| May
29, 2000 Colombia-aid Supporters Use Lies, Evasions and Distortions Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and current Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.) make a persuasive case for the Clinton Administration's $1.6 billion aid package for Colombia in their April 26 Los Angeles Times op-ed article, "Quick Aid to Colombia--for Our Sake." But to pull it off they are forced to avert their eyes to unsavory acts perpetrated by the package's prime recipients and even go so far as to misquote themselves. The authors begin by describing a recent attack on two fishing villages by leftist guerrillas, who killed 30 people "including a mayor, two children and 24 police officers." This grisly assault was also condemned in a April 14 statement to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by Human Rights Watch (HRW). But unlike Scowcroft and Graham, HRW added that, in 1999, "Colombia's Public Advocate recorded over 400 massacres. Most massacres were perpetrated by paramilitaries working with the tacit acquiescence or open support of the Colombian Army." With 80 percent of the $1.6 billion earmarked for the Colombian Armed Forces, the facts that escaped the Scowcroft-Graham radar screen would appear to be relevant. Yet their essay makes no mention of the terror perpetrated or facilitated by agents of the Colombian government. Scowcroft and Graham are co-chairs of a task force on Colombia sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), two establishment-oriented groups focusing on U.S. foreign policy. While the IAD's stated mission is "to improve the quality of debate and decisionmaking on hemispheric problems," its co-chairs have polluted the debate with distortions and deceit. In their Los Angeles Times op-ed article, Scowcroft and Graham claim that,"Since 1990, Colombia's growing guerrilla insurgency has murdered 35,000 of its own citizens." This bears no relation to anything reported by HRW, Amnesty International, the United Nations or even the U.S. State Department. Nor does it bear any relation to the detailed CFR-IAD "Interim Report"--penned by Scowcroft and Graham. Like the Los Angeles Times article, the Interim Report is a sales pitch. However, unlike the op-ed article, it is not a crude piece of disinformation. The Report states that "Armed conflict has killed more than 35,000 Colombians in the past decade." Unlike the article, it does not claim they were "murdered" by the "guerrilla insurgency," but "killed" in "armed conflict." The Interim Report is careful not to apportion responsibility for those 35,000 civil war-related deaths, for to do so would undermine its sales pitch. Most of these were not battlefield combat deaths, but executions of civilians and surrendered fighters. The left-wing guerrillas, the police, the military and the right-wing paramilitaries have all committed atrocities; however, the paramilitaries and government forces were and are responsible for 75 percent of such killings. Though aid proponents pretend not to notice, the Colombian security forces have for years been waging an Argentina-style "dirty war" against political dissent by targeting union and peasant leaders, peace activists, human rights investigators and even government prosecutors. In the mid-1990s, the security forces did most of the killing themselves, but in recent years they have, in effect, contracted out this work to the paramilitaries, who now kill in record numbers the same types of people army intelligence has long targeted. Another dubious claim in the Los Angeles Times article that does not appear in the Interim Report is the statement claiming the guerrillas have murdered 5,000 police officers since 1990. No source is cited. The article also states that "drug traffickers and insurgents bent on overthrowing the oldest democracy in Latin America are working together"--an embellishment of the Interim Report's assertion that the Clinton Administration "recognizes the close linkages that have developed between Colombia's illegal narcotics industry and the country's insurgent and paramilitary forces." As Scowcroft and Graham surely know, while the guerrillas tax coca growers and drug traffickers, as well as every other business enterprise in the zones they control, they and the traffickers are not "working together." On the other hand, paramilitary chief Carlos Castaño, who is closely allied with the Colombian Army, is himself a "major drug trafficker," according to the DEA. The op-ed article, while overstating the guerrillas' trafficking connection, completely ignores the army's drug ties. The CFR-IAD task force presents the illusion of bipartisanship, with its Republican and Democratic co-chairs. Both, however, are hawks. The task force's most informed member, the Woodrow Wilson International Center's Cynthia Arnson, who as a former associate director of Human Rights Watch wrote and edited reports on Colombia, did not sign the Interim Report. On the other hand, the most disreputable member of the task force, convicted Iran-contra perjurer Elliott Abrams, who is now ensconsed, ironically, at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, did sign it. He is fitting company for Scowcroft and Graham in their campaign of lies, evasions and distortions. Dennis Hans is a freelance writer and an adjunct professor of mass communications and American foreign policy at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, In These Times and online at Mother Jones and Z Magazine. He can be contacted at: HANS_D@popmail.firn.edu Copyright 2000 Dennis Hans This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).
Copyright © 2003 Colombia Journal. All rights reserved. |