Colombia: US aid package for murderous military
US President Bill Clinton on July 13 signed into law a massive aid package for the Colombian government. Approximately 80% of the US$1.3 billion has been allocated to Colombia's security forces in the form of equipment and training.
Clinton had earlier criticised the Senate for jeopardising "national interests" by delaying passage of the aid, but following its authorisation Clinton lauded Congress for collaborating with his administration in the "war on drugs".
The final legislation virtually abrogates the human rights stipulations included in the Senate version, since the president is permitted to waive these conditions if he perceives that "national security" is threatened. Given the US government's Orwellian definition of "national security", Clinton is afforded ample discretion in escalating US support for state terror in Colombia.
Washington's official justification for the material backing is to combat the flow of illegal drugs to the United States, but Colombia's guerilla insurgency and popular movement are the obvious targets. Counter-narcotics operations will be concentrated in southern Colombia, a region of heavy guerilla activity.
The legislation includes 60 helicopters for US-trained army battalions, and although the numbers of US troops and civilian contractors allowed in Colombia at the same time are limited, the president can veto this restriction for 90 days if there is "imminent involvement" of US personnel in conflict.
In addition, according to the legislation, "tested, environmentally safe mycoherbicides" may be applied to eradicate coca fields. Despite research suggesting its capacity for destroying food crops and damaging ecosystems, US officials intend to experiment with the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, a variant of which is classified as a biological warfare agent.
Since Clinton must either certify that Colombia's human rights record satisfies the conditions attached to the aid or override these provisions before the aid can be released, the administration is presenting the appearance of adhering to balanced and informed decision-making by meeting with human rights organisations and planning a one-day visit to Colombia during August.
The investigations and reporting of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) will render it difficult for the administration to deny the established links between the Colombian military and paramilitary death squads, but the scheduled meeting with these groups will be manipulated in an attempt to legitimise US policy.
Both international and local human rights monitors have documented the involvement of the Colombian military in widespread atrocities perpetrated by paramilitary associates against noncombatants.
According to a February publication from HRW, half of the army's brigade-level units are complicit in paramilitary violence. Another recent HRW report revealed that the 1991 US-supervised restructuring of Colombia's military intelligence incorporated the paramilitary apparatus to form "killer networks". Although uniformed soldiers are responsible for under 10% of political killings, the paramilitary system has murdered more than 25,000 Colombians in the past decade.
US government and military officials and the establishment media have deliberately misrepresented the humanitarian crisis in Colombia as an armed confrontation between drug-trafficking guerillas, the so-called "narcoguerrillas", and a besieged, incorruptible military establishment. To the extent the existence of paramilitary groups is acknowledged, they are portrayed as an autonomous force attacking the civilian base of the guerillas while the state struggles to protect innocent Colombians.
Twenty years ago, US government spin doctors and the major media depicted Central America's wars in the same duplicitous fashion.
Scores of media commentators have entered into the debate on US military aid to Colombia. While many of the op-eds and editorials have expressed scepticism about escalating assistance for the Colombian military, most of the apprehension is motivated by concern related to the Vietnam-type potential costs.
Once the aid bill was passed by Congress, the New York Times finally printed a piece regarding the military-paramilitary alliance. The article reported on the collaboration of a Colombian army unit in a massacre committed by paramilitary groups several months earlier.
The US aid package is one component of Plan Colombia, a US$7.5 billion strategy designed by the Colombian and US governments. Colombian President Pastrana has pledged US$4 billion and requested the US$3.5 billion balance from foreign sources.
Some members states of the European Union, however, have stated suspicions that the plan's military emphasis and the US agenda of bolstering Colombia's counterinsurgency forces will aggravate the conflict. The guerillas have already increased offensive operations in advance of the new US military assistance.
Plan Colombia's economic policies represent a deepening of the neo-liberal model imposed by the US government and global financial institutions. The authors of the plan claim these measures will promote prosperity and provide the economic and social conditions to facilitate peace. In reality, these policies exacerbated the levels of poverty and inequality in both urban and rural Colombia throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
For Washington, the "democratically elected" Pastrana is playing a role similar to those of Jose Napoleon Duarte in El Salvador and Vinicio Cerezo in Guatemala during the 1980s.
In both those cases, the civilian presidents were victorious in aptly named "demonstration elections", borrowing a term from US foreign policy critic Edward Herman. After Duarte and Cerezo took office, their respective militaries retained all de facto power and continued to rule, assassinating and massacring with impunity, while the civilian heads of state loyally obeyed prescribed parameters which strictly limited their actions.
In contemporary Colombia, US foreign policy makers have pursued this arrangement in conjunction with Colombian authorities.
The infusion of more US aid will translate into further death and destruction for Colombians. The pretext for US intervention in Latin America has shifted from Soviet-exported Communism to narco-trafficking in accord with international political realities, but the motivations remain unaltered. Only an expanded and vibrant US-based movement in solidarity with the popular struggle in Colombia, rooted in the Central American solidarity movement of the 1980s, will deter US imperialism from the course of "Central Americanising" Colombia.
By Joseph Raso