Direct US Intervention in Colombia Set To Increase

by Tom Fri Mar 24, 2006 19:16

Lets begin a campaign to encourage a boycott of sulphuric acid, hydrochloric acid, acetate and potassium permangate so we can hurt the interests of the companies selling these chemicals to FARC perhaps ending their operations entirely. If these chemicals are no longer on the market FARC will be unable to produce cocaine, the wordwide cocaine business will collapse and the US will no longer have cloak for its military actions in Colombia.

by Tank Girl Fri Mar 24, 2006 19:22

FARC do not produce Cocaine. They impose a tax on cocoa producers whose turnover is above a certain limit and they do this to all business concerns in the areas they control. Just like the Colombian government imposes tax on companies and takes bribes from the drug cartels. Its the CIA and the US military who are hand in glove with the drug barons.

by Gearóid O Loingsigh - Colombia Solidarity Network Fri Mar 24, 2006 19:53

Tom you are obviously incapable of reading. The post explained that drugs stuff is invention. Nowhere does it lay the blame for the cocaine trade on the FARC. Smart arse comments like yours are just that. they contribute nothing to nothing.

As for boycott, stop trying to introduce other topics here.

by pat c Fri Mar 24, 2006 19:58

Congrats on an excellent article. You should post more often about whats actually happening in Colombia. Its good to get reports from someone whos actually there rather than to encounter theoretical stuff about Colombia. Tom is only trolling about a boycott but I think Tank Girl dealt with him anyway.

by Peter Tue Mar 28, 2006 10:51

Couldn't agree more with Pat C - and therefore with Gearoid on this one.

US military intervention has always been built on the politics of the big lie. The US is clearly attempting to create the preconditions for a massive increase in its intervention. Colombia is a prime target and Venezuela and Bolivia are to be drawn into the frame of US subversion of democracy in Latin America. US economic interests, in alliance with the local privileged elite who fear the voice of the people, are under threat.

More of the same please, as it will alert people in Ireland and elsewhere to another front in the US war against civilisation.

by I_would_know Tue Mar 28, 2006 14:12

So maybe FARC don't produce drugs.Either they are the rightful governing authority or they are not. If they are taxing drugs , then they are not trying to reduce the amount of drugs. Having read this article i have no idea what your message is. America (a democracy ) is trying to setup a democracy in iraq ( which won't work ) but it's trying to get rid of democracy in south america ? Are you saying that FARC have the population's support? If you are then do you object to america trying to fuck columbia to stop drugs ? And if they are not trying to stop drugs what does america gain by intervention in columbia ? You state that big companies make lot's of money from drugs , so why would america try to stop drugs ?

Since the last time a junkie mugged me , i don't really have a problem starting a war on drugs. I am not convinced that a war will work. But i fail to see how america is bad in this case. could you elucidate?

by Real Columbia Supporter Tue Mar 28, 2006 14:39

This article says FARC does not produce drugs, but it "taxes" drug production. What's the difference?

Surely you are making a trivial argument. A drug overlord profits from hiring junior druggies to carry out the physical work. In your language you could say that a drug overload "taxes" junior drug dealers, and is therefore not a drug dealer himself. But we still call them drug dealers.

Any group that profits from drug production is part of the drug production chain, and that includes, in a big way FARC.

It seems to me that you are not really against drugs, you are just pro FARC. You seem to be perfectly happy that FARC profit from drugs.

(What does "taxes" mean anyway? Since when are terrorist organisations allowed to impose "taxes". I think the correct word here is "extort", "steal", "expropriate" or something like that.)

by I_would_know Tue Mar 28, 2006 15:00

That is what i was trying to get at. Exactly what is your point ? Are Farc in fact the rightful government ? . Do governments normally trade weapons with the IRA ? If farc is good then why have they had to resort to dealing with the IRA ? America's intervention? Should we intervene ? Would you support taxing drug production here?

A most unclear and shoddy piece of writing

by Gearóid O Loingsigh - Colombia Solidarity Network Tue Mar 28, 2006 17:46

The article makes no mention of the FARC as the real government. It deals with the issue that the excuse of war on drugs is once again being used. If the US government is really concerned about drugs why did Bill Clinton, the architect of Plan Colombia give a presidential pardon to the New York lawyer Harvey Weinig who laundered 100 million for the Cali Cartel (which had financed the succesful presidential campaign of Ernesto Samper). The answer is simple drugs is not the issue for them.

However, I suspect that the Real Columbia (sic) Supporter is just another troll. (do learn to spell, there are no u

Whether the FARC has popular support and to what extent (small but not non existant) and the significance of that would need a further much longer article, which I am not really interesting in writing. The degree of support they have or don't have is irrelevant to the debate on the war on drugs and irrelevant to discussions on attacks on the social movements.

For example when soldiers from the Reveis Pizarro Battalion murdered two trade union leaders and one farmers leader in a rural area of Arauca, having tied them up, whether the FARC have or don't have support is irrelevant to the debate. It might be relevant in other debates but not one.

By the way don't take my word for it on the murder of leaders by the army. Various soldiers are up on charges on that on.

For those that want further info on the war on drugs I recommend the page of the the Tranational Institute which has various policy documents , discussion documents and links to official and unofficial sites such as the UNDCP etc

by kevin keating Tue Mar 28, 2006 21:16

This article from the Guardian might help throw some light on the so called war on drugs. Despite years of chemical warfare inflicted on Colombias peasants, the output of the finished product remains unchanged. Cocaine itself is not produced by Colombias peasants as it requires refining with chemicals from the US and European Pharmaceutical industries. The ''Justice and Peace'' plan mentioned below is up and running with funding from the EU and our own government and the paramilitary perpetrators of countless crimes against humanity are rewarded with new jobs uniforms and the land they stole from peasants among the 3 million displaced in Colombia.

Colombia's drug untouchables
As Britain rolls out the red carpet for President Alvaro Uribe, MPs should think carefully about his allies

Isabel Hilton
Wednesday July 13, 2005

Guardian

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday March 24 2006

In the article below we said that President Alvaro Uribe's father, Alberto, was wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges when he was killed in 1983. We were relying on a confidential Colombian source. The Colombian embassy has complained that this allegation is inaccurate and, in response to its request, the US Department of Justice has since searched its records and says that it has found no request for the extradition of Alberto Uribe ever having been made by the US government.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Language matters in the war on terror. Since George Bush launched his global crusade against evil, there has been an opportunistic rush by less than democratic governments to rebrand their internal problems as local adjuncts tothe Bush project. One of the most vocal of these opportunists will be in London today, where he will be received by a British government that now reportedly ranks second among his sources of military aid.

The visitor is President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia, who will claim that his pacification plan for Colombia deserves further support from the British taxpayer and, as his supporters argued at a London conference in June, that the British investor should pitch in to a country that appealingly combines the smack of firm government with a sound commitment to free markets.

Uribe's visit offers the unusual spectacle of a British red carpet being rolled out for a man who, as mayor of Medellin, the drug barons' "sanctuary", allegedly accepted funds from the notorious trafficker Pablo Escobar. Uribe's father, Alberto, was wanted in the US on drug trafficking charges when he was killed in 1983.

Coincidentally, no doubt, Uribe's presidential campaign manager, Pedro Moreno Villa, was named by US customs as the biggest importer of potassium permanganate, a chemical used in cocaine production, between 1994 and 1998, though he insisted it was for innocent purposes; at that time Uribe was governor of Antioquia department, of which Medellin is the capital, and Moreno was his chief of staff. It was there that Uribe also devised his policy of encouraging the armed rightwing terror groups that he now seeks to legitimise.

President Uribe calls his plan Justice and Peace, a fine piece of newspeak which the Colombian Congress approved in June; under it he offers amnesty and cash rewards to rightwing paramilitary fighters, many of whom are guilty of human rights abuses and cocaine trafficking.

President Uribe's solution to this unhappy situation is to pardon them, allowing some to change their uniforms for those of private security firms, and others to sign up for duty in Iraq. Both options provide continuing career opportunities for killers. Justice and peace, as the UN commissioner for human rights in Colombia, Michael Frühling, observed, is hard to achieve without truth. President Uribe is well aware of the importance of perception. Colombia has been mired in civil war for 40 years, but for its present government the problem is simply one of terrorism.

A set of guidelines issued by Uribe in June, addressed to UN agencies, ambassadors, development agencies and humanitarian groups, laid down the terms by which the conflict must be defined. Out go such terms as "internal armed conflict", "armed actors" or "parties to the conflict" to describe the security forces. Out, too, go "non-state actors in the conflict" to refer to the leftwing rebels or extreme rightwing paramilitaries; or "peace community" or "humanitarian zone" - expressions used to describe Colombians who attempt to stay neutral. It is not, the government insists, civil war or armed conflict, but a terrorist threat posed by leftist guerrilla groups. The document so enraged the UNHCR director in Colombia, Roberto Meier, that he warned that the UNHCR would consider pulling out of Colombia if Uribe did not back down.

In the last five years the US has spent $3bn in the war against drugs in Colombia, a trade with which the paramilitary armies are intimately connected. The money is dispensed under Plan Colombia, due to end in September but now renewed for a further year. It is reasonable to ask whether it was renewed because it was considered a success or a failure: it has had no effect on the availability, street price or purity of the drugs that continue to arrive in the US. And though the US and Colombian officials claim that one million acres of coca have been eradicated in Colombia, the UN testifies that the area under cultivation in the Andes grew by 3% last year.

Washington has listed 18 paramilitary commanders as responsible for trafficking most of the cocaine reaching US cities. Now the US would like to extradite them, but many, including the cocaine trafficker and paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, have successfully attached themselves to President Uribe's plan and have become untouchable. While in Britain, Uribe has been promised a photo opportunity with Tony Blair and a visit to parliament. MPs might care to glance at Washington before lending themselves to his image.

Last July Senator John Kerry and 22 other senators signed a letter urging Uribe to prosecute officials who collaborated with paramilitary units. Administration officials may liken Uribe to Abraham Lincoln, but the Senate appropriations committee last week said it would freeze finance to the justice and peace plan unless Uribe guaranteed the dismantling of paramilitary groups and the extradition of the commanders. Neither is likely to happen under plan.

isabel.hilton@guardian.co.uk

by sinnombre Tue Mar 28, 2006 22:33

The War on drugs is a sham, but really, to deny or minimize the fact that the FARC's role in the drug trade has gone far beyond merely "taxing" drug crops and the final product is just a sign of ideological sympathies clouding one's judgement. Does that mean that the claims and figures made by the U.S. government are entirely true? Of course not, that's quite clear. Those are just the bells and whistles and can be easily discarded as U.S. propaganda for the purposes outlined in the article.

But that doesn't mean that there's not some truth to the fact that the FARC are more involved in the drug trade today than 10 or 20 years ago.

Why would the FARC go out of its way to avoid the juicy profits that a higher degree of involvement in the drug trade would bring over these years?

Especially when the risks involved are minimal for an armed organization that has already found itself outside the law, when keeping a healthy economy is an integral part of revolutionary strategy and a direct necessity of a growing revolutionary army, and when they are precisely in the perfect geopolitical position to do so, since a lot of their current (small, rural and limited, but certainly very existant, as has been said) social base is more closely linked to drug cultivation than to any other single economic activity (and, in part, turns to the FARC precisely as a way of reacting to the U.S. and Colombian gov't "drug war").

Geroid may call the evidence of their greater involvement in the drug trade anecdotal, but when there's a lot of that kind evidence, as there is when one has the time and opportunities to look for it, not all of it can be faked, unless the existence of a massive international conspiracy that goes well beyond the U.S. and Colombian governments can be proven. Why would, say, authorities in Venezuela, Central America, Brazil, Paraguay and elsewhere cooperate with such a conspiracy?

Logically, the U.S. government takes whatever scraps of evidence it finds and milks it for much, much more than it's worth, that I'm not denying. Nor am I supporting the sham that is the current drug war in any way, shape or form, since I agree that Western interests and multinationals are also involved in this hypocritical business.

by Peter Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:01

The issue here is that the US has concocted a lie that not only inflates out of all proportion, it also twists and distorts the economic realities of the areas that FARC controls. They also have nothing whatever to say about the far stronger evidence of drug trafficking by their military, political and business allies in Colombia – that has inevitable business links through the US army back to the US. It was the same in Vietnam, where generals in the US's South Vietnamese proxy army made fortunes from the drug trade. Ironically, the smack and dope made their way into the US Army, whose soldiers took to it, smoked it, injected it and smuggled it back to the States.

The demand for illegal substances in the US is fuelled by counterinsurgency, war, deprivation, destitution and economics.

Those who are focusing on FARC here and not on the fake accusations are missing the (needle) point. They are writing to the agenda of the prosecutors of this war on democracy.

I would respectfully ask responders not to give me any cheap shots about Colombia being a ‘democracy’. This is a country where the military and their allies can kill thousands at will and without fear of judicial retribution, where trade unionists are put in crowded jail cells for “rebellion”, and where extra-judicial death is an outcome of opposition to the government’s agenda.

by anton Wed Mar 29, 2006 14:52

The defence of the right to resist U.S backed state terrorism should be the first priority for solidarity work with the oppressed of Colombia . US authorities seek to criminalize Farc in order to lend legitimacy to the true criminal and murderous forces they themselves control , and , through those forces , assert hegenomy over the whole of Colombia . For "Plan Colombia " read "Project for a New American Century " .The war on drugs is a cynical excuse. If it wasn't drugs it would be something else - weapons of mass destruction or whatever . More articles like this please Gearoid.

by whyshouldicare Wed Mar 29, 2006 15:15

there is some sort of civil war going on , and america is involved doing bad things. If america is using drugs as a pretext for this intervention, what is its real motive? Not a single comment on this page answers this question. Does columbia have huge natural wealth that america is trying to steal. If it does what is it ? If the author is trying to portray america as an evil agressor he has to provide a plausible counter narrative to america's version.

Until someone does this i have to dismiss you all as lefty loonies.

by dinger Wed Mar 29, 2006 15:38

This is a news site, not a classroom. When the Irish Times publishes a story on the elections in Israel, do you expect them to outline the history of the region? If you want to know this stuff, read the links, research the background. A huge amount has been written about Plan Colombia, it's not for Gearoid to rewrite it every time he reports a new development in the situation

by whyshouldicare Wed Mar 29, 2006 16:20

Good articles are always self contained, and self explanatory. Shoddy and confusing ones are not. Propaganda is written with the sole aim of furthering one's own opinion. This is the category that this article fits into. The fact is i am of course well aquainted with the history in columbia. This article attempts to convince that america's in columbia has nothing to do with drugs. But this simply doesn't stand up to reason.Did america pluck farc out of the sky ? No of course not. America's intervention in Columbia may well be misguided and it of course will try to frame things in the best possible way, but this article is risible. And the author is thus deemed a leftie loonie till he provides something plausible to back up his assertions america is bad.

Risible.

Even if this article is true , how is it fundmentally different from what america is saying ? Farc profits from drugs and america is trying to get rid of farc.

I repeat what is the author's point?

by Anon Wed Mar 29, 2006 18:34

For someone who claims to know about the history of Colombia you are very ignorant. US intervention in Colombia long pre-dates the drugs boom and has been constant for years. Eg The Banana Workers Massacre of 1928 of workers of the United Fruit Company. FARC itself was born in 1964 out of an offensive called "Operation Marquetalia" part of of the US Govt's Plan LASO (Latin American Security Operation). See http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/colombia/planlazomarqueta...a.htm
There are tons more examples.

by i _ would _know Wed Mar 29, 2006 19:56

with iraq the pretext was nukes , but now we now that it was a combination of oil and having a large base in the middle east in order to keep iran in check.(duh)

You all complain that america is bad , yet you are neither convincing nor give any kind of a believable alternative. So why is this article interesting , why does this information change anything, in short why should i care ?

Until you can provide substantiation you are all lefties loonies

by Dan Wed Mar 29, 2006 20:15

OK, here's something I wrote on the subject a while ago. Now are we still "lefties loonies"?

Plan Colombia and US intervention

Since the resumption of US military aid to Colombia in 2000, $3bn has been channelled to the Colombian armed forces. Only Israel and Egypt receive more from the US government. Plan Colombia was sold to the US public and the international community as a key component of the “war on drugs”. But a closer examination reveals that the plan is driven by strategic and economic interests - above all, the desire of US capital to crush the guerrillas and secure access to Colombian natural resources.

A war on drugs?

If the US government really wanted to eliminate or reduce coca production in Colombia, it would not be very difficult. Many farmers have taken to growing coca because it is a reliable source of income. Typically, these farmers live in isolated rural areas, where the soil is poor, transport networks are very limited and the cost of moving legal crops to urban markets is greater than the value of the crop itself. Coca production allows them to make a steady living.

This situation could be changed very easily if a serious land reform was carried out, giving poor farmers access to land in more fertile parts of the country. Land concentration has increased steadily in recent decades. In 1960, farms of over 500 hectares covered 29% of cultivated land. By 1996 they accounted for 60%. If this concentration was reversed, small farmers would not be forced into growing coca.

The global market has also hurt Colombian farmers. The price of coffee had been determined by an international agreement that guaranteed stability for producers. This agreement was dismantled in 1989 under pressure from rich countries. Colombian export earnings from coffee halved between 1990 and 2000. Many coffee producers shifted to coca in response.

But Washington has shown no interest in policies that would allow Colombian farmers to rely on legal crops without sinking into dire poverty. Instead, they have encouraged the Colombian army to launch a massive programme of fumigation in coca-growing areas. Fumigation is one of the central planks of the Plan Colombia. Its track record is very poor. In 1992, 944 hectares were fumigated, while 41,206 hectares were used for coca production. By 1998, the fumigated area had risen to 49,527 hectares, but the coca-producing area had more than doubled, reaching 101,800 hectares.

Despite this failure, US officials insisted that fumigation be expanded drastically. Herbicides have been sprayed over large areas of the countryside. There have been countless reports of damaging side-effects. Local people have suffered ill health, animals have died, and legal crops have been destroyed. The long-term environmental impact of fumigation is not yet known, but is likely to be harmful. Protests against fumigation have been widespread, and are often repressed brutally.

This expensive, dangerous operation has not eliminated the production of coca, nor is it likely to do so at any stage in the future. Even if coca production is stamped out in Colombia, it will merely spread to neighbouring countries. Meanwhile, the US government neglects social programmes that could reduce the demand for cocaine in its own cities. As long as this demand exists, the cocaine industry will carry on.

The real agenda

The Plan Colombia is unlikely to have much impact on the drugs trade. But this does not mean that the US government was foolish or short-sighted when it drafted the Plan. Military aid to Colombia had been suspended in 1994 because of its dire human rights record. With memories of the “dirty war” in Central America still fresh, the Clinton administration was reluctant to call openly for counter-insurgency aid to the Colombian army. Instead, it argued for military aid as part of the “war on drugs”.

The real intention was to strengthen the Colombian armed forces so that they could defeat the guerrillas and the civilian left. Colombia’s natural resources and strategic position have made it a vital prize for the US elite. Although its proven reserves of oil total 2.6 billion barrels, geologists estimate that there could be as much as 36 billion barrels on Colombian territory.

Large areas of land believed to contain oil have been under guerrilla control, making exploration impossible. Elsewhere, the guerrillas have harrassed foreign oil companies and blown up pipelines. If Colombia’s potential as an oil exporter is to be realised, it is vital for the Colombian state to establish full control over its territory. This has become more urgent for the US government in the light of the Venezuelan revolution. With a leftist government in Venezuela, the region’s leading oil producer, US capital urgently needs an alternative source for its needs.

One of the companies that lobbied most stridently for the resumption of military aid to Colombia was Occidental Petroleum, which owns a 50% share in the Arauca oil deposits (the richest yet discovered in Colombia). Under Plan Colombia, $100m has been channelled to the army units based in Arauca. They have used this money to establish a new battallion that defends the oil pipeline from guerrilla attacks.

Apart from its oil reserves, Colombia is a leading supplier of coffee, emeralds, bananas and coal to the world market. It is also of great strategic importance for the US. With a backlash against neo-liberalism sweeping through the region, Washington needs dependable allies. In the event of a US attack on Venezuela, Colombia is the only country in Latin America that could be relied on to supply military bases. Neither a guerrilla victory, nor a civilian government of the left, would be acceptable to the US government.

With this in mind, the Clinton administration brushed aside criticism of Colombia’s human rights record. In 2000, Bill Clinton used his presidential waiver to lift human rights conditions attached to Plan Colombia by the US Congress. Clinton’s successor has carried on in his foot-steps, expanding military aid substantially. In 2002, Congress passed a law that allowed direct funding for “counter-insurgency” efforts in Colombia.

The US authorities are well aware of the bloody repression inflicted by the Colombian army and its paramilitary allies on the people of Colombia. Indeed, many of the army officers implicated in crimes against humanity have been graduates of the “School of the Americas”, the US-run training camp. There is no question that US aid has greatly strengthened the armed forces and undermined human rights. Although the State Department has placed the AUC on its list of banned terrorist organisations, no attempt has been made to punish the Colombian authorities for their complicity with paramilitarism. Colombia shows the real face of America’s “war on terror”.

You think we don't have an alternative? The clear alternative to supporting murderers and torturers is ... not supporting murderers and torturers. It's as simple as that really.

by i_would_know Wed Mar 29, 2006 20:36

If this is the rational behind america's intervention in columbia, it would not appear to be succeeding. Just as the 'oil' reasoning behind iraq is difficult to square with the hike in prices, this is not entirely convincing.

But it is plausible.

From an irish perspective , America seems to be taking action to our advantage, given that FARC were (are) trying to buy terrorist knowhow from the IRA in exchange for huge funds for Sinn Fein.

Very shoddy writing, more of a rant than a balanced report.

by Dan Wed Mar 29, 2006 21:28

Actions often have consequences that aren't anticipated. The Second World War was a disaster for German nationalism, for example: Germany lost territory, its economy was devastated, it was partitioned and occupied by foreign powers. Does that mean that we can eliminate German nationalism as a cause of the Second World War?

The Iraq war has had consequences that the US government clearly didn't anticipate. They never expected to be in the position they are now. But the argument about the price of oil doesn't hold up. Bush and co weren't concerned so much about access to Iraqi oil fields - they could have secured that by ending sanctions. What mattered was control. Cheap oil isn't necessarily one of their goals - in fact, high prices can be very useful for Bush's friends in the oil industry. Greg Palast has done some excellent background research on the oil motivation, and his findings are pretty definitive (www.gregpalast.com).

In case you haven't yet picked up on this point (too busy searching for "shoddy" work from "loonies"), US military aid to Colombia means support for one of the world's worst abusers of human rights. Washington is funding death squads that target the whole civilian population, not just FARC.

by Gearóid O Loingsigh - Colombia Solidarity Network Wed Mar 29, 2006 21:32

For those who want to know about America's interests they can buy copy of Large Scale Mining in Colombia: The Profits of Extermination which was launched by Colombia Solidarity Network with David Norris as guest speaker. Please see posting on Indymedia about this.

As one person has already said it is not for me to rewrite everything to date about Colombia. A bit of research doesn't go amiss. But to give a short list of Colombia's natural resources.
Gold, Oil, Coal (largest open cast mine in the world), Emeralds, Niquel (largest producer in the world) Wood (gateway to Amazon), Water (currently being privatised).

Colombia is also a lynch pin in the electricity industry which was privatised as part of Plan Colombia and is currently in the process of building up an infraestructure which can supply electricity from Bolivia right up to Mexico. the privatised company now owns much of the electricity network of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Colombia and is moving into other parts.

If you require a more exhuastive list do some research. There are lots of websites
www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk
www.znet.org
www.ciponline.org (founded by people linked to the Democratic Party in the US, hardly lefties but they make a good go of being honest about Colombia)
www.tni.org/drugs

A short list of some of the English language websites. All of them have links pages some of which are quite extensive. Cip has links to US goverment sites and critics sites.

for those who wish to accuse me of being a FARC supporter they should check out two pieces I have put up on Indymedia criticising the FARC, one accusing them of murder and the other of blowing up the water supply in Arauca. Please do some research before launching accusation.

by Peter Wed Apr 05, 2006 12:15

(While strictly speaking this is "other Press", it answers questions from posters claiming ignorance of the situation in Colombia - it also confirms my observations above about involvement in the drugs trade by the allies of the US.)

U.S. Willing to Deploy Combat Troops to Colombia

by Garry Leech; Colombia Journal; April 02, 2006

While the U.S. mainstream media widely-reported the U.S. Department of Justice’s recent indictment of 50 rebel leaders belonging to the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an announcement by the State Department the next day received surprisingly little coverage. On March 24, Assistant Secretary of State Anne Patterson told Colombia’s Radio Caracol that, while the United

States would not initiate any unilateral military action to capture FARC leaders, it would intervene if invited by the Colombian government. Given that the U.S. government’s intervention in Colombia already involves everything but the deployment of U.S. combat troops, it is clear that Patterson’s comments were intended to illustrate the Bush administration’s willingness to deploy U.S. troops to Colombia to combat FARC guerrillas.

The indictment of the FARC leaders further illustrates the Bush administration’s strategy to portray the FARC as the greatest perpetrator of violence and drug trafficking in Colombia. The reality, however, is very different from the Bush White House’s fictitious portrayal. The U.S. indictment provided no evidence to support its claim that FARC leaders have earned $25 billion from drug trafficking and are responsible for 60 percent of the cocaine shipped to the United States.

Meanwhile, most Colombia experts agree that the country’s right-wing paramilitaries are far more deeply involved in drug trafficking than the rebels, a fact supported by the numerous drug busts in which the seized cocaine was traced back to paramilitary groups. In fact, former associates of Pablo Escobar, the notorious leader of the now-defunct Medellín cartel, established some of Colombia’s most prominent paramilitary groups.

At the same time that the Bush administration is making the FARC the focus of its drug war propaganda, it is becoming increasingly evident that the U.S.-backed paramilitary demobilization is nothing more than a charade. Last week, demobilized paramilitary leader Ivan Roberto Duque confirmed publicly on Caracol Radio what Amnesty International, the United Nations and many analysts had been alleging for more than a year: that demobilized paramilitaries are taking up arms again. According to Duque, ex-militia fighters are offering their services to drug traffickers or “private justice” groups, also known as paramilitaries. As a result, the number of killings by paramilitaries in 2005 more than doubled that of the previous year.

After more than five years and $4 billion in funding, Plan Colombia has failed to significantly reduce the price, purity and availability of cocaine in U.S. cities. Meanwhile, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s three-year U.S.-backed military offensive has failed to seriously diminish the FARC’s military capacity. Given that Washington has already made Colombia the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world—providing intelligence, weapons and training—the only remaining escalation available to the Bush administration is to deploy U.S. combat troops to the South American nation under the guise of the war on drugs.

Such a U.S. military intervention is not likely to involve a massive deployment of troops to Colombia, a strategy that is not possible at the moment given the Pentagon’s commitment in Iraq. Instead, it would most
likely involve the deployment of U.S. Army Special Forces units to track down FARC leaders in Colombia’s remote jungle regions. In other words, the U.S. military would replicate the strategy it is currently utilizing to find al-Qaeda leaders in the remote and mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.

Ironically, Plan Colombia has actually shown that its principal target—the FARC—is not heavily dependent on the drug trade. According to analysts James Brittain and James Sacouman, Plan Colombia has caused a dramatic decrease in coca cultivation in the FARC-dominated southern regions, displacing it to other parts of the country. At the same time, Uribe’s security policies have resulted in a massive decline in kidnappings over the past three years. If the FARC were heavily dependent on these two sources of income to fund its insurgency, then the rebel group’s military capacity should have been seriously diminished over the past five years. But as Brittain and Sacouman have noted, FARC attacks against the Colombian military, the country’s infrastructure and the operations of foreign corporations have dramatically increased over the past two years.

A direct U.S. military intervention in Colombia clearly would have little to do with combating drugs. After all, if that were the true objective then the Bush administration would be targeting the country’s paramilitary leaders who, under the demobilization agreement, have been allowed to maintain their drug trafficking organizations while avoiding extradition to the United States—instead serving as little as 22 months of jail time on luxurious ranches in Colombia.

The real objectives of a U.S. military escalation are rooted in ideology and economics. The Bush administration is intent on eliminating a leftist insurgency that is proving to be a persistent threat to U.S. economic interests and to Washington’s closest ally in the region. Colombia has become an increasingly important
source of oil and coal, most of which is situated in rural regions where the operations of multinational companies remain vulnerable to rebel attacks. Furthermore, it is no coincidence that the Bush administration has announced its desire to escalate U.S. military intervention in Colombia less than a month after the two countries signed a bi-lateral free trade agreement. The economic policies have been established, but many of them need to be militarily implemented in Colombia due to the FARC’s persistence.

There is unlikely to be any deployment of U.S. combat troops to Colombia prior to May’s presidential election. Anti-U.S. sentiment is already running high among Colombians following the signing of the unpopular free trade agreement in February. Consequently, any deployment of U.S. troops to wage war in Colombia prior to May would likely hurt Uribe’s chances of re-election. If it does indeed occur, the deployment of U.S. combat troops to Colombia will likely begin shortly after Uribe is sworn in for his second-term. Such a U.S. military escalation would help the Colombian president intensify the so-called democratic security strategy he initiated almost four years ago.