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Today's
Stories
October
11 / 13, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Kay's
Misleading Report; CIA/MI-6 Syrian Plot; Dershowitz Flaps Broken
Wings
October 10, 2003
John Chuckman
Schwarzenegger
and the Lottery Society
Toni Solo
Trashing
Free Software
Chris
Floyd
Body
Blow: Bush Joins the Worldwide War on Women
October
9, 2003
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Bombing
Syria
Ramzi
Kysia
Seeing
the Iraqi People
Fran Shor
Groping the Body Politic
Mark Hand
President Schwarzenegger?
Alexander
Cockburn
Welcome
to Arnold, King for a Day
Website of the Day
The Awful Truth about Wesley Clark
October
8, 2003
David
Lindorff
Schwarzenegger
and the Failure of the Centrist Dems
Ramzy
Baroud
Israel's
WMDs and the West's Double Standard
John Ross
Mexico
Tilts South
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Repub Guru Compares Taxes to the Holocaust
James
Bovard
The
Reagan Roadmap for Antiterrorism Disaster
Michael
Neumann
One
State or Two?
A False Dilemma
October
7, 2003
Uri Avnery
Slow-Motion
Ethnic Cleansing
Stan Goff
Lost in the Translation at Camp Delta
Ron Jacobs
Yom Kippurs, Past and Present
David
Lindorff
Coronado in Iraq
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Outing a CIA Operative? Why A Special Prosecutor is Required
Cynthia
McKinney
Who Are "We"?
Elaine Cassel
Shock and Awe in the Moussaoui Case
Walter
Lippman
Thoughts on the Cali Recall
Gary Leupp
Israel's
Attack on Syria: Who's on the Wrong Side of History, Now?
Website
of the Day
Cable News Gets in Touch With It's Inner Bigot
October
6, 2003
Robert
Fisk
US
Gave Israel Green Light for Raid on Syria
Forrest
Hylton
Upheaval
in Bolivia: Crisis and Opportunity
Benjamin Dangl
Divisions Deepen in Third Week of Bolivia's Gas War
Bridget
Gibson
Oh, Pioneers!: Bush's New Deal
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey
Wasserman
The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus
Nicole
Gamble
Rios Montt's Campaign Threatens Genocide Trials
JoAnn
Wypijewski
The
New Unity Partnership:
A Manifest Destiny for Labor
Website
of the Day
Guerrilla Funk
October
3 / 5, 2003
Tim Wise
The
Other Race Card: Rush and the Politics of White Resentment
Peter
Linebaugh
Rhymsters
and Revolutionaries: Joe Hill and the IWW
Gary Leupp
Occupation
as Rape-Marriage
Bruce
Jackson
Addio
Alle Armi
David Krieger
A Nuclear 9/11?
Ray McGovern
L'Affaire Wilsons: Wives are Now "Fair Game" in Bush's
War on Whistleblowers
Col. Dan Smith
Why Saddam Didn't Come Clean
Mickey
Z.
In Our Own Image: Teaching Iraq How to Deal with Protest
Roger Burbach
Bush Ideologues v. Big Oil in Iraq
John Chuckman
Wesley Clark is Not Cincinnatus
William S. Lind
Versailles on the Potomac
Glen T.
Martin
The Corruptions of Patriotism
Anat Yisraeli
Bereavement as Israeli Ethos
Wayne
Madsen
Can the Republicans Get Much Worse? Sure, They Can
M. Junaid Alam
The Racism Barrier
William
Benzon
Scorsese's Blues
Adam Engel
The Great American Writing Contest
Poets'
Basement
McNeill, Albert, Guthrie
October
2, 2003
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
What's
So Great About Gandhi, Anyway?
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
The
Ashcroft-Rove Connection
Doug Giebel
Kiss and Smear: Novak and the Valerie Plame Affair
Hamid
Dabashi
The Moment of Myth: Edward Said (1935-2003)
Elaine Cassel
Chicago Condemns Patriot Act
Saul Landau
Who
Got Us Into This Mess?
Website of the Day
Last Day to Save Beit Arabiya!
October 1, 2003
Joanne
Mariner
Married
with Children: the Supremes and Gay Families
Robert
Fisk
Oil,
War and Panic
Ron Jacobs
Xenophobia
as State Policy
Elaine
Cassel
The
Lamo Case: Secret Subpoenas and the Patriot Act
Shyam
Oberoi
Shooting
a Tiger
Toni Solo
Plan Condor, the Sequel?
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
Website of the Day
Downloader Legal Defense Fund
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
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Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
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Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
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The
Erosion of the American Dream
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Impeach
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|
Weekend
Edition
October 11 / 13, 2003
The
War on Human Rights in Colombia
Three Variations on
a Theme from Uribe
By PHIILIP CRYAN
Bogota.
I.
When Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez accused
human rights organizations of "serving terrorism" in
September 8 and 11 speeches, the international response was,
thankfully, strong. The United Nations, European Union, various
newspapers, NGOs and members of the U.S. Congress made statements
reproaching Uribe for the comments, pointing out that within
the logic of Colombia's conflict the President's words would
be understood by right-wing paramilitaries as a green light to
execute human rights defenders.
The "terrorist" NGOs "hide
cowardly in the flag of human rights," said Uribe in the
first speech. "When the terrorists begin to feel weakened,
they send out their spokespeople to talk about human rights."
To refute NGOs' claims of restrictions
on democracy, he claimed, incredibly, that "Colombia has
the best freedom of press and opinion in the entire world."
Dozens of Colombian journalists and hundreds of trade unionists
(and others organizing to challenge government policies) have
been murdered in just the last few years. Hundreds more have
been forced by death-threats to leave their homes and work, going
into exile abroad or seeking anonymity in the country's large
cities.
Many political analysts in Colombia and
abroad had expected an apology or at least a toning-down from
Uribe in response to widespread international reproach--anything
but what he delivered three days later, on the 11th of September.
Speaking to residents of Chita, a town where eight people had
just been killed by a "horse-bomb" probably planted
by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas,
Uribe insisted: "My commitment is to you, not to those people
who make a living defending, enabling the terrorists. Their honeymoon
is ending. My commitment is to you. It doesn't matter what the
sponsors of terrorists' defenders say."
Uribe did not specify which NGOs he views
as front-organizations for the Colombian guerrilla groups--what
he called, in a marvelous turn of phrase, "traffickers of
human rights"--but his first accusations came on the same
day a coalition of eighty Colombian NGOs released a book called
"The Authoritarian Curse" that evaluated Uribe's first
year in office. All eighty NGOs had to assume that he was referring
to them--or in any case that the anticipated consequences of
his statements (a new wave of death-threats and attempted assassinations
of human rights defenders) would apply to all of them equally.
Many of the country's most prestigious human rights organizations
were among this group.
So far--thank God--no one from these
organizations has been killed as a result of Uribe's statements.
Death-threats against and government-initiated legal prosecution
of human rights defenders have, however, increased. And the political
space for criticism of the Uribe government--already precarious,
tightly limited by paramilitary violence against human rights
defenders--was reduced even further by Uribe's comments and,
more so, by the fact that ultimately he got away with them. Though
initial outcry, especially internationally, was surprisingly
and hearteningly strong, three weeks later, on a visit to New
York to address the UN General Assembly and to Washington for
visits with his principal patrons and champions (including Bush,
Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Drug Czar John Walters and Speaker of
the House Hastert) he simply modified the tone of his accusations--without
retraction or apology--and found his U.S. backing thoroughly
intact. Secretary of State Powell reaffirmed faith in Uribe's
"commitment to the high standards of human rights."
And that was that.
U.S. media coverage of Uribe's September
30 and October 1 U.S. trip to "try to calm Washington"
(as Reuters put it) was minimal and surely left Uribe satisfied
that he had fulfilled his mission--or perhaps just reassured
that there wasn't much calming needed after all. In a joint press
conference with Powell, Uribe referred to a recent Human Rights
Watch study on child combatants in the Colombian conflict as
an example of respectable NGO reporting, contrasting it, ominously
and again without specifying his targets, to "other reports
by other NGOs." No U.S. or Colombian paper pointed out,
in stories on Uribe's visit, that the single NGO effort he held
up as respectable--the Human Rights Watch report--criticized
the guerrillas and paramilitaries, not his government.
In his address to the UN General Assembly,
trying to justify his human rights record and show moderation
in his approach to NGOs, Uribe appealed to his own democratic
freedoms: "We reserve the right to express dissent faced
with slanted reports that distort our efforts." However,
in his September 8 and 11 speeches, he had not argued against
NGOs' criticisms of his policies. He had simply labeled the NGOs
"terrorists" and "traffickers of human rights."
Again, no U.S. paper pointed out the wonderful irony in Uribe
appealing to his own "right to express dissent" to
defend generalized attacks on those critical of his policies
as "terrorists."
Even the relatively good media coverage
of Uribe's early September attacks on human rights defenders
overlooked two major stories related to the September 8 speech.
II.
The first missed story is simpler, quicker
to relate. So let's start there.
There were a number of ironies in Uribe's
choice of audience for his first frontal attack on human rights
defenders.
First, most newspapers reported the speech's
setting as "a military ceremony." This description
in itself ought to have produced some serious reflection on Uribe's
"commitment to the high standards of human rights,"
as Powell put it. The Colombian military, as the State Department
itself acknowledges, needs constant reinforcement of an entirely
different message (namely, a ringing endorsement of defending
human rights) after years of documented collusion with rightwing
paramilitaries responsible for most of the nation's political
killings.
Every year the State Department's report
on human rights in Colombia shows that "extensive"
military-paramilitary collusion continues. In conflict regions
like Putumayo, I've heard countless stories of what goes well
beyond collusion--"the Army is the paramilitary," explains
one friend and community leader. That is, members of the Army
put on paramilitary armbands to carry out massacres and other
extra-legal counter-insurgency actions--often at night--then
take off the armbands and go back to their day jobs as regular
soldiers. It's hard to find a single resident of rural Colombia,
in fact, who believes that the military is no longer linked to
the 'paras.' In a September 20 report, the Washington Post's
Scott Wilson quoted an unnamed "Western diplomat" describing
the paramilitary movement as, quite simply, "an adjunct
to the Colombian state."
Uribe was not just taking advantage of
a public-speaking opportunity to attack human rights defenders;
rather, he was sending a specific message to a military audience.
The military ceremony was held to swear in a new commander of
Colombia's Air Force, General Edgar Alfonso Lesmez. Near the
speech's end, Uribe addressed General Lesmez directly: "Assume
command of the Air Force, to defeat terrorism. May the traffickers
of human rights never stop you." A chilling message, when
you look at the Colombian military's history.
The second irony was that Uribe delivered
the speech during Colombia's annual Week for Peace celebrations
and on the eve of Colombian Human Rights Day.
But the principal irony, unmentioned
by all Colombian and foreign media coverage, was the thank-you
Uribe offered at the beginning of the speech to outgoing Air
Force commander General Hector Fabio Velasco. Uribe praised Velasco's
"long, successful and patriotic run with the Colombian air
force." The general's service, he said, showed a devotion
to "giving back total peace to the nation." No one
seemed to recall the numerous media accounts, throughout 2003,
of former U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson's repeated requests
to Uribe for Velasco's head. The U.S. Embassy held Velasco responsible
for repeated obstruction of investigations into a 1998 massacre
in which the Colombian Air Force intentionally dropped a <U.S.-made>
cluster bomb on the northeastern town of Santo Domingo, killing
18 civilians.
Occidental Petroleum--the beneficiary
since 2002 of over $100 million in U.S. military aid specifically
aimed at protecting a Colombian oil pipeline the Los Angles-based
company operates--provided their facilities in Arauca to the
Santo Domingo bombing's planners. AirScan, a U.S. contractor
then employed by Occidental to help protect the pipeline from
guerrilla attacks, reportedly provided the coordinates for the
bombing. A family-member of victims has filed suit against Occidental
in U.S. courts for its role in the massacre.
Earlier this year, the U.S. disqualified
the Air Force from receiving Plan Colombia military aid--the
first time an entire branch of the Colombian military has been
officially decertified--in response to Velasco's systematic obfuscation
of facts. Velasco initially blamed the bombing on the FARC. After
that claim was disproved, he changed his story again and again.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has pressured the State Department
to get to the bottom of the Santo Domingo case for years, eventually
leading to the decertification and to Patterson's request that
Uribe dismiss Velasco. "If justice is not done, the Congress
should withhold aid to the Colombian air force," said Leahy
in October 2002. "There has to be a consequence for killing
18 innocent people and lying about it."
Four years passed before two of the pilots
responsible for the bombing were sentenced. Their penalty? A
three-month suspension from military duty.
On August 26, the Los Angeles Times described
the Santo Domingo investigation as "the biggest obstacle
in relations between the United States and Colombia." When
General Velasco's resignation was announced in late August, many
commentators saw it as proof that the U.S. was indeed pressuring
the Colombian military to comply with human rights standards.
No judicial process has been opened against
Velasco, however. Colombian authorities did not even describe
his stepping-down as a dismissal. Velasco claims that he had
been requesting resignation for many months and in August Uribe
finally accepted. U.S. Embassy officials refused to comment on
this official version, claiming that it was an "internal"
Colombian matter.
And then Uribe, at a ceremony where he
thanks Velasco for his "patriotic run" and issues what
can fairly be described (particularly considering the audience)
as open death-threats to NGO workers, tells the new Air Force
commander "May the traffickers of human rights never stop
you." Three weeks later Colin Powell publicly applauds Uribe's
human rights record.
Maybe the U.S. isn't the best place to
look for leverage on human rights in Colombia after all.
Uribe closed the September 8 speech with
these words: "General Velasco, from the bottom of my heart,
one word: gratitude."
How will he repay the general for shielding
the Santo Domingo murderers from justice? Fittingly, twistedly,
Velasco will be Colombia's new ambassador to Israel.
III.
But there's a bigger story--a story tied
into another little-noticed moment from Uribe's speech at General
Lesmez's swearing-in.
The Colombian paramilitaries call themselves
"self-defense forces." Frequently, the Colombian military
and government use this same phrase to describe them--a phrase
that suggests, as both Colombian and U.S. military strategists
so often argue, that the paramilitaries are a natural byproduct
of guerrilla violence in Colombia and consequently can never
be done away with until the guerrillas are defeated. (An example
from RAND Corporation, a conservative U.S. think-tank, in their
2001 study The Colombian Labyrinth: "Realistically, because
the paramilitaries are the product of an environment of insecurity,
they will continue to be a factor in Colombia's crisis as long
as the conditions that gave rise to them are not changed.")
The notion of "self-defense forces" literally turns
the paramilitaries--who are responsible for more than 2 out of
every 3 political killings in Colombia over recent years, many
of them unspeakably gruesome--into an epiphenomenon of the guerrilla
war. Moreover, violent acts in "self-defense" are,
in other contexts, generally considered justified. So when Colombian
military and government officials use this euphemism, they help
normalize and justify the paramilitary project.
In his September 8 speech, Uribe did
not refer to them as self-defense forces. Nor did he call them
paramilitaries, nor "terrorists" (which is what the
U.S. State Department defines them as, and so Uribe sometimes
uses the term too). Instead, twice during the speech--the same
speech where he called human rights defenders "terrorists"--he
called the paramilitaries "private justice groups."
Once again, his choice of phrase takes
on special significance when you consider the audience. Colombians
are, in general, uniquely skilled at deciphering subtexts, insinuations
and suggestions, after nearly 40 years living a conflict in which
"giving away the papaya" (i.e., saying any more than
you need to) at any time could get you and your family killed.
Therefore: when they hear their President rail against guerrillas
as terrorists and--above all--against human rights defenders
as cowards who serve terrorists, the assembled military officers
don't exactly have to strain to grasp the significance of the
contrast when he calls paramilitaries "private justice groups."
The message was loud and clear--and particularly satisfying,
surely, to the many officers at the ceremony who have collaborated
with the paramilitaries occasionally or systematically over their
careers.
Uribe even turned the justification into
self-congratulation for restraint (with an implicit threat):
"The politickers of human rights...talk about raids by the
Armed Forces. For God's sake. In other countries, to beat terrorism,
between the Armed Forces and death squads they eliminated every
one of terrorism's auxiliaries."
His choice of the term "private
justice groups" plays into an unfolding story, the historical
dimensions of which make his attacks on NGOs look inconsequential.
The Uribe administration proposed in August a peace deal with
the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the country's
largest federation of right-wing paramilitaries. If the proposal
passes Colombia's Congress, AUC troops would give up their weapons
and offer symbolic reparations (primarily in the form of cash
payments and social work); in exchange, they would receive amnesties
from the President and not be required to serve jail time. After
ten years, their criminal records would be clean and they would
be eligible to hold public office. Impunity would extend even
to those leaders already convicted on multiple counts of crimes
against humanity.
The proposal has been pilloried by the
United Nations, Human Rights Watch, European governments, dozens
of NGOs, members of the U.S. Congress and numerous newspapers.
Reuters, for example, posed the question of whether the government's
"conditional freedom" offer for the paramilitaries
amounts to "allowing some of Colombia's most feared criminals
to literally get away with murder." The Chicago Tribune
titled their house editorial on the matter "Colombia's pact
with the devils." Human Rights Watch calls Uribe's proposal
"the impunity law."
Colombian Senator Rafael Pardo, one of
Uribe's most devoted allies until the law was proposed, commented
to El Tiempo (Colombia's largest newspaper): "You turn in
a farm and that compensates for a massacre?"
The Colombian weekly magazine Cambio
published a political cartoon called "Atrocious crimes"
in its September 1 edition. Four military officers have handcuffed
a man and prod him with their guns. A man watching the arrest
comments to the woman next to him: "He's a demobilized paramilitary.
They proved that he participated in seven massacres." The
woman replies: "Oh, of course. So that's why they're jailing
him." The man: "No, it's because they caught him selling
fruit by the streetlight." (In Colombian cities, police
throw street vendors in paddy-wagons, confiscate their goods,
and jail them for "invading public space.")
Traveling in southern Colombia's conflict
regions, I have heard countless stories of AUC massacres carried
out with chainsaws and machetes--slow, public decapitations designed
for their spectacular effects: as lessons to those watching.
On two occasions I've been told of paramilitaries playing soccer
with decapitated heads. In some urban areas they institute a
"social control" system: miniskirts for women and long
hair for men are prohibited; adulterers are made to wear Scarlet
Letter-like marks of shame and homosexuals are run out of town
or executed. Anyone suspected of collaborating with guerrillas--anyone
in a trade union, doing human rights work, or trying to be a
serious journalist or priest or mayor would fall in this category--is
murdered, often after prolonged torture. The paramilitaries tell
civilians not to move or bury the cadavers of their victims:
"leave the bodies to rot in public, so the dogs can get
at them," they instruct. On a trip to the southern province
of Putumayo--the region where U.S. military aid has been most
focused over the first three years of Plan Colombia--last December,
I happened to arrive in the city of Mocoa the same day that the
bodies of Giovanni and John, two brothers killed by the AUC,
were discovered by their mother, who was just returning from
a vacation. There were no bullet-wounds. The skin of their faces
had been disintegrated by some kind of acid, likely applied while
they were still alive.
Though of an entirely different culture
and history, some of the AUC's tactics resemble those of the
Taliban.
Yet "there is 98% impunity"
for paramilitary actions, according to a government human rights
official from another Putumayo city. "The police refuse
to collaborate [with judicial investigations]." "The
military and paramilitaries play volleyball and soccer together,"
says another civilian government official. Within a day of arriving
in a Putumayo city, one can find out--even as an outsider--where
the paramilitaries live, their names and ranks, even their military
specialties. Whenever asked about collusion, however, military
and police officers provide an unvarying response: "Prove
it." "We can't act without evidence, without an official
complaint being filed," a military commander recently told
me. The military insists that civilians' claims of regular paramilitary
killings are greatly exaggerated and deny outright the presence
of paramilitaries in many cities they in fact control. This just
to take one region of Colombia as an example.
The history of military-paramilitary
collusion in Colombia is a long one--and it is within this history,
finally, that Uribe's amnesty proposal (and other recent offensives
against human rights and international humanitarian law) must
be understood. This history, in turn, cannot be understood without
analysis of the U.S. government's role in Colombia.
In 1962--two years before the formation
of Colombia's two largest current guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army
(ELN)--a U.S. Army mission to Colombia suggested that the U.S.
support a new Colombian strategy called Plan Lazo ("The
Noose Plan").[i] Through this plan, civilian and military
personnel would be chosen and trained to undertake "clandestine
execution of plans developed by the U.S. government toward defined
objectives in the political, economic, and military fields."
The mission's report further explained that "this civilian-military
structure ... will be used to perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda
functions as necessary, execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or
terrorist activities against communist proponents. It should
be backed by the United States." (Quite remarkable to read
something like that from our government, in the current context
where "terrorist" tends to denote not a specific type
of tactics nor even simply "our enemy" but a host of
other and inherent qualities--inscrutable, lacking reason, evil,
inhuman (in a recent interview with PBS, Uribe described his
military campaigns against terrorists as "killing the snake").)
Also in the early 1960s, the Colombian Army published a Spanish
translation of the U.S. Army's "Manual on Operations against
Irregular Forces," which discussed civilian involvement
in counter-insurgency war.
From 1965 to 1989, paramilitary groups--"civilian
patrols" involved in counter-insurgency actions--were legal
in Colombia. In 1994, a new breed of private, armed "surveillance
and private security cooperatives" (CONVIVIR) was legalized
and operated throughout the country until 1997. (The previously
mentioned RAND Corporation study from 2001 essentially proposes
a return to the CONVIVIR model: "An alternative approach
could be to establish a network of government-supervised self-defense
organizations. Legalized self-defense units could at least give
the central government more control over their activities, and
possibly improve the prospects for peace by empowering local
communities to provide for their own security.")
According to a 1999 article by Ivan Orozco
in Foro, Office of the Advisor for Peace statistics show that
between 1990 and 1997 the Colombian armed forces attacked guerrillas
3,873 times and the paramilitaries six times.
There's a lot more history worth telling
here, but the crucial part for understanding today's developments
is the period of 1995-1997 in Antioquia province--the years Uribe
was governor there.
Uraba, a region of Antioquia, was effectively
taken over by the AUC while Uribe was the province's governor.
Homicides in the region tripled from 1994 to 1996. The commander
of the region's Army brigade during those years, General Rito
Alejo del Rio, was dismissed from service years later by President
Andres Pastrana (Uribe's predecessor) for collaborating with
the paramilitaries. According to Gloria Cuartas, former mayor
of the Antioquian town of Apartado, she is one of only two surviving
plaintiffs in a still-pending legal case against Rito Alejo del
Rio for collaboration with paramilitaries, a half-dozen other
plaintiffs having been killed by paramilitaries. The former general
is currently a candidate for governor in the province of Boyaca.
Shortly after Rito Alejo del Rio was dismissed by Pastrana, Uribe
delivered a speech at a banquet to honor the former general and
another dismissed officer. Uribe and the general are frequently
credited with the "pacification" of Uraba.
In the southwestern Colombian province
of Cauca, paramilitaries began a major offensive in 2000, after
traffic along the Panamerican Highway was stopped for nearly
a month in 1999 by 60,000 farmers demanding government investment
in education, health, infrastructure and other social programs.
According to the mobilization's leaders, Uribe participated in
a meeting in the province's capital shortly after the mobilization
ended, in which business community leaders decided to request
that the AUC move into the region. Today, the AUC maintains control
of all the towns and cities in Cauca through which the Panamerican
passes--and little if any control of the rest of the province.
Semana, the nation's largest newsweekly,
reported July 14 of this year that Uribe's counter-guerrilla
initiatives have been most successful in those regions of the
country where the paramilitaries have simultaneously advanced.
(The article ran without a byline--it can be extremely dangerous
to point this sort of thing out publicly.)
In short, as the Washington Post reporter's
anonymous "Western diplomat" stated, the paramilitaries
are "an adjunct to the Colombian state." (Drug traffickers,
large landholders and businessmen have played crucial roles in
the paramilitary project alongside the military and government.)
Carlos Castano, political leader of the AUC, describes his organization
as "para-State." He and the AUC's current military
leader, Salvator Mancuso, have made it quite clear in recent
press interviews that they are entering a demobilization process
only because they believe Uribe is capable of doing through State
actions what they have done as a "para-State" force.
While many U.S. newspapers have written
strong house editorials opposing Uribe's amnesty plan for the
AUC, the Washington Post recently defended the proposal, referring
to El Salvador and South Africa as examples of previous peace
processes that have involved major amnesty concessions. These
historical precedents involved negotiations between adversaries.
There is no precedent for peace "negotiations" between
long-time allies. Even if the model provided by other countries
could somehow be adapted for demobilization of Colombia's paramilitaries--in
itself an unquestionably noble goal--the offer of amnesty would
come after negotiations, not at their inception (as is the case
with Uribe's offer to the AUC).
Minister of Justice and the Interior
Fernando Londono--the other main speaker, with Uribe, at the
1999 banquet honoring Rito Alejo del Rio--presented the amnesty
proposal to Colombia's Congress in August. A brilliant orator,
Londono is perhaps one of the few people in power in the world
today who can rival his U.S. counterpart, John Ashcroft, for
sheer scariness. In the speech to Congress, Londono explained
that "this legislative proposal is oriented toward a restorative
conception [of justice] that goes beyond the identification of
punishment with personal vengeance--a discourse in which the
principle thing is reaction against the criminal with a pain
similar to that which he produced in the victim. It is important
to keep in mind that in doing justice the law is directed at
reparation, not at revenge." An eloquent criticism of many
countries' emphasis on punitive, repressive actions in dealing
with criminals--the U.S. case being particularly extreme--but
his words here served specifically to justify pardoning those
responsible for massacres, torture, medieval "social control"
regimes, gang-rape. There's got to be a certain point at which
we agree, internationally, that punitive action's required. In
fact we have determined that, internationally. Many crimes are
pardonable within a peace process, according to international
law; crimes against humanity are not.
In the proposed legislation--including
both the law's specific articles and an "explanation of
motives"--not a single reference is made to Colombia's human
rights obligations under international law.
On Uribe's September 30 and October 1
trip to Washington to try to smooth over any tensions created
by his attacks on NGOs and his paramilitary amnesty proposal,
the White House did not formally announce support for the proposal.
However, after dozens of foreign governments, international organizations
and media outlets expressed contempt for it, Colombians could
only interpret Washington's silence as approval (particularly
since that silence on the proposal was combined with a very warm
reception of Uribe--Powell's statement about Uribe's "commitment
to the high standards of human rights"; celebration of supposed
Drug War successes; an offer of three new crop-dusters for the
Plan Colombia herbicide-spraying program; Bush's willingness
to start bilateral free trade agreement negotiations with Colombia
before the end of this year; etc.).
Until this past week, U.S. officials
asked to comment on the amnesty proposal stated that it is an
internal Colombian affair in which they should not be involved
(though they also insist that they will not drop extradition
orders for three top AUC leaders who are wanted in U.S. courts
for drug-trafficking)--a curious assertion when the U.S. is involved
in pretty much every aspect of the design and implementation
of Colombia's internal security policy. Even more curious in
that former Ambassador Patterson had already offered over $2
million in new U.S. aid for the paramilitary demobilization process
when she left the post in July.
Curiouser and curiouser--three U.S. officials
held clandestine meetings with paramilitary emissaries earlier
this year. The Embassy has admitted that the meetings took place,
but, unsurprisingly, has not been very forthcoming about their
content. You'd think this story would have made a bit of a splash
back home ("U.S. officials negotiate with terrorists";
"Emergency Congressional hearings called on meetings with
Colombian terrorists"; etc.) but, rather chillingly, after
a single Associated Press report the story did not appear in
U.S. media.
On October 10 El Tiempo reported that
the U.S. has presented Colombia's Peace Commissioner with a series
of concerns about and suggested improvements to the amnesty proposal.
The U.S.'s two principal concerns, according to the El Tiempo
story, are that Ashcroft's extradition orders against paramilitary
leaders for drug trafficking will not be affected by the peace
deal and that drug traffickers will be prevented from joining
the paramilitaries to clean their criminal records (The New York
Times' Andes correspondent Juan Forero, in a September 15 story,
had quoted yet another disgruntled, anonymous "Western diplomat"
commenting on the amnesty deal: "What is happening here
is the biggest legal money laundering and narco-profiting operation
ever seen.")
Forero's article made another interesting
revelation: "Western diplomats here and American officials
who work on Colombia policy...say the United States has not only
offered support for Mr. Uribe but also has been consulted as
his administration drafted the [amnesty] legislation."
Unlike the United Nations' concerns and
suggestions, the U.S. wish-list submitted to Peace Commissioner
Restrepo reportedly focuses primarily on making sure that drug
traffickers aren't granted amnesty. Representative Tom Lantos
(D-CA), in an early October interview with PBS, explained his
view on the issue: "There are some things on which we cannot
compromise. The key drug lords cannot escape going to prison
for long terms by paying cash to their victims."
Funny that the things we can't compromise
on don't include the massacre of thousands of Colombian civilians.
The October 10 El Tiempo piece reported
that "authors of atrocious crimes who demobilize and take
part in a peace process" can still receive the benefits
of "alternative penalties" (i.e., not serving time
in jail) according to the U.S.'s suggestions.
Undoubtedly, Uribe will appear to give
some ground in the coming weeks. The U.S.'s proposals will be
largely or entirely written into a new draft of the law. He may
make other concessions to Colombian Congressional critics. He'll
be praised for flexibility. Yet, because he started "making
compromises" from such an extreme position (a position of
literally and simply wiping the paramilitaries' criminal slate
clean, allowing within a few years for them to become--as they
clearly aspire--a powerful, legitimate political force), the
ultimate agreement will likely still achieve these overarching
goals of legitimization and pardon. And the U.S. will quietly
assent, thanking Uribe for respecting their suggestions (just
as he's consented to their "proposals" that he grant
U.S. citizens in Colombia immunity before the International Criminal
Court and that Colombia support the Iraq War (making it the only
country in South America to do so)) and declining further comment
since it's an "internal Colombian matter." And our
helicopters and chemicals, military trainers and tax-dollars
will keep on flowing into Colombia's celebrated counter-insurgency
forces, who know better than to let "the traffickers of
human rights" slow or stop them.
Conclusion
While U.S. attention focuses, naturally,
on the horrors in Iraq, the completely embarrassing events in
California, the prospects for getting the ugliest regime in our
nation's history out of Washington, etc., on another front in
the "War on Terror," with Alvaro Uribe's leadership
and the U.S.'s approval one of the most brutal forces of the
right in our confused and turbulent world looks like it might
just get away with mass murder.
In remembrance of their thousands of
civilian victims -- most of them community leaders and activists,
including hundreds of trade unionists, thousands (literally)
of politicians, Afro-Colombian leaders, indigenous leaders, human
rights defenders, local journalists, teachers......... -- I ask,
quietly, for prayer. And loudly, that we don't let the bastards
get away with it.
Phillip Cryan
lives in Bogota, Colombia. Portions of this essay have been
adapted from his biweekly columns in Colombia Week, a weekly
report on events in Colombia you can sign up for by e-mailing
colombiaweek@mn.rr.com.
[i] [i] The following five paragraphs
draw heavily from the International Crisis Group's excellent,
brief review of paramilitary history in "Colombia:
Negotiating with the Paramilitaries" (September 16,
2003; Bogota/Brussels). I apologize for the lack of citations
in other parts of this essay--please feel free to contact me
at for information on other sources: phillipcryan000@yahoo.com
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