Volume 3, No. 9, September 2002

— G.Fellow

In 1998, after a series of military victories by the FARC-EP, the United States government considerably increased its military aid to Colombia. Military funding tripled from $89 million in 1997 to $289 million in 1998. This funding included advanced Black Hawk attack helicopters and sophisticated intelligence equipment. The United States is Colombia’s largest trading partner and principal arms supplier. In December 1998, the Clinton administration announced plans to build a joint U.S.-Colombian military base in Colombia. The U.S. also began to train an elite 1,000-troop counterinsurgency battalion, using trainers from the elite U.S. "Green Berets." The U.S. admits to having between 200 and 300 combat troops in Colombia at any one time.

In June 2000, the U.S. Congress passed a $1.3 billion military aid bill. Ninety percent of those funds were to go to Colombia’s armed forces and police. The bill provided 42 Huey and 18 Black Hawk helicopters, along with Special Forces training for two more elite combat units. The main objective of the aid package is the "push into the South," a FARC-EP stronghold. The Colombian resistance forces and struggling people call the package a "declaration of war."

The U.S. aid package is part of a massive $7.5 billion program called "Plan Colombia." This plan, drawn up by Washington and articulated by President Pastrana, is a rescue package for Colombia’s ruling elite. Its centerpiece is the U.S. military aid. The European Union, Japan, and other countries are asked to provide economic aid for the corrupt Colombian government.

There are five main goals to the Plan Colombia as outlined by Colombia’s President Pastrana. These are: advancing the peace process, improving the economy, combating narcotics, reforming the Judicial system and promoting human rights, and supporting democratization and social development. Overall Plan Colombia is a $7.5 billion package, $4.9 billion of which Colombia is providing itself mainly from international financial institutions and Colombian government general revenues. The House of Representatives met on March 9, 2000 and approved the Plan Colombia, which allocates $1.337 billion from US funds. This new assistance from the US will make Colombia the third largest recipient of US military aid after Israel and Egypt.

In the Colombian scheme of things the main group responsible for drug eradication prior to plan Colombia were the National Police. With the election of President Pastrana in 1998 a shift began in US policy, which favored the Colombian military in waging the drug war. The US argued that the Colombian military must be used to engage the guerillas, as the production of coca is concentrated in the Caquetá and Putumayo regions in the south of the country where the resistance movement, FARC, has its strongholds. Gen. Charles Wilhelm, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, argued that the Colombian National Police is only a police force and it lacks the strength in numbers and combined arms capabilities that are required to engage FARC fronts and mobile columns that possess army-like capabilities. That this was a mission that "the armed forces and only the armed forces can and should undertake." But the declared US position has been: "U.S support for the Colombian military is targeted at reducing the flow of narcotics and not against guerilla and paramilitary groups". According to it, it is just a coincidence that coca cultivation is most prevalent in the areas where FARC is situated. It thus makes sense to fight the guerillas and thus ease the ability to interdict and destroy coca crops.

To this end the main US/Colombian military initiatives have been the formation of a 950-man counter-narcotics division and additional funding for another two divisions. There has also been a $341 million aid program to upgrade radar facilities in Colombia as well as extensive intelligence sharing on guerrilla activity in the southern plains. The new riverine program will be used along the rivers on the Ecuadorian border in southern Colombia.

In his speech on the Plan the President Pastrana said, "And that’s why, for the first time, we create a coherent, comprehensive program, called Plan Colombia, asking all the international community to be involved in these programs, not only to fight narcotics, the military side of narcotics or narco- trafficking, but also alternative development. Most of the program that we want to invest in the Plan Colombia wants to go really into implement policies on health, on structural reforms, strengthening our institutions, human rights and alternative development and social investment. We want to invest most of this money that we’re asking for the international community in social development, because we cannot solve only the problem looking at this as a military problem or a policing aspect or the repression problem. We want to get into the real essence of the problem: that is, bringing back to Colombia prosperity and health and richness to our people, and that’s the way of eradicating drugs from our soil and from our territory." He divided the ratio of the fund to be spent on military and social aspect as 55:45. But the present figure stands at 85:15.

The money earmarked for the "development" is to be used, as the US Government has hinted, on the displaced people caused through the escalation of the counter insurgency war in the Southern Plains. The peasants caught in the crossfire will be "moved to places where they can find an alternative living at a reasonable rate with government support." This is another way of saying that civilians caught in the cross fire between the Colombian military and FARC rebels will be moved, even forcibly, into areas of governmental control.

The US has asserted that "Colombia must re-establish authority over narcotics producing ‘sanctuaries’ ...any comprehensive solution to Colombia’s problems must include the re-establishment of government authority over these lawless areas." To achieve this, it was proposed to establish a secure environment for GOC officials and NGO’s to extend services to these "lawless zones." The objective is clear: to wrest back control over the guerrilla held areas through an all out war.

The above part of the Colombia plan envisions a large-scale dislocation of the population during the war. It is like setting up concentration camps as was done during the Vietnam War and also in numerous other countries where forces of liberation were fighting the colonialists during the sixties and seventies. It is also a part of the plan that will deliver bombs and bread at the same time as was done in Afghanistan to make the operation look like a humanitarian one.

To show that the US cares for Human Rights the US senate has passed the Leahy Amendment whereby "all assistance to the Colombian armed forces is contingent upon human rights screening. No assistance will be provided to any unit of the Colombian military for which there is credible evidence of serious human rights violations by its members."

But Human Rights Watch, a US based organisation which is close to the administration, has said that there is extensive collaboration between Colombian regular army units and paramilitaries, including the shared use of intelligence, weapons, vehicles, medical aid and so on, many of the officers involved still remain on active duty. There is collusion between the Colombian military and the paramilitary networks in the assassination and intimidation of those involved in monitoring human rights.

In fact Human rights will be addressed primarily by securing a stable security environment; which means it will be an appendage and an accessory to the overall military operations that seek to destroy the guerrilla movement by declaring it a narco-guerrilla organisation.

However, the "aid" being made contingent to the behaviour of the security forces is a big state fraud. Clinton himself dropped this binding by saying that as the "American security interests are involved" this condition should not be followed while aiding the Colombian security services. Bush on his part has tried to bypass this condition by proposing to form new units to carry on the drug war. However, these new units comprise men from the security forces units that are not tainted. This entirely drops the promise to bring those responsible for collusion to justice. A second change to the Leahy proposal is the fact that a soldier from a ‘banned’ unit can still receive training if his personal record is clean. If collusion were taking place on such a grand scale as outlined in both the Human Right Watch and Amnesty Reports, and if investigations into the collusion are frequently thwarted through threats, intimidation and violence then it would seem logical to conclude that the vast majority of those who have colluded have never been brought to justice. Even a CIA document admits that "officials in Lima and Bogotá, if given anti-drug aid for counter-insurgency purposes, would turn it to pure anti-guerrilla operations with little payoff against trafficking." The human rights abuse issue in this way just becomes redundant. The US military academy ‘School of Americas’ which is usually termed as the "School of Assassins," based at Fort Benning, Georgia, trains soldiers and military personnel from Latin American countries and they are trained in the worst abuse of the Human Rights as they specialise in sophisticated techniques of torture to squeeze out information. Colombia is one of the single biggest senders of its security personnel to the school to be trained in counter-insurgent warfare, anti-narcotics operations, military intelligence and so on. There is clear evidence that at least "two hundred of SOA Colombian graduates have gone on to perpetuate some of the most heinous human rights abuses in Colombia."

Plan Colombia is exclusively military in orientation. The "drug war" is merely a sham used to hide the counter insurgency campaign waged by the Colombian military in the southern plains of Colombia

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