WASTING COLOMBIA

American coke heads and drug warriors fuel a bloody civil war

In the dawn of July 15, 1997, members of the ACCU, one of the largest
right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia, walked into the southern
village of Mapiripan and started killing. They rounded up villagers whom
they suspected of rebel sympathies, took them to the local slaughterhouse,
and there began to torture them and chop them up. The first victim was
quartered of his limbs, then hung by a hook like a slab of beef. Others
were decapitated and their severed heads dribbled through the village's
dusty streets like grisly soccer balls by the executioners. Body parts with
no sporting value were tossed in the nearby Guaviare River.

The death squad had arrived in a plane which touched down at nearby San
Jose de Guaviare, a U.S.-financed air base. During the five days of torture
and death, Judge Leonardo Ivan Cortes put at least eight calls to police
and military stationed at San Jose pleading for help. No one responded.
Curiously, the army unit that controls the base made no record of the ACCU
aircraft, despite their policy of registering every craft upon arrival.

Scenes like the slaughter at Mapiripan have become a regular feature in the
bloody saga of Colombia, where the advent of Cold War Latin American
anti-communist terror techniques like the "necktie"-tongues pulled through
a slice in the throat-have made a symbolic return .

As in many other Latin American conflicts of the past, Colombian civilians
are the victims of a war that fails to discriminate between combatants and
innocents. The terror that plagues the rural hamlets caught between the
Marxist guerrillas, the Colombian military and state-sponsored death squads
shows no signs of abatement. Indeed, when the leader of the ACCU, Carlos
Castano, proudly took responsibility for the Mapiripan massacre, he
promised "many more Mapiripans."

Enter the United States, eager to fight drugs on Colombian soil and prevent
them from coming north. Under the banner of the "drug war," the U.S. has
greased its way into the conflict in Colombia, lavishing arms, equipment
and training on the Colombian security forces to counter the ever-mounting
strength of the "narco-guerrillas," who finance their insurgency with drug
money to the tune of $100 million a year. The Colombian military, in turn,
hands over U.S. arms and support to paramilitary forces, who employ them in
a terror campaign against the Colombian people.

Between 1988 and 1997, according to the Intercongregational Commission for
Justice and Peace, there were over 33,000 "political" killings of
non-combatant Colombian civilians. In recent years the majority of these
murders have been carried out by paramilitary groups with guns furnished by
the U.S. The culture of terror has turned more than 1 million impoverished
Colombians into "desplazados"-refugees in their own country.

While the costs to taxpayers runs high-and higher to the Colombian victims
of political violence-the drug war continues to yield no benefits. Like the
eternally-foundering Sisyphus, the U.S. eradicates drug crops in one locale
only to see them pop up in another. Opium, for instance, was beaten in Peru
and now prospers in Colombia. If they can defeat it there (which is less
likely), the fallow poppy fields of Afghanistan will flourish once again.
As long as demand-side American junkies ingest it, dope will find its way
across the border.

The counter-drug habit

When most Americans think of Colombia, a country flanked by two oceans at
the intercontinental gateway between North and South America, they think of
drugs. For decades, the country has dominated the hemisphere in the
refining and trafficking of cocaine and heroin to satisfy the indulgences
and addictions of users in the United States. Today, Colombia accounts for
80 percent of the cocaine and 75 percent of the heroin entering the States,
according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency statistics.

In an ongoing campaign to stem the tide of narcotics flowing into North
America, the U.S. has made Colombia a prime theater in the battle. Like
many of its narco-wars around the world, the U.S. counter-drug campaign has
all the trappings of a military operation, with the Drug Enforcement Agency
sharing chores with the Pentagon and the CIA.

The embers of proxy warfare that marked Cold War brinkmanship-fueled by the
Superpowers and driven in developing nations around the world-have been
snuffed for a decade. But in Colombia, a new justification for U.S.
military aid has been found in counter-narcotics. The boogeyman of Soviet
influence has been replaced by the proliferation of the illicit drug trade.
State Department figures show that between 1990 and 1997, the U.S. gave
more than $731 million to Colombia in counter-narcotics aid, the majority
of it military-related.

Fueling American involvement in the civil war are the close ties between
the narcotics trade and guerrilla activity. The largest active guerrilla
groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Army of
National Liberation (ELN) protect the drug crops and processing facilities
of Colombia's narco-entrepreneurs. There's good reason: a limitless source
of revenue for their war against the state-$100 million a year, the
Colombian daily El Tiempo reports. The well-financed rebels are outspending
the military and gaining control over huge swaths of rural land. According
to some estimates, at least half of the country's territory is now under
the control of guerrilla groups.

Of course, the cash cow of the narcotics industry brings plenty for both
sides. Corrupt military officials and paramilitary groups make their own
gun money protecting and operating drug refining laboratories throughout
the country.

Given the substantial guerrilla threat, many observers believe that the
U.S. government is not only concerned with combating drugs, but also
protecting the substantial economic resources in the region, particularly
oil. Counter-narcotics also means counterinsurgency.

Following last fall's presidential election in Colombia, the Clinton
Administration took a sharp turn in Colombian aid policy. Anti-drug funding
was frozen in 1995 following accusations that then-President Ernesto Samper
had received a $6 million campaign contribution from the Cali drug cartel.
But with the U.S. government-approved Andres Pastrana now in office, the
Clinton Administration has bowed to drug hawks in Congress and approved
roughly $280 million in drug war support for the "re-certified" Colombia.
Aid levels have now reached an all-time high, making Colombia the
hemispheric leader in military support from the U.S.

The increased aid was announced earlier this month by Defense Secretary
William Cohen's in Bogota, where he promised President Pastrana more
training for Colombian military units, more intelligence sharing, and the
creation of a "bilateral working group" for U.S. and Colombian officials to
meet and strategize on a regular basis.

Aiding abuse

In 1994, Amnesty International released a report claiming that U.S. aid
shipments were going to equip Colombian army units responsible for human
rights violations. A subsequent audit by the U.S. military confirmed that
the U.S. had aided all but one of the army units which the organization had
cited for abuses.

Congressional action followed, banning arms shipments to army units
connected to human rights violations. These units are currently being
vetted of troublesome personnel, according to the Colombian army, which now
boasts three "clean" battalions.

The bulk of this year's aid package is slated for the Colombian National
Police, whose human rights rap sheet is relatively short in comparison to
the army's. But many observers point out that monitoring the end-use of
military aid can be difficult. "It's almost impossible to tell where the
military equipment gets used," says Adam Isaacson of the Center for
International Policy, a Washington D.C.-based peace advocacy group, "You
can track the big stuff, like helicopters, but small arms-no. Training is
even worse. You train a guy...Who knows where he is going to end up?"

Shockingly, half of the Colombian officers cited for violations in a recent
human rights report graduated from the School of the Americas, the Fort
Benning, Georgia academy that has reared many future torturers and
murderers for counterinsurgency operations in Latin America. These
graduates include three of the officers implicated in the Trujillo
"chainsaw" massacres of the late 1980s, killings in which SOA graduates
tortured helpless peasants-including old women-before stuffing them into
coffee sacks and hacking them to pieces.

In 1996, Human Rights Watch published a secret Colombian Defense Ministry
document, Order 200-05/91. This document showed that in 1991, U.S.
Department of Defense officials and CIA agents advised the Colombian
military how to create intelligence networks that partners military
officials with civilian operatives-generally paramilitary groups-to gather
information and carry out operations-a direct violation of the Colombian
law that prohibits such relationships. Nowhere in Order 200-05/91 were
narcotics mentioned. Such episodes fuel speculation that U.S. intelligence
agencies are more interested in crushing the insurgency than combating drugs.

One of these networks, under the command of the Colombian Navy and based in
the oil refining hub of Barrancabermeja, went on a political killing spree
in 1992 and 1993, murdering at least 57 people suspected of sympathizing or
participating with the guerrillas. The victims included human rights
workers, trade unionists, and members of the networks that spoke up about
the crimes.

Testifying before the Colombian Attorney General, one of the network's
operatives, Carlos Vergara Amaya, explained to prosecutors the code
language used between civilian hit men and their naval taskmasters: "'There
are some broken motors. I need you to repair them. They are in such and
such a place.' And they would give the address. 'Take good mechanics and
good tools.' Mechanics meant hit men, good tools meant weapons, and the
motors meant the victims."

Despite the fact that these "killer networks" were eventually exposed and
disbanded, human rights observers say the unholy trysts of the Colombian
military and their paramilitary partners has only become more intimate in
recent years. Stung by international condemnation, the military now relies
heavily on their civilian counterparts to carry the rhythm of political
terror. According to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, the
military-paramilitary partnership is "a sophisticated mechanism, in part
supported by years of advice, training, weaponry and official silence from
the United States, that allows Colombia to fight a dirty war and Colombian
officialdom to deny it."

As the military increasingly fosters death squads, the armed groups have
become bigger and stronger, and use their growing strength against the
civilian population. In 1997, right-wing paramilitary groups were
responsible for the large majority of that year's 185 "massacres"-defined
as the murder of four or more noncombatants at once-according to the
Colombian non-governmental Permanent Committee for Human Rights.

The drastic income disparities that plague the country-reflected in a per
capita GDP of a little over $2,446 in 1998-have driven many peasants into
the ranks of guerrilla groups. Despite their populist roots, the guerrillas
themselves account for roughly 14 percent of political massacres. For
example, when the guerrilla ELN recently attacked the Machuca oil pipeline,
more than 60 bystanders were killed.

The politics of impunity

In 1994, the constitutional courts in Colombia ruled that cases involving
human rights violations cannot be tried by military tribunals. Despite
this, the military continues to pluck these cases from civilian
jurisdiction, especially when the alleged perpetrators include high ranking
army officials. "This is a virtual rubber stamp for impunity," says Robin
Kirk of Human Rights Watch, pointing out that none of the officers with a
rank higher than major who have been charged with human rights crimes have
ever been convicted in the military courts.

In the case of the Barrancabermeja murders, for instance, strong testimony
pointed to Lt. Col. Rodrigo Quinones Cardenas, chief of naval intelligence,
as the man identifying the "motors" and giving the green light to proceed
with the killings. Nevertheless, Quinones remained a free man pending trial
and was later acquitted of all charges by a military tribunal.

The case of General Farouk Yanine is similar. A Fifth Brigade commander-and
School of the Americas alumnus, Yanine was based in the Middle Magdalena
region, which since the early 1980s has been a cradle for paramilitary
activity. In 1989, a judicial commission composed of Colombian judges and
prosecutors were sent to the region to investigate several paramilitary
murders in that area. Under orders from General Yanine, investigators say,
the paramilitaries massacred 13 of the commission members in the midst if
their inquiry. Despite the heinous crime and its obvious contempt for the
rule of law, Yanine was acquitted by a tribunal last year. He retired from
his military post with honors.

The total dearth of high-level accountability for human rights crimes has
become impossible for the U.S. government to ignore, which in it's latest
human rights report denounced the Colombian judicial system for "an almost
unbroken record" of acquittals for senior officers in the military courts.
Despite their concern, the U.S. has made no real demands that the Colombian
government put an end to this malevolent system. The Colombian president
has authority over the military tribunals, and the constitutional power to
prohibit them from challenging the authority of the civilian courts. "So
far, that has not happened," says Kirk.

The drug war and geopolitics

The U.S. continues to keep the darker corners of the war in Colombia at
arms length. The atrocities of Central America and elsewhere have not faded
from public memory, and Administration officials tread lightly around
issues of intervention, maintaining a steadfast policy that aid to Colombia
is strictly for fighting drugs, not guerrillas.

In a recent press conference, a senior U.S. official said that the
Colombian military has "been in a struggle for a long time to protect a
freely elected government and clearly there are areas that we can help them
in ... " When pressed about what these "areas" may be, the official quickly
added, "We do not have any interest in getting involved in a
counterinsurgency program in Colombia. Period."

But there are those in Washington who speak more frankly about the need for
military assistance to Colombia. Major F. Andy Messing, Jr., executive
director of the foreign affairs think-tank, National Defense Council
Foundation, says "In reality, there is no separation. The drugs and the
guerrillas are a mismo, as they say in Spanish-the same. So for anybody to
(separate the two) is naive." Messing, who retired from U.S. Army Special
Forces and has visited dozens of conflict zones throughout the globe,
concedes that Washington's official policy-which claims that military aid
can be used "exclusively" for drug purposes-doesn't jibe with reality.
"That'll change," says Messing, "But it will change too late." He believes
the U.S. is not doing enough to prop up the Colombian state, which is
crucial to both drug interdiction and the protection of our commercial
interests. The election of the Castro-friendly Hugo Chavez as president of
Venezuela, the return of the Panama Canal in 2000, and his belief that the
Colombian guerrillas could take over the country and create a "narco-state"
within a year, convinces Messing that the "Southern Cone" is slipping out
of the sphere of U.S. hegemony. If that happens, the U.S. would be helpless
to choke off Colombia's production of drugs. Also at risk would be 16
percent of the America's oil supply. "It only takes a 5 percent oil
variation to put the U.S. in gas lines," he warns.

To some, Major Messing may seem like a Cold War holdover, preaching a sort
of "neo-domino theory" to scare policy makers into committing ever more
military resources to the Colombia war. But Messing is a resonant voice
among congressional drug hawks like Dan Burton and John Mackey. And from
the swelling military aid provided by the State Department and the Pentagon
this year, it appears that he is catching the ear of the White House as well.

While official anti-drug aid levels have risen to an all-time high, reports
suggest that the Clinton Administration may be making an end run around
congressional appropriations to provide covert assistance to the Colombian
military. Last August, the Dallas Morning News quoted anonymous U.S.
intelligence and counter-narcotics sources and several operatives under
U.S. government contract claiming that "tens of millions of taxpayer
dollars are going into covert operations across southern Colombia
employing, among others, U.S. Special Forces, former Green Berets, Gulf War
veterans and even a few figures from covert CIA-backed operations in
Central America during the 1980s." Some of these personnel, the article
claims, worked beyond the scope of counter-narcotics, engaging in direct
combat with guerrillas.

Overdose

May 19 marked the one-year anniversary of a dark moment in the struggle for
human rights in Colombia. On that date, two long-time members of the Center
for Research and Popular Education (CINEP) were killed in their Bogota
apartment by men carrying government identification. Despite false
newspaper reports that "three guerrillas were killed," the executions sent
a chilling message to other human rights workers about the price of
activism in Colombia. One year later, hundreds of thousands of Colombians
across the country marched in protest to commemorate the killings, no doubt
fueled by an eight-person massacre by the paramilitaries only two days
earlier. Such a dramatic display of national outrage clearly demonstrates
that Colombians have reached the limits of their tolerance for a cycle of
death and terror financed by both sides of the drug war.

Meanwhile, America pursues a quixotic war against Colombian drugs to "save
the lives" of the thousands of American drug abusers. But the people of
Colombia have had enough.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski