If I may be permitted a word of advice to the president-elect, it's best not to rush at the answer straight away.

You have not been president before, sir, so you might make the mistake of thinking that (a) is the obvious answer. With a moment's reflection, though, you will understand that this is not the American Way. Think of Vietnam, which of course you remember - and its side wars in Laos and Cambodia; think of El Salvador and Nicaragua - most of Latin America in the 1970s and 80s, in fact. If the details of those escape you, I am sure that George Bush Sr remembers them well.

The right answer, of course, is (c) - carry on, loudly proclaiming victory, regardless of the evidence.

It's important to avoid the blame for bad things that might result - massacres, refugee problems, famine, pestilence. They, of course, are the fault of the Marxist guerrillas, drug barons, Russians or persons unknown. The press, on the whole, is ready to be convinced and television has largely lost interest in "abroad" if it doesn't have good beaches. Don't let any Americans get killed and you should be fine.

If it all goes completely pear-shaped, try to look statesmanlike and get someone to shred the documents. The truth won't come out for a couple of decades and then a commission will be set up to investigate. It will conclude that the right answer all along was (a), but by then nobody will remember which of those small countries it was that you trashed, and you will be long out of office, so what do you care?

I only bring this up because among the documents in the president-elect's pending tray there should be one or two that relate to Plan Colombia. They ought to get his attention, if only because he might wonder why the US is dispensing military aid to Colombia to the tune of $2m a day. Perhaps he will be told that this is the result of an agreement between the Colombian president, Andres Pastrana, and the Clinton administration, in which the US responded to poor, war-torn Colombia's request for assistance in its fight against drug trafficking and in support of a peace process.

That is certainly a version of the events of the last two years, but it's a misleading one. Andres Pastrana did ask for aid to fund coca eradication and a peace process. What he got instead, though, was a huge amount of aid, 70% of which is military, to fund a war.

After a year of preparation, that war is about to begin in earnest. Against whom is it to be waged? Not against the coca cartels in Colombia or the consumers in Manhattan but against the peasants who plant the coca and against the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) who protect them. This will solve neither the civil war nor the drug problem.

Just for the record, what were the objectives of Plan Colombia? They were to support the peace process, to reduce drug trafficking and to assist in Colombia's reconstruction. Already the peace process is on the edge of collapse, coca cultivation and trafficking has expanded and, as for reconstruction, the number of internal refugees has soared. Colombian human rights workers estimate that 300,000 people have been driven from their homes.

Nobody disputes that human rights violations have increased dramatically in the past 12 months - so much so that Colombia will certainly lose its certification and George W Bush will find himself obliged to sign a waiver if he wishes to continue to disburse the military aid. All this comes as a surprise only to those who did not read or understand the warnings about the consequences of Plan Colombia that were produced by a series of NGOs and human rights organisations from the beginning.

I would like to add a few predictions of my own: the Farc guerrillas will not be defeated, the coca plantations will relocate across the borders of Brazil, Peru and Bolivia and Colombia's neighbours will find themselves drawn into the conflict. (Ecuador is already the site of a new $62m US airforce base.)

A key part of Plan Colombia is the chemical warfare to be waged on the coca plantations in the south. The intention is, State Department officials admit, to remove the women and children and blitz the place. Leaving aside the ecological damage this Armageddon will cause, it might be worth pointing out that in the 25 years since the US began to use chemicals to eradicate coca, Colombia's area under cultivation has gone from 25,000 to 140,000 hectares.

If US drugs policy were a company, it would have gone bankrupt years ago. But it marches to its own drum, whose peculiar rhythm can be detected in the sayings of General Barry R McCaffrey, the White House drug tsar. A year ago, McCaffrey was being briefed by a series of experts from Colombian NGOs and human rights movements in Bogota on precisely why Plan Colombia was a very bad idea. The general did not disagree. He explained, though, why the plan would go ahead.

"When I was a young soldier," he told the astonished gathering, "I was taught that it was better to entertain a doubt than to make a mistake. But as the years go by I realise that's wrong. It's far better to make a mistake than to entertain a doubt." That's the spirit, general.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

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