U.S. Entanglements in Colombia Continue
Youngers, Coletta
Reviving the rhetoric of the Reagan/Bush years, Clinton Administration officials are once again pointing to the "narcoguerrilla" threat-erasing the already blurry line between counternarcotics...
...7 It also fuels human rights violations...
...In a throw-back to the Cold War, the nation with the worst human rights record in the hemisphere todayColombia-receives more U.S...
...From now on, we give the orders here," witnesses report overhearing the killers say...
...Thanks to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Representative Esteban Torres (D-CA), legislation appropriating assistance for fiscal years 1997 and 1998 includes language that stipulates that no aid can be "provided to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence to believe such unit has committed gross violations of human rights," unless adequate measures are being taken to prosecute those implicated...
...aid have been implicated in two paramilitary massacres in this region last year...
...5. Author's interview, October 9, 1997...
...assistance to that country...
...antinarcotics efforts are currently focused, entangles Washington even further...
...Ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette, that the FARC is not engaged in international drug trafficking...
...Drug Czar General Last April, around the time when the Bogota airport Washington announced its decision to resume aid to the Colombian army, warlord Carlos Castafio announced that he was moving his powerful paramilitary network into southern Colombia to wrest control of coca production from the FARC...
...assistance is increasingly intertwined with the armed forces' brutal counterinsurgency campaign...
...U.S...
...5 Having bought into the Colombian army's campaign to paint their adversaries as drug-trafficking guerrillas, General McCaffrey acknowledged that, in fact, U.S...
...If Castailo is successful in dislodging the FARC, this will not only undermine the guerrilla's ability to finance its operations, but it will also consolidate paramilitary control of the most strategic drug-trafficking corridor in the country, from the southern point of coca production to the cocaine export routes through the central and northern corridors into Urabi-a key strategic entry point for illegal arms as well as an exit point for illicit drugs...
...radars...
...Early last year, however, U.S...
...4 Reviving rhetoric reminiscent of the Reagan and Bush years, Clinton Administration officials are once again pointing to the "narcoguerrilla" threat, erasing the already blurry line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency efforts in Colombia...
...Four months later, despite the fact that Castafio's move into southern Colombia had materialized, the Clinton Administration announced that it would avoid involving the U.S...
...Drug Czar, shook hands with a man previously ostracized by the U.S...
...According to police chief General Rosso Jos6 Serrano, the U.S...
...But even the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) admits, in a study carried out at the request of the former U.S...
...4. Dr...
...No one disputes that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) gains significant resources from protecting coca growers in southern Colombia and facilitating shipment of coca and cocaine...
...civilian contract pilots and other U.S...
...assistance...
...In themeantime, aid to the navy, air force and police flows freely-as Colombia's already dismal human rights record continues to go from bad to worse...
...counternarcotics assistance for other purposes, including counterinsurgency, is not new...
...support in the face of the "terrible direct threat to democracy of 15,000 34NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Coletta Youngers is Senior Associate at the Washington Office on Latin America in Washington, D.C She co-edited WOLA's recent report, Losing Ground: Human Rights Advocates Under Attack in Colombia (1997...
...embassy's narcotics assistance section representative was at the base on the day the paramilitaries touched ground...
...Who said we couldn't come to this town...
...embassy officials in BogotA, on any given day there are between 130 and 250 U.S...
...law, and aid to the army remains at least temporarily suspended...
...Already, army units targeted to receive U.S...
...Entanglements in Colombia Continue 1. A massacre is defined as a collective killing of four or more individuals...
...2 In addition, according to U.S...
...October 19, 1997...
...efforts to further arm the Colombian army...
...The reason, McCaffrey explained, was to show U.S...
...The use of U.S...
...6. Author's interview, Ambassador Myles Frechette, November 15, 1996...
...This fiscal year, the Clinton Administration plans to raid the funding allocated for alternative development activities in coca-growing regions of Bolivia and Peru in order to provide an additional three Blackhawk helicopters to Colombia over and above the ongoing U.S...
...government for his alleged ties to the Cali drug cartel-Colombian President Ernesto Samper...
...6 Rather, it is one of many actors-including elements of the armed forces and paramilitary organizations-engaged in the lucrative drug trade...
...in the heaviest areas of conflict in Colombia by "limiting" aid to army units operating in the southern half of the country...
...Military and antinarcotics police units based in Miraflores took no action to stop the killings and, according to witnesses, when the killing spree ended, army soldiers summoned a private airplane with an army radio and, upon its arrival, boarded the gunmen...
...embassy in Colombia has yet to come up with a Colombian army unit that meets the human rights conditions laid out in U.S...
...The next day, General McCaffrey landed at the nearby Joaquin Paris army base in San Jos6 del Guaviare to show his support for the "heroic men fighting in the field...
...personnel...
...The installation, which is under the control of the Colombian army, is home to U.S...
...Overall assistance to the Colombian security forces more than quadrupled, and the army was promised boats and aircraft, spare parts for helicopters, weapons and additional training...
...At the time of this writing, the U.S...
...Reviving the rhetoric of the Reagan/Bush years, Clinton Administration officials are once again pointing to the "narcoguerrilla" threat-erasing the already blurry line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency in Colombia...
...security assistance than any other country in the region, with aid levels reminiscent of U.S...
...NACA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA narcoguerrillas armed with mortars, machine guns and automatic weapons...
...In a major policy reversal last October, General Barry McCaffrey, the U.S...
...counternarcotics assistance-with its focus on jungle warfare training and military prowess-is equally applicable to the counterinsurgency effort...
...In effect, Washington is targeting precisely the area which appears destined to become the next major paramilitary battleground...
...While Washington's current aid to Colombia is presumably directed at antinarcotics efforts, there are well-founded fears that U.S...
...All told, the Colombian antinarcotics police and armed forces were allocated an estimated $100 million in direct U.S...
...The recent movement of paramilitary groups into the southern coca-growing regions of the country, where U.S...
...Political killings in Colombia fluctuate from 3,000 to 4,000 a year, with over 70% attributed to right-wing paramilitary groups and their military allies...
...embassy in Colombia by Human Rights Watch reveal that in fiscal years 1992 and 1993, counternarcotics assistance was provided to units of the Colombian armed forces responsible for some of the worst human rights atrocities carried out in recent years, and that much of this aid went to units operating in areas not considered to be key drug-trafficking zones...
...3 In fact, 13 of the 14 Colombian army battalions implicated in human rights abuses in Amnesty International's 1994 report on Colombia received U.S...
...William F. Schulz, Executive Director, Amnesty International, "U.S.-Funded Human Rights Violators in Colombia," (Press Conference), October 29, 1996...
...involvement in El Salvador in the mid-1980s...
...Another 300 to 400 are disappeared each year...
...rry MacCaffrey at The gunmen did not act alone...
...While the news of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas, Mexico made international headlines last December, there was virtually no coverage of the 185 politically motivated massacres that took the lives of 1,042 victims in Colombia in 1997 alone.' While the United States has provided assistance to Colombia for many years under the guise of the "war on drugs," aid to the Colombian army was cut off in fiscal year 1994 due to human rights concerns...
...officials announced their intention to renew assistance to the Colombian army...
...The statistics speak for themselves...
...7. Author's interview, December 17, 1997...
...military personnel on the ground in Colombia, apart from those permanently stationed in the country, primarily engaged in counternarcotics training and the operation of U.S...
...Close to one million Colombians have been forced to flee their homes as a result of political violence...
...Documents obtained from the U.S...
...Last Bi on July, over 100 heavily armed men in military attire occupied the town of Mapiripdn, in Meta, for six days, killing some 30 local residents and virtually emptying the town as people fled in fear...
...weapons or training...
...support for the Colombian armed forces appears to be facilitating the consolidation of the Colombian drug trade...
...2. This reallocation of funds was approved by Congress in the 1998 foreign aid bill...
...Another $40 million channeled through obscure Pentagon funding accounts-which have only recently come to light--allows for the provision of additional military hardware and training over and above that provided by the annual foreign aid bill...
...Ironically," notes one Colombian analyst, "U.S...
...3. Human Rights Watch/Americas, Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996...
...8 The next major paramilitary attack took place from October 18 to 20, when paramilitaries took over the highly militarized town of Miraflores, in the heart of Guaviare department, killing at least four local residents whose names appeared on a list of alleged guerrilla supporters and provoking another exodus...
...Two recent massacres in the southeastern departments of Guaviare and Meta symbolize this terrifying trend...
...Evidence pointing to army complicity in the Mapiripin and Miraflores massacres has hindered U.S...
...According to the Bogota weekly, Cambio 16, the paramilitaries first flew into the small San Jos6 del Guaviare airport, which does double-duty as the antinarcotics police base, before going on to Meta...
...The FARC has virtual territorial control of vast areas where coca plantations thrive in the departments of Guaviare, Putumayo, Caquetd and parts of Meta, providing it with a very important and steady source of income...
...Statistics provided by Colombia's Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights...
...8. Author's interview, January 29, 1998...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 5
