Reviving the rhetoric of the Reagan/Bush
years, Clinton Administration officials
are once again pointing to the
“narcoguerrilla” threat-erasing the
already blurry line between
counternarcotics and counterinsurgency
in Colombia.
In a throw-back to the Cold War, the nation with the
worst human rights record in the hemisphere today-
Colombia-receives more U.S. security assistance than
any other country in the region, with aid levels reminiscent
of U.S. involvement in El Salvador in the mid-1980s. The
statistics speak for themselves. Political killings in
Colombia fluctuate from 3,000 to 4,000 a year, with over
70% attributed to right-wing paramilitary groups and their
military allies. Another 300 to 400 are disappeared each
year. Close to one million Colombians have been forced to
flee their homes as a result of political violence. While the
news of the Acteal massacre in Chiapas, Mexico made
international headlines last December, there was virtually
no coverage of the 185 politically motivated massacres that
took the lives of 1,042 victims in Colombia in 1997 alone.’
While the United States has provided assistance to
Colombia for many years under the guise of the “war on
drugs,” aid to the Colombian army was cut off in fiscal year
1994 due to human rights concerns. Early last year, how-
ever, U.S. officials announced their intention to renew assis-
tance to the Colombian army. Overall assistance to the
Colombian security forces more than quadrupled, and the
army was promised boats and aircraft, spare parts for heli-
copters, weapons and additional training. All told, the
Colombian antinarcotics police and armed forces were allo-
cated an estimated $100 million in direct U.S. assistance.
Another $40 million channeled through obscure Pentagon
funding accounts-which have only recently come to
light–allows for the provision of additional military hard-
ware and training over and above that provided by the
annual foreign aid bill.
This fiscal year, the Clinton Administration plans to raid
the funding allocated for alternative development activi-
ties in coca-growing regions of Bolivia and Peru in order
to provide an additional three Blackhawk helicopters to
Colombia over and above the ongoing U.S. assistance to
that country. 2 In addition, according to U.S. embassy offi-
cials in BogotA, on any given day there are between 130
and 250 U.S. military personnel on the ground in Colombia,
apart from those permanently stationed in the country, pri-
marily engaged in counternarcotics training and the oper-
ation of U.S. radars.
While Washington’s current aid to Colombia is presum-
ably directed at antinarcotics efforts, there are well-founded
fears that U.S. assistance is increasingly intertwined with
the armed forces’ brutal counterinsurgency campaign. The
recent movement of paramilitary groups into the southern
coca-growing regions of the country, where U.S. antinar-
cotics efforts are currently focused, entangles Washington
even further. Already, army units targeted to receive U.S.
aid have been implicated in two paramilitary massacres in
this region last year.
The use of U.S. counternarcotics assistance for other pur-
poses, including counterinsurgency, is not new. Documents
obtained from the U.S. embassy in Colombia by Human
Rights Watch reveal that in fiscal years 1992 and 1993,
counternarcotics assistance was provided to units of the
Colombian armed forces responsible for some of the worst
human rights atrocities carried out in recent years, and that
much of this aid went to units operating in areas not con-
sidered to be key drug-trafficking zones. 3 In fact, 13 of the
14 Colombian army battalions implicated in human rights
abuses in Amnesty International’s 1994 report on Colombia
received U.S. weapons or training. 4
Reviving rhetoric reminiscent of the Reagan and
Bush years, Clinton Administration officials are
once again pointing to the “narcoguerrilla” threat,
erasing the already blurry line between counternarcotics
and counterinsurgency efforts in Colombia. In a major pol-
icy reversal last October, General Barry McCaffrey, the
U.S. Drug Czar, shook hands with a man previously ostra-
cized by the U.S. government for his alleged ties to the Cali
drug cartel-Colombian President Ernesto Samper. The
reason, McCaffrey explained, was to show U.S. support in
the face of the “terrible direct threat to democracy of 15,000
34NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
Coletta Youngers is Senior Associate at the Washington Office
on Latin America in Washington, D.C She co-edited WOLA’s
recent report, Losing Ground: Human Rights Advocates Under
Attack in Colombia (1997).
NACA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA
narcoguerrillas armed with mortars, machine guns and
automatic weapons.” 5 Having bought into the Colombian
army’s campaign to paint their adversaries as drug-traf-
ficking guerrillas, General McCaffrey acknowledged that,
in fact, U.S. counternarcotics assistance-with its focus on
jungle warfare training and military prowess-is equally
applicable to the counterinsurgency effort.
No one disputes that the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC) gains significant resources from
protecting coca growers in southern Colombia and facil-
itating shipment of coca and cocaine.
The FARC has virtual territorial con-
trol of vast areas where coca planta-
tions thrive in the departments of
Guaviare, Putumayo, Caquetd and
parts of Meta, providing it with a very
important and steady source of income.
But even the Drug Enforcement
Agency (DEA) admits, in a study car-
ried out at the request of the former
U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Myles
Frechette, that the FARC is not
engaged in international drug traffick-
ing. 6 Rather, it is one of many actors–
including elements of the armed forces
and paramilitary organizations–
engaged in the lucrative drug trade. Drug Czar General
Last April, around the time when the Bogota airport
Washington announced its decision to
resume aid to the Colombian army, warlord Carlos Castafio
announced that he was moving his powerful paramilitary
network into southern Colombia to wrest control of coca
production from the FARC. Four months later, despite the
fact that Castafio’s move into southern Colombia had mate-
rialized, the Clinton Administration announced that it
would avoid involving the U.S. in the heaviest areas of con-
flict in Colombia by “limiting” aid to army units operating
in the southern half of the country. In effect, Washington is
targeting precisely the area which appears destined to
become the next major paramilitary battleground.
If Castailo is successful in dislodging the FARC, this
will not only undermine the guerrilla’s ability to finance
its operations, but it will also consolidate paramilitary con-
trol of the most strategic drug-trafficking corridor in the
country, from the southern point of coca production to the
cocaine export routes through the central and northern cor-
ridors into Urabi-a key strategic entry point for illegal
arms as well as an exit point for illicit drugs. “Ironically,”
notes one Colombian analyst, “U.S. support for the
Colombian armed forces appears to be facilitating the con-
solidation of the Colombian drug trade.”‘ 7 It also fuels
human rights violations.
Two recent massacres in the southeastern departments
of Guaviare and Meta symbolize this terrifying trend. Last
Bi
on
July, over 100 heavily armed men in military attire occu-
pied the town of Mapiripdn, in Meta, for six days, killing
some 30 local residents and virtually emptying the town as
people fled in fear. According to the Bogota weekly,
Cambio 16, the paramilitaries first flew into the small San
Jos6 del Guaviare airport, which does double-duty as the
antinarcotics police base, before going on to Meta. The
installation, which is under the control of the Colombian
army, is home to U.S. civilian contract pilots and other U.S.
personnel. According to police chief General Rosso Jos6
Serrano, the U.S. embassy’s narcotics
assistance section representative was at
the base on the day the paramilitaries
touched ground. 8
The next major paramilitary attack
took place from October 18 to 20, when
paramilitaries took over the highly mil-
itarized town of Miraflores, in the heart
of Guaviare department, killing at least
four local residents whose names
appeared on a list of alleged guerrilla
supporters and provoking another exo-
dus. “Who said we couldn’t come to
this town? From now on, we give the
orders here,” witnesses report over-
hearing the killers say.
rry MacCaffrey at The gunmen did not act alone. October 19, 1997. Military and antinarcotics police units
based in Miraflores took no action to
stop the killings and, according to witnesses, when the
killing spree ended, army soldiers summoned a private
airplane with an army radio and, upon its arrival, boarded
the gunmen. The next day, General McCaffrey landed at
the nearby Joaquin Paris army base in San Jos6 del
Guaviare to show his support for the “heroic men fight-
ing in the field.”
Evidence pointing to army complicity in the Mapiripin
and Miraflores massacres has hindered U.S. efforts to fur-
ther arm the Colombian army. Thanks to Senator Patrick
Leahy (D-VT) and Representative Esteban Torres (D-CA),
legislation appropriating assistance for fiscal years 1997
and 1998 includes language that stipulates that no aid can
be “provided to any unit of the security forces of a foreign
country if the Secretary of State has credible evidence to
believe such unit has committed gross violations of human
rights,” unless adequate measures are being taken to pros-
ecute those implicated.
At the time of this writing, the U.S. embassy in Colombia
has yet to come up with a Colombian army unit that meets
the human rights conditions laid out in U.S. law, and aid to
the army remains at least temporarily suspended. In the-
meantime, aid to the navy, air force and police flows
freely-as Colombia’s already dismal human rights record
continues to go from bad to worse.
U.S. Entanglements in Colombia Continue
1. A massacre is defined as a collective killing of four or more indi-
viduals. Statistics provided by Colombia’s Permanent Committee
for the Defense of Human Rights.
2. This reallocation of funds was approved by Congress in the 1998 foreign aid bill. 3. Human Rights Watch/Americas, Colombia’s Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996). 4. Dr. William F. Schulz, Executive Director, Amnesty International, “U.S.-Funded Human Rights Violators in Colombia,” (Press Conference), October 29, 1996. 5. Author’s interview, October 9, 1997.
6. Author’s interview, Ambassador Myles Frechette, November 15, 1996.
7. Author’s interview, December 17, 1997. 8. Author’s interview, January 29, 1998.
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