Plan Colombia can also refer to a wider aid initiative originally proposed by Colombian President Andrés Pastrana Arango, which included U.S. military/counter-narcotics aid, but was not limited to it. The plan was conceived between 1998 and 1999 by the administration of Pastrana with the goals of ending the Colombian armed conflict and creating an anti-cocaine strategy.
Critics of the initiative also claimed that elements within the Colombian security forces, which received aid and training from the U.S., were involved in supporting or tolerating abuses by right-wing paramilitary forces against left-wing guerrilla organizations and their sympathizers. Another controversial element of the anti-narcotic strategy is aerial fumigation to eradicate coca. This activity has come under fire because it damages legal crops and has adverse health effects upon those exposed to the herbicides.
Read more about Plan Colombia: Original Plan Colombia, Financing, War On Drugs, Expansion Under Bush, Military Programs, Nonmilitary Programs, Results, Quotes
Famous quotes containing the word plan:
“We saw the machinery where murderers are now executed. Seven have been executed. The plan is better than the old one. It is quietly done. Only a few, at the most about thirty or forty, can witness [an execution]. It excites nobody outside of the list permitted to attend. I think the time for capital punishment has passed. I would abolish it. But while it lasts this is the best mode.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)