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 US
Military Interference in the Colombian Civil War - Media Bias and America’s
Emerging Military Nightmare
by Rick Bayer,
M.D.
Mercenaries
& Oil
Last summer, Congress and President Clinton approved $1.3 billion
for “Plan Colombia” under the banner of fighting the
“War on Drugs”. This makes Colombia the third largest
recipient of US aid. About 80% (over a billion dollars) of Plan
Colombia is military aid, primarily helicopters.
US
media coverage routinely overlooks facts such as the near total
rejection of Plan Colombia by our European allies or that the
Colombian governors have asked the US to stop high-altitude fumigation.
Washington recently repeatedly portrayed a US crew flying a mission
in a State Department helicopter that was fired at by Colombian
rebels as “civilians”. These “civilians” were
dispatched to rescue the Colombian police crew of a US-built Huey
II helicopter shot down by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
The misleading statements by Washington gave the impression that
these US “civilians” were the victims of an unwarranted
attack by Marxist guerrillas. What our government and mainstream
media failed to mention was that these “civilians” were
in actuality American mercenaries—contracted by Washington
to perform military duties in combat zones where people fight
and die.
Washington
military intervention enthusiasts (hawks) learned from the Vietnam
experience that when US troops die in combat, US public opinion
sours quickly. In the Central American conflicts of the 1980s,
Washington modified its intervention strategy from the Vietnam
model of placing US troops directly in the line of fire to a policy
of funding, arming, and training military (El Salvador and Guatemala)
and paramilitary (Nicaraguan Contras) allies.
Our
government routinely maintains the Vietnam and Central America
strategy of deploying military advisors in non-combat zones. But
Colombia is a different story and our country has increasingly
contracted out frontline duties to “civilians”.
Who
are these “civilians”? They’re military veterans,
many with Vietnam combat experience, who work for private US corporations—Military
Professional Resources, DynCorp and Virginia Electronics,
to name a few. These companies are legally required to be licensed
by the US State Department, assuring adherence to Washington’s
foreign policy agenda.
This
new strategy’s success is illustrated by the fact that at
least three DynCorp “civilians” have been killed in
the line of duty in Colombia, with no press coverage to speak
of in the US. Earlier this year, General Barry McCaffrey, former
US drug czar and former commander of US troops in the Central
and South America, retired from the White House Office of National
Drug Control Policy to join DynCorp. General McCaffrey is now
technically one of those “American civilians”.
Some
U.S. military officials harbor no illusions about their role in
Colombia. Stan Goff, a former U.S. Special Forces intelligence
sergeant, retired in 1996 from the unit that trains Colombian
anti-narcotics battalions. Quoted by the Bogotá daily,
El Espectador, Goff said that the main interest of the United
States is oil and Plan Colombia’s purpose is defending the
operations of Occidental, British Petroleum and Texas Petroleum,
and securing control of future Colombian fields.
Good
Investment or Misappropriation
Because the Colombian conflict is complex and the American media
biased or hopelessly complacent, many Americans are confused about
whether spending billions in Colombia represents a “good
investment in democracy” or another “misappropriation”
of tax dollars. This is especially relevant since the new President,
George W. Bush and his Secretary of Defense, General Powell are
seeking another half-billion plus this year to feed the appetite
of Plan Colombia.
Peace
in Colombia Action Group held a public teach-in about Colombia
in Portland where about 300 of us gathered on January 27, 2001.
The teach-in was co-sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility
(PSR)–Oregon and other local progressive groups including
American Friends Service Committee, Coalition Against
Environmental Racism, Campaign for Peace with Cuba,
Columbia Gorge Audubon Society, Cross Border Labor Organizing
Coalition, Fellowship Of Reconciliation, Laughing
Horse Books, KBOO Community Radio, Military and
Draft Counseling Project of WRL, Northwest Alliance for
Alternative Media, Oregon Peace Works, Peace and
Justice Works, Portland Central America Solidarity Committee,
Right of the People, Salem Committee on Latin America,
School of America’s Watch, and Women’s International
League for Peace and Freedom.
Andrew
Miller, acting advocacy director for Latin America for Amnesty
International USA, spent much of 1999 in Colombia and testified
before Congress about human rights conditions there. Colombia,
a country of 40 million, is the site of a devastating 50-year-old
civil war between the government and leftist guerillas. In the
last decade, 35,000 have died and almost 2 million persons have
been displaced. Paramilitary forces, allied with the Colombian
army, commit over 80% of the killings and human rights abuses.
The vast majority of victims are noncombatants, including human
rights workers, trade unionists, journalists, and other civilians
caught in the crossfire. Geopolitical interests in Colombia include
oil, access to the Amazon basin, and a free-trade agreement for
South America (FTAA) similar to NAFTA.
Sanho
Tree, director of the Drug Policy Reform Project of the Institute
for Policy Studies, just returned from Colombia and discussed
reasons for failed US policies. While Congress “gets tough”
on drugs, it ignores the poverty that forces peasants to grow
coca; ignores the fact that treatment in rich countries is mostly
unavailable; and ignores the vast profits that unregulated prohibition
provides. Alternative crops for peasants are difficult because
the infrastructure is inadequate to truck crops to market and
globalization makes foreign goods cheaper than local goods.
While
modern Colombia (a country historically known for its fine coffee
exports) now imports coffee, the major export is oil—mostly
to the US. Some military strategists compare US involvement in
Colombia to Viet Nam in the 1950’s or early 1960’s.
For instance, we have Green Berets in Colombia training Colombian
troops in counterinsurgency tactics, yet the US has no “exit
strategy”. There are no goals or victory conditions such
as capturing a capital or determining how much drug consumption
must decrease in the US to declare victory.
War
and Peace on Drugs
Proponents of the “War on Drugs” would like us to believe
that the more South American countryside we spray and defoliate
with herbicides, the fewer North American children will fall prey
to drug pushers. However, studies show that herbicide spray campaigns
are simply wasted tax dollars because they are ineffective at
stemming the flow of drugs. In fact, a RAND study looked to see
the most cost-effective way to decrease cocaine consumption in
the US (http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB6002/rb6002.html).
They found treatment to be 23 times more cost-effective than eradication
of drugs at the source and 10 times more effective than intercepting
drugs at US borders. Rather than a war paradigm, Congress and
American citizens need to look at substance abuse as a public
health problem with social consequences. This new attitude might
lead to a more rational and humane public policy rather than continuing
to spend less than 10% of the drug war budget on treatment. Of
course, all of these sane domestic measures beg the question of
the immoral and tragic practice of indiscriminantly dumping airborne
poison spray onto indiginous people’s land and crops.
Flora
Uribe, a Colombian feminist and writer temporarily living in Portland,
spoke of the personal impact of living in constant fear of bombs,
kidnapping, and roadblocks.
Martin
Gonzalez, a local activist who is director of Community Economic
Development for the Portland office of the American Friends Service
Committee traveled to Colombia on a fact-finding mission led by
the Latin American Working Group. He described hostile economic
conditions that forced many peasants to either choose to grow
cash crops like coca or starve. He also described environmental
and social consequences of the US crop eradication efforts and
how massive quantities of pesticides dumped from high altitude
on coca destroys adjacent food crops. Roze Dotson, a student at
Lewis and Clark College, described the U’Wa tribe and their
risk of displacement under threat from oil drilling by Occidental
Petroleum.
Without
the rhetoric of “fighting drugs,” US officials would
have to admit we are intervening in another country’s civil
war—bringing back memories of Vietnam and other disastrous
failures of US foreign policy. In 2001, under the banner of the
“War on Drugs,” (instead of “fighting communism”),
we are waging a toxic war against another country’s unique
ecosystems and endangering the health of innocent civilians.
Peace
in Colombia Action Group and PSR-Oregon do not take
sides in the Colombian civil war but we oppose American military
involvement because it escalates the conflict while doing nothing
to solve poverty in Colombia or substance abuse in the US.
The
human rights violations, environmental devastation, and the disingenuous
folly of pursuing a “War on Drugs” strategy are bringing
diverse US activists together to oppose America’s emerging
military nightmare.
For
more info, please contact Kim Alphandary with Peace in Colombia
Action Group (kalphandary@yahoo.com
or 503-537-9014).
Rick
Bayer, MD is a board certified internal medicine physician
and member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. He lives in
Portland, Oregon.
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