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Colombia Journal will not be updated again until July 7, 2009, at which time a new version of the website will be launched 20 Questions: An Interview with Garry Leech As a connoisseur of Colombia, Garry Leech has released a new book about his journalistic adventures titled Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia. Washington Post Shamelessly Promotes U.S. Drug Policy in Colombia An article by Juan Forero published last week in the Washington Post reflects the approach commonly used by most mainstream media correspondents covering the war on drugs and the armed conflict in Colombia. This modus operandi involves a journalist briefly visiting a rural region—often on a press junket organized by the Colombian government or U.S. embassy—and being spoon-fed a story by the authorities. Inevitably, the official perspective dominates the resulting article, which ends up being little more than a public relations piece promoting the policies of the U.S. and Colombian governments. Forero’s article about a recent shift in strategy in the U.S. war on drugs in Colombia clearly fits this pattern. As a result, his findings contrast dramatically to those revealed in my recent investigation of the same counternarcotics project in eastern Colombia. Uribe’s Latest Misfirings Against the FARC Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe regularly labels the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as “cowardly terrorists.” However, he has inappropriately used the term on numerous occasions, including twice in the past week, in his effort to propagandize against the rebel group. Following a FARC attack against the Colombian military that killed eight soldiers in northeastern Colombia last week and another assault that resulted in the deaths of seven more soldiers yesterday, Uribe ignored the fact that both were strikes against legitimate military targets and that no civilians were killed in either instance. Additionally, the political wrangling over logistics related to the FARC’s proposed unilateral release of a soldier held captive by the rebel group for more than eleven years potentially represents the first serious repercussion from the Colombian government’s illegal use of the Red Cross symbol last year during a hostage rescue mission. Colombian Government’s Role in Human Rights Abuses It seems that new revelations about the Colombian government's links to human rights abuses are appearing almost weekly. In recent weeks there have been allegations that Colombian political and military officials conspired with right-wing paramilitaries to burn the bodies of massacre victims in an effort to conceal the number of people killed by the militias; the country’s largest paramilitary organization funded President Alvaro Uribe’s 2002 election campaign; and the military’s counterinsurgency strategy has contributed to a worsening humanitarian crisis. These revelations come on the heels of evidence that the military has increasingly used extra-judicial executions as a counter-insurgency strategy in recent years and the para-politics scandal linking elected officials to the paramilitaries. In response to the Colombian military’s increasing involvement in human rights violations, the British government recently announced that it was ending military aid to Colombia. In contrast, both the U.S. and Canadian governments continue to disregard the human rights crisis in their push to implement bilateral free trade agreements with Colombia. Plan Colombia: The New Military Strategy for Afghanistan? With the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan struggling on the battlefield against a resilient insurgency and opium poppy cultivation on the rise, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently suggested that the United States should import the counterinsurgency and counternarcotics model currently being employed in Colombia to Afghanistan. “I think many of us from all over the world can learn from what has happened with respect to the very successful developments of Plan Colombia,” Mullen stated, adding that the counterinsurgency approach used in Colombia would be applicable to Afghanistan. But while Mullen touted the “successful developments” of Plan Colombia, he conveniently ignored the negative consequences of the U.S.-backed initiative for many Colombians. Recent Articles The Liberation of Mother Earth in Cauca The New Face of Plan Colombia: An Alliance for Progress for the 21st Century? Uribe Gets It Wrong Again with Proposal to Crackdown on Colombia's Cocaleros Anatomy of an Investigation: The Colombian State's War Against Civil Society U.S. Policy Towards Venezuela and Colombia Will Change Little Under Obama Two Colombia's in 2008: Which One Will Be Remembered? Plan Colombia Devastates Afro-Colombian Communities U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Pact on the Minds of Obama, Bush and Colombia's Popular Movement Is There Really Much Difference Between McCain and Obama on Free Trade? Violent History Repeats Itself for Indigenous Communities in Colombia Displacement, Disappearances and Extrajudicial Executions Increase Under Uribe Threats Mount Against Indigenous Social Movement in Colombia The Case of Liliany Obando and the Rights of Colombian Workers If Not Colombia, Then Where is the Cocaine Coming From? Examining FARC Resistance in Colombia: Not the End of Guerrilla Warfare Is the Colombian Government Guilty of War Crimes? Wall Street Journal a "Front" for State Terrorists For more articles, visit the Archive
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Updated: July 2, 2009 |
