THE WAR ON DRUGS FROM THE SUPPLY SIDE

Last October 25 a paramilitary patrol landed on the small town of El Aro in
Colombia's northern Antioquia province, with the intention of "doing away
with the guerrillas." For five days the town was converted into a
concen-tration camp. First, they killed Andres Mendoza, Wilmar Restrepo,
RosaMaria Barrera, and Dora Angela Areiza in front of everybody.

Before leaving El Aro the paras assassinated 64-year-old Marco Aureho Areiza
who owned the town's store. Prior to killing him, they tied him to a tree in
the plaza, tortured him, pulled out his eyes and heart, and rubbed salt all
over his body. His wife and children were forcefully taken to see his
remains. On leaving, the paramilitary burned the town. The result of the
paramilitary presence in El Aro was 51 of the 68 town's houses destroyed and
10 small farms looted and burned. Another 5 peasants were killed and the
paras took with them 1,300 heads of cattle and 130 mules and horses.

After the paramilitary left, the 250 survivors buried the bodies of their
friends and relatives, and fled to nearby towns, joining some 1,500 other
refugees from the region, adding to the one and a-half million refugees in
the country.

Colombia has been for many years the window case democracy which the U.S.
State Department loves to show off as Latin America's oldest and most
durable democracy. Yes, Colombia fulfills all the formal requisites of a
democracy: elections are held every four years, the three branches of
government function in different buildings, even though their powers are not
separate. A string of civilian presidents sign all kinds of international
treaties on human rights, women's rights, environmental rights, and
children's rights. Colombia holds its place at the United Nations, the OAS,
and the ILO where it has no moral problems with the fact that more labor
leaders are killed in Colombia than in any other country in the world.

Colombia has always, had two political parties, Liberals and Conservatives,
whose power struggles have caused many wars. The last one, La Violencia,
from 1948 to 1953, left more than 300,000 dead. Killings continued on a
lower scale through the 1960s and 1970s. These two political entities might
as well be considered one party with two heads, because there is no
ideological difference between them and they hold the same position on
social and eco-nomic issues.

Colombia is not a poor country. It has abundant resources such as oil, coal,
gold, emeralds, platinum, and uranium. It exports coffee, flowers, sugar,
and bananas. An article in the Wall Street Journal published last' year said
that "Colombia boasts continuous economic growth, by far the best in Latin
America and perhaps in the world." Yet there is much hunger in Colombia.
Colombia's tragedy is the result of deep inequalities - 3 percent of the
people own 70 percent of the arable land-and the lack of political will to
implement social, political, and economic reforms.

Because of these deep inequalities and violence, guerrilla movements started
forming in the late 1930s. Today there are two major guerrilla forces, FARC
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and ELN (Ejercito de
Liberacion Nacional).

In 1985 a challenge to the two political parties came about when the
government, in one of its periodic peace processes, offered amnesty to those
guerrillas who would give up their arms and become a political party
competing in elections. Created by former guerrillas, the Union Patriotica
Party (UP) organized at the grass roots and appealed to a broad range of
Colombian citizens who believed Liberals and Conservatives had done nothing
to represent their interests. Elections came and UP enjoyed extensive
electoral success: city council members, mayors, state assembly and national
Congress members were elected. There was a sense of being a democracy at
last. Except that virtually all of the UP's elected officials and the
party's only two presidential candidates were killed. About 4,000 of them at
last count. The real number of UP grass-roots activists and sympathizers has
been lost.

Colombia has a privileged geographical location as the only country in South
America with coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This particular
geographic location was the main reason why Colombia became, in the 1970s, a
key stop in the trade of cocaine brought from Peru and Bolivia. This
stopover for drug trade was initially made by Miami Cubans who wanted to
profit from drugs after the American troops came home hooked from Vietnam.
Contacts were made with the un-derworld in Colombia and with the emerald
trade. Soon the Colombians outdid their Cuban partners and became the main
middlepeople in the drug trade.

Initially Bolivia and Peru produced coca leaves and paste and the paste was
brought to Colombia where it would be processed and refined to cocaine and
distributed to the always hungry U.S. market. So we find two contradictory
ille-gal forces, FARC and drug traffickers, co-habiting the vast rain
forests of Colombia's Amazon basin. In this way the drug trade with all its
money and power became another factor in the old and vicious Colombian war.

The Players The displaced peasants: The peasants, who have fled from terror
during all of these 50 years of war in the countryside, have two options: to
go to the big cities and become beggars and prostitutes or go to the
rainforest to colonize the land. If they choose the latter, they till the
land and plant crops such as corn or plantains. Since these areas were never
developed, they lack transportation routes. Only by using the big rivers and
crossing hundreds of miles can the crop reach Bogota or other markets. By
the time it gets there, the crop is rotten or has become so costly that all
the profit is practically lost. There is only one alternative open to
peasant farmers: growing coca leaves. They do not have to worry about
transportation because the drug lords' economic machinery picks up the
harvested coca at the farm. Coca is more profitable than corn in the "free
market."

The guerrillas: FARC and ELN have a political agenda that calls for agrarian
reform, democratization, and protection of natural resources from
multi-national corporations. But the Conservative and Liberal parties have
never allowed third party or grass-roots opposition.

Colombian politics is very exclusionary. Guerrillas have used kidnappings of
rich people to finance their activities. They also place land mines in areas
where they are active, and the ELN has a penchant for bombing oil pipelines
causing untold ecological damage.

In the 1980s paramilitary groups such as MAS (Death to Kidnappers) were
formed when enraged cattlepeople joined forces with drug traffickers against
guerrilla kidnappings. Recently guerrillas announced that they would also
start attacking civilians they believe are friends or relatives of
paramilitaries, which means fur-ther spreading the conflict to the civilian
population. This violates international humanitarian law. Today, the
guerillas hold virtual control of vast regions of the countryside where for
most of this century the only presence of the state has been the army. Since
guerrillas and drug traffickers generally operate in the same areas, many
guerrilla fronts tax drug trafficking operations, while protecting
plantations of coca, processing, and shipping drugs, just as they tax any
area that comes under their control, and in this way they benefit from the
drug trade. But to say that guerrillas are "narco-guerrillas" is a
simplification.

The drug traffickers: Colombia's rigidly stratified class system does not
give much opportunity for people to advance socially. In Medellin, for
example, the textile capital of Latin America, many people were left
unemployed when factories closed during the 1970s economic recession.
Unemployed people plus refugees fleeing from terror make an easy breeding
ground for drug trafficking. The under-world and the ruthless emerald-trade
Mafia in the state of Boyaca quickly took advantage of the promising drug
trade. Fortunes were made quickly by this new class, which became wealthier
than the traditional elites. They saw themselves as much entrepreneurs as
the coffee or sugar barons and demanded their share of power. Money talks
and soon those who did not sell themselves were eliminated. Among them the
incorruptible leaders of the UP party. Here the drug people figured out how
to kill two birds with one stone: since the UP represented the left, and
since the drug traffickers sought to win grace from the viscerally
anti-communist Colombian elites and military, they proceeded to go after UP
people and kill them, as well as non-combatant peasants suspected of
guerilla sympathies such as the ones in El Aro. The drug traffickers in this
way also started to get land. In the last seven years drug traffickers have
taken between four to five million hectares of the best Colombian land. They
are not interested in growing anything, they just want to gain social
status, and owning land gives status. In taking the land, they drive the
peasants out and introduce private armies to protect them.

The Army: Keep in mind that Colombia's army is Simon Bolivar's army which
crossed the Andes in an epic march and gave the first defeat to the Spanish
empire. Made up of peasants, that army and its aristocratic and enlightened
leader sought to found a republic where democracy, freedom, and human rights
would prevail. That army later became the private army of the ruling elites
and a proxy army for a foreign power. Fighting a guerrilla war in the
tropics for 50 years has made it the most seasoned army in this hemisphere,
and the most brutal. Lately, as documented by the BBC, this army has been
renting itself out to protect multinational corporations' properties.
Colombia's list of graduates from the School of the Americas is the longest
of any Latin American country. Colombians started training in 1947 and have
continued to the present. Colombians will roudly tell anybody that they are
not only students but teachers at SOA.

The Paramilitary: In November 1996 Human Rights Watch released a report
called "Colombia's Killer Networks: the Military-Paramilitary Partnership
and the U.S.," which documents the historical links between U.S. Cold War
strategies, political violence in Colombia, and the nurturing of
paramilitaries by the CIA and the Pentagon since the 1950s.

Paramilitaries are a creation of the Colombian state. They represent an
attempt to cover up the brutalities of the army which are continually
reported by reputable human rights organizations. Amnesty International,
Human Rights Watch, and the myriad of Colombian NGOs, at tremendous risks
and despite the numerous killings they suffer, keep reporting atrocities
such as the one in El Aro.

These paramilitary groups act together with the military, but carry out
irregular actions in order to blur the borders between what is civilian and
what is military. It is a perverted mechanism because it resorts to secrecy
and makes a mockery of democracy and its institutions. When paramilitaries
are created, a state's responsibility ceases to exist.

Father Javier Giraldo, in Colombia: The Genocidal Democracy, reveals some of
the charac-teristics of Colombia's paramilitaries. The paras receive support
from trade organizations and powerful businesses such as export agriculture,
cattlemen, oil companies and drug traffickers. They get political support
from the military and leaders of the traditional parties. They receive
military support from the Army's local battalion and brigade. The judicial
system protects them by absolving the responsible parties and discontinuing
the criminal proceedings. Or if the courts condemn someone, they refuse to
investigate the lines of command. The executive and the legislative powers
provide the military who organize and direct this criminal structure with
all kinds of promotions in rank and honors.

More insidious is the military-paramilitary modus operandi of the last ten
years. The strategy has been to declare as military objectives, not only
FARC and ELN militants, but also members of dissident political parties.
They target people who have lived in regions where guerrillas have been
present and members of any community organization, such as cooperatives,
which represent alternative models to the accumulation of capital different
from neo-liberalism. For local peasants geographical territories stop being
seen as lands where you feel emotionally attached, but become "conquered
territories" with armed groups. They are forced to relate to the combined
action of the army and the paramilitaries as those who exercise power. A
brutally cynical counter-insurgency tactic of former guerrillas joining
paramilitary units is being tried now with young men fighting for the
highest payer.

This strategy responds to the "development" plans with a new conception of
social and family relations. These relations are based on irrational use of
force and loyalties where the most important thing is private property and
profitability. A new society is created within the free market model where
only those people who have money and property (be it cattle, contraband, or
cocaine) can compete. The rest have to beg to be included in the
paramilitary scheme or are excluded. The creation of the parastate has arrived.

Paramilitary structures have multiple alliances with important sectors of
drug4rafficking in coordination with military units, as the massacres of
Trujillo and Riofrio have shown. A typical example is that of Colonel Luis
Felipe B-cerra, who coordinated the death squad massacres in March 1988 of
22 workers from banana planta-tions in Uraba. When an honest judge announced
preliminary results of her probe against two drug traffickers and three
military officials, she received death threats and had to flee. Seven months
later, in retaliation, her father was slain. When Colonel Becerra was going
to be served with legal papers, he was in the United States where he was
taking a course to be promoted to lieutenant colonel. When he returned, he
was involved in a second massacre in Riofrio in 1993. A known drug lord
wanted the land around Riofrio, 50 13 peasant owners were killed through
army-paramilitary cooperation.

The Church and the NGOs: After being one of the most conservative churches
in Latin America for centuries, the Colombian Catholic Church has become one
of the few institutions left to help the poor.

Many priests and nuns have died working for justice and the poor. Many of
the internal 1,500,000 refugees have come to the Church's door. The Bishops'
Con-ference has raised its voice in favor of the poor. And the Colombian
Jesuits, with their prestigious think tank. CINEP and their Program for
Peace, have taken leadership in struggling for the rights of the poor.
Colombian NGOs have led a courageous battle to assist and represent the
poor. Many activists have been killed or "disappeared" as a result.

The U.S.: The U.S. support for the "war on drugs" does not strengthen
democracy or respect human rights. The Colombian army has a long and close
relation-ship with the U.S. military; From World War II on, they
collaborated against "communist subversion." Now it is drugs. The State
Department has issued reports about human rights violations, but these are
not taken seriously by the Colombian elites because the U.S. government
keeps giving military aid to the Colombian army. Human Rights Watch reports
that in 1990 a team of CIA and U.S. strategists gathered to assist
Co-lombian military intelligence. The document produced at this meeting does
not mention narcotics at all, but rather emphasizes combating "terrorism by
armed subversion."

So one must question the real goal of the "war on drugs." Is the "war on
drugs" a pseudo-ethical argument for perpetuating violence for the economic
benefit of the elites in both countries? The facts contradict the speeches
by U.S. politicians in their appeals to the U.S. public. Drug czar General
McCaffrey announced on a recent visit to Bogota that the U.S. is willing to
help Colombia combat not only "drug traffickers" but also the "guerrillas."
It would be interesting to know if he considers the brutally murdered CINEP
researchers Mario Calderon (a former Jesuit) and Elsa Alvarado as
guerrillas, or the millions of Colombians who desire social change.

The United States is involved in the region's most brutal war - a war in
which the army, allied with drug traffickers and paramilitary death squads,
combats not only guerrillas but anyone committed to political or social
change. The victims of this war have been lawyers, priests, nuns, political
activists, labor leaders, peasant leaders, university professors,
journalists, cooperative members, women leaders, anybody who thinks.

Some 4,300 Colombians are killed each year for political reasons out of a
total annual death toll of 30,000. This carnage is in a country with a
population of 33 million people. According to the Colombian Commission of
Jurists only 2 percent of these political killings are drug related, while
28 percent of the deaths are at the hands of the guerrillas and 70 percent
are caused by the paramilitary/military alliance.

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett