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February
15, 2002
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
February
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ashcroft
the Bigot
Molly
Secours
Racism
and Real Estate
Wole Akande
World
Economic Forum:
The Aftermath
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Dita
Sari Tells Reebok
to "Shove It"
February
7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban's
War on Chess
John Chuckman
Howdee,
Dick!
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
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Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
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The New Crusade:
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The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
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A Pocket Guide to
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February 15,
2002
Colombia in War Time
By Phillip Cryan
President Bush's budget proposal includes $98
million in military aid and training to help the Colombian government
protect an oil pipeline from guerrilla attacks. The aid is being
pitched by the Bush administration and its Colombian counterpart,
the government of President Andres Pastrana, as a new and necessary
theater for the broadening "War on Terrorism."
Having recently returned from Colombia,
where I and a group of 36 other concerned U.S. citizens investigated
the effects of current U.S. aid and met with dozens of community
and church leaders, it is clear to me that the proposed counter-insurgency
support will create more, not less, terror in the lives of Colombian
men and women.
Collusion between the Colombian military
and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC)--the right-wing
paramilitary group that is responsible for over 70% of civilian
deaths in Colombia's civil war--is a long-standing and well-established
fact. Attempts to bring paramilitaries to justice and to root
out members of the military who collaborate with them have lacked
the political will to achieve concrete results. A senior U.S.
Embassy official in Bogotá told us, on condition of anonymity,
that although military-paramilitary collusion no longer exists
"at the command level," lower-ranking officers and
solders "have and will continut to have" ties to the
paramilitaries.
Riding by bus through Putumayo, the Department in southern Colombia
where U.S.-funded aerial herbicide spraying campaigns have been
focused, we were stopped by members of the paramilitary. They
boarded our bus and introduced themselves, confident and even
somewhat jovial despite the fact that a Counternarcotics Brigade,
created by U.S. "Plan Colombia" funding, was stationed
just a mile down the road. It was a shocking confrontation with
the persistent complicity, or perhaps collaboration, between
the two forces.
The paramilitaries were in fact provided
with weapons and training, during their first years of existence
(the late 1980s), by the Colombian military.
Now the Bush administration seeks to expand support to that military,
in defense of U.S. oil interests. There has been consistent and
vocal opposition to counter-insurgency aid from many members
of Congress since "Plan Colombia" was first proposed
in 1999. The Colombian conflict is complex and enduring--now
in its 38th year, in fact--and the U.S. should not let itself
be drawn into a military and human rights "quagmire,"
Congress-members have warned. Yet in the new climate of the "War
on Terrorism," the Bush administration seems to think it
can evade those concerns by presenting counter-insurgency aid
as a defense of "national security" and a stand against
terror.
Some of the public relations leg-work needed to justify this
bold initiative was kicked off during the SuperBowl, through
an ad campaign seeking to equate drug trafficking with terrorism.
The "War on Drugs" has been the only politically viable
justification for U.S. military aid to Colombia to date--what
better way to ease the transition from "War on Drugs"
to "War on Terrorism" than by making the two appear
identical? "Where do terrorists get their money?,"
one of the ads asked. "If you buy drugs, some of it may
come from you."
Narcotrafficker equals guerrilla equals terrorist: so the logic
goes. A war on any one of these must necessarily, already be
a war on them all. So what difference does it make if we extend
funds from counternarcotics to counterinsurgency?
The difference, of course, is the scale and nature of U.S. support
for a military that maintains ties with one of the most ruthless
killing forces in the world, the AUC. While two Colombian military
brigades defend Ecopetrol's (the State oil company's) facility
near Barrancabermeja, the paramilitaries openly assassinate,
"disappear" and torture labor leaders. A staggering
60% of the union organizers killed in the world last year were
killed in Colombia.
By a truly uncanny coincidence (if such profound synchronies
can indeed be called coincidences), barely a week after the SuperBowl
ads and the $98 million aid proposal, "Collateral Damage"--an
Arnold Schwarzenegger movie about a U.S. commando's heroic crusade
against Colombian narco-trafficker-guerrilla-terrorists--hit
theaters, having been postponed in the immediate aftermath of
September 11th.
What frightens me most is that the Bush
administration's proposal may be only a test balloon for far
more aggressive U.S. involvement in the Colombian conflict. The
exchange of human rights standards for oil access has characterized
U.S. foreign policy for decades. It is an indefensible and tragic
choice that should not be repeated in Colombia.
Phillip Cryan
is a fellow at the Pesticide
Action Network. He traveled to Colombia in January with
Witness for Peace, a social justice and human rights organization
based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at: phillipcryan@mindspring.com
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