... The US Embassy in Bogotá, since the launch of the $4.7 billion Plan Colombia in 2000, has grown into the second largest US diplomatic mission in the world, after Baghdad. It employs over 2,000 people, including some 350 US military personnel and 750 contractors.
The cornerstone of Plan Colombia is the massive effort to eradicate Colombia's coca plants before they are processed into cocaine. Some 20 aircraft, piloted by contractors with DynCorp International, headquartered in Falls Church, Va., take turns carrying out daily spray missions. Army and police units assist these efforts by clearing the ground of coca farmers, guerrillas, or traffickers below, and by protecting the spray mission from above - with a fleet of 71 US provided helicopters. The majority of the State Department's counternarcotics and law enforcement budget in Colombia is dedicated - directly or indirectly - to these endeavors.
In 2005, a record-breaking 170,000 hectares (419,000 acres) of coca were destroyed: 138,000 sprayed and 32,000 pulled out by hand or plowed under.
In total, since the program began in 1994 (and particularly since it was ramped up in 2000), 986,925 hectares of coca plant and opium poppy have been eradicated - an area almost equivalent to the size of the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
Drug seizures are another pillar of the plan, and here too, there are results. Two hundred and twenty-five tons of cocaine hydrochloride and cocaine base were seized in 2005, up from 125 tons in 2002, and the number of clandestine drug labs destroyed soared to nearly 2,000 last year from 317 in 2000, according to a July study by Colombia's National Narcotics Directorate (DNE). Meanwhile, the number of traffickers extradited to the US in the last four years is climbing toward 400.
"We are squeezing them. We are forcing them to change their drug trafficking routes and their methods," says Walters.
A better-trained and -equipped military and police, meanwhile, has meant that overall security in Colombia has vastly improved, especially in the urban areas. From 2002 to 2005, the murder rate fell 35 percent - from 28,837 murders to 18,111 - and kidnappings have dropped from nearly 3,000 in 2002 to 800 last year, according to Uribe's office. As a consequence, nearly 1 million foreigners visited last year, a 21 percent jump compared with 2004, and foreign investment hit $10 billion last year, a fivefold increase since 2002...
But even Plan Colombia advocates admit the impressive statistics do not a complete victory make.
"We're making first downs," US Ambassador to Colombia William Wood is fond of saying, "...but we're not sure how long the football field is."
President Uribe is often even more circumspect. "It is clear we cannot abandon Plan Colombia," he said while in New York last week."But it is also clear that, in comparison to our efforts, we should be seeing better results."
Sometimes, it seems the harder Colombians and Americans fight, the more the drug lords push back and the coca fields reproduce...
Plan Colombia: Big Gains, But Cocaine Still Flows
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