|
National Radio Project1714 Franklin Street #100-251 • Oakland, CA 94612 • 510-251-1332ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. For permission to reproduce and/or reprint, please contact us. |
MAKING CONTACT Transcript: #28-00 Priming Colombia: A Look at U.S. Drug War Aid Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact.... Adam Isacson: If you sell it as an anti-drug program, and something that's designed to keep drugs away from our kids and off our streets, then you have a much better chance, especially in an election year, when everybody's afraid of the 30 second ad that says they voted against the anti-drug bill even if it's just an anti-guerilla bill in disguise... Coletta Youngers: To date there is not a single indicator that points to success of international drug control policies. On U.S. street corners there are more drugs at lower prices than ever before. In fact, the street price of heroin and cocaine is declined by two-thirds since the administration launched this drug war, and purity is up. Phillip Babich: The United States is filling Colombian government and military bank accounts with hundreds of millions of dollars. On this program we take a look at conflict in Colombia and U.S. drug war policy. 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. On June 21, 2000, the U.S. Senate approved a $1.3 billion dollar, two-year, aid package to Colombia. In March, the U.S. House of Representatives had passed a heftier package, $1.7 billion dollars, a near replica of the Clinton administration's request to provide Colombia with funds for military support. Both bills assure the administration financial support for part of its drug war strategy to equip the Colombian military with helicopters, weapons and training to combat drug traffickers at the source. According to White House figures, 80 percent of the U.S. cocaine supply and 60 percent of the heroin supply originate in Colombia. But, many observers say this infusion of funds, more than double Colombia's current total in U.S. aid, is likely to intensify that nation's 35-year civil war: the Colombian military working in collusion with right-wing paramilitaries is engaged in an armed conflict against left-wing guerrilla groups. Cecilia Zuarte-Luan: We oppose military aid to Colombia because the military aid goes only to increase the war. It's like throwing gasoline into fire. Phillip Babich: Cecilia Zuarte-Luan is co-founder of the Colombia Support Network, a human rights organization based in Madison, Wisconsin. Her opposition to the U.S. aid package to Colombia is shared by many indigenous communities that have experienced repression and murder stemming from the civil conflict, according to human rights reports. An indigenous woman from Colombia, who wished not to be identified, says the U.S. aid package will result in more violence against her people. Colombian Woman: We do consider ourselves as indigenous people that are caught in the middle of a war. The war between these two parties is an armed struggle, whereas we, as indigenous people, we don't take up arms. We arm ourselves in a different way. We arm ourselves with our voices in order to save our lands, because we believe that peace isn't found through killing other people. Peace is only found through a good dialogue and through good thoughts. Phillip Babich: Last Fall on October 24, ten million people throughout Colombia amplified that message through mass protests in the streets of Bogota, Medellin, Cali, and hundreds of villages. According to analysts on Latin America, the Colombian government has circulated numerous versions of the "Plan Colombia," its formal request to the U.S. government for additional financial and military assistance. "Plan Colombia" essentially became President Clinton's proposal to Congress. The version the Colombian public saw emphasized poverty alleviation even though over 80% of U.S. financial support goes toward military and police spending. Colombian Woman: They say that it's going to be benefiting the poor and the unemployed, but we see that that's not true. Because the main part of that money is going to be going to the military sector to buy guns, and the other part goes to the process of the peace agreement with different armed forces. And everything that's part of this Plan Colombia aid package is going to effect, directly and indirectly, indigenous people. Because the Colombian government plans these things without taking into account that most of -- where this is going to be happening is within indigenous territories. Because in order to carry out this against different armed forces, they are all found now in indigenous territories; drug running and drug trade is within indigenous territories. That's why we're opposed to the fact that the decision taken by the Colombian government has been taken without consulting indigenous people. Because it's been proven that one of the platforms of the Colombian government is to exterminate indigenous people in Colombia. Phillip Babich: The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the administration's drug war wing, operates with a $19 billion dollar annual budget. So far the U.S. government has expended nearly $30 billion dollars in the so-called war on drugs. Coletta Youngers, senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin America, called the "war" "unwinnable and fundamentally flawed" at a forum about U.S. foreign policy on May 2, 2000, in New York City. She went on to say that U.S. financial aid is connected to U.S. military interests in Colombia, to assist the Colombian government in its armed conflict against F.A.R.C. (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and other leftist guerrilla groups. Coletta Youngers: The U.S. Military has slid down the slippery slope of intervention. We've crossed the line from counter-narcotics to counterinsurgency. And our key ally is now a military force that's in bed with the most brutal paramilitary groups that we've seen in the region. In short, U.S. international drug control policy directly contradicts the stated goal of the U.S. government to promote human rights and democracy in the hemisphere. The drug war is essentially the cold war of the 1990s. We've adapted the same mentality, the same approach, to a new problem. We've moved from Central America south to the Andean region where coca, cocaine and heroin are produced. We're waging war in the Andes today just as we did in Central America in the 1980s, only this time with very clear bipartisan support. Ultimately the drug was is driven by domestic politics. Politicians of all political stripes continue to believe that they get more votes back home if they're tough on the war on drugs. But the other side is the situation of the U.S. military, and here I'm really speaking about the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Latin American Region. In the wake of the cold war, it's become the raison d'être for continuing to operated in the Latin American and Caribbean region, where they really don't have any place anymore. As one former South-Comm commander said: "It's the only war we've got." Phillip Babich: Heading U.S. narcotics policy is Barry McCaffrey, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern Command until President Clinton appointed him Drug Czar in 1996. McCaffrey's office claims that interdiction and crop eradication programs directed at the Latin American drug trade have reduced illicit drug shipments from that region to the United States by 18%. But critics of U.S. drug policy ask: If this is true, why are cocaine and heroin still readily available on U.S. streets at historically low prices? Adam Isacson, senior associate at the Center for International Policy based in Washington, DC, says a look at strategic priorities in the U.S. aid package to Colombia reveals that freshly equipped military units will implement so-called counternarcotics operations in Southern Colombia, where F.A.R.C. guerillas collect taxes from coca growers. Yet, the aid package directs virtually no counternarcotics efforts in central and northern regions of Colombia where right-wing paramilitaries operate and are said to be more tightly linked to drug trafficking than F.A.R.C. Adam Isacson: The cornerstone of this aid package is something the administration's aid proposal calls the "push into Southern Colombia." This requires us to basically create from scratch three battalions in the Colombian army. They're going to somehow secure - that's the word that's used, "secure" an area about the size of Pennsylvania. The jungles of southwestern Colombia. The province is called Putomayo and Kakata, two names you may hear a lot more in the future: They're going to secure it in order to make it safe for the police to do, sort of fumigation and drug lab raid operations. But who are they securing it against? It is Colombian guerillas, who would obviously be shooting back at any military offensive in this area. So for the first time, we're going to be funding an offensive operation against Colombian guerillas. We've never done that before. We've paid for police to shoot back at the guerillas, shoot at them when they're spraying crops. But this is different. We're trying to retake territory with U.S. funds and U.S. trained people. Phillip Babich: Do you think the U.S. military and government has an interest in seeing the F.A.R.C. defeated in this civil conflict? Adam Isacson: There's certainly a strong interest in seeing the F.A.R.C. defeated. What the F.A.R.C. represent right now is instability in Northern South America, not just in Colombia but for the whole region. And the United States has always preferred even an abusive dictator to even the possibility of instability. However, that said, you cannot sell the American people right now on a crusade against, you know, a bunch of old Marxists and their teenage soldiers out in the jungles of Colombia. There's no way the American people would want to get involved in that. And certainly not the Congress either. However, if you sell it as an anti-drug program, and something that's designed to keep drugs away from our kids and off our streets, then you have a much better chance, especially in an election year, when everybody's afraid of the 30-second ad that says they voted against an anti-drug bill. Even if it's just an anti-guerilla bill in disguise. Lisa Hauggard: The choices of who to fund, and how, indicate there's something more than counter-narcotics at play. Phillip Babich: Lisa Haugaard is legislative coordinator for the Latin American Working Group based in Washington, D.C. Lisa Hauggard: The United States has funded for years the anti-narcotics police within Colombia, and not, in a large extent, the Colombia army. And the choice to involve an army counter-narcotics work is, we believe, a mistaken policy direction, and is a real departure in terms of U.S. funding for Colombia. That's where you get the United States more involved in counterinsurgency directly. Adam Isacson: If they were not targeting the F.A.R.C.s, they would at least have some of this aid package operating in the Northern part of the country, where come Colombian analysts, I trust, are now saying that up to 40% of Colombian coca is being grown. The Northern part of the country is being dominated by right-wing paramilitary groups. The paramilitaries, as their own leader said in an interviews earlier this year, get about 70% of their funds from the drug trade. Yet the word "paramilitary" hardly appears in the administration's aid proposal. They are not being targeted, even though they engage in the same behavior. Lisa Hauggard: Moreover, the paramilitaries seem to be more extensively involved in the drug trade, as opposed to taxing drug production, than the guerillas. Those paths for drug trafficking out of the country go through the central and northern parts of the country, where the paramilitaries control much of the routes. And so simply, just through basic geography and the placement of the package, the United States has made a choice to focus on the guerilla angle. Shereen Meraji: 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: According to the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy, stepped up coca growing in southern Colombia explains the Clinton administration's selectivity in targeting left-wing drug traffickers as opposed to right-wing ones. Bob Brown is acting deputy director of the Drug Czar's Office of Supply Reduction. He says the U.S. aid package is strictly support for counternarcotics programs, not military involvement in Colombia's war. Bob Brown: No, this is not military action against left wing F.A.R.C. What it is, is an assistance package focused in the southern areas of Colombia, where this exploding coca cultivation occurs. It is principally focused, again, in support of the Colombian government's "Plan Colombia" to deal with the drug issue. It is not a counterinsurgency type of initiative at all: It's rather focused on the drug problem, and we thing that in dealing with that problem it will have a supportive, healthy effect on the rest of Colombia. It appears military, perhaps, in cost, because the essential requirement here is to support the Colombian government's extension of its authority into the south of the country, principally Putomayo and Kakata, those Departments. And the type of support we can offer to the Colombians to accomplish that is mobility, meaning helicopters, is the ability to provide security in those areas; training and equipping military forces. And those efforts, helicopters and security are indeed expensive. But the nature of the initiative there is a broad-based initiative. It's one that addresses security, mobility, relocation of rural inhabitants, campesinos, alternative development issues, enhanced legal and other judicial structures within the Colombian capacity, support both of their military and police. So I'd want to characterize our support initiative as a broad-brush one, not a military one. Phillip Babich: Now, following up on that...critics of the aid package say that the aid package focuses efforts, couter-narcotic efforts, in the Southern region, as you pointed out. Yet there's a substantial amount of drug trade that's emanating from the Central and Northern regions of Colombia, which are dominated by paramilitary groups, right wing paramilitary groups. So, what's your response to that? That does feed into the perception that perhaps the U.S. is engaging more in a counterinsurgency effort that in a counter-narcotics effort. Bob Brown: No I don't think that either is the case. This is not something focused only against the F.A.R.C. versus the paramilitary, so called, or the agencies specifically. It is a drug initiative, and it's a drug initiative focused specifically in those areas where exploding coca cultivation has occurred. That's the drug threat to the United States specifically and to the hemisphere in a more general sense. So for that reason, our initiative to support "Plan Colombia" is indeed focused there. But it should not be down the road exclusively limited to southern Colombia. It should be support that over years is able to react to Colombia's assessment of where their drug problems are at any point in time. In fact, there are...in the southern areas there are any number of illegal armed groups. Not just the F.A.R.C., but all types of illegal armed groups found in Colombia are indeed found in southern Colombia, drawn in many cases by the lucrative, illicit drug business. Phillip Babich: Isn't it true that right wing paramilitary groups are also involved with the drug trade? Bob Brown: It is indeed. As far as we know, I think we have a reasonable feel for it, almost all principle illicit arms groups in Colombia are indeed in one way or another involved, in the illicit drug trade. Phillip Babich: Is the administration comfortable with increasing support substantially to a government and a military that is one of the worst human rights violators in the hemisphere? Bob Brown: Well, I think that the long standing violence in Colombia...again, we're talking decades-standing level of civil violence has produced all sorts of atrocities or ugliness on the rural inhabitants throughout Colombia. I find that the reaction of the Colombian government and specifically the Colombian armed forces in the recent time of my own exposure has been steadily more aggressive in attending to civil rights, human rights concerns and inculcating human rights training into all the military training programs and establishing a responsive reporting structure for human rights abuses. So while it is countrywide a difficult and challenging human rights setting, I see the trend steadily upward and very positive with regard to this important issue. Phillip Babich: Bob Brown of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy. U.S. military ties with Colombia date back to the 19th century. The Colombian military was instrumental in toppling Spanish rule in South America and helped shape U.S. military programs in Latin America, according to Cecilia Zuarte-Luan of the Colombia Support Network. Counterinsurgency, she says, was one of the Colombian military's strengths. The United States integrated Colombia's lessons into training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, an institution linked to repressive dictatorships and human rights violations throughout Latin America. Cecilia Zuarte-Luan: Since the 1940s, when the School of the Americas was founded, the very first counterinsurgency manuals that were produced, were produced based on the experience of the Colombian army. Because the Colombia army, remember had been fighting insurgency since the early 1920s. So they had a long seasoned experience with fighting guerillas. And they were the national army that was being used to have this new stage in the development of armies in the Western hemisphere, which is the use of Latin American armies to replace their own people. So the United States does not have to send the Marines all the time, as they did in the 1800s. Phillip Babich: Speaking at a symposium in Montreal, Canada, in June 2000, scholar and activist Noam Chomsky, who's written numerous books on U.S. foreign policy, noted that state terror in Colombia began to escalate in the early 1960s after a training mission initiated by the Kennedy administration. Noam Chomsky: That mission recommended that "the security forces, as necessary, execute paramilitary sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known Communist proponents." That's a phrase that has very broad coverage. In the 1990s, the annual toll of atrocities has been about 3000 killed and 300,000 refugees. The overwhelming majority are attributed to the military and its paramilitary associates. The close linkage between them has been documented by a long report of Human Rights Watch and a United Nations report. In 1999, atrocities increased sharply, almost 80% of them attributed to the paramilitary military alliance, and again conforming to traditional patterns, the U.S. arms flow increased, in fact, tripled in 1999. And it's now scheduled to rise even more sharply under the pretext of a drug war. Coletta Youngers: The U.S. now gathers intelligence throughout the country. We have five radars in place. We have blanket surveillance of what's going on throughout the country, and we share it with the Colombian military when we chose do that. And the U.S. is equipping the Colombian military to improve its intelligence capacity. Phillip Babich: Coletta Youngers with the Washington Office on Latin America... Coletta Youngers: It has reorganized military intelligence within the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It set up an intelligence command center in Tress, which is in the southern coca growing region of the country. And I think here it's important to remember that it's the Colombian military intelligence that has probably the worst human rights record within the Colombian armed forces, and has the closest link to right wing paramilitary groups. So this is really disturbing from the human rights point of view. And finally, the U.S. is heavily involved in training. We have about 300 military personnel on the ground in Colombia at any given time. We don't call them advisors or trainers, but that's of course what they're doing. Phillip Babich: Some of these "advisors and trainers" are private contractors, hired by the U.S. government to implement tactical and bureaucratic strategies within the Colombian government and military, says Adam Isacson with the Center for International Policy. Adam Isacson: In everything from logistics in intelligence to actual operational things like marksmanship and ambush techniques, the real focus is on general institutional improvements in the Colombian military...trying to make it become an overall better fight force, more efficient. And for that, we are hiring lots of private contractors to help sort of with everything from management consulting to teaching them how to run an actual logistics effort. Phillip Babich: Those companies include Dyncorp and MPRI -- Military Professional Resources Incorporated. Adam Isacson: MPRI has been awarded, for instance, a $3,000,000 contract to do a bottom-up review of the Colombian military and make all kinds of recommendation for their needs and how they should be what they need to do to make themselves more effective in the near future. Phillip Babich: Corporate interests also extended to natural resources in Colombia. At present, Colombia is the seventh largest source of imported oil to the United States. Adam Isacson: It's said that it has the largest unexplored potential oil reserves in the hemisphere. So clearly the U.S. oil companies have their eye on Colombia and are hoping the situation improves so that they can start drilling. Oil has been found in Putomayo Department, which is one of areas that the United States hopes to push into with this aid package. And Occidental Petroleum already drills heavily just across the border, from Putomayo in northern Ecuador. Phillip Babich: Meanwhile, Colombia is likely to figure highly in the Clinton administration's drug war and, more broadly, foreign policy plans in Latin America. Colombia is the third-ranking recipient of annual U.S. financial assistance; Israel and Egypt are first and second. Part of official drug war strategy in Colombia includes massive aerial fumigation sweeps with highly toxic chemicals to eradicate coca crops. Coca growers in Colombia report eye and skin irritation and often have to evacuate when helicopters fly in to fumigate. Lisa Haugaard of the Latin American Working Group says Colombian peasant farmers are willing to destroy their coca fields themselves if there are economic alternatives. Lisa Hauggard: Some of these farmers have other solutions they'd like to propose to the problem. There's been a proposal from Putomayo to do manual eradication of coca plants by the farmers themselves, if in fact a legitimate, viable strategy is presented to them for what they are to farm, and how they are to work and gain a livelihood...if they give up coca. What will be the reaction of these small farmers when the fumigation planes step up their efforts? It's not at all clear. They may be fleeing into the Amazon; there may be increased peasant protests like the coca marches we've seen in the past, which were enormous in scale. It's not at all clear. Phillip Babich: Indigenous communities are also looking for solutions to end violence in rural areas where both left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups have perpetrated gross human rights violations, including forcibly removing indigenous peoples from their land to make way for oil, mining, and logging companies. Colombian Woman: The way I see a military aid package and U.S. involvement is that the people that are being affected the most by this are indigenous people. Because when you see this, you keep in mind the fact that indigenous peoples are found in rural areas far away from the capitol and the big cities. And when I say indigenous people, I also include the campesino peasant population and the fishermen that are also found in rural areas. Phillip Babich: Supporters of "Plan Colombia" and the U.S. aid package anticipate that increased military activity in southern Colombia will displace indigenous communities and have set aside money to assist with relocation costs. Coletta Youngers of the Washington Office on Latin America says this is the first time in her thirteen years in the U.S. capitol that she's seen a military aid package that contains money for inhabitants who will be displaced as a result of the aid package itself. She adds that the United States can't fight its domestic drug problems by sending multi-million dollar helicopters abroad. Coletta Youngers: We need to shift the policy debate in this country so that politicians in Washington begin to feel that they can get more support by developing effective alternatives. This means grass roots organizing, links with the reform community, and media campaigns to change the public opinion and popular perception about our virtual war on drugs. We need to send a different message to Washington, and only then will we see policy change. Phillip Babich: That's it for this edition of Making Contact: a look at Colombia and U.S. military and corporate interests. Thanks for listening. And, special thanks this week to Norm Stockwell of radio station WORT-FM in Madison, Wisconsin, Heather Majaury of radio station CJAM in Windsor, Ontario, and the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., for recorded portions. We had translation and voice-over assistance from Ana Maria Murillo and music from Tecoloto Productions. Laura Livoti is our managing director; Peggy Law is executive director; Associate producer is Stephanie Welch Senior advisor, Norman Solomon; National producer, David Barsamian; Women's Desk coordinator, Lisa Rudman; Prison Desk coordinator, Eli Rosenblatt; Production assistant, Shereen Meraji; Archivist, Din Abdullah; and I'm your host and managing director, 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. You can also go to our website at WWW.radioproject.org. 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. |