January 28, 2008

The Bush Administration’s Hollow Commitment to Colombian Democracy

by Michael Walker

The administration of President George W. Bush likes to boast of its commitment to promoting democracy around the globe, and has employed the same sort of rhetoric to defend US policy toward Colombia. On a trip to Bogotá in January last year, US General Peter Pace, at the time the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that he had discussed with his Colombian colleagues “how to continue the very good partnership, to strengthen the democracy here in Colombia, which in turn strengthens the democracy in the United States.” However, and notwithstanding the pretensions of General Pace and other US officials, the reality is that democracy promotion has barely featured in the Bush administration’s Colombia policy. This is evident from the administration’s stance on paramilitarism and free trade.

The paramilitary phenomenon has long been a blight on Colombia’s democracy. In the Caribbean departments, extreme right-wing paramilitaries effectively replaced the Colombian state, enforcing their rule through bribery, co-optation of politicians and regular bouts of savage violence. In short, democracy did not exist where the paramilitaries held sway. In light of its declared desire to strengthen democracy in Colombia, one would therefore expect the United States to have taken an extremely hard line against paramilitarism. And yet, over the last few years the Bush administration, desperate to bolster the government of its Colombian ally, President Álvaro Uribe, has provided strong diplomatic support to a massively flawed peace and demobilization process that has allowed the paramilitaries to retain immense political and socio-economic influence.

In November 2002, the paramilitary organization known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) declared a ceasefire, and announced the following year that it would disband by the end of 2005. It quickly became apparent that the ceasefire was a meaningless gesture, for the AUC continued to murder its presumed enemies, and it is widely assumed that the AUC bears responsibility for several thousand murders in the years since its ostensible decision to lay down arms. Nonetheless, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was decidedly upbeat during a trip to Bogotá in April 2005, deeming the demobilization of 5,000 AUC members to that point “the impressive result of tough policies.”

The Bush administration then reacted favorably to Colombia’s June 2005 Justice and Peace Law, which was to provide the legal basis for the demobilization process. The law, which stipulated that paramilitaries who had committed major human rights abuses would receive sentences of up to eight years in return for confessing their crimes and surrendering assets obtained by illegal means, was deplored by Human Rights Watch, which noted that it “utterly fails to satisfy international standards on truth, justice, and reparation for victims.”

By contrast, Bush administration officials were rather pleased with the law, especially after it was modified by Colombia’s Constitutional Court in May 2006. As Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns stated a few months later, “We’ve been very pleased to support [the Justice and Peace] law and support the process of demobilization.” While Burns noted that the United States has “a number of questions that we’ll want to seek answers to about the implementation of this law,” he declared that “we admire what President Uribe and his administration have done, what his Cabinet has done, to seek the demobilization of over 30,000 people.”

What the administration blithely ignored was that the “demobilization” didn’t signal the end of paramilitary power, far from it. The paramilitaries have continued to exert great influence over Colombian politics, with the AUC pre-determining the winners of many elections in the Caribbean departments. Thus, in Magdalena in 2003, Trino Luna Correa was elected to serve as governor following a one-man contest, his prospective opponents having wisely pulled out in the face of paramilitary threats. In 2007, however, Governor Luna was arrested on suspicion of working with the paramilitaries. Meanwhile, the congressional elections of March 2006, which were also notable for paramilitary intimidation, saw several unapologetically pro-AUC politicians enter the legislature. According to the International Crisis Group, between 10 and 20 percent of senators were assumed to have paramilitary connections.

That the paramilitaries retained significant power became inescapably clear in October 2006 when a laptop computer discovered by Colombian prosecutors revealed that notorious AUC commander Jorge 40 had ordered the murders of 558 Colombians in the Caribbean department of Atlántico while the paramilitary ceasefire was supposedly in effect. It also transpired that Jorge 40 had organized sham demobilizations, using peasants in the place of his fighters, had greased the palms of police to ensure they turned a blind eye to his continued drug trafficking and had worked with local politicians to advance their electoral prospects.
The ensuing scandal has proved exceptionally embarrassing for President Uribe.

In February 2007, Senator Álvaro Araújo, the brother of then Colombian foreign minister Maria Consuelo Araújo, was arrested, accused of conspiring with the AUC to kidnap a political rival before the 2002 election. The foreign minister promptly quit the government. And then, in October, the president’s cousin, Mario Uribe, resigned from the Senate when the Supreme Court began looking into allegations that he had had dealings with the paramilitaries. Senator Uribe was the leader of Colombia Democrática, the party he and President Uribe had co-founded some years before. Two other senators from Colombia Democrática, Álvaro García and Miguel de la Espriella, have also been arrested on suspicion of co-operating with the AUC. García was accused, sensationally, of having orchestrated a massacre in 2000 and of involvement in the murder of an electoral official in 1997.

The “para-politics” scandal has been truly explosive, revealing the existence of a sinister and anti-democratic partnership between a criminal mafia and Colombia’s elected representatives. In a bizarre twist, however, the Bush administration has tried to turn these incendiary revelations into a success story for the government of Álvaro Uribe. Testifying before Congress in April last year, State Department official Charles Shapiro argued that “the allegations that have surfaced … about government connections to paramilitary groups show both the progress Colombia has made in rooting out such people and the challenges that lie ahead.” Another overly optimistic official was Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte who, when asked about the scandal during a television interview in Colombia in May, declared, “I basically see the situation with respect to the paramilitaries in a positive way.”

In its eagerness to shore up Uribe’s government, the Bush administration has shown just how its support for Colombian democracy really is. Were US officials genuinely concerned about democracy in Colombia they would have expressed deep concern at the pervasive criminal influence corrupting the political system, rather than professing to see the discredited demobilization process “in a positive way.” As it is, the United States has demonstrated that what matters most is not strengthening democracy but backing President Uribe.

Another reason to doubt the Bush administration’s self-proclaimed enthusiasm for Colombian democracy is its zeal for a US-Colombia free trade agreement (FTA). Talks on a US-Colombia FTA began in May 2004 in Cartagena. Explaining the decision to commence negotiations, then US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick declared that “Colombia’s courageous fight against narco-trafficking terrorists that threaten democracy and regional stability can be assisted by promoting economic development and hope.” The two teams of negotiators announced that they had reached agreement in February 2006, and President Bush, claiming the pact would strengthen Colombia’s democracy, duly signed it in November 2006.

Not everyone has been persuaded by the administration’s claims, however. One reason for the opposition of human rights groups and labor unions to the FTA is Colombia’s status as the world’s most dangerous country for trade unionists. The number of murdered Colombian union activists is disputed, although no one doubts the severity of the problem, and there is near total impunity for such killings.

Democrats in the US Congress, who have long-standing ties to US labor groups, have themselves expressed grave concern at the plight of Colombia’s unionists. Consequently, when they won control of the legislature in the November 2006 mid-term elections, it spelled deep trouble for the US-Colombia FTA. As Representative Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) remarked, “Countless numbers of trade unionists in Colombia have been intimidated, have been threatened and have been murdered. Until those issues are addressed, I think there’s going to be some rough sledding for the trade agreement.” As of the time of writing, the Democrats were still refusing to ratify the FTA, notwithstanding the Bush administration’s tireless efforts to change their minds.

Beyond the unseemliness of entering into a free trade pact with a country where workers can’t exercise their rights without fear of being murdered, numerous other arguments have been advanced against the agreement. Although Bush administration officials argue that the FTA will benefit Colombia’s economy, the pact may in fact have devastating consequences for many Colombian workers. An example is those employed in the agricultural sector. The removal of tariff barriers on US agricultural imports could have a catastrophic impact on Colombia’s farmers, who comprise over 20 percent of the workforce. Colombian farmers would be forced into direct competition with their US counterparts, who are lavished with billions of dollars in subsidies from the US government.

According to Witness for Peace, 700,000 Colombians could join the ranks of the unemployed due to the influx of cheap American rice. A similar fate may await Colombia’s corn producers. This in turn will likely exacerbate Colombia’s already desperate crisis of displacement, with farmers being forced to leave the countryside for the urban slums that have developed on the outskirts of major cities.

The administration’s advocacy of the US-Colombia FTA must bring into question its purported commitment to democracy in Colombia. By arguing for the FTA, the Bush administration is sending the message that it considers the protection of basic political rights, like freedom of speech and the freedom to organize, rights that are essential for democracy to function and which Colombian unionists exercise at their own peril, to be of less importance than prying open Colombia’s markets. Also, democracy implies the involvement of citizens in their country’s political life, and it’s safe to assume that destitute Colombian farmers who have been forced to migrate to squalid slums in the cities in the hope of finding employment will be too busy eking out a living to bother with politics. This cannot be good for democracy, and yet it is the likely consequence of the FTA promoted by the United States.

To put it bluntly, the Bush administration’s claimed support for Colombian democracy is just not credible. Administration officials profess to “see the situation with respect to the paramilitaries in a positive way,” despite a torrent of evidence pointing to the infiltration of this criminal mafia into Colombia’s political institutions. The administration is also desperate to induce the US Congress to pass the US-Colombia FTA, notwithstanding the plight of Colombia’s trade unionists and the terrible implications this pact could have for Colombia’s farmers and the country’s displacement crisis. The administration’s pro-democracy rhetoric as regards Colombia should therefore be taken with a very large dose of salt.

Michael Walker is currently studying for a PhD at the University of St Andrews in the UK. His research is focused on the democracy promotion policies of the United States since President Ronald Reagan; including a case study of President George W. Bush’s Colombia policy.

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