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Militarization of the Drug War Equips Violent Repression in Colombia

By VVAW

The "narco-terrorism" remains unrelenting. One day after the New York Times ran an article by the head of the Committee in Defense of Human Rights in central Colombia, his secretary was assassinated.

At 8 p.m. January 29, Blanca Valero du Duran was executed in the doorway of the Committee's regional offices in downtown Barrancabermeja by two assailants. She was shot 12 times before her killers fled on a motorcycle. Valero had been heading home from the human rights offices where she had worked for 13 of her 38 years.

The incident is a small part of the worsening human rights emergency which has gripped the region in recent months. The area around Barrancabermeja is considered to be a stronghold of oil workers and the Patriotic Union, a progressive electoral coalition. Over 1700 of its members have been assassinated since its formation in 1985.

The military is bombing villages in the countryside. International human rights groups have noted that the Colombian government received aircraft matching the type used in the bombings in it U.S. assistance package under the auspices of narcotics control.

Colombian Army Chief-of-Staff General Luis Roca admits that $38.5 million of the $40.3 million allocated to Colombia for anti-narcotics assistance in FY 1990 was slated for logistical support for a three-year counter-insurgency program.

Activists have warned that U.S. militarization of the drug problem is complicating an already severe human rights situation. Colombia competes with Guatemala for the most violence in Latin America. Peasants and activists are often "disappeared". Their bodies, if found, show signs of relentless torture and dismemberment. Further, the policy could weaken the fragile democracies in the Andean region by boosting the resources and profile of the armed forces.

Curiously, U.S. aid may well be finding its way into the pockets of the very traffickers it is supposed to defeat. The Colombian National Police is responsible for 80-90% of all anti-narcotics raids, yet 77 % of the U.S. aid package went to the military where corruption is extensive. In the words of one European diplomat, "I've been to places where the army frustrates (the) police, where they're actually guarding the labs.... I've noticed no increased commitment on the part of the army to go after traffickers."

Drug traffickers have an alliance with the right-wing and the military through their joint paramilitary units. Termed "narcoparamilitarism" by one historian, the traffickers have linked with the large landowners to form paramilitary units-very often with the tangible support of the army. The death squads operate under names such as The Red Fascist Army, Kan Kill, and Exterminator. The use of hired assassins (sicarios) like those who gunned down Valero has also increased.

While there are 100 massacres and countless assassinations annually in Colombia, George Bush claims that there is no consistent pattern of gross human rights violation- a prudent evaluation since the U.S. law forbids military aid to countries with severe human rights problems.

According to the Washington Office on Latin America ( WOLA) the Andean strategy hasn't met its chief two-year goal of reducing cocaine supply to the United States by 15%. In fact, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents report that production in South America increased in 1990 by 28%. DEA agents estimated that coca production would increase in 1991 by another 10%, reaching record levels. The U.S. has slated $282 million in military assistance for Colombia the 5-year period ending in 1994. The Andean region has become the main locus of U.S. military assistance over the three-year period between GY 1990 and FY 1992 than all of Central America.

Meanwhile, the military, paramilitary units and sicarios have followed the aircraft into the area around Barrancabermeja to discover real or imaginary guerrillas, to drive the peasant from their land and even from their refugee centers, to dislodge the Patriotic Union by death or disappearance from its legally elected positions, to break this oil union stronghold, and to silence people like Valero. Not coincidentally, these actions will help secure the section of the country where new oil has been discovered-reportedly the largest oil deposit in the western hemisphere.