National Radio Project

MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #26-01 White Lies: The Drug War In Colombia
June 27, 2001

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2001/2601.html

Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact:

Adam Isaacson: The United States has a regular presence in Colombia of about 300 people doing training, manning radar sites, which are more and more actually being taken up by private military contractors on U.S.-based companies.

Noam Chomsky: ..right on the surface--that we have absolutely no right to do a thing in Colombia. And if we have a problem with drugs, that problem is here, and it's known to know how to deal with it.

Phillip Babich: More than 150 people employed by U.S.-based corporations are directly involved in military operations in Colombia. These hired guns work closely with the Colombian military, fumigating coca crops and assisting in counterinsurgency efforts. On this program, we look at U.S. involvement in Colombia. We also hear reaction from Colombian coca farmers. 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.

When President Clinton signed Plan Colombia into law in 2000, the 1.3 billion dollar 2-year aid package to the Andean country was a victory for those who believe in the so-called "War on Drugs." It was also a boon for military contractors and weapons manufacturers. More than 70 percent of Plan Colombia funds is for military hardware and training. As part of Plan Colombia's "Push into Southern Colombia," the United States is helping to create three new Colombian army battalions. In addition to guns, food and uniforms, the battalions will receive 18 Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters, 42 refurbished Bell-Textron UH-1 Huey II helicopters, a surveillance plane, a pesticide spraying plane, an assortment of aircraft and airfield upgrades, ammunition, and training.

According to Adam Isaacson, senior associate at the Center for International Policy, based in Washington, D.C., the Sikorsky company stands to rake in more than $250 million dollars from helicopter sales. He says the chopper orders come at a good time for the Connecticut-based firm.

Adam Isaacson: The United States government was not planning to buy any more Sikorsky. . .not any more Black Hawks for another year or two, so this was a great way to keep the production lines going. And Sikorsky and Sikorsky's union lobbied hard for the aid package as a result. You had the whole Connecticut delegation, which is usually exemplary on human rights issues in Latin America voting for this package. You had Chris Dodd, Senator Dodd -- human rights in Latin America is more or less his turf in the Senate -- actually introducing an amendment to try to put more Black Hawks into the Senate bill, going on the Senate floor talking about the superior load-bearing capacity of the Black Hawk helicopter. The influence of Sikorsky was enormous.

Phillip Babich: Sikorsky donated $100,000 to Senator Dodd's most recent campaign. Other military contractors lobbied hard for Plan Colombia, including Bell-Textron which gets 2 million dollars for each of its refurbished Hueys. Other big ticket items include contracts with U.S. corporations to provide military assistance and training to the Colombian military. One of those companies is Military Personnel Resources Inc., an Alexandria, Virginia, firm that generates about 50 million dollars in revenues annually. Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the human rights organization School of the Americas Watch, says the U.S. government is essentially contracting-out its military operations in Colombia.

Father Roy Bourgeois: In Colombia now, there are these what they call the "outsources"--the outsourcing. The private company in Alexandria, Virginia, of retired high-ranking military personnel--in a sense who are mercenaries now--who are well-paid, who are in Colombia, and they are not accountable to Congressional committees. They're not accountable to the White House. They're contractors. But who are they? They're retired military. They're the mercenaries. And of course we've learned from Vietnam, we've learned from El Salvador, and now they're trying to be more sophisticated about this.

Phillip Babich: Military Personnel Resources Inc. completed its contract work in Colombia in Spring 2001. But other U.S. corporations are on the Plan Colombia payroll. Cecilia Zarate-Laun, co-founder and program director of the Colombia Support Network, says she's concerned about these contracts because the public loses oversight of U.S. military involvement in Colombia.

Cecilia Zarate-Laun: This means they are privatizing the war. And if the war is privatized, it means that the government decides, the Congress, the Senate, etc., cannot exercise control and vigilance on what these people do. Because if you have private contractors they have become private businesses. And it's much more problematic because all the mechanisms of control that a democracy has are out of place here and that's a problem, because clearly there is a lot of presence of the United States in Colombia that's not official.

Phillip Babich: By some estimates, there are as many as 170 individual U.S. military contractors at work in Colombia. By far the largest private U.S. presence there, the Reston, Virginia-based company Dyncorp employs about 100 Americans in Colombia. Journalist Jeremy Bigwood is the author of an investigative report for the on-line publication Corpwatch titled "Dyncorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War."

Jeremy Bigwood: Dyncorp people are usually ex-military people with experience in helicopters and experience in lower-intensity war. And they have been employed to work in Colombia pretty much under the cover of the drug crop eradication program. And in many cases there are problems when one tries to eradicate peoples' drug crops. For instance, peasants or guerrillas or people associated with the peasants that are growing the crops often shoot at these planes. And sometimes you'll get planes or helicopters shot down, and it is necessary to mount search and rescue operations to get those people, who've been shot down in helicopters or whatever, to get them out. And in fact there have been at least one occasion where Dyncorp employees have come under very hostile fire and have conducted search and rescue missions.

Phillip Babich: But, it's hard to figure out exactly what Dyncorp does in Colombia, says Bigwood. Public records on the 1.4 billion dollar company reveal nothing since Dyncorp is privately held. And the company does not comment on its operations in Colombia.

Jeremy Bigwood: There have been reports of them doing all kinds of things that have nothing to do with crop eradication. Essentially what they are is a secret army.

Phillip Babich: You write in your Corpwatch Report that the company's day-to-day operations are overseen by a secretive clique of officials in the State Department's Narcotic Affairs Section in the State Department's Air Wing. What does that oversight consist of?

Jeremy Bigwood: Basically these are people. . .there are some people in there who have been in all of our little dirty wars for the last couple of decades. And those people oversee the operations, and essentially they tell the Dyncorp people where they're suppose to be, when they're supposed to be there, etc., etc., when they can have a vacation, and what the projects are for that week. So they're essentially, the oversight. But there's a problem with them--they are in of themselves very secretive.

Phillip Babich: So, is it your assessment that some of them in dirtiest aspects of that U.S. involvement in Colombia are behind private or secret doors?

Jeremy Bigwood: Yes, absolutely.

Phillip Babich: According to some of those reports, Dyncorp has transported right-wing paramilitary troops to various regions of the country. Bigwood says Dyncorp's duties go beyond crop eradication programs, which the company participates in on a daily basis.

Jeremy Bigwood: They're involved in ferrying people around from country to country. They're involved if there are any medical problems or medical evacuation or search and rescue missions. In some cases, they're even involved. . .they even have a command and control function, which in some cases is over Colombian troops in the field.

Phillip Babich: In February 2001, while rescuing a downed helicopter, four Dyncorp pilots exchanged fire with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or F.A.R.C. Adam Isaacson of the Center for International Policy says the line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency operations is blurring.

Adam Isaacson: The U.S. you know, the official U.S. policy is to draw a bright line between counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency that the United States does not have an interest in getting stuck into the quagmire of Colombia's 40-year old conflict. It just wants to cut down on the flow of drugs out of Colombia. But how does that translate into these contractors' actions? Are they getting too close to combat, as they may have in February, and what will that mean? I mean, Congresswoman Shikowski from Chicago has expressed worries about a privatized Gulf of Tonkin. I don't quite go that far, but it's certainly a concern.

Phillip Babich: Also of concern to critics of U.S. policy in Colombia are U.S. business interests there. Cecilia Zarate-Laun says that what's really behind the drug war is eagerness to gain access to valuable resources and land controlled by rebel groups. Right-wing paramilitaries, she notes, often target areas that could be economically significant if the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, is expanded to include Colombia and other Latin American countries as part of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Cecilia Zarate-Laun: You can see the pattern. The paramilitaries go first, aiding the people take the land, and then the multinationals come. So all. . .they go into areas that are clearly going to be the site of multinational corporations' business, or areas where there's a lot of plans in order to facilitate the expansion of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Areas that are the future site of infrastructure development programs that would help to implement NAFTA.

Phillip Babich: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, we'll be giving out our toll free number at the end of this broadcast.

Colombia is home to large oil reserves and extensive mineral deposits. For a look at U.S. business interests in Colombia, we have this report from correspondent Susan Wood.

Susan Wood: President Bush's energy policy, unveiled in mid-May, calls for stepped-up domestic power production to lessen U.S. dependence on imported oil. But Michael Klare believes the U.S. is poised to vastly increase its petroleum imports from selected regions and countries, including Colombia.

Michael Klare: There's a long-term U.S. policy of trying to shift our energy imports from the Middle East to the Western Hemisphere. And, of the countries in the Western Hemisphere, in Latin America, Colombia is one of the major suppliers, along with Venezuela and Mexico.

Susan Wood: Klare is professor of Peace and Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts and author of the book, "Resource Wars." He says oil is at least as important a factor in U.S. strategy for Colombia as stopping the flow of drugs.

Michael Klare: It's likely that Colombia has large reserves that have yet to be discovered because they're located in areas where there's been a lot of fighting. So, to get at that oil and be able to deliver it to refineries and ports on the coast, the entire countryside has to be under military control and occupation. And hence, I believe one of the main purposes of Plan Colombia is to beef up the Colombian military's capacity to protect the pipelines and the oil fields.

Susan Wood: The foreign-owned pipelines are frequent targets of the country's two main anti-government guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and the National Liberation Army, or ELN. So far this year, the Quanya Limon pipeline, operated jointly by Occidental Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell and the state oil company, Ecco Petrol has been bombed over 60 times, resulting in losses of 3 million dollars a day. The E.L.N. has also been known to kidnap oil company employees and hold them for ransom. Patrick Reinsborough organizing director of the San Francisco-based Rain Forest Action Network, says energy producers have been a driving force behind Plan Colombia.

Patrick Reinsborough: The U.S. military aid to Colombia has been part of a five, six year lobbying campaign by a number of U.S. energy corporations. The U.S.-Colombia business partnership was formed in 1996 by companies such as Enron, who was the largest funder to George Bush's campaign; companies like Occidental, British Petroleum-- all of these companies that were looking to reinvent the Colombian government, to change it from what it was perceived as a few years ago as one of the worst violators of human rights in Latin America, to suddenly this burgeoning democracy that needs to be supported by U.S. military aid.

Susan Wood: Enron Corporation, which has natural gas interests in Colombia, gave 1.8 million dollars to the Bush-2000 campaign. British Petroleum's successor, BP Amoco, which owns Colombia's largest old fields, gave $800,000. Colombia is the world's fourth largest coal exporter and the leading producer of emeralds. It has sizable gold and mineral deposits, and it has a huge supply of cheap labor. Privatization is proceeding apace. The Colombian Congress this year considered proposals to deregulate natural gas prices by 2003. Most of Colombia's natural gas is produced offshore by Texaco. As for the oil industry, in 1999, the Colombian government reduced Ecco Petrol's share of the country's oil from 50 to 30 percent, slashed royalties to as low as 5 percent, and relaxed environmental standards for foreign companies.

Ignacio Gomez: Any time that E.L.N. put a bomb in the pipeline, the multinationals are asking the government for relief.

Susan Wood: Ignacio Gomez covers the oil industry for the Colombia Daily, El Espectador. Unlike some U.S. critics of Plan Colombia, he believes the oil companies want to prolong the war, not to defeat the guerrillas,

Ignacio Gomez: They are saying, "Oh this is too dangerous for us to be here, so we're gonna leave." And the Colombian government has been answering to them, "Okay, don't worry, we're gonna give you 5 percect more." So I think that as the war in Colombia is getting worse, the business of the oil multinationals is getting better.

Susan Wood: Jamie Kneen, communications coordinator for Toronto-based MiningWatch Canada, agrees, and he says it's not just oil companies that stand to benefit.

Jamie Kneen: There's a pattern in Colombia, that's very worrying. And what we've got is foreign companies coming in and buying pieces of Colombian resources. And rather than entering in negotiating with the people that live there, they're buying concessions and staying in the background while the paramilitaries move in and essentially clear the land for them. They go in and kill a few people. And if they can't persuade everyone to leave that way, they'll start killing all of them.

Susan Wood: The Colombian Daily Vanguardia reported in May that right-wing paramilitaries had killed 450 people in southern Bolivar province, most of them small-scale gold miners. The mine workers' union president accused multinational corporations of financing paramilitary activities. This is not the first time such allegations have surfaced. British Petroleum, for example, has been dogged by reports that its private security contractor provided training and equipment to military and police units linked to abuses. MiningWatch's Jamie Kneen says the proximity of military activity and valuable resources is no coincidence.

Jamie Kneen: If you look at the map of the U.S. military installations in Colombia, the map of paramilitary activity--the massacres and abuses that have been going on--and the map of oil and gas and coal and gold deposits, they coincide very, very closely. And they actually coincide more closely than the maps of drug activity.

Susan Wood: Also at the heart of the U.S.-led drug wars, says Patrick Reinsborough, is seizing control of resources from local communities.

Patrick Reinsborough: A big part of the military plan in Colombia is the displacement of local peoples and particularly the marginalization of indigenous communities and local campesino groups who are resisting oil development. Oil development has brought nothing but death and destruction to communities across Colombia. The proceeds are certainly not reaching the communities that are being impacted by them. What's the price of an indigenous culture? What's the price of an intact community?

Susan Wood: Across Colombia there have been massive protests against oil and other extractive industries. A clear example of this, says Reinsborough, is the Uwa people's nine-year battle to stop Occidental Petroleum from drilling for oil on their traditional land, which they hold sacred. Despite international protests, Occidental sank its first exploratory well in the land in November, 2000, two months after the U.S. Congress approved Plan Colombia. The site is now guarded by 1000 soldiers, and paramilitaries are reportedly moving into the area. Activists say that with the Colombian government under increasing pressure to generate oil revenue to pay a $33 billion debt, such scenes will be repeated all over the country unless Plan Colombia is stopped and peace negotiations are allowed to go forward. For Making Contact, this is Susan Wood.

Phillip Babich: Eighty percent of the U.S. cocaine supply comes from Colombia. Eradicating coca crops is a primary focus of the U.S. drug policy. Helicopters and planes routinely drop toxic herbicides and, in some cases, experimental biological agents on coca fields in the southern region of Colombia, with an emphasis on the top growing state, Putumayo. The U.S. Office on National Drug Control Policy claims that crop eradication programs have been effective in reducing cocaine production. But, crop spraying has had detrimental impacts on nearby communities and land.

Community leaders from Colombia toured the United States in Spring 2001 to tell the U.S. public about coca farming and how Plan Colombia is affecting their health and livelihoods. Many farmers grow coca, which is a traditional plant used for medicine and other purposes in indigenous cultures, because it is one of the country's few remaining cash crops. Correspondent Neeva Reese caught up with the Colombians at a high school in Portland, Oregon.

Neeva Reese: According to a story in the Washington Post on January 7, herbicides have been sprayed over crops in Colombia's Putumayo regions since December 22, 2000 as part of Plan Colombia. Colombian coca growers are reported to be a primary source of cocaine for the illicit drug market in the United States. Though coca fields are the intended targets, local reports say that indigenous people, native plants, fish, animals and food crops are suffering more from spraying than the coca fields. The herbicide Roundup, one of the agents used for crop eradication, is known to be deadly to food crops and toxic to fish and aquatic plants. Referring to a photograph during a presentation, a resident of Putumayo, who did not wish to be identified, explains the effect on food crops and the resilience of the hardy coca plants.

Unidentified Indigenous man (translated): There you see a coca field that was fumigated. In between the coca bushes and the background, you can see banana trees. You can see how those banana trees are completely destroyed, but the coca continues growing. The fumigation doesn't affect the coca as directly as it does the banana trees. There are other crops that have absolute nothing to do with coca, that are nowhere near coca, that are also destroyed.

Neeva Reese: U.S. officials have claimed that Roundup, produced by the multinational corporation Monsanto, is safe. However the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that ingredients found in Roundup should be handled with caution, and that exposure can cause health effects such as pneumonia, tissue damage, and mental confusion. When sold in the U.S., Roundup carries a warning label. In Putumayo it is reportedly been sprayed over homes, fields, water supplies, and according to at least one report from the area, a school.

Unidentified Indigenous man (translated): Here's a high school like yours. The students are protesting because their school was fumigated. They fumigated their school gardens. The school has nothing to do with coca or the war, so the children are also protesting because they're not in agreement with this plan, a plan that is designed to get rid of the people that are living here.

Neeva Reese: A very small percentage of the 1.3 billion dollar aid package to Colombia is directed to our humanitarian needs or development of other crops, for farmers who struggle to survive. In a country filled with conflict, members of indigenous communities are caught in the middle. At risk for their lives from either FARC or right-wing paramilitary groups, they are often coerced into joining the fighting or enticed by promises of pay. An indigenous woman from Putumayo, who also did not want to be identified, explains the damage to the communities.

Unidentified Indigenous woman (translated): Women are also being recruited. This is a grave problem that I want to share with you all. They recruit youth; they recruit the indigenous women. This is seriously affecting our culture, because it is the women who continue and protect the life that God has given us. The mothers whose sons and daughters have been recruited to be members of these armed groups, they cry over this situation, over the loss of their children.

Neeva Reese: As a representative of indigenous communities, she believes that none of the fighting factions have the interest of the people at heart and pleads for help in resolving the conflicts.

Unidentified Indigenous woman (translated): I want to conclude by saying thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting. I would also like to ask you to please communicate this message to others, and to please help us find a solution, an exit strategy for this huge conflict we, the Colombian people are in.

Neeva Reese: In their parting comments to the class, the speakers implored students to do what they could to spread their message and enlist help in alleviating the suffering of the people of Colombia caused by U.S. policies.

Unidentified Indigenous man (translated): We don't have many alternatives in our lives, so this is why we're looking to you to raise our concerns here in the United States for solidarity. I hope you can talk about this with your parents and other people. Tell them that the help the United States is offering Colombia is for war, and it doesn't help the people in my community. This money should be invested in social programs, so that we have education for children; so that we can have more schools, more hospitals; so we can have roads; so that we can defend the Amazon, that we, and you also, need in order to live. That's why it's important to help our small organizations. You can also get in touch with your Congressional representatives, who can change our reality. You can help people live, and you can stop collaborating in the war.

Neeva Reese: Meanwhile, some of the most biologically diverse regions of the world are in jeopardy from U.S.-sponsored crop eradication programs. Indigenous leader are frustrated by their efforts to link crop spraying to health problems in their communities, such as rashes, welts, respiratory problems and possibly deaths. These Putumayo residents would like to see the funds that the United States is putting into military and crop fumigation efforts in their country go into a campaign against cocaine use in the U.S. and humanitarian aid in Colombia. For Making Contact, I'm Neeva Reese.

Phillip Babich: Many critics of U.S. policy in Colombia have raised concerns that the United States could get drawn deeper into the civil war. But the noted scholar and activist Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says there's a more fundamental question at issue.

Noam Chomsky: What right do we have to do anything in Colombia? Suppose, for example. . .if there happens to be a lethal drug produced in the United States which is much more lethal than cocaine. In fact, the Supreme Court just described it as the most lethal drug produced in use in the United States - tobacco. We forced that on other countries in the world. Like the countries of, say, East Asia, not only has to accept our lethal drugs, but they have to accept advertising for it. Advertising aimed at vulnerable populations like women and children. They have to accept that under the threat of trade sanctions.

But suppose China, say, where millions of people are being killed by our lethal drugs would say, "Okay, we're going to go into North Carolina and carry out counterinsurgency operations in chemical and biological warfare to destroy the drugs that you're forcing on us. You're even forcing advertising on us." Do they have a right to do that? Well, if they don't have a right to do that, how do we have the right to do anything in Colombia? I mean, that's sort of the most elementary question that ought to be asked. That is never raised. I mean at least I can't find it. I mean, even the critics of the new program don't go that far. But that's not going far -- we've recognized that China doesn't have that right. In fact, if China tried to claim such a right, why, they're newcomers, aren't they? But we're supposed to have that right. These are the kinds of things that people ought to be asking themselves. And they're not profound. I mean, this is right on the surface. It's right on the surface that we have absolutely no right to do a thing in Colombia. And if we have a problem with drugs, that problem is here. And it's known how how to deal with it. And there's a reason why people turn to self-destructive drugs, so take a look at those. These are all problems within the United States. They give us no justification for carrying out chemical and biological warfare and military action in other countries, whether that military action is done by proxy or not.

Phillip Babich: Noam Chomsky spoke with David Barsamian, host and executive producer of Alternative Radio. You can read more of that interview in the new book "Propaganda and the Public Mind," a collection of interviews Barsamian conducted with Chomsky.

And that's it for this edition of Making Contact: A look at U.S. policy in Colombia. Thanks for listening. And special thanks this week to Susan Wood who wrote portions of this show. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law, executive director. Associate producers, Stephanie Welch and Shereen Meraji. Senior advisor, Norman Solomon. National producer, David Barsamian. Women's desk director, Lisa Rudman. And, I'm your host and managing producer, Phillip Babich. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, or if you would like to get in touch with any of our guests, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. That's 800-529-5736. You can also go to our website at radioproject.org. That's radioproject.org. Bye for now.