COLOMBIA'S OTHER TARGETS - A NATION SUFFERS

HECTOR CALLED LATE Sunday night soon after we landed in Bogota to say
he would meet with us at 7 Monday morning. He never sets up meetings
far in advance, never visits his wife and children in his own house,
never sleeps in the same place two nights in a row. By giving up all
routine, he has managed to stay alive.

Hector's crime? He's a human rights worker in Colombia.

We were in Colombia meeting with Hector as part of Witness for Peace's
first exploratory delegation to Colombia. We had both worked with
Witness for Peace in the past, Paul as a photographer for the program
in Nicaragua from 1985 to 1990 and Pam as director of the North
Pacific Witness for Peace office from 1985 to 1993. Witness for Peace
is a faith- and conscience-based nonprofit group focused on changing
U.S. policy to support justice and sustainable economies in the Americas.

Last August, then-President Clinton waived congressional human rights
restrictions to permit military aid to Colombia, a country whose
military historically has the worst human rights record in the Western
hemisphere. We were outraged, as were human rights workers around the
globe. We decided to travel to Colombia with Witness for Peace to take
a stand against the waiver and to see for ourselves how this military
aid affected the people of Colombia.

The U.S. military aid is part of a package known as Plan Colombia,
which was designed by Colombian President Andres Pastrana to assist
with ending coca production in Colombia through a crop-substitution
initiative and through development assistance. Coca is the main
ingredient in cocaine. The plan called for a contribution of $4
billion from Colombia and $3.5 billion from the cocaine consuming
countries. The U.S. agreed to contribute $1.3 billion, but wanted the
majority of the money to be in the form of military assistance, which
had originally been a very small portion of Pastrana's Plan Colombia.

At this point, European countries, which had agreed to support Plan
Colombia with development assistance, withdrew their support,
indicating they believed that their contribution would be used only to
clean up the destruction brought about by the United States' military
approach. On Feb. 1, the European Parliament voted 474-1 in opposition
to the military approach of the current Plan Colombia. Human rights
workers in Colombia reported to us that the militarization of Plan
Colombia would only make their work more difficult and more dangerous.
"It's throwing gasoline on the flames," was their common response.

Before we traveled to Colombia, we questioned whether reducing cocaine
consumption in the United States by eradicating coca production was
truly the United States' aim. A landmark study by the conservative
Rand Corp. showed that dollar for dollar, drug treatment programs were
23 times more effective than source eradication in reducing cocaine
consumption. Treatment was found to be 10 times more effective than
border interdiction. If the purpose of our $1.3 billion contribution
to Plan Colombia is to reduce cocaine consumption, the money would be
better spent right here in the United States, where people are being
denied drug treatment every day. So what was the true purpose of the
$1.3 billion investment?

Colombia is exceedingly beautiful. The magnificent scenery and
biodiversity of its coastal lowlands, Amazon forests and snowcapped
mountains are unmatched in any country. It is rich in natural
resources - including petroleum, coal, iron and emeralds - and in
agricultural land and forests. Colombia could be supporting its 40
million inhabitants in a healthy, food-rich and clean
environment.

But instead, it's a country where 3 percent of the population owns 70
percent of the arable land and 18 percent of the population lives in
absolute misery. The social and economic inequities are extreme, even
by Latin American standards. Such a setting is a perfect scenario for
discontent, upheaval and crime; it's no surprise that there has been
an insurgency in Colombia for nearly four decades.

Our delegation of 25 included human rights workers, students, a
cardiologist, a professional photographer, several ministers, a
congressional aide, journalists and a drug policy expert. We landed in
Bogota on Jan. 7, and it was that night that Hector called to schedule
our meeting.

Hector Mondragon is the former adviser to the National Indigenous
Organization of Colombia, and in that capacity supported indigenous
people in their claims against oil interests in Colombia, particularly
Occidental Petroleum Corp. and BP Amoco Co. Ltd. In 1998, Hector's
name was circulated on a paramilitary hit list and he was forced to
leave Colombia. He later returned, but now his hands tremble, his eyes
scan the room constantly, his body jumps at the least unexpected noise.

Hector isn't the only human rights worker in Colombia who fears for
his life. Thirty thousand people are killed each year in Colombia. Of
the five labor leaders killed in the world last year, three were
Colombian. Judges, journalists, lawyers and anyone working for change
is a target. In spite of this, there is a strong and growing human
rights network.

After several days of meetings in Bogota, we flew to Putumayo, the
southern state bordering Ecuador and Peru that produces 50 percent to
60 percent of Colombia's coca and is the focus of the U.S. military
strategy. People repeatedly told us that Putumayo has historically
been neglected by the government. From the lack of farm-to-market
infrastructure to the competition of imported products as a result of
free trade agreements, farmers lose money by the time they get their
legal crops to market.

But coca is different. Farmers can clear a few acres of forest to grow
the coca, and buyers will come to their doors with cash. With coca,
farmers are able to pull themselves into a more tolerable existence -
but coca also brought human and environmental tragedy to Putumayo.

Soon after coca cultivation began, the presence of FARC (the Colombian
Revolutionary Armed Forces) increased. FARC was formed in 1964,
emerging from leftist peasant groups that organized in the 1950s in
response to rural repression and violence. It is currently the oldest
and largest guerrilla group in Colombia, and is financed through
kidnappings and taxes on drug cultivation as well as by income from
legitimate businesses and farms.

In 1998, the Colombian army established a base in Putumayo, and within
months, the paramilitary moved into its urban areas. While the
paramilitary groups are now outlawed, they were legally connected to
the military from 1964 until 1988. Today, the paramilitaries, in their
unofficial and clandestine status, are stronger than ever.

According to the September 1999 report by the Colombian Commission of
Jurists, the paramilitary groups are responsible for nearly 80 percent
of all atrocities. The February 2001 U.S. Department of State Human
Rights Report stated that "paramilitary forces find a ready support
base within the military and police, as well as among local civilian
elites."

As might have been expected, after the army and the paramilitary moved
into Putumayo, the bloodshed increased exponentially. The Rev. Alfonso
Gomez told us that of 107 deaths registered in his parish in the 2000,
92 were assassinations. Now his life is being threatened and he is
being forced to leave Colombia.

These farmers who have faced so much loss are now being aerially
sprayed with herbicides with the assistance of the U.S. military
money. Our money is paying for the herbicide, the planes, the pilots,
the armed helicopters. Our money is even paying the salaries of U.S.
civilians, hired by DynCorp in Virginia, to fly some of these planes
and helicopters.

We met with farmers who had been recently sprayed, and we saw video
after video of destroyed food crops. Paul returned to Putumayo after
the delegation left and visited these farms. Yes, coca was sprayed,
but so were pastures, fish ponds, yuca fields and fruit trees. Food
crops were destroyed, farm animals were killed, and people were
nauseated, had skin rashes and were facing starvation.

The farmers with whom we met do not want to grow coca, but they need a
cash crop and a way to market it. If they sign a letter of intent
saying they will stop growing coca, the Colombian government will
supposedly reciprocate with no fumigation for 12 months. In addition,
the government is to assist with alternative crop development,
infrastructure development and $1,000 in food assistance.

We spoke with farmers who had signed these letters and were still
being sprayed. An official of Puerto Asis, a city in Putumayo, said he
didn't know of anyone who had signed the letter and had actually
received the food assistance.

Coca is a crop that can grow in most climates, and as long as there is
crushing poverty around the world and a demand for cocaine in the
United States, poor farmers somewhere will take the risk. As coca
cultivation was reduced in Bolivia and Peru, it simply moved to Colombia.

In our two-hour meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, even David
Becker, deputy director of the narcotics division, admitted to the
balloon effect: You squeeze in one place, and it pops out in another.
But he said we weren't just fighting coca; we were defending
democracy. Human rights workers of Colombia and the European
Parliament clearly disagree with our method of defending democracy.

Carlos Castano, the head of the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia
(AUC), the paramilitary umbrella organization, admitted in a two-hour
televised interview that his group obtains 70 percent of its funding
through taxes on drug production. AUC's coca strongholds, however, are
distant from the state of Putumayo. The basic question of Colombians
is this: Why is the United States destroying only coca production in
the guerrilla-controlled areas, and not the paramilitaries' coca
fields to the north? Why has Washington coined the term
"narco-guerrillas" and not "narco-paramilitaries"?

The human rights workers who spoke with us all agreed that this was
not a war against drugs. When we asked Hector whether he saw any hope
for Colombia, he replied, "not in the near future." His view was that
there is no hope right now because the United States wants to control
the region's oil.

In an April 10, 2000, Washington Post editorial column, the late Sen.
Paul Coverdell, D-Ga., wrote that the situation now in Latin America
is similar to that of the Middle East a decade ago, "except that
Colombia provides us more oil today than Kuwait did then."

Much of Colombia's oil has not been tapped, and more oil reserves are
being discovered each year. Perhaps our real addiction is oil.

On Jan. 17, the day our delegation left Colombia, there was another
massacre. A paramilitary group killed 26 people in Sucre, in the
northern part of the country. Since Jan. 1, there had been 23
massacres, much higher than the recent national average of one a day.
When we asked what was the political agenda of the paramilitary, we
received no answer other than to keep things as they are, preserve the
status quo, keep the oil flowing. The February 2001 State Department
Report indicated that "paramilitary forces were responsible for an
increasing number of massacres ... ."

We met with a human rights ombudsman from an area in Putumayo who had
recently experienced aerial fumigation.

He said, "We don't understand the indiscriminate spraying. In my
opinion, it is a flagrant human rights violation. Nor do I understand
the ignorance of the U.S. population. Of course coca production occurs
in Putumayo. In our communities, it is small crops. We are victims of
historic abandonment of the state. No electricity, no potable water.
This abandonment has forced our young people to look to armed actors
for employment. Make others aware of what your money is being invested
in. Your contribution is money; ours is death, misery, poverty."

Why are we sending money to a military that has a horrendous human
rights record? Why are we sending money to a military that our own
State Department indicates has strong connections to the paramilitary?
If we are truly concerned about cocaine addiction, why we not making
addiction treatment more available? Why are we destroying people's
food crops? Why are we adding to the destruction of the Amazon rain
forest?

Upon returning to the United States, we spotted a bumper sticker that
read, "If you liked Vietnam, you'll love Colombia." Are we headed down
this same path? Are we entering a counterinsurgency quagmire in an
effort to ensure our access to Colombia's oil? This and other
questions will be explored at a public presentation at 7 p.m. Monday
at Harris Hall in Eugene.

The delegation envisioned what our $1.3 billion could do in Putumayo
if it were invested in alternative crop programs, infrastructure
development, schools and temporary food assistance.

Maybe then residents wouldn't have to join Colombia's 1.8 million
internally displaced people. Maybe then they wouldn't have to go
farther into the jungle to slash and burn more land for coca crops.
Maybe then their children wouldn't be forced to turn either to the
guerrillas or the paramilitaries for employment.

Pam Fitzpatrick of Eugene is a Social Security benefits counselor and
the former director of North Pacific Witness for Peace. Paul Dix of
Livingston, Mont., is a photographer who specialized in
photojournalism and extreme-sport photography. Fitzpatrick and Dix
will describe their visit to Colombia in a presentation at 7 p.m.
Monday at Harris Hall in the Lane County Courthouse.