Pubdate: Tue, 02 Aug 2005
Source: Sun Herald (MS)
Copyright: 2005 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact:  http://www.sunherald.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/432
Author: Thomas Oliphant
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

COLOMBIA: OUR OTHER WAR

For American VIPs interested in a peek at the murderous mess that Colombia 
tragically remains, with American money and soldiers fueling the carnage, 
there are basically two ways to travel.

One is for the cheerleaders behind the Bush administration's policy that 
keeps the slaughter going and the illegal drugs flowing. The other is Jim 
McGovern's way.

The cheerleaders, in exchange for putting on a set of blinders, can be down 
and back in 36 hours. The country's sophisticated ambassador up here, Luis 
Alberto Moreno, is happy to arrange everything. Cheerleaders get slick 
presentations from top U.S. and Colombia officials in Bogota, a quick look 
at a Potemkin economic development project or a newly "pacified" village, 
an evening of cultural entertainment, an easily assembled press conference 
to proclaim progress and - presto - they're back here to support more 
billions to fund another US war in which only the Colombian people are the 
victims.

Representative McGovern prefers vans and SUVs on the back roads in remote 
areas, where the security is questionable and the guides are the hardy 
warriors for human rights and economic change from nongovernmental agencies 
and the Catholic and Protestant churches which face the uphill task of 
stopping the one approach that has always failed in Latin America - war.

After more than $4 billion and hundreds of U.S. soldiers and private 
"contractors" of the sort flooding Iraq, the cheerleaders do not lack for 
what the insiders call metrics. Kidnappings are down 52 percent. The 
cultivation of poppies was off 52 percent, and the production of coca 
itself is off one third in the last three years. Arrests and "desertions" 
among the drug racket's forces in the country are way up.

According to McGovern, however, the fruits of American policy through two 
administrations over the last half-decade have been death, drugs and 
oppression. "The fact is there is no light at the end of the tunnel as long 
as we are merely feeding the status quo," he said last week.

McGovern notes the typical spread of cocaine production through a broader 
slice of the region in response to the supposed crackdown on producers in 
Colombia, the plentiful supply and low price of cocaine on the street in 
the United States and, most important, the continued violence in the country.

There is no doubt about the impact of the policy of military support for a 
government that is trying to kill its way to stability. For decades, that 
has meant massacres of rural citizens whose misfortune it is to get in the 
way of the fighting. In fact, the U.N.'s high commissioner for refugees has 
labeled the resulting displacement of people second only to the genocidal 
situation in Sudan as a humanitarian crisis.

Because of the continued fighting and death squad killing, about three 
million Colombians are now crowded into shantytown slums outside most 
cities and towns. That is nearly 10 percent of the population.

At the same time, official data show that fewer than 750,000 Colombians pay 
income taxes, a fact that underlines the extent to which this is becoming 
an American war.

The war is not simply left versus right or even good guys versus bad guys. 
As McGovern explains, there is a right-of-center government with armed 
forces supplemented by armed U.S. military, still with ties to paramilitary 
units that operate in the traditional Latin American death squad mode. They 
fight with at least two agglomerations of fighters who long ago ceased to 
be of the left, but in fact have become essentially armed militias that 
raise money by dealing drugs. From the citizen's perspective, it is a 
classic example of why, when elephants tangle, it is the blades of grass 
that get crushed.

Indeed, while officially sounding as it does about Iraq, the Bush 
administration has been unable to come up with the evidentiary goods needed 
to certify that progress is occurring on the human rights front in the 
country - a statutory requirement for the release of the latest batch of 
military aid funds. Normally, this is one of the government's easier white 
lies; the fact that the State Department is still holding back is the one 
official clue to the truth.

McGovern believes the facts justify an immediate end to military assistance 
and a shift to economic and social program aid. He is also appalled that 
President Alvara Uribe Velez may soon approve a new statute - with the 
Orwellian name of the Justice and Peace Law.

In fact, it would institutionalize official violence under the guise of 
withdrawing sanction for the paramilitary organizations and encouraging 
their dismantlement. A simple reading of it shows it would permit thousands 
of known killers and torturers to remain free, and frustrate efforts at a 
public accounting of official violence and reparations. A recent Amnesty 
International study says paramilitaries are already working as government 
informers and agents.

McGovern favors the "peace communities" that have emerged in more than a 
dozen rural areas. Powered only by local fed-upism regarding the various 
combatants, they ban all guns at their borders and manage a precarious 
existence with the help of nongovernmental organizations.

They are, alas, the only bright spot. With U.S. money and "advisers," 
Colombia's prospect remains more of the same.

Thomas Oliphant is a columnist for The Boston Globe, 135 Morrissey Blvd., 
Boston, MA 02107.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom