Subject: AUT: Fw: GUARDIAN: COMMENTARY - John Pilger
Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 08:36:31 +0100



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From: Colombian Labor Monitor <xx738-AT-prairienet.org>
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Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 3:52 PM
Subject: GUARDIAN: COMMENTARY - John Pilger


============================================What Washington fears most in South America 
is not drugs, but losing control of the 
critical north-east corner of the continent 
when the US military reluctantly withdraws 
from the Panama Canal at the end of the year.
_____________________ ============================================THE GUARDIAN [London]

Tuesday, 19 October 1999 

**************
* COMMENTARY *
**************

Phoney war
The US is planning a massive 
intervention in Colombia under 
the pretext of fighting the 
      'narco-guerrilla'
------------------------------

By John Pilger 

Following its attack on the Balkans, the United States is planning a 
massive intervention in Colombia. The Clinton administration has decided 
to seek congressional approval for $ 1bn in military aid to the 
government of Andres Pastrana in Bogota. This is for a low-level air war, 
American-planned and 'advised", with Blackhawk helicopters, satellite 
surveillance and cluster bombs. 'It is the same policy," says Amnesty 
International, 'that backed, death squads in El Salvador in the 1980s." 
It is the policy that started the war in Vietnam. 

Colombia receives more US arms and equipment than any country in the 
world, apart from Israel and Egypt. Last May, the Washington Post 
disclosed that 200 American military personnel were playing key parts in 
the war against the guerrillas of Colombia's popular resistance, who 
occupy an area the size of Switzerland. Justifying a frontal attack on 
the resistance presented difficulties for Washington until the War on 
Drugs replaced the Soviet Threat, and a new enemy was conjured: the 
'narco-guerrilla". 

The hypocrisy of American anti-drug campaigns in Colombia dates back to 
the 1970s when congress cut back US aid to repressive Latin American 
police forces while increasing so called anti-narcotics aid by about the 
same amount: a sleight of hand barely acknowledged at the time. 'To keep 
the aid coming," wrote Peter Dale-Scott in his book, Cocaine Politics, 
'corrupt Latin American politicians helped to invent the spectre of the 
drug- financed narco -guerrilla, a myth." He quotes a senior US military 
officer who says the way to counter 'those church and academic groups 
that have slavishly supported the insurgency in Latin America" is to put 
them 'on the wrong side of the moral issue". 

Because coca was grown by the poorest peasants as their sole means of 
survival, the guerrillas they supported were attacked, in a bogus 'war on 
drugs" - while the drug cartels and their allies in the military were 
strengthened. This has been US strategy since the 1960s, when a secret 
American-led 'Force X" infiltrated the guerrillas, carrying out 
atrocities that would then be blamed on the insurgency. Pioneered in 
Vietnam by the CIA's infamous Colonel Edward Lansdale, it was also used 
in Indonesia during the CIA -assisted bloodbath that brought Suharto to 
power. 

What Washington fears most in South America is not drugs, but losing 
control of the critical north-east corner of the continent when the US 
military reluctantly withdraws from the Panama Canal at the end of the 
year. Compounding this is the popular nationalism of the reformist 
government of Hugo Chavez in oil-rich Venezuela. So far, the Americans 
have been able to control Panama by the open threat of an invasion 
similar in ferocity to that ordered by President Bush in 1990 on the 
pretext of arresting General Noriega, the head of state, drugs dealer and 
former friend of George Bush when he ran the CIA. At least 20,000 
Panamanian civilians were killed in the American assault. If the popular 
resistance in Colombia can be 'pacified", Venezuela may be restored to 
its traditional submissiveness. 

In Colombia, however, matters are getting out of hand. Last month, a 
general strike all but stopped the cities and towns. Ten thousand Indian 
people blockaded the south; the majority of high school and university 
students walked out of their classes.  Like most of Latin America, 
Colombia's economy is prescribed by the International Monetary Fund. 
Almost half the gross domestic product goes on paying off an unrepayable 
debt, while the Pastrana government is selling off most of the 
infrastructure, from telecommunications to the water supply, at well 
below its true value but at too high a price for domestic capital. The 
beneficiaries are, as ever, US and other western multinationals. In that 
respect, it is simply globalisation at work, a war of the rich versus the 
poor. 

Violence is a constant, with more than 2,000 trade unionists 
assassinated, and thousands 'disappeared" and killed by drug-trafficking 
paramilitaries who, like their counterparts in East Timor, are often 
indistinguishable from a military trained for civil repression - many in 
the US. A Human Rights Watch report says that army officers who planned 
and took part in paramilitary violence, 'have been promoted and rewarded 
and now occupy the highest positions in the Colombian military". 

The British are flying the flag. The Blair government has approved 
weapons sales to the Colombian military - ammunition, grenades. British 
Petroleum, whose former chairman, Lord Simon, made the smooth transition 
to Blair's minister for competitiveness, 'is the most aggressive oil 
company in Colombia", says the national workers' union. An investigation 
by ITV's World in Action in 1997 revealed that BP had contracted former 
British SAS soldiers to train paramilitaries. The company denied the 
allegations. 

When the suffering of the East Timorese was finally ordained news and the 
force of world opinion brought a glimpse of hope and freedom, it was too 
late for the thousands of victims of policies materially supported, even 
formulated, by Faustian partners in Washington and London. They ought not 
to get away with more of the same in Colombia.

Copyright 1999 Guardian Newspapers Limited   
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