April 2002

Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC.

US Fuels the Fires of Colombia's Civil War

Sean Donahue is Co-Director of New Hampshire Peace Action. He has worked on issues related to Colombia for several years, and traveled with a delegation sponsored by the Colombia Support Network in January,2001. He is available for talks and interviews and can be reached at 603/228-0559; wrldhealer@yahoo.com. References for this article can be requested from him.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana Arango's decision to end peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was triggered by the guerillas' kidnapping of Sen. Jorge Gechem, president of the peace commission. But the failure of the peace process was predetermined by decisions made in Washington.

President Pastrana was elected in 1998 with a mandate to negotiate an end to Colombia's decades-old war against the FARC and the smaller ELN (the Army of National Liberation). Both guerilla groups were born from struggles for land reform and against corporate exploitation of Colombia's land and people. Decades of bitter struggle left the guerillas increasingly alienated from their base and increasingly willing to use extreme violence against those who stood in the way of their revolution. But political repression and severe poverty ensured that the guerillas would always have some support from Colombian peasants. By the late 1990s the FARC and the ELN had fought the government to a stalemate, and negotiations seemed the only way to end the war.

But in the final years of the last Clinton administration, the US, which has had a consistent military presence in Colombia since 1947, began to take a deeper interest in Colombia's civil war. In the name of fighting drugs, the US increased military aid to Colombia, and expanded its program of fumigating coca crops, especially in parts of southern Colombia that had traditionally been FARC strongholds.

This was and is justified by the theory that the members of the FARC were "narcoguerillas," operating more as a criminal gang than as a revolutionary army.

The theory is more fiction than fact. The FARC is involved in extorting "taxes" from the poor farmers who grow coca and the middlemen who turn the coca leaves into coca paste. But there is not much money to be made at this base level of the cocaine trade. In a good year, a farmer might be able to produce $5000 worth of coca leaves. The real money is made in processing coca paste into cocaine and exporting the cocaine to the US and Europe. $5000 worth of coca leaves will make $800,000 worth of cocaine. The production and export of cocaine are controlled by criminal gangs with links to right wing paramilitaries. The government won't target these gangs because it needs their help. The paramilitaries serve as an extension of the Colombian military, carrying out the dirty work of massacring people who stand in the way of oil exploration, expanded cattle ranching, and mining and assassinating union organizers, indigenous leaders, peasant leaders, and others who question the political and economic order.

Needless to say, the strategy of targeting guerillas and small farmers has done nothing to stop the flow of cocaine to the US. Nevertheless, these "counternarcotics" efforts have served some in the US well: the FARC attacks and extorts money from US corporations doing business in Colombia. The "narcoguerilla" theory justifies US military aid to Colombia without drawing attention to the real interests and motivations beyond the policy.

US military aid has made the success of the peace process less important for the Colombian government, and has eroded the FARC's confidence in the government's desire for peace.

It has also strengthened the paramilitaries by strengthening their military allies. The paramilitaries are a major obstacle to any peace agreemenr. In the 1980s the FARC nearly reached a peace agreement with another Colombian president. Elements of the FARC had laid down their guns and joined with labor unions and peasant groups to form the Patriotic Union Party. The Patriotic Union had some initial political successes, but soon its leaders became the target of a paramilitary assassination campaign. 3000 members of the party were killed over the course of ten years. As a result, the FARC considers it suicide to lay down its weapons without some guarantee that the government will disarm or rein in the paramilitaries.

Increased paramilitary violence and new military assaults on guerilla strongholds in southern Colombia have driven the FARC to expand its attacks on the infrastructure that supports the cities where most of Colombia's ruling class lives. (Though the cities, and the shantytowns at their edges, are becoming home for more and more poor people driven from the countryside by violence and the collapse of the agricultural economy.) The FARC's violence has increased support for the paramilitaries among the wealthy and the middle class, pressuring President Pastrana's Conservative Party to crack down on the guerillas and bring the peace process to a quick and violent conclusion. Presidential elections will be held in May, and Alvaro Uribe Velez, a former provincial governor with close ties to the paramilitaries, is expected to win by a landslide.

In January the Bush administration announced that it was asking for $90 million more in military aid to help Colombia to protect an oil pipeline from the FARC, sending President Pastrana a clear signal that the US was ready to see the war escalate. In the wake of September 11, securing sources of oil outside the Middle East has become an increasingly important priority for the US

So, in February, when the FARC kidnapped Sen. Gechem to pressure the government live up to its end of a prisoner exchange agreement, President Pastrana responded by declaring an end to the peace process, and launching a military offensive against a "safe haven" granted to the FARC during the negotiations.

Civilians have been hit the hardest by the escalation. The FARC had trucks and jeeps and was able to abandon the "safe haven" in the three hours between the end of the peace talks and the beginning of the military offensive. Most of the 100,000 civilians who live in the region were trapped there as ground troops sealed off its borders and the Colombian air force's US-made helicopters and bombers, guided by US satellites, bombed 85 targets in the zone. The wounded were unable to reach hospitals, which in some cases were a four-hour drive away on roads that were being bombed. Soldiers in the zone are not accountable to civilian courts for any actions they take in the line of duty. Paramilitaries are now massing at the border of the zone and are threatening to massacre hundreds of people they accuse of being "guerilla sympathizers." One third of the nation is now under a limited form of martial law. Paramilitary massacres and assassinations continue at an alarming rate. And the FARC has escalated its attacks on the water and electrical systems.

On March 7, while few inside or outside Congress were paying attention, Rep. William Delahunt of MA, Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, and others slipped a resolution through the House urging President Bush to request more military aid for Colombia. The Bush administration responded to the invitation by introducing legislation that would increase military aid to Colombia, and would place no human rights conditions on new aid. Having given Pastrana the go-ahead to light the match, the US is pouring gasoline on the fire.

The US government and the Colombian government seem completely unwilling to address the poverty, repression, and desperation that feed the FARC's guerilla war. the only path to peace in Colombia lies through democracy and economic justice. In their absence the war escalates. And the innocent die.

--from "Fair Trade--Reality and Colombia's Farmers." Jason Marti <bolivarno@hotmail.com>

Last August, the National Association for Farm Salvation held protests that blocked roads in half of Colombia's Departments. The army killed two protesters when 11,000 peasants occupied roads in Huila. Farmers complain that the government has over and over failed to deliver on promises to the rural areas for technical assistance, road improvements, and other rural programs.

The Colombian War endangers regional security and economics; it endangers the small farmers and the indigenous people; and the war and the herbicide spraying by the US is endangering the most biologically diverse region on Earth. Fifty percent of all species live in tropical rainforests. Five to ten percent of all tropical species disappear each decade: 100 species a day. The only country in the world with more species than Colombia is Brazil which is eight times larger. Ten percent of all the species on the planet live only in Colombia. There are more species of birds in Colombia than any other country and 75 percent are endangered (data from the Independent Review, Vol. VI, No3, Winter, 2002, Plan Colombia). And now there is war.

Drug use by US citizens is the fuel which fires the nightmares in Colombia. But no one wants to emphasize this enough, so people talk about the plight of the farmers and how fair trade could help. Shade-grown fair trade coffee and support for local craftspeople is a fine idea, but these efforts will remain only symbolic education until there are major structural changes in global economics. Many groups don't want to sound as if they are against the whole structure of international trade and finance so they promote fair trade and modest reforms. The real problem in Latin America is land ownership, income distribution and the continuous interventions of the US against progressive governments and new ideas.

Colombia Campaign packet is now available--beautiful color poster (see this month's cover of Peacework), a flyer with a summary of the situation in Colombia, a booklet with more extensive information, ideas for fundraising, and requests for donations and creativity kits; AFSC/EMAP, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102; 215/241,7000; CMejia@afsc.org; or call Annie Goglia;.617-876-5312. Also available from her, "The Road to Peace for Colombia," an educational game for teachers to use with children.

The National Mobilization on Colombia is a coalition of over 60 organizations and thousands of individuals working to transform US policy toward Colombia and the Andean region. We will gather in Washington DC, 4/19-22, 2002 for lobbying, vigils, workshops, a teach-in, nonviolence training, and a Festival of Hope & Resistance; on 4/22 we will hold a march and nonviolent direct action; for a complete schedule of events, with locations, contact Witness for Peace, 1229 15th St NW, Washington DC 20005; 202/588-1471; www.witnessforpeace.org or www.colombiamobilization.org for details and suggestions on housing and transportation.

Still Pulling Strings, a recent publication from American Friends Service Committee, examines US military policy in Latin America and the Caribbean in the post-Cold-War era. In four parts, the report is a comprehensive overview of the region and US policy, with case studies on Mexico, Colombia, and Puerto Rico. A rich resource for activists, students, and concerned citizens who want to know more about the US's roles in democratization, militarization, and basic human rights in Latin America. For more information: Literature Resources, American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia PA 19102; www.afsc.org/lac

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