TAKE A TOUGH LINE

Europe's commitment to human rights and the environment must be matched by self-examination on cocaine consumption, writes Francisco Santos Calderon

Last month I flew over a pristine tract of rain forest on Colombia's Pacific coast, a region with one of the greatest biodiversities on the planet, according to environmentalists.  But as I marvelled at the endless green carpet of trees below, I also saw huge charred rectangular holes in the triple-canopy forest.

These black scars were the product of slashing and burning, not by multi-national logging companies but by cocaine workers seeking to sow a new crop of coca leaf to meet the huge demand in Europe and the United States.

Cocaine workers in Colombia work directly for the country's illegal rightwing paramilitaries, the United Self-defence Forces of Colombia ( AUC ), and the two left-wing guerrilla groups the AUC was formed to combat - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ( FARC ) and the National Liberation Army ( ELN ).  The AUC is responsible for the majority of human rights abuses in Colombia, and the together the three groups are the worst violators of human rights in the Americas.

Aside from their murdering, kidnapping and other criminal activities, the AUC, FARC and ELN have between them laid to waste an estimated 1.8m hectares ( 7.92m acres ) of pristine rainforest.

One thing is missing from this destruction of Colombia's rainforest, which accounts for 10% of the planet's biodiversity.  There has been no outrage.  Instead, human rights groups focus on the state's alleged relationship with the AUC and government policy towards the FARC and ELN, which they deem to be too harsh.  But serious human rights groups and environmentalists need to direct their energies towards stopping the enormous environmental damage and human rights violations caused by the rebel groups, all three of whom have been classified as terrorists by the European Union.

In Colombia, the production of cocaine is not an organic extension of indigenous medicinal culture, as some would have us believe.  It is an industry run by the AUC, FARC and ELN, who pollute rivers and forests with millions of gallons of toxic fertilisers and slash and burn the natural habitats of increasingly endangered species.

The Colombian government's tough security policies are not implemented in a vacuum.  They are a response to the violence that is financed directly by profits from the international drug trade, which in turn is managed by the rebel groups.  The illegal profits derived from cocaine subvert every community, every individual, every system they touch, including banking, law enforcement, the judiciary and the legislature.

Some Europeans have been openly critical of "weak institutions" in Colombia, and of "excessive spending" on security.  We ask these same critics to look honestly at the debilitating effect of the international drug trade on our democratic institutions, the bodies we need to enforce the law and prevent human rights violations.

The 2003 UN human rights report on Colombia clearly links the AUC, FARC and ELN with drug trafficking, extortion and use of illegal landmines.  In addition, Human Rights Watch has documented the forced recruitment of children into crime and violence by all three of these groups in a report entitled You'll learn not to cry.  Yet the link between these atrocities and international drug consumption seems to fall on deaf ears.

If the oil industry were to directly finance such violence or environmental destruction, European activists would be up in arms.  Yet despite the fact that the violence and environmental destruction in Colombia is a direct consequence of cocaine demand and consumption by their own society, Europeans remain silent over what is nothing less than a "cocaine for blood" cycle of consumption and violence.

This failure to make the link between European drug consumption and human rights violations in Colombia exposes a moral paradox.  The European countries whose drug habits help create the need for strict anti-terrorist laws in Colombia are the same ones that criticise the security policies of the current government in Bogota.

Europe can't have its moral cake on human rights and its cocaine too.  Until Europe reduces its cocaine consumption and makes a multi-lateral commitment to fight transnational crime, sacrificial spending in Colombia on defence rather than poverty reduction will be required.

The EU has recently increased its membership by 10 countries.  If the increase in cocaine consumption grows in step with economic expansion, then Colombians will pay with more violence, more land mines, more child soldiers, more kidnapping and more charred scars in our pristine rainforest.

- - Francisco Santos Calderon is vice-president of Colombia.  This article is republished with permission from the International Herald Tribune