Chairman Hyde, Ranking Member Lantos, and distinguished Members of the Committee: I am honored to appear before you today to discuss counternarcotics policy in the Andes and the progress of the Andean Counterdug Initiative. Before I proceed, I want to thank Chairman Hyde for his 32 years of service in the United States Congress. A true statesman with a distinguished record of accomplishment, I have valued your friendship, guidance, and insight over the years. Further, this Committee has consistently supported our policy and programs in the Andes by which the Western Hemisphere is safer and more secure. Through visits to the region by Members and staff, and by maintaining a dialogue with the principal policy actors in the Andes, the Committee has kept close watch on developments and contributed greatly to the historic successes we have witnessed.
My testimony today will be a positive one because our policies and programs have measurably improved the security, health, and economic well-being of the people most affected by the narcotics threat. I will focus on Colombia, but there is also good news to report in Peru and Bolivia. The so-called "balloon effect," the theory that drug production will simply expand into new areas in the proportion that it is squeezed out of old areas, has simply not materialized. Across the region, we have witnessed three succesive years of declining production of both cocaine and heroin. At the same time, the regional security threat from narco-terrorist organizations has diminished.
We are heading in the right direction and we are winning. Cocaine production in the Andes has declined by 29% since 2001 and Colombia's opium crop was cut in half from 2003 to 2004. As the threat we face adapts, we will make adjustments as needed, but in large measure, the job that remains for us is to help our willing regional allies with training, intelligence, supplies, and mobility so that they can finish the destruction of the existing large-scale cocaine and heroin trafficking infrastructure. In particular, we need to help Colombia disrupt the ability of the FARC and AUC to coerce rural producers into cultivating coca. Eradication, interdiction, enforcement, and alternative development are essential to this end and will proceed with great intensity.
Last Updated: May 12, 2005
