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 by Lynn Biddle, Steering Committee Member The First Complication: There are at least four armed factions: the army, two major leftist guerrilla groups, FARC and the ELN, and the largest of the illegal, far-right paramilitary groups, AUC. Paramilitary forces are often referred to as “paras.” The army aids and supplies the paras, and their men have been known to switch uniforms. Former guerrillas often join the paramilitaries because the pay is better. All these groups, except the army, commit terrible human rights abuses, including torture and massacres, against neutral civilians, and the army uses the paras as its proxy for such abuses to keep its own record “clean.” The Government of Colombia rarely apprehends or prosecutes members of the paramilitary. The paras commit roughly 70% of these human rights crimes. Death by chainsaw is one of their specialties. The U.S. has placed both FARC and AUC on its official list of “International Terrorists,” but so far it is concerned only with the leftists. The Second Complication: Now there are five: five armed factions since the U.S. army and its private subcontractors have arrived in force. (If we assume that the army and the subcontractors are both “playing by the same rules,” as they like to say in Washington war-speak. If not and the subcontractors are “wild cards,” or if the CIA is also there with its “dirty tricks,” ... Well, then I’ve lost count. More on this later. The Third Complication: Leadership and political philosophy. That's easy, because there aren't any. Colombia may have democratic elections, but ever since Colombia's independence, political offices have been divided up between two parties, the Liberal and the Conservative. For decades they even had an agreement to alternate presidential terms between them. The only political agenda they have is a common one: to keep the power in hands of the very small and very wealthy elite. It would be hard to argue that the leftist guerrillas have the welfare of the common people in mind when they keep killing them with the only apparent motive being to terrorize them. As for popular leaders, except for leaders of one or another armed group, they are systematically assassinated. Union officials, heads of indigenous organizations, human rights workers, religious leaders. In short, all civil leaders are targeted. Still, knowing this, there are always brave men and women who step forward to take the places of those who have been murdered. The new president, Alvaro Uribe, campaigned on a promise to defeat the guerrillas militarily and even hinted about using paramilitary force if necessary. He has said he plans on enlisting citizens to spy on one another. It is a measure of the level of insecurity in Colombia that Uribe won the election easily. In April, then President Pastrana finally gave up on peace negotiations with FARC and took back the safe haven the size of Switzerland which he had granted to them as a place to hold negotiations. In return, FARC promised a bloodbath, and said that they would bring the war into the cities for the first time in the nearly 50 years that the current civil war has dragged on. As a result, the middle and upper classes began to feel the effects of this war for the first time. For most of Colombia’s war-torn history, the elite have used peasants as their proxies to fight their wars for them. (Anyone in Colombia with a high school diploma is exempt from conscription into military service.) A few months ago, there was a mass exodus from Colombia of people fleeing the expected “bloodbath,” but, apparently, aside from knocking out the electricity a few times, FARC’s campaign of urban violence has been mostly a fizzle. Meanwhile, back in the U.S. (and more on Complication Number Two): Congress has restricted U.S. military assistance for Colombia to combating drug production and trafficking for the past 15 years, mostly because of human rights concerns. Similarly, under Plan Colombia, Congress granted aid to Colombia to be used only to fight the “war on drugs” and with additional specific environmental and human rights conditions on the use of this money. Clinton sidestepped the human rights condition. Recently declassified documents show that the first President Bush didn't pay much attention to the no-military-use conditions. Now, George W. Bush wants to eliminate all the conditions, use the aid to join in the civil war on the side of the government of Colombia (which would, effectively, also include the paras) increase the scope of the aid to include the other countries of the Andean region, double the area fumigated, and significantly increase the amount of the aid. Just one more, little, thing: some of the money is to be used to guard an oil pipeline owned by Occidental Petroleum, which is frequently blown up by guerrillas. Opponents of this plan say this would be a form of corporate welfare, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. By the time that you read this, Congress should have finished its debates and have voted on the ‘02 Emergency Supplemental Aid Bill and the regular ‘03 Appropriations Bill, and the extent of President Bush's powers in Colombia and the other countries of the Andes will have been decided. We may not like what our government is doing in Colombia, but as taxpayers, we are paying for it. Many believe that increased military aid will just escalate the violence and bring us into another “quagmire” similar to Vietnam. The rebels have said that they will neither give up nor negotiate peace until certain structural changes are made in the government and important institutions which will bring more democracy and equality to their country. Many Colombians have given up hope for peace and decided that the best they can do is to pray. | ||||
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