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... "So you believe that the subjective testimony
of three people (no numbers, no facts) makes
something "self-evident..."? So, do I look like I do? Or did I maybe just pull up the handiest and most helpful thing from my bookmarks file to get you started on your quest for knowledge and understanding? I didn't say "here, let me mount an exhaustive case to substantiate the blatantly obvious assertion you claim to be having a problem with -- and this is unfortunately the only thing I can come up with". Nooo. I said "here's step one on the voyage of discovery", and "The evidence of the horrific impact of the US's war on drugs on peasant farmers in Colombia ... is pretty glaring and pretty easily accessed". Got Google? Try asking it for colombia "war on drugs" farmers indigenous, just for an introductory sally into the field. In addition to my bookmarked article, you get things like this on the very first page of results: http://www.alertnet.org/thefacts/reliefresources/550440.htmThe official government reason behind the massive U.S. support for Colombia's war against the guerrillas is to stop the drug traffic in cocaine and heroin. While it is true that the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) depend on taxes they collect from coca farmers in southern Colombia to finance their activity, they have also called for development plans that would allow peasants to grow alternative crops.
In the absence of farm-to-market roads, technical assistance and credit, subsistence farmers have little choice but to plant coca if they are to feed their families.
However, the other major coca-producing region is in northern Colombia where most of the traffickers and paramilitaries are located. This area has not been targeted as part of the war on drugs despite the fact that Carlos Castano, the leader of Colombia's biggest paramilitary group the AUC, told a national Colombian television audience that the drug trade provided 70 percent of his organisation's funding. His autobiography, "My Confession", in which he admits to ordering and planning the 1990 assassination of left-wing presidential candidate Carlos Pizarro, is a bestseller in Bogota bookstores.
The so-called drug war has not targeted the drug kingpins. Instead, it is directed to the Putumayo coca-producing region of southern Colombia, the stronghold of the FARC.
Much of the $1.8 billion worth of U.S. military aid since 2000 has provided for the training, weapons and attack helicopters for the army's anti-drug battalions operating in this Amazon jungle area on the frontier with Ecuador. I'm sure this source is no more credible: http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2117In the name of the "war on drugs" much of Colombia is being subjected to terror in the form of massacres, assassinations, rapes and the spraying of poison from airplanes. When in August 2000 Congress approved President Bill Clinton’s request for $1.3 billion to implement "Plan Colombia," the faith-based organization Witness for Peace decided to send a delegation of 100 people to see for themselves what was happening there, and I signed on. We feared that U.S. involvement would add to the violence in an already war-ravaged land, would create a situation similar to that of El Salvador in the 1980s or even lead to a debacle like our involvement in Vietnam. The trip confirmed these fears -- and more.
Plan Colombia, which President George W. Bush renamed the Andean Regional Initiative, is being sold as a key component of the war on drugs. The propaganda for it is so effective that even critics of U.S. policy in Colombia assume it is true. For example, NBC’s August 31 Dateline devoted a full hour to a skeptical look at what the U.S. is doing in Colombia. The program’s host, Geraldo Rivera, suggested that it will be impossible to stop the flow of drugs as long as demand for them is so high in the U.S. and warned of the danger that we might be drawn into a civil war. Though both points are important and valid, the program was notable for what it did not say.
Rightly calling attention to the extremely high level of violence in Colombia, Rivera failed to mention the group responsible for 70 percent of that violence: the paramilitary forces which, although ostensibly private and illegal, receive aid and cooperation from Colombia’s army and hence, indirectly, from the U.S. Neither did Rivera mention the 2 million people who have fled from the fighting and the aerial fumigation of their farms. How 'bout School of the Americas Watch? http://soawne.org/SOAIraq2.htmlA War without Borders...
Colombia, the Price of Oil & the War on Terrorism
The U.S. Role in Colombia:
Colombia has been a target of the “war on terrorism” since before it was titled such. On Sept. 10, 2001, the U.S. State Department designated 3 armed groups within Colombia as “terrorist organizations” -- the guerilla forces: FARC & ELN and the Paramilitary group, the AUC.
The connection between the “war on terrorism,” “war on drugs,” Colombia and the SOA is simple. The Colombian military is among one of the most corrupt and brutal militaries in Latin America. Despite this, more than 10,000 Colombian soldiers have been trained in the U.S. at the School of the Americas (SOA), now called the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHISC). Many high ranking Colombian officers, who are graduates of the SOA, continue to be cited for brutal atrocities, including murderous rampages which were conducted in association with the AUC paramilitary (assassins) group, whose tactics include torture and the dismemberment of bodies.
Despite this, since 2000, as part of “Plan Colombia,” the US has allocated over $2 billion for Colombia to purportedly “fight the war on drugs.” Ironically, a 2002 CIA report cites that coca production has increased by 25%! Tens of millions of dollars have gone directly to the notorious Colombian military, and hundreds of millions continue to be allocated to US weapons and chemical manufacturers. This plan, commonly referred to as the “Plan of Death,” has resulted in thousands of human rights atrocities, serious ecological destruction, and has contributed to the displacement of 4 million people. After approving an additional $600 million as part of the “Andean Initiative,” Congress agreed to an additional $100 million specifically earmarked for counter-insurgency offensives, which include protecting the oil pipe lines of LA-based Occidental Petroleum. As in Iraq, we have propped up, supplied and trained despotic dictators and militaries who have little or no regard for human rights; while U.S. petroleum corporations, government contractors, and weapons manufacturers have greatly benefited from the ravages of war and the chaos that ensues. One more -- and these are all from page 1 of that Google search I suggested: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/globalissue/drugwar/drugwar.htmlThe U.S.-led drug war and human rights abuses in Latin America
1 Purpose of this outline
a This outline focuses on specifically U.S. policy (and direct implementation thereof) pertaining to the so-called “war on drugs” in Latin America. Its purpose is to give the reader an overview of the political, economic and social costs – including human rights abuses - associated with interdiction, eradication and other “drug control” initiatives which form part of this “war”. To the extent that it is relevant this outline will also deal with issues in relation to general U.S. foreign policy goals for the Latin American region, and with issues in relation to political, social and economical problems facing both Latin America and the U.S. itself
b The outline will mainly be based on material provided by various academic institutions and organizations concerned with human rights, although recent press clips will be added when relevant and when time and resources permit.
2 Perspectives behind this outline
a There are, of course, violent forms of drug interdiction, human rights abuses and other repressive policies being carried out by various Latin American governments, military and police forces – (and sometimes by opposition groups to these entities) – which are not directly supported or endorsed by the U.S. It is therefore not the view of CCR that culpability for all the costs and abuses related to the drug war can be exclusively attributed to the U.S. It is rather to highlight the criticism of the arguments and methods behind a primarily militaristic drug control policy, and the heavy responsibility that the U.S. bears for the many of the war’s costs (directly or indirectly) as well as for the failure to find more rational, less costly solutions to drug control.
b Also – for the record - it is not the intent of this outline to endorse drug trafficking or drug abuse. If you want to dispute any of the facts reported, or challenge the credibility of the people reporting them, do feel quite free to do that. Asking *me* boorish and very stupidly condescending questions implying that I am an idiot who believes things based on one report like the one I showed you really does not rise to the level you need to be aiming for in that respect. "interesting"Indeed. The things that people claim to have deduced from the things other people say just never cease to amaze and fascinate me. |
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