....It is no secret that Colombia is beset by difficult problems. Illegal armed groups and powerful drug gangs, often working together, continue to challenge the rule of law in parts of the country. The presence of these violent elements fuels other problems: crime, human rights abuses, poverty, and a weakening of governance. Taken out of the context of Colombia’s history, these challenges might be seen as nearly insurmountable.
In fact, however, Colombia’s current situation represents a major improvement over what it had been only eight years ago. During the 1990s, a confluence of highly negative factors threatened to drag the country down. By 1999, Colombia’s stability was at stake, with guerrillas and paramilitaries threatening to overwhelm the weakened capabilities of the state, violence spiraling out of control, and the economy in free fall.
Colombia’s emergence from this grave crisis constitutes a success story. It is, however, a story that is not well known, despite the fact that billions of dollars in military and economic assistance from the United States helped bring Colombia “back from the brink.” Successful foreign policy initiatives normally have no shortage of executive branch or congressional leaders claiming authorship but, curiously, not in the case of Colombia. Despite strong bipartisan support for an emergency supplemental package for “Plan Colombia” approved during the Clinton administration in 2000 and vigorously continued during the Bush administration, assistance to Colombia, as well as approval of a trade promotion agreement with Colombia signed late last year, is now a topic of considerable debate.
This report by the CSIS Americas Program provides a timely and useful point of reference in understanding the difficult issues at stake in Colombia and the U.S.-Colombia relationship. It analyzes the factors that took Colombia to the verge of unraveling in the late 1990s and how the country began to make its way back from instability. Then the report evaluates the impressive progress made between 1999 and 2007 across a broad spectrum of difficult issues, as well as the thorny problems that persist.....
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