Pubdate: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 Source: Bangor Daily News (ME) Copyright: 2001 Bangor Daily News Inc. Contact: 491 Main St., PO Box 1329, Bangor, ME 04402-1329 Website: http://www.bangornews.com/ Author: Jim Harney Note: Jim Harney works with Posbilidad, a Bangor-based nonprofit working on issues of globalization. UNCLE SAM FUELS FIRE IN COLOMBIA Imagine a house on fire and firefighters throwing gasoline on it with the hope of extinguishing it. The United States does just that in Colombia. The gasoline, in this case, is a controversial aid package that goes by the name Plan Columbia. Last year Congress approved $1.3 billion as part of Plan Colombia. Much of the aid will go to buy helicopters to beef up a losing war against guerrilla forces that occupy almost half the country. Drug trafficking lies at the center of a discussion in the House and Senate as to why Colombia has become a national security issue. Drugs have taken the place of communism as the flashpoint for military involvement in this front-burner foreign policy issue. Drugs provide a wonderful excuse for the U.S. military to maintain its hegemony in the Andes. The United States and Colombia depend on the European Union, Canada and Japan to raise $7.5 billion over a three-year period as part of the aid package to Colombia and the region. This money, the most given to any Latin American country, makes Colombia the third largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world. The economically strapped Colombian government made a commitment to raise $4 billion. Yet in the thick of its worst economic crisis since 1933 it looks unlikely that it will raise its share. Thus the United States will end up footing most of the bill. Washington's glaring commitment to a military solution to the conflict, and closing its eyes to pronounced human rights violations, did not bode well with the European Union. Europe halted its $250 million contribution and decided to channel its aid money through non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Twenty-seven NGOs wrote that they had "ethical and political difficulties" with U.S. assistance. Prodigious documentation from State Department and United Nations sources link the Colombian military with paramilitary forces, death squads that account for almost 70 percent of the violence. The Clinton administration ignored this evidence and waived human rights attachments to the aid, a move that emboldened paramilitary activity and alienated human rights organizations whose members risk death documenting violations. Because of the aid the country's guerrillas have upped their kidnapping to respond to the massive U.S. infusion of assistance to the government. Congress, as part of Plan Colombia, gave the go-ahead for 300 U.S. advisers to train three Colombian army battalions in counterinsurgency, capping the number of advisers at 500. This move makes a stalled peace process all the more strained. As does U.S. corporations contracting with the Colombian military to train its solders. The advisers will train Colombian pilots to fly Black Hawk and Huey helicopters. The pilots will have as their objective to knock out guerrilla forces protecting laboratories, coca and poppy plantations under their control. Then, they will spray the crops with poisonous herbicides. This intense war swipes the ones on the bottom the hardest. For it diverts needed funds away from the poor who make up most of the two million people uprooted due to paramilitary incursions. Plan Colombia does little to address this. Peasants can count on only 6 percent of the aid to help them deal with how they're going to make a living once their illegal crops are poisoned and their food as well. Washington makes little distinction between those who grow coca and poppy to survive and the big drug lords who see it as a lucrative industry. As aid pours into Colombia the country's poor fall further into poverty. None of the aid touches their lives. On the contrary, it exacerbates conditions that buttress violence. In 1999, 20 percent of the country's poor possessed 2 percent of the wealth. Meanwhile the top 20 percent enjoyed 62.5 percent of it. Ten percent of Colombia's poorest make up for 65 percent of the country's unemployment. This makes Colombia the hemisphere's most unequal country. Awash in poverty, Colombia is the hemisphere's most violent country. Massacres take place on a daily basis with paramilitaries committing the overwhelming majority of them, followed by the guerrilla and the Colombian army. Last year, 402 occurred. The death squads freely move about with license to kill women and children unimpeded by the military that unofficially supports them. It's time we started dealing with the violence destroying Colombia. Taking by the horns glaring structural problems that plague the country is a good way to start the journey to peace. A close look at the "structural violence," as Latin American Catholic bishops say, will bring us to the conclusion that drugs are not the issue. What really matters is that we listen and respond to the clamor of the poor: where the true solution lies. And Plan Colombia has muffled that clamor. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom