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October 15, 2001 Colombia's Right-Wing Terror Campaign Easy to Shut Down--If Only the U.S. Had the Will The day before the U.S. suffered the worst terrorist attack in our history, Secretary of State Colin Powell designated the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) as a "Foreign Terrorist Organization" and imposed economic and political sanctions on the group. "This designation," said Powell, "makes it illegal for persons in the United States or subject to U.S. jurisdiction to provide material support to the AUC; requires U.S. financial institutions to block assets held by the AUC; and enables us to deny visas to representatives of the group."
Following in the footsteps of earlier paramilitary groups, the AUC kills Colombians it suspects of aiding or merely sympathizing politically with left-wing guerrillas. In the 1980s, when a faction of the main guerrilla group laid down their arms to pursue their aims via democratic politics, the AUC's forerunners teamed up with the military to kill some 3,000 activists, candidates and elected officials (see, Fifty Years of Violence). Although the AUC has yet to kill 6,000 people in a year, let alone in a day, it can be counted on each year to kill a thousand or so innocent civilians. President George W. Bush, Secretary Powell and other administration officials have vowed to root out the networks and cells that commit terrorism -- and to hold accountable those governments that support, encourage or harbor them. In Colombia, they won't have to look far, nor will they have to divert any time or resources from the search for Osama Bin Laden and his associates. President Bush need only take ten seconds to tell our people in Colombia to use our clout to clamp down on the AUC evil-doers. Our people in Colombia -- diplomats, intelligence officers, military advisers -- know all about the AUC. The AUC hangs out rather than hides out, and our people know all the locations. They even know who collaborates with and protects the AUC: the armed forces of Colombia. The collaboration between the "national democratic forces" (former drug czar Barry McCaffrey's ludicrous description of Colombia's army and police) and the newest addition to the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations is extensive. Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch (HRW), testified before the U.S. Senate July 11 about the nature of the teamwork: "Colombian army brigades and police detachments promote, work with, support, and tolerate paramilitary groups, treating them as a force allied to and compatible with their own. At their most brazen, these relationships involve active coordination during military operations between government and paramilitary units; communication via radios, cellular telephones, and beepers; the sharing of intelligence, including the names of suspected guerrilla collaborators; the sharing of fighters, including active-duty soldiers serving in paramilitary units and paramilitary commanders lodging on military bases; the sharing of vehicles, including army trucks used to transport paramilitary fighters; and the coordination of army roadblocks, which routinely let heavily-armed paramilitary fighters pass...." (http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/americas/coltestimony.htm) For years, the Colombian armed forces have been the leading Latin American recipient of U.S. military aid, culminating in a billion-dollar aid package last year. Thus, as the armed forces' lifeline, we've got all the leverage in the world. Alas, if the Bush Administration is anything like its Clinton, Bush and Reagan predecessors, no matter what it says publicly, privately it approves of army-death squad collaboration. Back in 1996, HRW summarized the enduring relationship in the book Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States: "a sophisticated mechanism, in part supported by years of advice, training, weaponry, and official silence by the United States, that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it. The price: thousands of dead, disappeared, maimed, and terrorized Colombians."
By an odd coincidence, the AUC kills the same types of people that army intelligence long has targeted. Meanwhile, most of the officers coordinating the partnership reap rewards and promotions, while cynical proponents of aid, such as McCaffrey, cite the army's dwindling direct contribution to the death toll as proof of its sterling character. (It's a sad commentary on our mainstream media that this transparent charade remains effective.) Colombia's civilian government contains tenacious investigators who've courageously documented army-AUC ties. Some have been assassinated or forced to flee Colombia after receiving death threats from the AUC or senior army officers. Other investigators have been undermined by inaction from the military and the Pastrana administration, which spend millions not on improving human rights, but on PR efforts to create the illusion of improvement. (For voluminous detail, see the new HRW report, "The 'Sixth Division': Military-Paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia." (http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/colombia/) Because Pastrana insists he is commander-in-chief both in name and in fact -- and solicits our Congress and seduces our media on that basis --he has no excuse for not acting to reduce the death toll. Vivanco's Senate testimony suggests the steps that Pastrana and his generals should take--and that Powell should demand they take: "Even as President Pastrana publicly deplores successive atrocities, each seemingly more gruesome than the last, high-ranking officers fail to take the obvious, critical steps necessary to prevent future killings by suspending security force members suspected of abuses, delivering their cases to civilian judicial authorities for investigation, and pursuing and arresting paramilitaries.... [D]espite dozens of 'early warnings' of planned atrocities, paramilitaries advanced, killed, mutilated, burned, destroyed, stole, and threatened with virtual impunity, often under the very noses of security force officers sworn to uphold public order.... Meanwhile, hundreds of arrest warrants against paramilitary leaders issued by the Attorney General's office remain un-enforced because the military chooses not to execute them." (http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/americas/coltestimony.htm) This is the reality of army-AUC collaboration. The fact that Powell's 304-word statement designating AUC as terrorist does not even hint at an army-AUC relationship strongly suggests he supports the dirty war, for he has failed to do what must be done to slow the AUC onslaught: put on notice the official Colombian forces who facilitate AUC terror that they too will be held accountable for AUC crimes. Mr. Secretary, having two standards on terrorism is the same as having none at all.
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. |
We
know why the perpetrators of the attacks on U.S. soil are considered
terrorists: They murder innocent civilians to achieve political
objectives. So does the AUC. A federation of right-wing paramilitary
death squads sponsored by drug barons and wealthy ranchers, the
AUC murders human rights investigators as a warning to others. The
AUC massacres community activists as a prelude to taking control
of villages and driving out the inhabitants. The AUC murders union
leaders, ordinary peasants, journalists and politicians, in every
case to "send a message." 
In
the years since HRW penned that passage, the "privatization"
of the dirty war has accelerated: The number of political murders
committed by the army has declined dramatically in recent years,
while paramilitary killings have skyrocketed. For the past few years
the paramilitaries have committed 75-80 percent of the political
killings of civilians, compared to about 20 percent by the guerrillas
(who've earned their own "terrorist" label) and just 2-4
percent by the armed forces.