Colombia: The
U.S. Military is in Danger of Going to War on the Wrong
Side
By JONATHAN
POWER
August 11, 1999
MADRID- After Kosovo why not next Colombia, land of the
drug barons and 40 years of near continuous civil war? The
rest of the world may drop its jaw at the idea of Nato
troops being sent to pacify leftist guerrilla groups,
army-backed, fascist-inclined paramilitaries and the world's
most ruthless drug cartels. But in Bogota, Colombia's
capital, it is being touted by some as a necessary solution.
And if not Nato, at least the U.S. army.
Don't drop your jaw too far. For none less than the U.S.
commander in chief, Bill Clinton, said last month that vital
American interests were at stake in Colombia. It is "very
much in our national security interests to do what we can".
When a U.S. president uses these code words it essentially
means that the backbone of the U.S. military, intelligence
and national security bodies has decided that, if necessary,
the U.S. is prepared to go to any lengths, even war, to deal
with the problem.
If Clinton's statement was sparked by the relatively
trivial loss of a U.S. military reconnaissance plane flying
over Colombia, it comes after a long period of slow-burning,
mounting frustration at the inability of successive
Colombian governments to get to grips with the armed gangs
that threaten to destabilise the government and with the
country's narcotic dealers, who for decades have been the
principal suppliers of hard drugs on the American
market.
If U.S. intervention were likely to be even-handed
perhaps there could be an argument for it. After all
Colombia is often exhibit 1 for those who say, look what
happens when the outside world doesn't intervene: the local
fires just burn brighter and fiercer.
But "even-handed" does not appear in the current lexicon
in the Pentagon's thinking on Colombia. Almost perversely,
the Clinton Administration seems to be ignoring what the New
York -based Human Rights Watch describes as "the root of
these abuses.... the Colombian army's consistent and
pervasive failure to ensure human rights standards and
distinguish civilians from combatants."
Terrible violence is being inflicted both upon each other
and on civilian innocents by all three sides in the armed
struggle. But by no stretch of the independent reporting
available, whether it be done by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty
International or the very few outside journalists who have
dared to risk their lives studying the situation close up,
can it be said that the left wing guerrillas are the most
vicious or the most responsible. The clear concensus is that
the army is in league with the right wing paramilitaries
who, in turn, are in league with the drug mafia. It is they
who consistently set the pace in assassinations, organising
death squads, inflicting torture and practising widespread
intimidation.
The army has not only failed to move against the rightist
paramilitaries in any significant way, it has tolerated
their activity, even providing some of them with
intelligence and logistical support. On occasion it has even
coordinated joint maneuvers with them.
In a report last year the Bogota office of the United
Nations High Commission for Human Rights observed that
"witnesses frequently state that massacres were perpetuated
by members of the armed forces passing themselves off as
paramilitaries."
It is true that both the preceding government of Ernesto
Samper and the present, relatively new one, of Andres
Pastrana have moved to suspend or close down particular
units, such as the army's notorious Twentieth Brigade. Yet
offficers are rarely, if ever, prosecuted, and some have
even been promoted. Occasionally there is a dismissal.
"Defending human rights in Colombia is a dangerous
profession", says Susan Osnos of Human Rights Watch. Yet it
continues to attract unusually dedicated people. Last year
when assassins gunned down the president of a human rights
committee in his office in Medellin, the drug traffickers'
home town, it was the fourth president to be killed since
1987. But still someone has taken his place.
The Clinton Administration's attempts to be even handed
have been derisory. It allows the State Department to issue
human rights reports that are highly critical of the
Colombian establishment, even, in last year's report,
acccusing the government of "tacit acquiescence" of abuses.
In May last year the U.S. revoked the visa of one
particularly corrupt and cruel general. Nevertheless, the
main direction of the Clinton Administration is clear-
increasing levels of aid for the Colombian military, less
strings attached to how it is used and the deployment of CIA
and Pentagon operatives to work with Colombian security
force units that have not been give a clean bill of health
on human rights abuses. Last year General Charles Wilhelm,
head of U.S. Southern Command, told a committee of the U.S.
Congress that criticism of military abuses was "unfair".
Now with the pace being set by U.S. General Barry Mc
Caffrey, the Administration's top anti-narcotics official,
Washington is giving more and more aid to the Colombian
military, supposedly for combating the drug menace, but in
practice aimed disproportionately at the left-wing
guerrillas. Already Colombia is the third largest recipient
of U.S. aid after Israel and Egypt.
Washington's sense of frustration is understandable. The
left wing guerrillas have not responded well to the
significant steps taken towards them by President Pastrana.
But then nobody in their right mind expected the betrayals,
bad memories and fears of 40 years of war to be quickly set
on one side by handshakes and face to face meetings. But if
the U.S., angry at the slow pace of events in Colombia,
allows itself to be drawn in it will be quite
counterproductive.
It will simply give substance to all the marxist twaddle
that has been talked for decades across Latin America by
left wing intellectuals and guerrillas about who really
pulls the strings. And it will embolden the Colombian army
and its paramilitary allies to even worse excessses.
The path to peace in Colombia lies where it has long
been- in honest and humane government within the country and
serious moves by the world's largest drug consuming nation
to pull the rug from under the drug barons by amending its
outdated and outmoded laws on prohibition.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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