August 26, 2002

War is Brewing in Colombia

by Oliver Houston

War is brewing in Colombia. A strange thing to say, perhaps, about a country that has been in the grip of civil conflict for the last 50 years, but while the world's attention is on Iraq, Israel and India, the South American country that's just a stone's throw from the Washington hawks' nest is set to erupt and could soon lead to the "Vietnamization" of the whole Amazon region. Under Plan Colombia, begun by the Clinton administration, the U.S. pledged $1.3 billion in military aid to Colombia, making it the leading recipient for the Western Hemisphere, ranking behind only Israel and Egypt worldwide. George W. Bush wants the total package increased to $2 billion, and has succeeded in lifting all restrictions (such as they are) on how the aid can be used.

Colombia's new President, Alvaro Uribe Velez, who visited British Prime Minister Tony Blair in July, ran on a "final solution" ticket, promising to crush the peasant revolt that now controls 40 percent of the country by doubling the number of troops and creating a one million-strong "civilian" militia. Even before Uribe's election, the creation of the new Supreme Council of National Defence represented, according to Federico Andreu Guzmán, a UN expert on human rights and a juridical advisor to Amnesty International, "a Coup d'Etat within the state. It is the legalization of the transformation of Colombia into a de facto military dictatorship disguised as a formal civil democracy".

Uribe's links with the brutal, right-wing AUC paramilitary umbrella organization that works hand in glove with the Colombian military--and is said by Human Rights Watch to be responsible for 78 percent of the country's human rights violations and by the United Nations to be Colombia's largest narcotics traffickers (contrary to the U.S. "war on drugs" rhetoric about left-wing "narco-guerrillas")--are well documented.

But Uribe is coy about his relationship with the now extinct Medellin drug cartel: as mayor of Medellin, Uribe was connected to the famous drug lord Pablo Escobar; as director of the Civil Aeronautics Agency he granted pilots' licenses to the cartel; and as a Senator he vehemently opposed the extradition of drug traffickers to the United States. Furthermore, the DEA has been interested for some years in Pedro Villa, Uribe's friend and campaign manager, whose company G.M.P. Productos Químicos sells precursor chemicals used in the production of cocaine.

The new president has also vowed to continue the unpopular austerity measures, slashing public spending and privatizing public utilities, to service the $2.7 billion IMF loan taken out in December 1999. Only 46 percent of the 24 million people registered to vote in Colombia participated in the May ballot, leaving Uribe, who had a media mogul as his running partner, with just 5.8 million votes, less than a quarter of the electorate.

Many on the left-of-centre remain suspicious of "democratic engagement." The civil war in Colombia began when the popular Liberal candidate for the 1950 presidential election was assassinated, and, after the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and others laid down their arms in 1985 to form the Patriotic Union and contest elections, 4,500 of its candidates and campaign workers were killed, including a presidential candidate and his replacement.

So guerrilla recruitment continues apace, with few other avenues seemingly open to reformers. For instance, Colombia's right-wing death squads assassinate three out of every four union activists murdered worldwide each year. The EU raised the issue with the UN Commission on Human Rights in March, and U.S. and international trade unions have recently joined Colombian workers in filing lawsuits in U.S. courts against Coca-Cola and coal giant Drummond for orchestrating paramilitary campaigns of intimidation, torture and killing at their Colombian plants. Yet the murders continue, with over 100 trade unionists having been assassinated already this year, plus countless human rights workers, land reform advocates, academics and journalists.

Stan Goff, a retired U.S. army Delta Force sergeant, jungle operations instructor and West Point military science teacher who was active in Panama, Grenada, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru, insists: "If the guerrillas stood down tomorrow, the consequences for the peasants now partially under their protection would be horrendous. The people in the countryside are not facing a choice between violence and peace, but between self-defense or annihilation."

For its part, the FARC asserts, "Our voice is that of the Colombian people, [so] we will continue the struggle to find solutions to the problems of unemployment, lack of education, health, housing, land for the farmers, political freedom, democracy and national sovereignty and for a new government of national reconstruction and reconciliation."

The European Parliament voted against Plan Colombia in February 2001, and in June Britain's Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) withdrew its support too, disgusted by Plan Colombia's supposed coca fumigation program that amounts to little more than a "scorched earth" policy. It is a policy that is exacerbating the internal refugee crisis through the use of chemical weapons that destroy food crops, pollute water supplies, and harm animals and humans.

Undeterred, hawkish members of Congress, such as Senator Jesse Helms, supported by extremist members of the Bush administration and the powerful Cuban lobby in the swinging-chad state of Florida, where Jeb Bush is running for re-election this year, are pushing hard for a new "aid" package.

Larry Birns, director of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs and a former member of the UN economic commission for Latin America, says: "Those responsible for Latin America in the U.S. State Department are the most extremist, off-the-wall team!" Chief amongst them is the notorious Otto Reich, who has a long record of covert meddling in Latin America and whom Bush appointed to the State Department in January against the advice of the Senate Foreign Relations committee. And in the Pentagon, there's Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, who was the aide to the head of the Contras when they were waging their U.S.-backed war against the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

"In the last fifty years," explains Garry Leech in his new book on Colombia, Killing Peace, the United States has "overthrown democratically elected governments in Guatemala and Chile; invaded the sovereign states of the Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama; organized and funded the unsuccessful invasion of Cuba; supported brutal militaries allied with right-wing death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala and Argentina; and orchestrated a near decade-long illegal war against Nicaragua." So, nobody should be surprised that Reich & Company are staying true to form.

In April, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, speaking to the House Appropriations Foreign Operations Subcommittee, claimed that Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah groups were operating near Ecuador's border with Colombia and Peru, coincidentally a guerrilla-controlled area where huge oil deposits have recently been found. The claim was branded "nonsense" by the Ecuadorian government, already upset that the United States has reneged on its agreement that the Manta airbase on Ecuador's Pacific coast (handed over in 1999) would not be used for Plan Colombia operations.

The Bush administration is also pushing for an additional $98 million to protect an oil pipeline in Colombia owned by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. Ron Paul, a Republican congressman from Texas and a member of the House International Relations Committee, warns that: "Pretending that the fighting there is somehow related to our international war on terrorism is to stretch the imagination to breaking point. It is unwise and dangerous. It has nothing to do with our national defense or our security. It has more to do with oil, and we know it."

As the world's fourth largest oil exporter, Venezuela replaced Saudi Arabia as the United States' chief foreign source of oil after it shattered the embargo of 1973. This April, left-wing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez tried to avert a U.S.-backed coup by assuring Bush that Venezuela would not join the oil boycott called for by Iraq and Libya, having been alerted to the panic in the White House by OPEC's secretary general Ali Rodriguez. But Chávez's opponents said they would cut off supplies to Cuba and reverse his plan to double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies, principally Exxon-Mobil, so the coup attempt went ahead.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark explained to the New Colombia News Agency (ANNCOL), that the U.S. role in Colombia is "the biggest intervention in the Western Hemisphere in our history. It involves not only Colombia, but also Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. They are afraid of the spreading of political insurrection, turmoil and rebellion. They are afraid of the spreading of political beliefs that are opposed to U.S. policies." And nothing will hasten the spread of such beliefs more effectively than Washington's escalation of military intervention. The Andean and Amazonian regions need peace and prosperity, not a U.S. war for oil.

Oliver Houston works with the London-based organization, Colombia Peace Association