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MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #51-99 Narco Cover: Colombia and U.S. Foreign Policy Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact... Stan Goff: This Narco guerrilla thing obfuscates the actual situation there. This is the ideological window dressing that they're using to justify further intervention, down there by the United States... Cecilia Zarate-Laun: When people talk about peace in Colombia, or in relation to Colombia, let's prepare for war... Phillip Babich: The U.S. government wants to increase its military support to Colombia, the number one recipient of U.S. aid in the Western hemisphere, and the number one violator of human rights. On this program we take a look at U.S. involvement in Colombia, and what's behind U.S. counter-narcotics operations there. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people, vital ideas and important information. In October 1999, ten million Colombians took to the streets, calling for an end to that country's civil war, a protracted conflict between left-wing guerrillas and the Colombian military, which has ties to right-wing paramilitary groups. The war has left tens of thousands of Colombians dead, and many more displaced. Political murders and kidnappings are a daily occurrence. And an additional dimension to the conflict is the relationship of the lucrative drug trade in Colombia to the armed forces. According to Cecilia Zarate-Laun, co-founder and program director of the Colombia Support Network, the October protests took place all over the country and are significant because numerous sectors of civilian society were willing to risk repression and speak-out to end the violence in Colombia. Cecilia Zarate-Laun: Traditionally for the last maybe ten, maybe twenty years, Colombians as such, citizens as such, have been so afraid and really paranoid with the violence that they have not taken out to the streets to really say, "We have a voice in this country. We also are part of this country. We are the people who are not armed who need to say something in this war." And that is very significant, because they were able to put out millions of people for the very first time in Colombia, something that had not been seen before. But the situation was that many of the main organizers of the march are people who want peace in Colombia. We all want peace in Colombia, but they are people who do not want structural changes in the country, and they were sort of using this opportunity to have a lot of people present on the street. People generally want peace, but the kind of peace that some of the people who organized the march want is not necessarily the same kind of peace that we are talking about. Phillip Babich: Some of those main organizers, says Zarate-Laun, included the business elite in Colombia, those who want an end to the civil war but not at the expense of remedying widespread poverty and inequality. Cecilia Zarate-Laun: Most of the wealth of Colombia is concentrated in the hands of very few, a small percentage of people, while the majority of people are in poverty. So when we talk about structural changes in Colombian society, we mean investing the wealth of the country in the people -- in education, in health, in work, in things that would make people to participate in civil society, to be members of society, and not to go to the guerrillas or to the paramilitaries as the only solution or the only future in their lives. Phillip Babich: The armed conflict is a struggle between left-wing guerrilla groups, namely the FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the Colombian government and military. All sides of the conflict have been charged with human rights violations. According to Carlos Salinas, advocacy director for Latin America and the Caribbean at Amnesty International USA, the Colombian military has direct ties with the AUC, an extremely violent right-wing paramilitary group. Carl Salinas: They range from a guilt by omission -- in other words a group of armed paramilitaries traveling without any type of hindrance or obstacle from the many military and police check points to a direct collaboration, whether it be a joint military or police and paramilitary operation, to intelligence sharing, to having been trained together, to sharing of equipment, what have you. Phillip Babich: Given that Colombia is, I believe, the number one recipient of U.S. aid in the western hemisphere, is it Amnesty International's position that the United States is indirectly or directly aiding the promulgation of human rights violations in Colombia? Carl Salinas: We believe that the United States could well be instigating the conflict and escalating the conflict, especially with the discussion now being of increasing the military assistance components significantly. We think that would be disastrous, and would be a return of Washington to the death squad politics, that so characterized its operations in Central America in the 1980s.
Phillip Babich: U.S. interests in Colombia are multiple. State Department officials justify U.S. military aid, support and operations there as necessary components of an escalating war on drugs. Colombia is the number one supplier of cocaine to the U.S. market, and the Clinton administration has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in "counter-drug" aid to Colombia. But according to Stan Goff, a former special operations army officer in Latin America who served in Colombia and Peru in the early 1990s, the drug war justification is just a "cover" for greater U.S. military intervention in Colombia. Stan Goff: There are two ways to cover an operation. One is to say that you're down there to train the team -- that would be a deployment for training our JCET, our Joint Combined Exercise Training. Even though, in fact, what we were doing was we were delivering very high quality counter-insurgency training to the host nation's forces. Because in both cases, Peru and Colombia, they were taking quite a beating in the field. And they'd lost the confidence of their own indigenous populations, because of the way that they were headed. But, you know, each different type of deployment required a different pot of money, and so there were so bureaucratic reasons also for covering a lot of these operations. [That is] the principal thing that they had used to cover the operations, but they didn't want to scare the American public with the notion that they were involved in a counter-insurgency, because it smacks too much of Vietnam. Phillip Babich: So what was the U.S. military doing in Colombia, if it wasn't fighting against the drug trade? Stan Goff: First of all, some Special Forces, who I worked for then, didn't know a doggone thing about counter-narcotics. I don't know...we weren't cops, and what we were trying to get people to do when I was down there -- my particular mission was to train them to do night air mobile operations. We were trying to integrate the staffs of their air force with the army, so they could coordinate night air operations more effectively. Phillip Babich: And these were operations directed at the FARC, the leftist guerrillas in Colombia? Stan Goff: That's the only appropriate target for that kind of a doctrine. There's no need for that kind of a doctrine to do counter-narcotics work. Phillip Babich: Just quickly, what would be required to take care of the narcotic situation in Colombia, if you had the force of the U.S. military, what would you employ? Stan Goff: I wouldn't! I wouldn't. If I was going to employ any kind of a force to try to break down the whole system of narcotics trafficking, then the place to start is the Unites States, because that's where the people are who provide most of the finances that actually get the product to market, and also where the majority of the market is. Cecilia Zarate-Laun: The war on drugs is just an excuse to speed up the military defeat of FARC. Phillip Babich: Cecilia Zarate-Laun of the Colombia Support Network. Cecilia Zarate-Laun: Colombia is the only really sore spot in the whole hemisphere with a civil war that has been going on for many, many years. And the United States is very anxious to stop this civil war at any cost -- at any cost, because it hampers the process of globalization. And Colombia is a key actor in globalization, not only because it's a very wealthy country, but also because of the geographic location of the country. The country, if you look at any map, is the corner of South America, and is the only country that has coasts with both oceans, Atlantic and Pacific. It's the sort of the house at the corner of South America. Phillip Babich: Making Contact called the U.S. State Department for responses to charges of supporting a counter-insurgency effort in Colombia, rather than counter-narcotics operations. We also sought an explanation for U.S. military aid to Colombia. But the State Department declined to comment. Laura Livoti: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you'd like to get in touch with us, we'll be giving out our toll free number at the end of this broadcast. Phillip Babich: U.S. economic interests in Colombia include oil and mining operations. Colombia is the eighth largest oil exporter to the United States. Likewise, Colombia's markets are significant to U.S. businesses as the fifth largest U.S. export market in Latin America, and the 26th most important market worldwide, according to the U.S. State Department. In the parlance of U.S. officials and corporate leaders, "stability" is essential in Colombia. And, many U.S.-based multinational corporations go to great lengths to downplay the importance of dissent there. In some cases, companies collude with right-wing paramilitary groups to silence labor organizers, according to Dennis Grammenos, managing editor of the Colombian Labor Monitor, an on-line publication that documents the on-going crisis in Colombia. Grammenos is based in Chicago and he spoke by phone with correspondent Sandy Leon of radio station KWMR. Dennis Grammenos: For the most part, the petroleum corporations are very eager to use security forces, and even paramilitaries to do their work. Specifically I'm looking at BP-Amoco, and Occidental Petroleum, but also Chevron, and a number of other smaller petroleum corporations, U.S.-based petroleum corporations. Then you have multinationals such as Coca-Cola that does not hesitate to use death squads to take care of any sort of legal unrest. In fact, at this point none of the Coca-Cola plants in Colombia have a union any more, not one at least that is visible. Sandy Leon: And this a matter of public record, that the paramilitaries are actively involved in protecting their interest. Dennis Grammenos: Entire regions in Colombia -- places like the south of the Department of Bolivar have been cleared, the land has been cleared of the peasants by the paramilitaries, in order to facilitate the work of mining corporations such as Conquistadora...quite an interesting name in the history of Latin America. So time and time again, you have corporations like Nestle. Nestle, you know, the milk people... Sandy Leon: Yes. Dennis Grammenos: ...the chocolate people, exactly, that deploy death squads in Colombia. And that's not to mention any of the Colombian corporations that have long done so. General Motors in Colombia is very eager to work with the security forces to make sure that there's "stability." Also, since we're mentioning this, I would like to point out the recent survey that was conducted, and published in the Chicago Tribune, of all places, that concluded that corporations prefer dictatorships over democracies. And let me just point out something else here. In the middle of the northern part of the country is a town called Barrancabermeja. It is the headquarters of the petroleum workers union, and this is where 70 percent of all petroleum in Colombia is processed. This town, a very strong union town, is at the heart of the violence inflicted by the paramilitary death squads on Colombian working class. In fact, several massacres, including one two days ago, are carried out every year, where the paramilitary death squads arrive in trucks, wearing their hoods, 50 or 100 at a time, and they're literally waved in at the road blocks. Because the road blocks all around Barrancabermeja are manned by both the military and the police. And they somehow manage to sneak into Barrancabermeja in these trucks, take about two or three hours in the working class neighborhoods firing off guns, and never get caught. And then waved out again. In fact, there've been ten arrests of military personnel that have been linked to situations, one situation where they did in fact wave in the death squads. Sandy Leon: And Dennis, wasn't there actually a report entitled "Barrancabermeja, a City Under Siege"? Dennis Grammenos: Oh, absolutely. Sandy Leon: And then Amnesty International came out... Dennis Grammenos: Amnesty International has taken great pains to document, meticulously, the situation at Barrancabermeja. And I have been to Barrancabermeja, that's where I do a lot of my work, because I do labor work, and I can tell you now the war on labor is at its peak. Sandy Leon: Yes, you know, I want to get into that. But I also wanted to ask you a little bit more about Barrancabermeja. I know the report, I believe it focused on a 1998 massacre that happened, I think, in May? Dennis Grammenos: In May and June. I was there when that happened. Sandy Leon: You were there? And the disappearances by the paramilitaries? And isn't Barrancabermeja a strategic oil port? Dennis Grammenos: Yes, it is the strategic oil port, and it's also the headquarters of a very expensive intelligence network that was set up by the CIA. There's no way that the paramilitaries can be operating in the Matarena Medio region, of which Barrancabermeja is the largest city, without Naval Intelligence knowing everything about it -- in fact, without the collusion and protection of Naval Intelligence. There has been ample evidence of this particular type of a relationship. This is something...it's public. It's even in the Colombian newspapers. Phillip Babich: Dennis Grammenos, managing editor of the Colombian Labor Monitor, speaking with Sandy Leon. One of the most stunning examples of protest against a U.S. multinational corporation is the struggle of the U'wa Indians. The U'wa Indians live in the Colombian Cloud Forest near the Venezuelan border, an ecologically delicate area that is threatened by an oil drilling project proposed by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. The U'wa maintain that they will commit collective suicide if the oil project takes place, explaining they prefer that to a slow death caused by the destruction of their ancestral lands. They recently marched onto one site of Occidental's planned oil well and established a permanent settlement to block the drilling. Shannon Wright, of the Rainforest Action Network, recently visited Bogota for two months to work with environmental, human rights and indigenous groups based in Colombia to participate in the battle of the U'wa people. She says that throughout Colombia, oil pipelines and oil facilities act as a magnet for violence. Shannon Wright: The three decades long civil war has really accelerated in areas where oil pipe lines are in place. Where you see the military militarize them, build up army brigades around there to protect the strategic interest that is oil, the major export commodity. And in response you see the guerrilla factions, both the ELN and the FARC, particularly ELN, bomb the pipelines, as it represents government power, and is really a way of stifling the government in those areas. So it's a vicious cycle of violence that builds up around these areas. And unfortunately, in addition to the environmental costs of this ongoing spillage taking place, the local peoples are often the ones caught in the crossfire. In the case of the U'wa people, this is one of their primary concerns and why they're trying to block the new oil pipeline from their land, because they've seen what's happened in other areas such as the Cali-Limon pipeline. [It] has been bombed over 600 times in its 13 years of existence. And we're seeing a current average of one bomb a week by rebel forces. Phillip Babich: Though the violence and environmental damage continues, Wright says that there is a strong grassroots movement building among people throughout Colombia. Shannon Wright: The positive side of the repression and the escalating war is that you've seen a civilian society that is more and more concerned, and has been expressed both by the well-publicized multi-million person march in the streets of Bogota and other large cities. But at a grassroots level -- where we are more tapped into, and where we're working with indigenous peoples -- you see from the northwest of Colombia, where the Embaracatio people are standing up to a dam project that's beginning to flood their homeland, to the U'wa in the northeast, to communities further south, where there's really a growing movement to not allow the war and the militarization to completely take over their livelihoods, but to stand up and say no to it. And what's been very exciting is that in response you see a growing concern in Bogota and Medellin, in Cali and in major cities to back these indigenous peoples. Phillip Babich: Another wrinkle to U.S. involvement in Colombia is whether the United States has greater strategic designs in Latin America. According to Cecilia Zarate-Laun of the Colombia Support Network, the U.S. is interested in establishing a military base in the Amazon region and could use the situation in Colombia as a way to justify sending more troops to that area. Cecilia Zarate-Laun: Colombia actually is going to serve as an excuse to have like a NATO force because... for example, you notice in the last meeting of the Organization of American States, the United States came with a proposal to form a multilateral force in case there is threats against any democracy in the region. Clearly everybody had in mind Colombia. But one of the things that is interesting to know is that after all, we have a very historic relationship with the United States, and we are not Eastern Europe, exactly, where the United States can fool the people of the countries of Latin America. When the United States talks about multilateral force together, everybody's ears immediately start to light up, because we have a long-standing, long relationship with the United States that historically has been linked to invasions by the United States. So it's not as easy to be like it was for example in Eastern Europe, where people have the image of the United States as the savior country, to save us from, you know, after World War II, etc. We are not like that, because we have a long historical relationship with the U.S. that is very painful. So it is not as easy because people immediately are going to the streets to protest, and the governments know that. So they have to go about and to go around, and say that this is this or that, but it was rejected other ways. However, the United States representatives openly say that they will really start this proposal again at the next meeting of the OAS in Canada. Phillip Babich: The Organization of American States consists of 35 member-countries in the Western hemisphere. Among its goals is to "provide for common action in the event of aggression" and to "promote economic development." In an article published in the News and Observer, based in Raleigh, North Carolina, former special operations officer Stan Goff criticized the U.S. proposal at the last OAS meeting to form a multi-nation military force that would be based in Latin America. Stan Goff: You write that in June of this year, at the meeting of the Organization of American States in Guatemala, Clinton Administration representatives proposed an American led multinational Latin American force to "intervene in threatened environments." And you say, "A new Latino NATO." What exactly do you mean by that? Stan Goff: When they start talking about a multilateral regional force, to "intervene in a threatened environment," what does that suggest? You've seen how we operate in the context to NATO...Yeah, it's a multilateral force, but it's dominated by the United States, and it responds to the will of the U.S. State Department. So I think it's a pretty reasonable assumption that that's exactly what they're trying to replicate in Latin America, because they see that as necessary, as another tool to protect their long-term economic interests in Latin America. Phillip Babich: Further suggestions of a stepped-up military presence in Colombia may be found in corporate media coverage of the situation. Antonio Prieto, project coordinator for Information Services Latin America, says that mainstream coverage has focused on the massive internal refugee problem in Colombia, possibly setting the context for a U.S.-led "humanitarian intervention," one of the primary justifications for NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. Antonio Prieto: Right around the time during the early summer, when the U.S. was already starting to declare victory in Yugoslavia, the U.S. press started to talk about Colombia as the "Kosovo next door." And there is an article in the Miami Herald as a matter of fact, titled like that, called "The Kosovo Next Door," by Tim Johnson, published on June 13, 1999. And we at ISLA who've been monitoring the U.S. coverage about situations in Latin America in general -- but in Colombia in particular -- in this case we find that several of the articles such as this one, were using that sensationalistic approach to the very sad and very serious refugee problem. And it's only now, after the situation in Yugoslavia, that suddenly the U.S. press discovers this and starts denouncing it, and starts saying, "The U.S. has to do something." And of course reading between the lines, what one finds is a demand that the U.S. intervene in the name of humanitarian peacekeeping, when in fact what is sought is to eradicate the left-wing guerrillas, which is perhaps the only remaining old-fashioned left-wing insurgency movement left in Latin America. That's something the U.S. cannot stand, cannot tolerate. Phillip Babich: Peace talks between the FARC and the Colombian government were set to take place early in 1999, but the negotiations were suspended after the guerrillas accused the government of colluding with the paramilitaries and demanded that the death squads be brought under control. Since then, negotiations have been on-again-off-again. The U.S. government says it supports the peace talks, but Cecilia Zarate-Laun of the Colombian Support Network says that support for peace would require discontinuation of military aid to the Colombian government. Cecilia Zarate-Laun: In reality, the United States keeps on increasing military aid, increasing military presence of U.S. military people in Colombia. And also it's starting to share military intelligence with the Colombian army. So also you see sort of the same situation, they talk about peace, but we are afraid -- by "we," I mean the peace movement in Colombia and here in the United States -- that when people talk about peace in Colombia, or in relation to Colombia, let's prepare for war. Phillip Babich: Lucy Rodriguez of the Colombia Information Group agrees, and says that with continued military aid from the U.S., the Colombian government has no incentive to resume negotiations with the guerrillas. Lucy Rodriguez: The peace talks need to be encouraged, and to give military aid right now will be to really hamper those talks, because the military, as soon as they realize that they're getting aid, they have no reason to make any kind of treaties with the guerrillas. They will feel encouraged to say that they can go for an all out military victory, which right now is absolutely impossible. Phillip Babich: In 1996, Congress passed the Leahy amendment proposed by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, which prohibits the U.S. government from providing military aid to governments guilty of human rights violations. Carlos Salinas of Amnesty International USA says that the amendment should be applied in the case of Colombia, and the pressure to do so must come from Congressional representatives and their constituents. Carl Salinas: Absolutely. It needs to be applied not only to Colombia, but to any other country where the United States has a security assistance component. And indeed it is where we have to insure, from a civil society standpoint, that the administration takes it seriously, that the embassies are actually and actively looking for information about who it is that's receiving U.S. aid. To make sure that none of them are committing violations. But it also has to be take serious by the Congress, and the only way that can happen is if people make sure that their Congressional reps are actively asking the Administration to report to them on how the Leahy amendment is being implemented in Colombia, or in Peru, or in Indonesia, or wherever. Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact: A look at Colombia and U.S. foreign policy. Thanks for listening. Special thanks this week to Norm Stockwell of radio station WORT-FM and Bessa Kautz for recorded portions. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Stephanie Welch is associate producer. Norman Solomon is senior advisor. Our national producer is David Barsamian. Shereen Meraji is production assistant. Din Abdullah is archivist. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. That's 800-529-5736. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. Bye for now. |