Bogota Colombia – After pledging to overhaul Colombia’s drug laws, President Gustavo Petro’s administration announced plans this month to scale back enforcement efforts that, for years, have been one of the country’s main means of curbing coca, which is made from cocaine.
Illegal coca farming is big business in Colombia. The country is the world’s largest producer of cocaine, and cultivation of the coca crop has reached its peak, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimating that 204,000 hectares (504,095 acres) were set aside for production in 2021.
In order to combat the drug trade, Colombia has sent security forces to smoke and manually remove coca plants from the ground. But Petro’s leftist officials have vowed to change course, abandoning policies that harm small farmers and vowing to go after drug lords.
On January 10, the Colombian National Police announced a 60 percent reduction in its 2023 eradication goals, saying it would destroy only 20,000 hectares (49,421 acres) of coca. This is down from last year’s target of 50,000 hectares (123,553 acres), although only 44,000 hectares (108,726 acres) were cleared after protests by coca farmers.
The government is expected to announce plans to disband the military, which is also responsible for clearing coca crops, in the future.
The proposed crackdown is the latest policy change in an effort by officials to ramp up the decades-old war on drugs, a U.S.-led campaign that Petro, a former guerrilla fighter, has long opposed. His government has announced plans instead to provide more economic opportunities for coca farmers.
“We will give oxygen to some things and reduce others: oxygen to the weakest links in the chains, to the coca farmers, and rest to the businessmen, to the extortionists and the mafia,” Minister of Justice Nestor Osuna said. in December.
But as Petro tries out a new way to fight drugs, the president will face pressure, both inside and outside the country, to start expanding the coca trade.
“Petro’s views are completely different,” said Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director of Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research organization. “But in particular, his views on drugs that the elite in Colombia consider very dangerous.”
Petro’s predecessor, former President Ivan Duque, favored the solution, believing that the crackdown on coca plants would reduce violence and weaken armed groups.
He tried unsuccessfully to restart aerial fumigation with glyphosate, a practice the government banned in 2015 when the World Health Organization labeled the herbicide a cancer-causing agent.
Duque also expanded land clearing, clearing 130,000 hectares (321,237 acres) in 2020 through police and military operations.
“I don’t think there’s been a greater effort at enforcement than during the Duque administration, and it still hasn’t worked,” said Maria Alejandra Velez, director of the Andes University’s Center for Studies on Security and Drugs. . “There is real evidence that abolition was not the solution.”
Petro has chosen a different approach that is based on the idea that the drug problem in Colombia is fueled by inequality. He has avoided fumigations in the air and promised to focus on the elimination of the so-called “industrial fields”.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, the Ministry of Justice of Colombia described such fields as large coca fields, where there are no houses and crops other than coca. Their size is much larger than the traditional family farm, known as the family farming unit.
“These are not small coca farms,” ​​said Sonia Rodriguez, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice. “It is in these places that it is determined that we will deal with it.”
The rise of coca remains a shared concern in the US and Colombia. Experts believe that the unprecedented growth in coca farms was due to the increase in the global demand for cocaine and changes in the decades of war in Colombia.
Another thing has been the release of a plan to provide support and other economic measures to coca farmers who uprooted their crops voluntarily. The program was originally created as part of a 2016 peace deal between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) – the country’s largest armed group at the time – and the government.
But long-term start-up funds failed, creating a crisis among farmers who were no longer able to grow coca or raise funds to start a new business. The UNODC estimates that by 2020, approximately 100,000 coca-growing families had voluntarily eradicated their crops.
Petro promised to provide the promised support and introduce more families to the program, adding to it with funds for agricultural projects, rural infrastructure and development.
Some aspects of the program will be revised with input from coca farmers. The first meeting of coca farmers was held in December in Norte de Santander, a province on the border with Venezuela that has the country’s second largest coca area. About 8,000 people from across the country submitted their ideas for the conference.
The government has already approved one of the proposals – allowing coca farmers to keep their crops until their other economic ventures. In the past, farmers had to destroy their coca crops before receiving aid.
“I will tell the officials to prepare a program for the farmer to cultivate coca while planting replacement crops until the crop is functional. If it works, then there will be no need for anything else,” Petro told the farmers who packed in the month of December.
But the farmers have also asked to stop all forced labor, which they say has destroyed their lives, displaced families, illegal cutting of trees, and caused violent conflicts between farmers and security forces.
Responding to the police’s new intention to end the crisis, Juan Carlos Quintero, leader of the Peasant Farmer Association of Catatumbo, said that any effort to remove crops by force “causes violence and mistrust”. He added that the use of force should be seen as a last resort.
The U.S. State Department has pushed back against the reduction of abolitionist goals but for different reasons. In its statement, it said that “it is important to make full use of all available tools to reduce coca cultivation”, including forced killing of the crop.
Petro had to walk a fine line between pleasing Washington and keeping his promises to reform Colombia’s drug policy. The US is Colombia’s most important partner and the largest donor to the Colombian peace process.
Garzoli-Sánchez, Andes adviser to Washington’s Latin American office, said that Petro’s policies seem to be in line with Washington’s requirements, especially on paper.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has shown a “whole” approach to combating drug trafficking, emphasizing rural development, security and the implementation of the 2016 peace agreement. But, Garzoli-Sánchez said, there are sections within the US State Department and Congress that support using the military.
“The problem is that.” [Biden’s] policy on Colombia was not a big idea in Washington among the anti-drug community,” said Garzoli-Sánchez.
Professor Velez of the University of the Andes said that the cessation of crop destruction means that Petro’s success in the fight against drugs now depends on other methods, of which there are not many.
In October, President Petro said that Colombia and the US are working together to disrupt narcotics trade by air and sea and increase their intelligence capabilities.
But Petro’s success will also depend on forging agreements with coca farmers to stop growing their crops, Velez said.
Quintero, the president of the Farmers Union, said he believes there is an agreement that will empower local leaders to inspect farms with the help of the government and the international community.
“It doesn’t have to be military because there is no dependence on the military,” Quintero said. “Who better to do this than agricultural organizations that have power in their communities?”
