Condemnation of the policy came amid reports that the area in Colombia used for the production of coca, the raw material used to make cocaine, dramatically increased last year despite extensive crop-spraying and military operations. In a broad attack on the US's Plan Colombia, an ambitious anti-narcotics strategy to which it is contributing more than a billion dollars, Senator Patrick Leahy criticised the exemptions granted the Bogota government from human rights conditions on the disbursement of aid. They give more aid to the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries are involved with atrocities.
Guerrillas are too.
Drug lords seem to flourish, but the paramilitaries are now working as sort of semi-drug lords too. The number of massacres have increased. Responding to the senator's criticism, the secretary of state, Colin Powell, denied that the US was supporting paramilitaries, and insisted that Washington was committed to the maintenance of human rights in Colombia. And in my conversations with my Colombian colleagues, I make the point that human rights are an essential part of our strategy. Critics of Plan Colombia say that it is being used to fight leftwing guerrillas, rather than to solve the underlying social and economic pressures which push farmers into coca cultivation.