Beyond 'Drugs and Thugs'
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4051709/
A new report says the Andes could destabilize the hemisphere
By Jimmy Langman and Joseph Contreras
Newsweek International
Feb. 2 issue - A newly appointed U.S. diplomat to an Andean country
was asked recently how he viewed his assignment. His response: "Ah,
you know, it's all about drugs and thugs." That, says a new report
issued by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR),
America's leading foreign-policy think tank, is precisely the problem
with U.S. policy in the Andean region. Over the past two decades, the
United States has contributed roughly $25 billion in aid to the area.
But most of the money has been used to fight coca growers and cocaine
traffickers--not the pressing social and economic ills plaguing the
120 million residents of Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela and
Bolivia. "Sustainable, peaceful democracies in the Andean region
depend as much on political, legal and socioeconomic reform... as on
'hard' counter-narcotics and counter-terror initiatives," warns the
report, which is titled "Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges
of Colombia and the Region."
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