " [6] . In the past, much controversy has surrounded the statistics due to the tendency of Colombia's National Planning Department to turn a blind eye when they do not conform to their own logic - the displacement and poverty crisis was handled in a similar way. CIA reports put coca leaf cultivation at 144,000 hectares in December 2002, three years later that figure had dropped to 114,000 hectares in 2004. Following similar efforts, the figure has now risen to 144,000 - putting us right back where we started. Furthermore, in 1995 Colombia accounted for 10% of the global cocaine production - today that figure has leapt to 90% despite receiving two-thirds of US anti-narcotic aid. Following significant advances in crop eradication, yields began to decline to the point of stagnation and the report issued by the White House in April this year shows that this process is now being reversed, to the extent that, for the first time since Plan Colombia came into effect in 1999, coca cultivation has risen by a shocking 26% compared with 2004. The government refused to acknowledge the validity of such figures and maintained that it acts only upon those issued by the UN's Integrated System for Monitoring Illicit Crops (SIMCI). The level of discord amongst American Congressmen prompted an outburst in which Senator John Tierney interjected that "instead of continuing to wage war against drugs in Latin America, we must reach an agreement. This war has done nothing to hold back the flow of cocaine, which is becoming increasingly cheap to buy on our streets". Yet according to SIMCI, whilst the situation is not quite as dramatic as the CIA report would have us believe, it concedes that illicit crops have spread to a further 8 departments (Bolivar, Antioquia, Cordova, Vaupés, Amazon, Guanía, Araucan and Caquetá) which had been previously untouched. As Minister Sabas acknowledges - 64,000 hectares of new crops have sprung up that had not been subject to previous fumigation. To admit this is simply verifying an irrefutable fact as suggested by numerous studies; that when threatened with eradication, cultivators simply move elsewhere. On the whole, statistics show that crops continue to increase as a result of coca being planted in areas where eradication has not been implemented [7] . The assumption that we are winning the fight against drugs has been branded "premature and unfounded" by influential North American legislator Chuck Grassley. Whilst figures from various sources are contradictory (last year SIMCI registered 58,000 fewer hectares than Washington), all point to a steady increase. SIMCI's most recent report is no exception to this having registered an increase of 6,000 hectares between 2004 and 2005. SIMCI director, Antonio Maria Costa can confirm that, despite the varying approaches adopted by national authorities [8], there has been a moderate increase of 8 per cent nonetheless [9]. As Alfredo Rangel points out, all evidence suggests an inability to bring coca crop yields below a certain level [10] and this is precisely why there is a belief that "an anti-drugs policy based on crop fumigation has exhausted all possibilities, and that those who make the decisions are at a loss as to what should be done, apart from to justify their actions and continue along the same lines" [11]. We have already seen that the US anti-drug strategy - based on mass fumigation, aerial interdiction and extraditions (currently in excess of 400 under this government) - has failed spectacularly [12]. By continuing to make these mistakes we are risking taking desperate measures in order to reach a solution. How else can we explain the insane attempts by the US House of Representatives to authorise the use of biological weapons on coca crops? Or the order issued by the national government to bomb Colombia's La Macarena National Park? To proceed with this strategy - as with dynamite fishing - would only make matters worse. The collateral damage that would ensue would give rise to a number of unforeseeable consequences - who can forget the devastating effects of the Chernobyl disaster? Fortunately, before these proposals were given the go-ahead, US Drug Tzar, John Walters, condemned the preposterous idea of using herbicidal fungi to eradicate coca crops, by branding it "ludicrous and counter-productive". The effectiveness of the current strategy is beginning to raise doubts in Washington and over which there is a growing sense of unease. John Walsh, Analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), says "for the Bush administration to have to acknowledge six years and four billion dollars down the line, that cocaine culture continues to thrive, must come as a tremendous blow. These shocking figures illustrate the enormous gap that exists between the rhetoric and the reality of the campaign of mass fumigation in Colombia. The truth is that fumigation not only fails to restrain new crops, but actually exacerbates the problem ". A column in the Miami Herald written by US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns in which he praised the "enormous progress" made in the fight against drugs prompted a harsh response from three prominent Senators, Patrick Leahy, Barack Obama and Chris Dodd who hit back by saying "the situation in Colombia is extremely complex and there are reasons to be seriously concerned about whether our current policy can achieve its goals. The US has spent more than 4,000 million US dollars over the last five years and now, despite having reached its sixth, the battle is far from over" [13]. The extent to which this strategy is flawed and it's futility in the fight against illicit drugs is evident from the numerous setbacks it has suffered. The need for a fresh approach is paramount and of which the international community must partake. It is a problem that requires must be attacked from every angle - not with the focus solely on illicit crops and drug trafficking. Unless consumption, laundering of assets and the production and trafficking of precursor chemicals is tackled head-on, all efforts to end this monster will be futile. Only once the international community assumes co-responsibility and begins to play an integral role in breaking the links of the chain, will it be possible to move forward in the right direction. Colombia cannot fight this battle alone, nor can it continue to play the role of puppet general in this misguided strategy; we have already paid a high enough price by going it alone and to continue to do so would be to struggle in vain. Bogota, June 2006 First published: www.amylkaracosta.com [1] Presidente Sociedad Colombiana de Economistas Translated by Lisa Roberts
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