Narco-fascist Elected President of ColombiaOn May 26, independent candidate Alvaro Uribe won 53% of the vote and was elected president of Colombia. 54% of registered voters abstained. Uribe, as the favored candidate of right-wing paramilitaries, benefited from their efforts to intimidate voters. Uribe will take office on August 7.
Congressional UpdateIn the US Congress, work continues on the bill that will fund US protection of Occidental Petroleum's Caño-Limón pipeline and escalate the officially stated US mission in Colombia from counter-narcotics to counterinsurgency. The Kaptur amendment, which would have cut funds for training the pipeline protection unit was not allowed to reach the floor. On May 23, the McGovern/Skelton amendment, which would have prevented the legal use of US military aid for counterinsurgency was defeated by a vote of 192-225. It is critically important that Jim Kolbe take some heat from constituents opposed to US policy in Colombia. Kolbe chairs the house subcommittee responsible for US foreign aid, including military spending.
Al-Qaida in the Andes?While Congress is preparing to declare US military aid to the paramilitary-connected Colombian army an element of a supposed war against terrorism, the US State Department is busy fabricating a convenient set of facts to justify the policy. On April 18, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told Jim Kolbe's Foreign Operations Subcommittee that elements of Al-Qaida and Hizbollah, are now operating in the area of Ecuador's border with Colombia and Venezuela. Armitage said, "We have got in the tri-border area a bit of a problem with al-Qaida itself and some Hizbollah elements." Foreign Minister Heinz Moller of Ecuador responded to Armitage's claim the next day, saying, "officially the government of Ecuador knows absolutely nothing about that, and the connotation that this statement could have concerns us enormously." |
Report Details Construction of the "Drug War" FacadeA recent report released by the National Security Archive includes official policy planning documents which prove, in detail, that US war planners have always seen "counter-narcotics" efforts as a useful and false justification for achieving their desired policies of sending military aid to Andean governments for counterinsurgency campaigns. In discussions leading up to the formation of the first Bush administration's Andean strategy in 1989, officials placed an emphasis on the "interoperability" of regional counter-narcotics and counter-guerrilla forces. A cable from the US embassy in Peru to Washington, for example, describes a counter-narcotics initiative as a "deal" with the Peruvian government to "help them deal with their number one problem which is subversion." Later on, the document states "The program is repeat is an anti-subversive program". Also, according to the report, "contrary to repeated official statements about 'narco-guerrillas,' US intelligence analyses of guerrilla involvement in the drug trade have been decidedly mixed." The report includes a CIA report on the issue, which states that the relationship between traffickers and insurgents is one "characterized by both cooperation and friction," and that "many traffickers would probably welcome, and even assist, increased operations against insurgents." The CIA document also contains the Agency's official assessment that "officials in Lima and Bogotá, if given anti-drug aid for counterinsurgency purposes, would turn it to pure anti-guerrilla operations with little payoff against trafficking." The report includes State Department documents detailing how "Two Colombian brigades that lost US aid in September 2000 for human rights violations [began] work as part of a joint strike force with anti-drug battalions specifically created to qualify for US funds." Other documents show how US officials got around the restrictions on the use of counter-drug aid to drug producing areas by changing the definition of a drug-producing area to include "the entire national territory of Colombia." The most publicized finding in the report has been the revelation that US House Speaker Dennis Hastert, in meetings with officials of the Colombian government and military in 1997, promised to "remove conditions on assistance," and urged the military to "bypass the executive branch and communicate directly with Congress." Head of Colombian Anti-drug police Resigns After Corruption Scandal And in the present day, the US-funded "war on drugs" continues its descent into absolute absurdity. On May 22, the head of the anti-narcotics unit of the Colombian National Police, Gen Gustavo Socha, resigned. 12 anti-narcotics officers had already been fired after some $2 million in US aid disappeared from an account with a $4 million annual budget. A US Embassy official said about 20 CNP officers are suspected of diverting the aid money "for personal ends".
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