Articles by Kyle Johnson

The Way to Lay Down Arms is to Lay Down Arms

The current government of Juan Manuel Santos is playing the same game as the previous Colombian government: argue that demobilization is the same as peace and declare that war is the way to achieve peace. Oddly enough, Vice-President Angelino Garzón has said that the doors are open for dialogue only when the guerrillas decide that they are truly interested in peace. This, though, is not a contradiction in positions. What appears to be happening is a game of words that, in the end, does not imply any true government interest in peace negotiations. In fact, the statements by the government show that they actually  desire a continuation of the war. Read more»

Uribe Gets It Wrong Again with Proposal to Crackdown on Colombia’s Cocaleros

The northern Colombian departments of Antioquia and Córdoba have seen an upsurge in violence in the last year that Colombian authorities have attributed to two phenomena which are, in their minds, interrelated: a dramatic increase in coca cultivation and the push by emerging criminal groups to take advantage of coca crops and trafficking routes in the region. Facing down a difficult situation experienced elsewhere in the country, Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe briefly mentioned a new strategy to confront these two phenomena: the arrest and prosecution of those who grow coca in the region. This strategy, though, is fraught with problems that are likely to lead to failure. These include the overt ignorance of the failures of past punitive policies against coca growers, the overt ignorance of the reasons why cocaleros grow coca in the first place and the alienation of the cocalero population, which could lead growers to move even closer to armed groups in the area. Read more»

Seven Years of Plan Colombia … and Little Has Changed in Putumayo

In December 2000, fumigation planes began to fly over Putumayo as part of a massive aerial eradication campaign under the newly signed and recently delivered Plan Colombia aid package. The spray planes first came to Putumayo in 1997, but the spraying occurred on a much smaller scale. Their arrival in 2000 brought increased levels of sickness, human displacement and an overwhelming destruction of legal crops, all of which, like the fumigations, were not new to Putumayo. And now, seven years later, Putumayo continues to see fumigations and war. However, manual eradications have recently been added to the mix. They are conducted by a team of 125 men, guarded by anti-narcotics police, which goes from farm to farm uprooting entire coca field’s in a matter of minutes. Read more»