by Ken Shores
U-Wire
Friday is marked as the National Day of Action Against Plan Colombia. Plan Colombia is the United States' current involvement in giving aid and training to the Colombian government and its paramilitary forces. Keep in mind the following is entirely attributed to a War on Drugs.
Here's what's currently happening in Colombia and some of the United States' involvements over there:
l In 1999, Colombia became the leading recipient of U.S. military and police assistance replacing Turkey (Israel and Egypt are in separate categories). In the last year, the United States has provided the Colombian government with more than $1 billion in aid.
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l The United States imports more oil from Colombia and its neighbors - Venezuela and Ecuador - than from all of the Persian Gulf. As President Bush's energy agenda prioritizes energy independence from the turbulent Middle East and the left-leaning President Chavez of Venezuela, attention has turned to Colombia. Bush's public defense of U.S. oil interests also rewards corporations such as Occidental Pete and formerly Enron who lobbied aggressively for military aid to Colombia and provides clear evidence of their effectiveness in shaping United States-Colombia policy to their benefit. "We never mentioned the words coca or narco-trafficker in our training . . . The objective continues to be oil," said Stan Goff, former U.S. Special Forces Intelligence Sergeant, on his work in Colombia.
l The Colombian army dedicates one quarter of all its soldiers to protecting oil installations. This does not include the money spent on hiring out (a form of privatization) to paramilitary groups, who the Colombian government claims it has little control over. Human rights reports, however, have documented the extensive ties between the military and paramilitary groups.
l These paramilitary groups are responsible for nearly 80 percent of the murders and displacement of civilians.
l Since 1986, 3,800 unionists have been assassinated, and three out of every five unionists murdered in the world are Colombian.
l Since 1996, a million people have fled the country; since 1985, 2 million have been internally displaced. 45 percent of those displaced are children and 75 percent of the victims are civilians. Colombia now has the third largest displaced population in the world.
l Colombia has an unemployment rate of 20 percent ("We have reasons for killing all those we do. In the case of trade unionists, we kill them because they prevent others from working," said Carlos Casta§o, head of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, the largest paramilitary group in Colombia).
l Fifty-five percent of the population is below the poverty line, in one of the wealthiest South American countries that is rich with natural resources. Colombia has the worst imbalance of wealth in the world.
l Funding in the name of a drug war occurs even though the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration reports that "all branches of government" in Colombia are involved in "drug-related corruption."
l The insurgent groups (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia being the largest) that both the United States and Colombian governments have dubbed terrorists and are actively killing have called for "a development plan for the peasants" that would "allow eradication of coca (the cocaine derivative) on the basis of alternative crops." "That's all we want," their leader Marulanda has publicly announced.
l The chemical dropped on primarily peasant farmers and coffee crops is called Roundup SL and is made by Monsanto (the same company that produced Agent Orange during the Vietnam conflict). Not only has this not decreased coca production in Colombia, but once it is dropped the land is no longer suitable for growing food or legal cash crops.
Furthermore, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank programs demand that Colombia open its borders to a flood of agricultural products (agricultural products that are heavily subsidized in the United States), with the obvious effect of undermining local productions. Those farmers displaced are either driven to the slums, thus lowering wage rates in the cities, or become "rational peasants," producing the best cash crops available, i.e. coca, cannabis and opium. After this rational act, they are rewarded with pesticide burns and slowly dying children.
The portrait painted here leaves little room for misinterpretation. The supposed war on drugs is at best a half-truth and more likely a perverse deceit hiding U.S. oil interests. As a war on drugs, it is an absolute failure, resulting in an increase of drug production, a displacement of legally acting farmers, an unprecedented refugee crisis, a proliferation of an already devastating wealth imbalance, a blatant assault against a people's right to unionize, the destruction of arable crop space, the murder of civilians and farmers, primarily children and the funding of a murderous paramilitary group, through which territory conflicts force formerly non-violent groups like FARC to take up arms.
A question lurks not too far in the background. Just what right does the United States have in carrying out military operations and chemical-biological warfare in other countries to destroy a crop it doesn't like? We must therefore ask whether others have the same extraterritorial right to violence and destruction that the United States implements. Where do our rights end and others rights begin?
So though it is in the interest of some organizations and parties to be in Colombia right now, it is not in my ethical interest; my government's actions do not represent my goals, and so I reject our claim to action there. I ask you to do the same.
