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.
