U.S. drug war money may backfire
Critics fear worsening of human rights, Vietnam-style war in South America
Linda Diebel
LATIN AMERICA BUREAU
MEXICO CITY - Last August, U.S. President Bill Clinton went to Colombia for a few hours. There, protected by 4,500 Colombian soldiers, sharpshooters, armed boat patrols and his own White House security detail, he promised the United States would not get involved in a ``shooting war'' in Colombia.
``This is not Vietnam. Neither is it Yankee imperialism,'' declared Clinton in Cartagena, referring to Washington's $862 million (U.S.) military aid package for Colombia.
The U.S. military spending - the major chunk of a $1.3 billion (U.S.) regional plan - officially begins in January.
Its supporters say it's aimed at the drug war in a country that produces 85 per cent of the world's cocaine, and where rebel armies pull in millions by taxing the drug trade.
Critics say the United States is plunging headlong into Colombia's long and bloody civil war. Fighting drugs means fighting guerrillas, and that involves the U.S. in counter-insurgency operations in yet another Latin American nation, among them El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala.
Colombian President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia is criticized as a military buildup, thinly glossed by development money, which will worsen an already desperate human rights situation and lead to a Vietnam-style war blowing up in South America and exploding into the Isthmus of Panama.
``This is always how it starts,'' wrote U.S. author Patrick Symmes recently in Harper's Magazine.
``Colombia isn't Vietnam in 1965; it is closer to Vietnam in 1955, when America's wise men offered military aid, not civil reform, and shipped ammunition, not election monitors.''
U.S. money is part of Pastrana's Plan Colombia. It was originally touted by U.S. and Colombian officials as a $7.5 billion (U.S.) ``peace and prosperity'' plan with major developmental spending from the international community, including Canada.
But its focus appears to be military operations.
It has been criticized by human rights groups, Colombia's neighbours, United Nations and European officials, Democrats on Capitol Hill and, in a recent reversal, by the powerful Republican chair of the congressional committee overseeing the plan.
The Colombian army, buttressed by paramilitary squads, is fighting leftist rebels, including the largest group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.
The peace process has broken down.
FARC rebels control a huge southern demilitarized zone, and Pastrana has given them until Jan. 31 to return to peace talks or lose the zone - a threat he probably can't carry out. FARC rebels say they won't negotiate until Pastrana cracks down on the death squads.
The war is already spreading.
Thousands of refugees have poured into Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama, destabilizing large regions. Rebels and paramilitaries operate outside Colombia, and illegal arms shipments flow across borders.
Recently, it was revealed that disgraced Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, once a CIA informer and now on the run, ran illegal arms shipments into Colombia for years, depositing a fortune in Swiss banks along the way.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, increasingly volatile and angry at U.S. policy, recently welcomed a FARC commander to the floor of his National Assembly in Caracas where she attacked Plan Colombia.
And now, the U.S. wants to expand Plan Colombia.
There are preliminary plans for major increases in military spending to Colombia's neighbours, including Peru, Panama and Ecuador. These proposals now pass from the Clinton administration to Republican President-elect George W. Bush.
``The Colombian wars have to be approached with the same level of regional and international engagement we saw in Central America, Kosovo, Northern Ireland and the Mideast,'' Bernard Aronson told the New York Times last week. Aronson was top state department official for Latin America under Bush's father, president George Bush.
Human rights agencies warn against further arming and training a Colombian army, which has been indisputably linked to death squads.
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`The humanitarian catastrophe is going to get worse. Colombians are calling on us to stop the escalation of the U.S. military machine. They don't need any more guns. There are enough guns in Colombia. They need support for the peace process.'- Bill Fairbairn, director of Toronto-based Interchurch Committee on Human Rights in Latin America
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``The humanitarian catastrophe is going to get worse,'' says Toronto church activist Bill Fairbairn, who recently visited Colombia.
``Colombians are calling on us to stop the escalation of the U.S. military machine. They don't need any more guns. There are enough guns in Colombia. They need support for the peace process.''
Colombia is already the third largest recipient of U.S. weapons in the world, after Israel and Egypt.
``One man said to me, `We're getting $9 to buy guns, and $1 to buy the coffins to bury the people killed by the guns,' '' says Fairbairn, director of the Toronto-based Interchurch Committee on Human Rights in Latin America.
Plan Colombia critics ask why the war on drugs isn't being waged against paramilitary armies, who also live off the drug trade.
Death squad leader Carlos Castao, infamous for his barbarity, reportedly took control of a revamped Medellin Cartel after he helped Colombian and U.S. drug officials kill narcotics boss Pablo Escobar.
Castao says 70 per cent of his financing comes from drugs.
He hasn't been out of Colombia for seven years since, according to Time magazine, he visited Disney World in Orlando, Fla., with his wife and two children and ``the full knowledge of U.S. officials.''
``It's clear the U.S. now uses drug-trafficking to intervene in the continent, as before they used the Cold War or the struggle against Communism, not as a reason, but as a pretext to keep producing arms and keep them coming,'' says the Panamanian Bishops Conference, in a recent statement on Plan Colombia.
An Amnesty International report warns of escalating the war: ``Social and developmental assistance programs included in (Plan Colombia) cannot disguise its essentially military character.
``There is conclusive evidence that paramilitary groups continue to operate with the tacit or active support of the Colombian armed forces,'' it says. ``Evidence has also emerged that Colombian army personnel, trained by U.S. Special Forces, have been implicated (in) serious human rights violations, including the massacre of civilians.''
Amnesty also raises the spectre of the U.S. military working with death squads on the ground.
``Amnesty is concerned that paramilitary organizations may be employed as part of the military strategy contemplated in Plan Colombia,'' it says.
New York Republican Benjamin Gilman, chair of the House international relations committee, recently withdrew his support for Plan Colombia.
In an October letter to outgoing U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey, he urged military support be redirected to the Colombian police - an admission he has lost faith in the Colombian army.
``If we fail early on with Plan Colombia, as I fear, we could lose the support of the American people for our efforts to fight illicit drugs abroad,'' writes Gilman.
There are increasing signs of complications for the U.S. military.
This week, for example, an FBI ballistics analyst began a new investigation into allegations the Colombian air force dropped a U.S.-made bomb on a Colombian village two years ago, killing 17 people.
Two months ago, FARC rebels shot down a U.S.-made Blackhawk helicopter, killing 22 soldiers.
What Plan Colombia entails - and who is paying for it - is increasingly in doubt. Pastrana's original package included some $4 billion (U.S.) from his own war-stripped treasury, as well as $2 billion (U.S.) from the European community, Canada, Japan and international lending institutions.
The European Commission, nervous about the U.S. military component, reduced its spending to $250 million (U.S.) and stipulated the money go directly into non-governmental programs. Belgium condemned Plan Colombia outright; Canada has not done that.
As a result, Colombian officials tend to lump Canada's roughly $10 million (Cdn) in annual developmental assistance as part of Plan Colombia.
Ottawa's bilateral aid was in place ``long before Plan Colombia was ever put forward,'' says Canadian Ambassador Guillermo Rishchynski. ``That's the Canadian government's position. We are working bilaterally with Colombia.''
When asked if Canada is part of Plan Colombia or not, he says: ``I think the way to characterize it is that there is a fair deal of international support for many of the priorities included in (Pastrana's) strategic vision. But the way each of the countries chooses to work with Colombia is the result of individual bilateral consultations.''
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