June 7, 2004

Another 40 Years?

by Garry Leech

In May, Colombia’s largest and oldest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), celebrated 40 years of existence. A group of peasants formed the FARC on May 27, 1964, following a military land and air assault on their “independent” village of Marquetalia in south-central Colombia. The FARC emerged out of a climate of repression in which state-sponsored violence targeted all opposition, particularly Liberals and communists. At the time, the U.S. framed its Colombia policy within Cold War ideology, supplying the Colombian military with weapons and training to target communists and suspected communists. Looking at Colombia today, little has changed. Many Colombian peasants, unionists, human rights workers and community leaders are labeled guerrilla sympathizers and targeted by the Colombian military and its right-wing paramilitary allies.

The United States has escalated its military role in Colombia in recent years, first as part of the war on drugs, and since 9/11, under the war on terror. For its part, and to make matters worse, the FARC has increasingly targeted the civilian population. Over the past decade, the group’s ideological goals seem to have taken a back seat to its military objectives. This has resulted in attacks, not only against the country’s middle and upper classes, but also against peasants viewed as sympathetic to the government or the paramilitaries.

Since assuming office in August 2001, President Uribe has militarized many parts of the country. The Colombian army has conducted mass round-ups of union leaders and human rights workers, accusing them of being guerrilla sympathizers. Increasing numbers of them are being “disappeared” by state security forces. A March 2003 United Nations report stated that the Colombian military had become more directly involved in human rights abuses under the Uribe administration. In September last year, President Uribe made public pronouncements that NGO workers, especially human rights defenders, are terrorists doing the bidding of the country’s guerrilla groups. He made these accusations against human rights workers at the same time he was proposing amnesty for the country’s worst human rights violators: the paramilitaries. Clearly, the principal targets of President Uribe have not only been guerrillas, but anyone critical of his security and economic policies.

The Bush administration has openly supported Uribe’s authoritarian agenda. It has expanded U.S. military aid and even deployed U.S. Army Special Forces troops to Colombia to help defend an oil pipeline used by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. Under the Bush administration, human rights have taken a back seat to combating terrorism globally. This is clearly apparent in Colombia with Washington’s ongoing support for a government that is blatantly targeting civil society groups under the guise of combating armed groups on the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist list.

The social and economic inequalities, along with the government repression, that led to the formation of the FARC 40 years ago are clearly still prevalent in Colombia. Today, 64 percent of Colombians live in poverty. Tragically, instead of providing any viable alternatives, the FARC’s tactics are now contributing to the problem of social injustice in Colombia. But regardless of what the Bush and Uribe administrations try to have us believe, the FARC are not the root of the problem, they are but a symptom. And if the gross inequalities and government repression that lie at the root of Colombia’s conflict are not effectively addressed, then the FARC may be around for another 40 years.

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