As President Obama hosts Colombian President Santos at the White House today, University of Notre Dame Law Professor Douglass Cassel, who played a crucial role in helping to negotiate the Colombian peace deal, will be in attendance at the White House event, followed by a small dinner with Santos tonight.
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A jump in USA aid for is “fundamental” for peace, particularly given a 20 percent hit to Colombia’s budget from the plunge in oil prices, Cassel said in an interview.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos likes to say that when forced to choose between justice and peace, the family of a past victim will choose justice, but a family fearing future violence will choose peace. Between 2000 and 2015 the USA sent close to $10 billion in aid through Plan Colombia, with around 71 percent of the funds going to military and policing operations, according to the AS/COA.
“In short, a country that was on the brink of collapse is now on the brink of peace”, Obama said in the East Room.
With peace negotiations underway, Colombia’s Marxist FARC rebels could see their designation as a terror group end once it has fully disarmed, a top US diplomat said Tuesday.
Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas, says Colombia and the USA must take steps to ensure that doesn’t happen to post-conflict Colombia.
Its advocates say Plan Colombia also helped Colombia’s armed forces roll back the FARC, killing many of its top commanders and introducing semblances of a state in remote regions that had always been run by the rebels.
Santos’ government is on the cusp of signing an historic peace deal with leftwing FARC rebels.
Colombia-which for a generation has depended on mostly military and antinarcotics aid from Washington-has characterized the USA assistance, both in funding and technical aid, as an important, second phase to Plan Colombia.
“We will call it Peace Colombia, Paz Colombia”, he announced.
Subsequently, the Plan laid the foundation for systematic and inclusive economic growth that has lifted millions of out of poverty and made Colombia one of the most dynamic markets in the Western Hemisphere.
The Colombian president said he understood the threat destabilization could pose to the country’s progress over the last 15 years.
As part of the peace talks, the FARC has renounced kidnapping and declared a unilateral truce while demanding its removal from the terror list, which includes al-Qaida and the Islamic State.
In a statement, retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, who helped design Plan Colombia, said he anxious a deal with the FARC could “maintain or increase cocaine production”, permitting the group to keep its drug profits.
“That’s not true here in the United States”, Obama quipped. “I am also hopeful that, even amid election year politics, the bipartisan tradition of United States support for Colombia will be sustained”.
The demobilization would require the FARC – which the US has designated a terrorist organization – not only to set aside its arms but also to give up the benefits reaped from involvement in illicit narcotics. The degree of Washington’s influence in Bogotá is such that had the United States held Colombia to those conditions – especially when the first false positives were being reported in 2003 – it’s likely that many lives could have been saved.
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“He’s earned our respect and appreciation, so we’ll have to look at what he’s requesting very carefully”, Rogers said.
