Robin Kirk of HRW, who edited a Peru Reader for Grove Press, has a new book on Columbia, the AUC paramilitaries, the FARC and ELN, the Columbian government which has a new President who has abandoned the peace negotiations of the previous Prez, and the USG.
An excellent way to follow Columbian developments is through the webpg. of the Center for International Policy, the think tank founded by Robert White, the reformist liberal US ambassador to El Salvador during the Carter admin.
Also, Alma Guillermoprito(spelling?) of The New Yorker had an excellent two or three part article on FARC there about two yrs. ago.
Another Columbia article via Z, http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/South_America/Yanqui_War_Colombia.html
Michael Pugliese
Training the Terrorists: US Intervention in Columbia http://insurgent.fruitiondesign.com/index.php?volnum=13.3&article=columbia
Lotus Look south to Colombia, one of the many countries we so eagerly exploit for our own material gain. Nearly 70 percent of all terrorist acts, two-thirds of all kidnappings, and more than half of all violence toward labor activists worldwide occur in Colombia, a country of 40 million. During its 37-year conflict, over 300,000 noncombatant civilians have been murdered or "disappeared," many having been brutally tortured in the process. The poorest third of Colombia's population has an income share of less than ten percent, while the wealthiest third has nearly 70 percent. It is also the largest cultivator of coca, which is later processed into cocaine.
Unemployment rates in Colombia have topped 20 percent. Staple food crops are of little value compared to coca. The aggressive land takeovers in Colombia by transnational oil and mining corporations and their use of paramilitary (para) death squads and "private security forces" to expel the peasants, as well as the continued crop eradication efforts, has inevitably contributed to the growth of the insurgency. For many, crop eradication destroys one of the few remaining options for survival. More and more of the poor join the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and the Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) guerilla forces.
In 1985 the FARC made an agreement with the government of then-President Romulo Betancur to lay down their weapons and form the Patriotic Union Party (UP). UP candidates won by a large margin in the ensuing elections, winning thousands of local and regional posts with a progressive political platform. The victorious candidates were systematically hunted down and murdered in the following years by army and para death squads, to the point where today almost 5,000 have lost their lives. Among those killed were the party's most viable presidential candidates. The FARC is unlikely to accept such a deal again, and other insurgencies have no doubt learned from the set example that any state-negotiated peace process is bound to be a double-cross.
Current US military aid to Colombia amounts to nearly one million dollars a day. Plan Colombia, the $1.3 billion "counter-narcotics" package consisting mostly of military aid has further fueled the long and bloody conflict in the region by intensifying the armed conflict between the Colombian army, right-wing paras and left-wing guerillas. All three are rumored to control the drug trade. The Colombian armed forces and paras are estimated to control over 70 percent of the drug trade. Unfortunately, efforts by corporate media to portray the guerillas as the main trafficking force have been widely successful. The DEA's Acting Administrator testified in 1999 that the DEA had "not yet really come to the conclusion" that "the FARC and ELN [guerillas] are drug trafficking entities per se," even though the guerillas do finance themselves in part through protecting and "taxing" drug producers (testimony of Donnie Marshall before the House Judiciary Committee, July 29, 1999).
In November 1998, a half-ton of cocaine was found on board the airplane of the chief of the Colombian Military Air Transport Command when it landed in Miami (Washington Post Sept. 22, 1999, p. B1). In November 1998, a Colombian Air Force cargo plane that landed at Ft. Lauderdale, Florida was found to contain 1,639 pounds of cocaine. In 1996, Colombian Air Force officers tried to smuggle heroin to the US aboard the plane used by then-President Ernesto Samper (NYT Nov. 11, 1998 p.24). According to a DEA document recently released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), on May 12, 2000 the Colombian National Police intercepted a FedEx parcel at the airport. It was sent from the Bogotá DynCorp site and destined for DynCorp's office on Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. The name of the sender on the document had been blacked out. The 250-gram liquid "tested positive for heroin," according to the DEA. "My understanding is that was a faulty test result," DynCorp spokesperson Wineriter said. DynCorp is the company currently hired by the Pentagon to carry out crop eradication. The State Department refuses to make on-the-record statements about DynCorp's operations, saying only that it has "command and control" function in the field, apparently outside any government oversight.
In 1998, roughly 17 percent of all political killings in Colombia could be attributed to either the FARC or ELN guerillas. In the same year, guerilla forces were responsible for 1,233 of the 2,216 reported kidnappings. Most were financially motivated.
The para death squads, however, are responsible for far more atrocities. The 5,000 strong United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC), which harbors under its wings a number of smaller para groups including the Peasant Self-Defense Force of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU), both of which were under the control of the notorious Carlos Castaño until May this year, when he suddenly stepped down from AUC command because he was tired of being in the media spotlight for his death squads' atrocities. He still heads the ACCU, and is rumored to still be in control of the AUC on a behind the scenes basis.
According to the DEA, Castaño is connected to some of the world's richest drug dealers. Indeed, Carlos has openly admitted that drug trafficking finances 70 percent of his operation. He is supposedly being hunted by the Colombian government, which has been unsuccessful in locating him, although media groups have successfully done so. He often boasts of his strategy, quitarle agua al pez, or draining the sea to catch the fish (killing the innocent to catch the guerillas). When asked why he slaughters peasants, women and children, he replies, "Well, I can't wait for the guerillas to put on their uniforms before I kill themŠ. When we take out [a sympathizer] we save many who would've been killed in the future." Robin Kirk, author of "War with Colombia and International Law," claims that the death squads make their massacres as brutal and gruesome as possible to make sure their message is understood.
On a Friday in July 2000, in the village of El Salado, some 300 paras arrived and went straight to the makeshift basketball court which doubles as the main square there, announced themselves as members of the AUC, and with a list of names began "summoning people for judgment. A table and chairs were seized from a house, and after the death squad leader had made himself comfortable, the basketball court was turned into a court of execution. The paramilitary troops ordered up liquor and music, and then embarked on a rampage of torture, rape and killingŠ. By the time they leftŠthey had killed at least 36 people whom they accused of collaborating with the enemyŠ. The victims ranged from a six-year-old girl to an elderly woman. As music blared, some of the victims were shot after being tortured; others were stabbed or beaten to death, and several more were strangled. Yet during the three days of killing, military and police units just a few miles away made no effort to stop the slaughter. At one point the paramilitaries had a helicopter flown in to rescue a fighter who had been injured trying to drag some victims from their home. Instead of fighting back, the armed forces set up a roadblock on the road to the village shortly after the rampage began and prevented human rights and relief groups from entering and rescuing residents," (NYT News Service, July 2000).
According to the 2000 State Department report on Human Rights, "High-ranking government security forces committed serious abuses, including extra judicial killings, but were rarely brought to justice."
This year in August, Colombian President Andres Pastrana freed the army from human rights oversight. "ŠPastrana has signed legislation giving the military broad new powers to wage war with less scrutiny from civilian human rights monitors, a measure some U.S. lawmakers have warned could threaten a key American aid package. The measure, originated in large part by the Defense Ministry, is designed to give the military more latitude in fighting a growing guerilla insurgency that dominates large parts of Colombia's rural landscape," (LA Times-Washington Post Service, August 2001). Obviously the aid has not stopped flowing. Guns and gunships continue to be fed to American-trained soldiers in Colombia who have little or no regard for human rights.
Of course, the government doesn't want to publicize that the "drug war" is really a war on the poor to protect "national interests" (resources). It is a war on guerilla insurgents who are fighting to gain the basic necessities for survival, such as food, water, freedom from abuses, etc. This type of war against insurgents is referred to as "counter-insurgency" warfare, and often "low-intensity" warfare. The Colombian government wants to crush the guerilla uprisings, and the US government fears that, if the leftist rebels take control, Colombia will become a "rotten apple in the barrel," referring to the Kissinger phrase that if one country is able to demonstrate that the lives of its people are benefited by a leftist government, then others, too, will want to follow in its path. That is what the Cold War was all about. It was about trying to make the lives of the poor better in Latin America, and the US retaliation out of fear of losing control of it's resources there. Its easier to control resources in a country ruled by a puppet right-wing government than in a country ruled by an independent leftist government that is trying to get the rural poor back on their feet.
The US Army School of the Americas (SOA), now renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), has an extensively documented history of training some of the hemisphere's worst human rights abusers. It acquired its nickname the "School of Assassins" for obvious reasons. SOA graduates are currently involved in the dirty war now being waged in Colombia with US support. The school is now drawing more of its students from Colombia than from any other country over 10,000 to so far.
In 2000, Human Rights Watch released a report linking SOA graduates to the formation and operation of Colombian paramilitary death squads. These groups are notorious for horrific atrocities including rape, torture, chainsaw massacres, other types of terrifying massacres, and assassinations. Among those graduates cited for involvement with paramilitary groups were: Maj. David Hernandez Rojas, cited for the 1999 murder of peace commissioner Alex Lopera, and who is now working with the ACCU; Maj. Jesus Maria Clavijo and Maj. Alvaro Cortes Morillo, linked in 1999 to para groups through cell phone and beeper communications as well as regular meetings on military bases; Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle, former commander of the Fourth Brigade cited with "extensive evidence of pervasive ties" to para groups involved in human rights atrocities in 1999; Brigadier General Jaime Alban, who commands the Third Brigade of the Colombian military, the brigade responsible for setting up a para death squad known as the "Calima Front" in 1999. A 2001 Human Rights Watch report states that "the Calima Front and the Third Brigade are the same thingŠ. The Third Brigade provided the Calima Front with weapons and intelligence." The report also notes that, "Half of Colombia's eighteen brigade-level army units have documented links to paramilitary activity."
The military/paramilitary collusion is obvious and documented. The "drug war" is nothing more than a front for a covert counter-insurgency campaign, as was US involvement in Nicaragua, Guatemala, El SalvadorŠ, with the justification of the time period Communism and the "Domino Theory," that if one country "falls" to "Communism," they'll all "fall." Indeed, if one country democratically elects someone like Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua in the 70's, someone who cares about the poor and wants to make changes, someone who isn't at all Communist, this cannot be tolerated. In such circumstances, it is necessary to develop a plan of action. The CIA comes in handy, especially with such training manuals as KUBARK counter-intelligence interrogation, Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare, Human Resources Exploitation Training Manual (all of which SOA graduates and CIA paid agents are familiarized with intimately). From the latter, released through the FOIA:
"While we do not stress the use of coercive techniques, we do want to make you aware of them and the proper way to use themŠ. These techniques should be reserved for those subjects who have been trained or who have developed the ability to resist non-coercive techniquesŠ. If a subject refuses to comply once a threat has been made, it must be carried out. If it is not carried out, then subsequent threats will also prove inefficientŠ. All people have approximately the same threshold at which they begin to feel pain and their estimates of severity are roughly the sameŠ. Some subjects actually enjoy pain and withhold information they might otherwise have divulged in order to be punishedŠ. If pain is not used until late in the 'questioning' process and after other tactics have failed, the subject is likely to conclude that the 'questioner' is becoming desperateŠ. Once a subject has successfully withstood pain, he is extremely difficult to 'question' using more subdued methods." Not to mention what lies within the blacked out paragraphs and omitted pages. According to Florencio Caballero, a former member of Battalion 316, the infamous Honduran death squad, organized, equipped, and trained by the Pentagon, "If a person did not like cockroaches, then that person might be more cooperative if there were cockroaches running around the room." Such are the means of American foreign policy.
Look at the United States of America today. Look at Latin America today. Notice a gap? This vast wealth and prosperity so many Americans have doesn't just appear out of thin air. It is taken from those less fortunate countries whose poverty-stricken inhabitants so frequently lie within the shadow of our economic imperialist boots. Look whom we have trained and what their education has done for those around them. Can the devastation wrought by American tyranny abroad truly be justified by our own prosperity?
"If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril." George W. Bush
Subverting Democracy 101 Lesson 1: Believe the lies