• Outsourcing War: Columbia Military Aid From The Private Sector,
  by Paul De La Garza and David Adams, St. Petersburg Times, December 3, 2000

  ---

  [T]he Clinton administration quietly has hired [MPRI,] a high-level group of former U.S. military personnel whose job far exceeds the narrow focus of the drug war . . .
          "We're outsourcing the war in a way that is not accountable," says Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch. She argues that because the 130,000-strong Colombian military is notorious for human rights violations, it is essential for the United States to provide assistance "in accordance with international law and in a transparent manner -- not in secret." . . .
          Although the hiring of MPRI was approved by Congress, it raises serious questions about the propriety of U.S. intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state, of American civilians participating in a foreign war, and whether the United States can guarantee the Colombian military will not misuse the assistance it receives from MPRI. . . .
          MPRI and the Pentagon both denied requests by the Times to review the MPRI contract, which is renewable each year. MPRI spokesman Ed Soyster, a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency, compared the need for secrecy in Colombia with the need for secrecy in Vietnam.
          "When I was in Vietnam, I wouldn't want to tell you about my operation," he said. "If the enemy knows about it, he can counter it."
  
  
  
• Echoes of Vietnam, by Rachel Massey, in in Rachel's Environment & Health News #713, 12/7/00

  ---

  Proponents of the "war on drugs" would like us to believe that the more acres of South American countryside we spray with herbicides, the fewer North American children will fall prey to drug pushers. But studies show that herbicide spray campaigns are ineffective at stemming the flow of drugs. . . . On the other hand, tackling the drug problem within the U.S. by reducing drug use can succeed. A study by the RAND corporation found that drug treatment programs for cocaine users in the U.S. are 23 times as cost effective as efforts to eradicate drugs at their source.[10] And yet, according to a 1999 U.S. government report, the majority of Americans needing drug treatment went untreated between 1991 and 1996.[11]
  
  
  
• Monsanto/US War on Drugs Poisoning Colombian Environment,
  by Brian Hansen, ENS, November 20, 2000

  ---

  "This spraying campaign is equivalent to the Agent Orange devastation of Vietnam -- a disturbance the wildlife and natural ecosystems have never recovered from," said Dr. David Olson, director of the World Wildlife Fund's conservation science program. "And it is occurring on the watch of the current Congress and [executive] administration, supported by taxpayer dollars." . . .
          The herbicide approved for the program, glyphosate, is manufactured by the U.S. based Monsanto Corporation and is commonly referred to by the trade name Roundup.
          Glyphosate is a non-selective herbicide, meaning that any plant exposed to a sufficient amount of the chemical will be killed. The chemical has been sprayed over tens of thousands of acres in Colombia since the early 1990s, but the eradication program has done little to curtail the supply of cocaine that comes into the U.S. every year.
          Still, Colombian officials -- at the request of U.S. policymakers -- are once again gearing up to dump thousands of liters of glyphosate on Colombia, this time targeting the country's southern state of Putumayo. . . .
          As many as 10,000 Colombians could be displaced when the spraying begins next month, noted Hiram Ruiz, a senior policy analyst with the U.S. Committee for Refugees, a non-governmental group based in Washington. Ruiz, who toured the Putumayo region in June, said that the fumigation program will make local residents vulnerable to the guerrillas and paramilitary groups that were spawned from Colombia's long running civil war.
  
  
  
• The Untold Story of `Plan Colombia', by John Neumaier, 5 November 2000

  ---

  LET'S LOOK at "Plan Colombia." Most of the U.S. aid allocation (over 80 percent) is for military purposes -- amounting to a quarter of Colombia's annual total military spending. Actually, however, much of that U.S. money goes directly to the U.S. defense contractors who make the weaponry and aircraft. (It is noteworthy that two U.S. helicopter companies contributed $2.4 million during the last two U.S. election campaigns. Incidentally, I don't recall any talk about the Colombian aid package by the two major presidential candidates.) . . .
          COLOMBIA is the fourth largest country in South America, with a population of near 40 million. It has a violent history. The Spaniards decimated most of the native Indian culture. The slave traders brought Africans to replace rebellious Indians. In 1818 came the war of independence from Spain, beginning decades of internal strife which still continues today.
          Colombia's horrendous human rights record makes it one of the most dangerous places in the world, particularly for the vast number of poor peasants and their families. The battles of the period called La Violencia (1948-58), when the two main Colombian parties -- the Liberals and the Conservatives -- fought for power, cost over 200,000 Colombian lives. Today's conflict between the various armed groups has brought about the displacement of 1.8 million Colombians within their own country.
  
  
  
• Witness for Peace - Columbia: A Call to Witness, Summer 2000

  ---

  In the context of the current situation in Colombia, the most important thing to understand about the US aid package is this: every single Colombian organization with which we met was certain that the aid would only escalate the conflict in the country.
  
  
  
• Witness for Peace - An Urgent Message From Our Columbian Partners, Summer 2000

  ---

  Perhaps, brothers and sisters, it is precisely in order to support the Colombian churches in turning the governmental message of death from the North into life that God has placed you there in the nations of the North at this time, just as God did with Esther.
  
  
  
• U'wa Communique, September 11, 2000

  ---

  The U'wa people reject the despotic nature of the Andres Pastrana government, the lies and the deceit that he attempts to legalize by means of informing national and international citizens of a process of alleged respect for our rights, which in reality doesn't exist. While the government dialogues in Bogota, the machinery is arriving to the drilling site and the process of violence is growing stronger. For these reasons, we want to make clear that if in the future an U'wa leader or any U'wa person is attacked physically or morally, we will hold the Colombian government Occidental of Colombia Inc. directly responsible.
          The U'wa are not going to abandon our farms because this is our home and our land. We will continue to gather there and to make known to the Colombian community and the world each inhumane act that is committed by the military forces. We will communicate these events not to provoke pity, but to garner support for our people who fight to maintain our culture, our beliefs, our ancient laws; We are an example a community that seeks to live in peace and harmony with others and with nature. The Plan Colombia only benefits the multinationals who, in their efforts to seize and take control of our riches and of our wealth devastate all that is around them. We the U'wa people stand as a clear example of a community defending our right to live in peace, unity and harmony; to live within the territory that was created by Sira (God), and to care for and and coexist peacefully on this, our land.
  
  
  
• Introduction to Columbia Certification document, Aug 28/29 2000

  ---

  On the eve of a visit by President Clinton, three top human rights groups Monday issued a scathingly detailed report charging that Colombia does not deserve a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package.
  
  
  
• Colombia Certification, August 28 2000

  ---

  On July 13, 2000 United States President Bill Clinton signed Public Law 106-246, which included $1.3 billion in aid to Colombia. The bulk of this aid is for Colombia's military.
          Section 3201 of the law establishes specific human rights conditions for military assistance to Colombia, included in this document as Appendix A . . . .
          The following document outlines the evidence presented jointly by WOLA, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. All three organizations concluded that there was overwhelming evidence demonstrating that Colombia has not met these conditions.
          On August 22, 2000, President Clinton invoked Section 4 of the law, waiving the human rights conditions on the grounds of U.S. national security interests. We deplore this decision.
          In this report, we set out each of the human rights conditions mandated by Congress and then review the record of the Colombian government and military.
  
  
  
• The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links,
  Human Rights Watch, February 2000

  ---

  Human Rights Watch here presents detailed, abundant, and compelling evidence of continuing close ties between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups responsible for gross human rights violations.
          This information was compiled by Colombian government investigators and Human Rights Watch. Several of our sources, including eyewitnesses, requested anonymity because their lives have been under threat as a result of their testimony. . . .
          Together, evidence collected so far by Human Rights Watch links half of Colombia's eighteen brigade-level army units (excluding military schools) to paramilitary activity. These units operate in all of Colombia's five divisions. In other words, military support for paramilitary activity remains national in scope and includes areas where units receiving or scheduled to receive U.S. military aid operate.
  
  
  
• Gore and Occidental Petroleum
  Excerpt from The Buying Of The President 2000

  ---

  For example, in the Democratic Party, Vice President Al Gore has a long-time relationship with Occidental Petroleum that has been enormously beneficial to the company. Occidental's late chairman, the controversial Armand Hammer, liked to say that he had Gore's father, Senator Albert Gore, Senior, quote, "in my back pocket", unquote. When the elder Gore left the Senate in 1970, Hammer hired him for $500,000 a year. Personally and professionally the vice president has profited from Occidental largess. To this day he still draws $20,000 a year from a land deal in Tennessee brokered between his father and Hammer. The total amount is more than $300,000. The personal relationship between young Gore and Hammer was very close throughout the 1980's, including trips on Hammer's private jet and constant campaign contributions.
  
  
  
• Big Guns Back Aid To Colombia, Legal Times, Feb 23, 2000

  ---

  The Clinton administration's $1.3 billion aid package was preceded by a year-long corporate lobbying campaign. A business consortium of blue-chip multinationals has been pressing the White House and Capitol Hill for such a package. The assistance, the companies say, is needed to help the war-torn Latin American country beat back a growing illegal drug trade that is making it difficult to do business. . . .
          Together, Some of these Republicans wonder whether the administration chose Sikorsky's Black Hawks [helicopters], in part, to gain the support of the company's powerful home-state Democrats -- politicians who have traditionally opposed such military-type aide to foreign countries.
          Former Rep. Gerald Solomon (R-N.Y.), who is pitching in to help his old colleagues lobby to pass the plan, says gaining the support of Dodd and Gejdenson was "absolutely crucial." While he feels that the two Democrats genuinely believe in the anti-drug plan, Solomon says that appealing to a member's home state loyalties is a common tactic.
  
  
  
• U'wa Defense Working Group - Response to Occidental's PR Campaign, March 2000

  ---

  In Congressional testimony before the Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources Subcommittee of the House Government Reform Committee, and in various lobbying documents and conversations, Occidental's spokesmen have made several disingenuous and misleading points. They are presented and rebutted below.
  
  
  
• US Media "Body Count" Games Begin in Plan Colombia, NarcoNews, Sept 2, 2000

  ---

  As the US media argues about whether "Plan Colombia" is another Vietnam, another El Salvador, or none of the above, the behavior revealed by US press coverage of the first major battle in the Plan Colombia war is distinctly reminiscent of the 1960s. . . .
          The first English-language report came from Associated Press. It noted that a US-made C-47 phantom airplane "crashed" into a mountain at dawn, with loud official denials that it had been shot down by the Colombian rebels. (If true that it simply "crashed," what does that say about the quality of US training of Colombian pilots and troops?) . . .
          Meanwhile, in the ground war battle, the AP reported the death of "8 Colombian soldiers" and "12 rebels" -- the implication being that the score is 12 to 8 in favor of Plan Colombia.
  
  
  
• Human rights: a casualty of Colombia's drug war, Christian Science Monitor, Sept 1, 2000

  ---

  To make Colombia eligible for aid, Clinton overrode, "for national security reasons," six human rights conditions that the Senate had attached to the aid bill. The conditions were included by the Senate to bolster flagging support among members wary of Colombia's human rights record. But in an election year, when no one wants to appear soft on drugs, little congressional protest was heard when Clinton bypassed the State Department's determination that Colombia's human rights record could not be "certified."
  
  
  
• COMMENTARY: The president of hypocrites, The Independent, Sept 3 2000

  ---

  [T]he spectre of US involvement in a protracted jungle war in South America is belatedly setting off alarm bells in Washington. [But w]hy should Mr Clinton take any notice? This most shameless of US presidents will be out of office in four months, leaving someone else to sort out the mess. Opinion polls have suggested that the electorate is worried about drugs, and that the Democrats are seen as soft on the issue. Mr Clinton is doing Al Gore a favour, at no political cost to himself, while also delighting US arms manufacturers with substantial orders, not least the companies whose helicopters will be part of the aid package. You do not have to be a cynic to guess, correctly, that they also happen to be important donors of funds to the Democratic Party.
          In effect, Colombia has become the setting for an exercise which is really about US domestic politics, in which the anxieties of voters and the interests of arms manufacturers happen neatly to coincide. The war on drugs is unwinnable -- as President Pastrana remarked in a candid interview last week -- as long as there is a continuing demand in wealthy nations such as the US.
  
  
  
• Colombia's Drug Problem: Us, Washington Post, Sept 1, 2000

  ---

  Pastrana, whether by inadvertence, apolitical candor or devious design, blurted out the truth: The only sure way America can solve its drug problem is by reducing demand. The only irreplaceable player in the drug-racket chain--from peasant producer and armed exporter to middleman, money launderer, distributor, street pusher and user--is the last one. Take away the user and the whole thing collapses.
  
  
  
• The gringos land in Colombia, The Economist, Sept 2, 2000

  ---

  The visit was brief, amounting to not much more than an extended photo-opportunity and a pat on the back for Colombia's President Andres Pastrana. Yet the symbolic meaning of Bill Clinton's few hours in the walled colonial city of Cartagena on August 30th was great. It set the seal on a new strategic venture by the United States, the largest such commitment in its backyard since the Central American wars of the 1980s.
  
  
  
• U'wa Chieftans Carry Eco-Fight To Doorstep of Corporate America, April 1999

Links to Further Reading

Start Here:

COLOMBIAWAR.ORG - War on Drugs and Human Rights in Colombia

Includes:

The Violent History of Colombia
archives of declassified U.S. government documents

1928-1929   The Santa Marta Banana Workers Massacre 31 pages

1940-1945   Falangists and Nazis 41 pages

1946-1950   Assassination of Gaitán and the bogotazo about 500 pages

1950-1958   La Violencia 101 pages

1959-1965   Plan Lazo and the Alliance for Progress about 180 pages

1965-1973   ELN and University Violence 45 pages


A special thanks to Edward Barnes, Richard Boylan, Milton Gustafson, Elizabeth Lipford, Douglas Sofer, and others at the National Archives who've made this work possible. Many of these documents are from the records of the US State Department. To follow the routing codes, see these organizational charts from 1951, 1955 and 1959.



The War on Drugs and Human Rights in Colombia

1993-2002 Human Rights Reports

1998-2002 Articles about U.S. Counternarcotics Programs

Up To The Minute:

• Colombia Support Network (Madison, Wisconsin)
• Columbia Report

Organizations:

• Columbian Labor Monitor
• Colombia Support Network (Champaign-Urbana, Illinois)
• Columbia Action Network
• Columbian Human Rights Network
• School of the Americas Watch
• Washington Office on Latin America (Washington, DC)
• Resource Center of the Americas (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

News Sources:

• Columbia Crisis Page from ZNet
• Agencia de Noticias Nueva Colombia (News Agency New Colombia)

• El Tiempo - Bogotá daily newspaper
• El Espectador - Bogotá daily newspaper
• El Colombiano - Medellin daily newspaper
• Vanguardia Liberal - Bucaramanga daily newspaper
• El Pais - Cali daily newspaper
• El Heraldo - Barranquilla daily newspaper
• El Mundo - Medellin daily newspaper
• La Patria - Manizales daily newspaper
• El Universal - Cartagena daily newspaper
• El Nuevo Dia - Ibague-Tolima daily newspaper
• La Libertad - Barranquilla daily newspaper

• Radio Cadena Nacional (RCN)
• Radio Caracol
• Semana (newsweekly)
• Cambio (newsweekly)

• Washington Post/Associated Press

Read All About It:

• Human Rights Watch:
  • War Without Quarter: Colombia and International Humanitarian Law, 10/98
  • Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military - Paramilitary Partnership
    and the United States, 11/96
  • Generation Under Fire: Children and Violence in Colombia, 11/96
  • State of War: Political Violence and Counterinsurgency in Colombia, 12/93
• Subscribe to "colombiavigil", an eGroups list created September 3rd.
  (Join by clicking on the Subscribe link.)
• STRATFOR's focus on Hotspot: Columbia
• Gore'y Oil Plots:
  • How the Gores, Father and Son, Helped Their Patron Occidental Petroleum, Free Republic, 3/9/00
  • Corporate Watch's Feature, Greenbacks and Election Blues:
    • Al Gore: The Other Oil Candidate, 8/29/00
    • Al Gore: Friend of Corporate America, 9/8/00
    • Al's Pal's: a List of Gore's Top Donors, 9/8/00
    • Integrity in the Balance: Al Gore's Record On the Environment, 8/29/00
  • Gore's Oil Money, The Nation, 5/22/00
  • Rainforest Action Network - Beyond Oil Campaign:
    • U'wa Campaign
    • Gore: Principles or Petroleum? - Gore & Oxy
    • Fidelity Investments: Investing in Genocide?
    • Ten Things You Can Do to Help the U'wa
    • Reports and Publications
  • Project Underground:
    • "Occidental's Oil Project Ignites More Violence Against Peaceful Tribe in Colombia,
      Gore Family Continues To Profit From Occidental Stock Despite Abuses",
      Press Release, 6/26/00
  • Native Forest Network protest Gore Campaign in New Hampshire, ACERCA, 1/00
  • "Gore and Occidental: Environmental Activists Arrested at Gore Headquarters, As U'wa Expelled From Land," Democracy Now, 1/27/00
• Shell Supporting Suicide in Columbia, Project Underground, 11/97
• Bastards of the Universe: The Oil Industry, Ecological Destruction and Genocide,
  from Resist Corporate Rule