Human Rights Watch Report
"The Ties That Bind: Colombia & Military – Paramilitary Links"
[To read full report, click on the above title.]
7 SOA GRADUATES CITED
The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, issued February 23, 2000, presents detailed and abundant evidence of continuing ties between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups. Complied by Human Rights Watch and investigators from the Colombian government, the report implicates three brigades that operate in Colombia’s three major cities, including the capital, Bogotá. The report reveals that despite claims by the Colombian Army, military support for the paramilitaries remains national in scope. In fact, the cited brigades function in areas of the country where military units are receiving or are scheduled to receive U.S. aid.
The investigation found that as recently as 1999 Colombian Army officers established a "paramilitary" group composed of active duty, retired and reserve duty officers. "Paramilitaries," such as this, operate in coordination with the military. This means that the Colombian military shares intelligence, plans and carries out joint operations, provides weapons and munitions, provides support with helicopters and medical aid, and coordinates with the paramilitaries on a daily basis.
It is important to note that though human rights violations attributed to the Colombian military have diminished over the past several years, abuses by the paramilitaries have skyrocketed to 70% of all violations. The military-paramilitary ties allow political violence to continue while the Colombian Army maintains a relatively clean human rights record, making it eligible for U.S. military aid.
SOA Graduates
Human Rights Watch reports that at least seven SOA graduates are highly involved with the paramilitary. This is not surprising, as Colombia has graduated 10,000 officers from the SOA, the highest number of any sending country. Among the officers cited in the report are Brig. General Jaime Ernesto Canal Albán, General Carlos Opsina Ovalle, Captain Diego Fernando Fino and
Major David Hernández Rojas.
Hernández trained at the SOA in 1985 for Cadet Arms Orientation and in 1991 for Psychological Operations. In August 1996, troops under Hernández’s command fired on and used tear gas against a group of protesting peasants. Four were wounded. The soldiers also burned the protester’s tents and stole money intended to purchase food. (Noche y neblina: Panorama de derechos humanos y violencia politica en Colombia, Banco de Datos de violencica politica).
Supporters of the SOA say that training at the school does not lead to human rights violations and that the SOA is actually increasingly important as a tool to teach democracy and instill respect for human rights. The Human Rights Watch report presents the SOA grads as evidence that training does not prevent human rights abuses. The Colombian military continues to operate outside the rule of law in its relationship with the paramilitaries. The Colombian government has been unable to force the military to sever ties with the paramilitaries and act in accordance with the laws. Officials who have tried are often subjected to death threats and several officials who worked as government investigators for the HRW report were forced to leave the country. The School of Americas is not a human rights training tool and continued training and aid to the Colombian military only serves to support and legitimate the Colombian Army’s connection to the paramilitaries and the human rights violations that occur.
Military aid and training to Colombia must be stopped and the SOA must be closed!
ACT NOW TO STOP the "Emergency Supplemental" Aid Package of $1.3 BILLION
The Ghost of Vietnam Haunts 'Plan Colombia'
By TAD SZULC
EXCERPTS:
Most Americans seem to have no idea that Plan Colombia threatens to suck
the United States into the longest and most brutal civil war in the
Western Hemisphere, which has lasted on and off for 160 years. It has
never been explained to them, just like Vietnam was never explained at
the outset.
...
A complicating factor is that a half-dozen guerrilla wars or conflicts
are currently underway in Colombia, making it difficult for McCaffrey to
decide whom and where to hit. The most important guerrilla group is the
FARC (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), whose
15,000 troops occupy the southern departments of Putumayo and Caqueta,
an area the size of Switzerland, and function as a virtually independent
coca-rich state. The FARC's ranks have swelled since the U.S. launched
Plan Colombia. The counterinsurgency battalions will have a tough time
with the Marxist-Leninist force, as will their U.S. advisors. The
Vietnam-era question of how many Americans will be needed to overwhelm
the guerrillas will surely arise.
...
It does not require much imagination to conclude that Plan Colombia, as
most informed
Colombians know, is simply unfeasible. In Brasilia last week, Secretary
of State Madeleine K. Albright, on a mission to sell the plan in Latin
America, was told that Brazil would have no part of it. Most other
Latin American governments feel the same way, leaving Washington
isolated in its undertaking.
Perhaps the greatest threat and tragedy facing the U.S. in its Colombian
venture is that the plan was developed by men and women who know little
of Colombia's history, culture and politics. This, too, is reminiscent
of Vietnam, where President John F. Kennedy engaged the U.S. without
consulting the handful of officials who actually knew something about
Hanoi, Dien Bien Phu, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong.
...
===========================================
The Ghost of Vietnam Haunts 'Plan Colombia'
By TAD SZULC
Tad Szulc Has Written Extensively About International Politics and
Foreign Policy
Sunday, August 20, 2000
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/print/opinion/20000820/t000078189.html
WASHINGTON -- As in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago, the United States has
embarked on the phantasmagoric enterprise of destroying the countryside
of Colombia in order, supposedly, to save it.
In the 1960s, the mission was called "Search and Destroy." Today, it's
Plan Colombia, the objective of which is to eradicate cocaine drug
lords, leftist and rightist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary
vigilantes, thugs and thousands in between. In Vietnam, the enemy was
identified as communists. In Colombia, everyone seems to be a
potential enemy.
Congress quietly approved U.S. armed intervention in Colombia last
month, complete with at least 60 Black Hawk and Huey-2 helicopter
gunships with U.S. crews. U.S. Army Special Forces are already training
two Colombian battalions in counterinsurgency. President Bill Clinton
is expected to endorse the mission Aug. 30 on a one-day visit to
Colombia.
Most Americans seem to have no idea that Plan Colombia threatens to suck
the United States into the longest and most brutal civil war in the
Western Hemisphere, which has lasted on and off for 160 years. It has
never been explained to them, just like Vietnam was never explained at
the outset.
In another ghastly reminder of Vietnam, the administration has persuaded
Colombia to develop a powerful biological herbicide against coca and
heroin poppy fields. It is a fungus known as fusarium oxysporum, derived
from the coca plant. Washington's idea is to spread it across hundreds
of thousands of acres cultivated for poppies. Nobody appears to know
the impact of this fungus on humans, which evokes memories of the Agent
Orange defoliant in Vietnam that killed and maimed the Viet Cong and
Americans alike.
Plan Colombia is the result of the administration's festering
frustration over its
continuing inability to stem the huge flow of cocaine and heroine
produced in Colombia, notwithstanding billions of dollars spent over the
years on interdiction and for what passed for cooperation with Colombian
authorities. The plan's chief author is the White House drug czar, Gen.
Barry M. McCaffrey, former head of the U.S. Southern Command. Congress
allocated $1.3 billion to put it into action.
To the extent that it can be understood, the plan calls for the
elimination of the guerrillas, no matter their allegiance, who guard the
fields, so small aircraft can safely spray the fungus over the poppy
plantations. This task is to be carried out by U.S.-trained Colombian
counterinsurgency battalions ferried to the poppy fields by U.S.
helicopters. Nothing has been said about what would happen should a
U.S. chopper be shot down and members of its crew killed or injured.
A complicating factor is that a half-dozen guerrilla wars or conflicts
are currently underway in Colombia, making it difficult for McCaffrey to
decide whom and where to hit. The most important guerrilla group is the
FARC (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), whose
15,000 troops occupy the southern departments of Putumayo and Caqueta,
an area the size of Switzerland, and function as a virtually independent
coca-rich state. The FARC's ranks have swelled since the U.S. launched
Plan Colombia. The counterinsurgency battalions will have a tough time
with the Marxist-Leninist force, as will their U.S. advisors. The
Vietnam-era question of how many Americans will be needed to overwhelm
the guerrillas will surely arise.
In the north, the ELN (National Liberation Army), a more politically
moderate organization, controls its own smaller "mini-country," equally
wealthy in coca. It has no more than 5,000 fighters.
Then there are right-wing paramilitary units at war with the guerrillas
and local peasants. These units have a frightening human-rights record,
but so do the guerrillas. Hardly a day passes in Colombia without
dozens slaughtered on all sides. The Colombian army and police have been
accused of working quietly with the paramilitary squads, but under Plan
Colombia, they are to ensure peace and probity.
It does not require much imagination to conclude that Plan Colombia, as
most informed
Colombians know, is simply unfeasible. In Brasilia last week, Secretary
of State Madeleine K. Albright, on a mission to sell the plan in Latin
America, was told that Brazil would have no part of it. Most other
Latin American governments feel the same way, leaving Washington
isolated in its undertaking.
Perhaps the greatest threat and tragedy facing the U.S. in its Colombian
venture is that the plan was developed by men and women who know little
of Colombia's history, culture and politics. This, too, is reminiscent
of Vietnam, where President John F. Kennedy engaged the U.S. without
consulting the handful of officials who actually knew something about
Hanoi, Dien Bien Phu, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong.
The shakiness of U.S. knowledge of Colombian history is best illustrated
by the widely repeated falsehood that the civil war there has been going
on for 40 years. Actually, the first great civil war that would define
subsequent ones erupted between
the Liberals and the Conservatives in 1840, 21 years after Simon Bolivar
won Colombia's independence from Spain. These wars never really
stopped, and a key milestone were the savage riots in Bogota, the
capital, in 1948, when the leftist
liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was murdered.
The civil war -- the violencia -- continued after 1948, leading to
military coups, a restoration of formal democracy and the emergence of
large guerrilla forces. What's left of that democracy today is in
tatters, and Plan Colombia will clearly not rescue it. It is difficult
to "save" a nation about whose history and identity our top Washington
policymakers know so little.
Subject: LA Times, 8/20/00: The Ghost of Vietnam Haunts 'Plan Colombia'
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