Obama seeks increased aid for Colombia as peace deal nears

“Bienvenidos a la Casa Blanca”, said U.S. President Barack Obama as Colombian President Santos stood by his side Thursday.

At a time when the U.S. is trying to help other states on the verge of failure, its decade-and-a-half partnership with Colombia is an important example of when intervention worked, some regional experts say.

President Barack Obama shakes hands with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos during their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016.

“The US has stood with Colombia for 15 years”, Shifter says.

Juan Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, will visit Washington to commemorate the success of Plan Colombia, a testament to Colombian national fortitude and arguably the boldest worldwide reconstruction effort undertaken since the Marshall Plan.

Some are calling on the United States to go further, by examining the legacy of Plan Colombia and its own role in Colombia’s long and dirty war.

Under the newly styled “Peace Colombia”, the White House said there would still be cash for the military and counternarcotics, but the focus would also be on demobilizing rebels, mine clearance, humanitarian assistance and funding truth and reconciliation efforts. But if the demand in Europe and the United States persists, drug trafficking will continue as well, he added. Norway will contribute an additional $20 million. Lengthy peace talks in Havana, Cuba, paved the way for a potential accord.

“A country that was on the brink of collapse is now on the brink of peace”, Obama said, expressing optimism that an agreement can soon be reached.

It was “an incredible moment of promise” for ending the long-running conflict in Colombia, he said.

“They recognise that they have financed themselves through drug trafficking, or taxing the drug traffickers”.

“We collectively learned the hard way in Central America that if you don’t pay as much attention to the peace as you did to the war, then down the road you can have some bad security problems and that’s exactly what we’re facing in Central America now for a variety of reasons”, Farnsworth says. Under the new agreement, however, those accused of these and other atrocities will be tried not by the justice system that the US and Colombia have worked so hard to improve, but by a new, untested “special jurisdiction” whose independence from political interference is not guaranteed. He did not comment on how much extra aid the USA would offer. If enacted by the Congress, it would increase total aid to Colombia to over $450 million.

Obama, a Democrat, will ask the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress to approve funds for the programme in his budget next week.

Colombia received little under 300 million in 2015 and has received approximately 10 billion since Plan Colombia took force in 2001. Some elements of the organization have expressed misgivings about the peace deal and about giving up its estimated 60 percent share of the nation’s illegal drug trade.

“We’re letting them off too softly”, Ros-Lehtinen said. Provided they confess to their human rights crimes, guerrillas will avoid any meaningful punishment. “They could be back doing coca production in no time”.

Curbelo declined to be interviewed but struck a more moderate tone in a statement.

“We were very close to being declared a failed state”, the Colombian leader said.

The post-conflict period “is more hard than the process itself”, said Mr Santos. “They know that”, said Santos. “Everybody we talked to made this relationship between the fiscal reform and the welfare program”.

All eyes are on the new deal since human rights advocates have largely considered the original Plan Colombia to be a human rights disaster.