War on Drugs
Extradition of Paramilitary Leaders Undermines Para-Politics Investigation
In the early hours of May 13, Colombian security forces transported 14 high-ranking paramilitary leaders from their prison cells to an aircraft that whisked them out of the country and to the United States. Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe had ordered that the paramilitary leaders be extradited to face drug trafficking charges in the United States because, as Interior Minister Carlos Holgumn stated, “In some cases they were still committing crimes and reorganizing criminal structures” from their prison cells. The paramilitary leaders were engaged in a demobilization process that called for them to confess their crimes in return for reduced jail sentences. In their testimonies, several paramilitary leaders revealed links between the right-wing militia organization and elected officials and multinational corporations. By extraditing the paramilitary leaders, President Uribe has ensured that they will do no further harm to himself and his political allies as he has effectively stymied future investigations into the so-called para-politics scandal. Read more»
Seven Years of Plan Colombia … and Little Has Changed in Putumayo
In December 2000, fumigation planes began to fly over Putumayo as part of a massive aerial eradication campaign under the newly signed and recently delivered Plan Colombia aid package. The spray planes first came to Putumayo in 1997, but the spraying occurred on a much smaller scale. Their arrival in 2000 brought increased levels of sickness, human displacement and an overwhelming destruction of legal crops, all of which, like the fumigations, were not new to Putumayo. And now, seven years later, Putumayo continues to see fumigations and war. However, manual eradications have recently been added to the mix. They are conducted by a team of 125 men, guarded by anti-narcotics police, which goes from farm to farm uprooting entire coca field’s in a matter of minutes. Read more»
Waging War in Colombia’s National Parks
Cecilia walked around her small wooden house pointing to the banana trees and yucca plants that were killed by the aerial fumigation that had occurred eight days earlier. She described how the chemicals blanketed not only the coca crops she and her husband cultivate in order to survive, but also their food crops and two young children. As a result, the family is now struggling to survive in a part of Colombia that has been Cecilia’s home for her entire life: the Macarena National Park. Based on the results of the initial fumigations, it appears that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s decision to begin spraying coca crops in the country’s national parks will only intensify the conflict, escalate the humanitarian crisis and increase ecological damage in some of Colombia’s most pristine environments. Read more»
The FARC Indictment
The U.S. State Department has developed the secret formula to dismantle the armed groups of Colombia’s war. Or so it believes. It is believed that the demobilization of 28,000 members of the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) was the result of threatening its leaders—notably Salvadore Mancuso and Don Berna—with extradition to the US. Fear of extradition, accompanied by promises of amnesty, convinced large numbers of paramilitaries to lay down their arms, confess their crimes, and put their faith in the government to restore order in Colombia. Now, the same strategy is being tried on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), an insurgency born in Colombia’s civil conflict (“La Violencia”) and greatly influenced by the Cuban Revolution. Read more»
Coca Figures Make Evident the Failure of Plan Colombia
The U.S. government’s recently released annual survey of coca cultivation in Colombia makes evident that Plan Colombia is a failure. However, while the latest figures for 2005 are clearly unambiguous, the Bush administration is contorting itself in every which way to present them as positive. The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) report reveals that there was 144,000 hectares of coca cultivation in Colombia in 2005, a 26 percent increase over the previous year’s 114,100 hectares. Despite the gloomy statistics, U.S. Drug Czar John Walters astoundingly insisted that Plan Colombia was succeeding in its objective to reduce coca cultivation. Read more»
The Media’s Drug War Propaganda
Last week, mainstream media correspondents based in Colombia again served as propagandists for Washington’s so-called war on drugs in the South American country. Following last month’s killing of 29 soldiers by rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), President Alvaro Uribe was determined to make a statement to Colombians and the world that his government was winning both the civil conflict and the war on drugs. However, in order to get his message out effectively, Uribe needed the international media’s cooperation. No problem. All he had to do was plan a counternarcotics offensive and have the military arrange a press junket to transport foreign correspondents from Bogotá to the operation zone. Inevitably, the spoon-fed reporters would quote the military officers in charge of the operation and comprehensively cover one side of the story. Read more»
Chemical Warfare in Colombia
It was five years ago this month when I first visited the department of Putumayo to investigate the effects of Plan Colombia’s initial aerial fumigation campaign launched several weeks earlier in December 2000. In the ensuing years, I made several more trips to Putumayo to further investigate Plan Colombia, the civil conflict and the growing presence of foreign oil companies in the resource-rich region. With extensive personal experience in Putumayo under my belt and having read numerous erratic accounts of the U.S. war on drugs in Colombia, I cautiously picked up a copy of the recently published book by Hugh O’Shaughnessy and Sue Branford titled Chemical Warfare in Colombia: The Costs of Coca Fumigation. My concerns would prove to be unwarranted as it quickly became evident that Chemical Warfare in Colombia is the best book yet written about the U.S. war on drugs in Colombia. Read more»