Fanning the flar es
US. igniting murderous, bloody campaign with Colombian aid money
It had all the makings of a
great story—guerrilla insur
gents, CIA coverts and roving
death squads, all in a country that
now produces 80 percent of the
cocaine smuggled into the
United States.
Chances are you haven’t
heard about it. It’s not exactly
been on everybody’s radar
screen. The most recent coverage
was last Sunday on “60 Minutes”
in a story on Colombia’s presi
dent, Andres Pestrana.
' Pestrana has made it the goal
of his presidency to fight the
drugs, corruption and turmoil
that have plagued Colombia for
more than forty years. Guerrilla
groups have been warring
against the government since
1970, and the perpetually weak
state army has been unable to
suppress them.
Ten years ago, a CIA team
went into Colombia and began
advising top officials of the
Colombian army how to wage a
better war against the guerrillas.
Along with the CIA cdme mas
sive military aid in the form of
weapons—gobs of them. In 1991
alone, the Colombian army
received 10,000 M14 rifles,
37,000 hand grenades, 15 mil
lion rounds of ammunition and
other weaponry from the United
States.
Leave it to the United States
to throw weapons and money at a
problem and then ignore the
results. Aside from my moral
qualms about tunneling multiple
tons of death into poor countries,
this situation in Colombia is
fatally flawed.
The United States continues
to send aid to the Colombian
army based on two assumptions:
1) The guerrillas are the main
drug traffickers, and 2) therefore,
helping the military fight guerril
las is the best way to fight drugs.
This is partially true. Yes, the
guerrillas ^re mired in.the drug
trade. Two-thirds of the largest
group, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colotnbia, are involved
in drugs.
However, according to
Human Rights Watch, the
Colombian army is just as
involved in the drug trade as the
guerrillas. So, by funding the
army, the United States is fund
ing the drug trade, a delicious
irony considering our vitriolic
“war on drugs.”
We are also inadvertently
funding death squads. Many of
the weapons sent to the army are
traded to paramilitary groups—
civilian vigilantes under contract
with the state army. According to
Fairness and Accuracy in
Reporting, a media watch group,
70 percent of the human rights
abuses (torture, murders and the
like) committed in Colombia last
year can be linked to paramilitary
groups.
In one incident last October,
the village of El Aro was sur
rounded by a paramilitary force.
All the suspected “subversives"
were dragged into the village
square and executed, along with
11 other people, including three
children. A shopkeeper whose
shop was raided for supplies was,
for reasons unknown, gagged
and tied to a tree where he had his
eyes gouged out and his tongue
and testicles cut off before being
executed.
Before leaving, the paramili
tary forces burned 47 of the 68
homes, looted stores and stole
over 1,000 head of cattle, forcing
most of the 2,000 residents to
flee. Hundreds of families were
displaced to nearby shelters in
Ituango and Puerto Valdivia.
According to
Human Rights
Watch, the para
military groups
trade some of
these casual
ties to the army
for weapons.^*'
Army officials
then dress the civil
ian corpses in military
fatigues and claim they
were guerrillas killed in
combat. This practice of trad
ing and dressing corpses may
be fueled by the army’s empha
sis on body counts as a measure
of performance.
All of this information
implies that, of the $123 million
spent on Colombia last year,
most of the money went to fund
the drug trade, civilian displace
ment and death squads. This is
reprehensible even for a CIA
project.
There is a bill currently up for
a vote in the Senate that could
increase aid to Colombia to die
billion-dollar level.
Write to Bob Kerrey and
Chuck Hagel. Tell them to vote
down this package. Tell them
to stop throwing weapons at an
already volatile situation. Tell
them to spend the money on
finding a way to reduce demand.
As President Andres
Pestrana said on “60 Minutes,”
“even if we win in Colombia,
there will always be anoth
er country to supply the
U.S. with drugs, as
long as
demand for
them
remains.”
Seth Felton is senior history and english major and a Daily Nebraskan columnist.