[News] U.S. and Colombia Relaunch Plan Colombia to Sabotage Peace Plan

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  U.S. and Colombia Relaunch Plan Colombia to Sabotage Peace Plan

*http://cpcml.ca/Tmlw2016/W46006.HTM#10*

Peace talks between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 
and the government of Colombia are expected to culminate next month with 
the signing of a final peace accord after more than three years of talks 
in Havana, Cuba. It is hoped by the Colombian people that the accord 
will bring an end to more than 60 years of armed conflict in which more 
than 7 million people have been killed, disappeared or displaced. 
However, in the midst of advances made to bring about a peaceful 
resolution to the longest-running civil war in the hemisphere, the U.S. 
and Colombian governments have announced a new security initiative which 
will see hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars used to finance yet 
another round of the fraudulent and criminal war on drugs.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos met with U.S. President Barack 
Obama in Washington, D.C. on February 4 to celebrate the 15th 
anniversary of Plan Colombia, which was signed in 2000 between 
then-presidents Bill Clinton and Andrés Pastrana. What was presented as 
aid to combat drugs was in fact a thinly-disguised counterinsurgency 
plan that provided billions of dollars in mainly police and military 
assistance the Colombian state used to wage an all-out dirty war on its 
own people in the name of a "war on drugs."

The two leaders are calling the new plan -- which again is focused on 
"strengthening security and combatting drugs" and that will be financed 
to the tune of $450 million over the next 10 years -- "Paz Colombia" 
(Peace Colombia).

Obama heralded the new Plan Colombia as a "tribute" to Colombian people 
and the challenges they have overcome. "We all know it is easier to 
start wars than end them," Obama said, as if to say that Colombia's 
reward for establishing peace is new militarized aid. This would be 
laughable if it was not so criminal coming from the country which has 
financed and worked hand in glove with the Colombian military and its 
closely-linked paramilitary death squads, committing mass murders and 
brutally violating the human rights of Colombian peasants and 
progressive forces.

For its part, Canada announced following a meeting of the foreign 
ministers for Canada, the United States and Mexico on January 29 that 
one of the countries' priorities would be working together to "promote 
the peace process" in Colombia. Allying itself with the U.S. agenda, 
Canada will be involving itself in what looks like an attempt to 
reignite the conflict in Colombia at a time when demilitarization is on 
the agenda of the peace talks.

Canadians have never accepted the U.S. war on drugs. They will 
rightfully conclude that the Trudeau government has not abandoned its 
predecessors' desire to fuel conflict and war rather than contribute to 
the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Canadians must hold the government 
to account for the crimes and violations of human rights that such a 
program is sure to give rise to.


    Plan Colombia: 15 Years of National Tragedy

While the U.S. and Colombian governments present the 15th anniversary of 
Plan Colombia as an occasion for celebration, Pastor Alape, speaking on 
behalf of the FARC Secretariat, gave a solemn assessment of the damage 
it has caused to the broad masses of the Colombian people.

Plan Colombia represents "15 years of national tragedy, during which the 
number of victims of the armed conflict increased, displacements 
increased up to seven million people, as did the number of disappeared 
people and falsely persecuted. The results are sad and painful," Alape said.

Alape explained that Plan Colombia has a public face that hides a covert 
component. Its public face is the "war on drugs," which scholars and 
analysts all over the world confirm has failed, he noted. During the 
plan, cultivation of crops deemed illicit has only increased, while the 
aerial delivery of herbicides has affected peasants' health, crops and 
the environment. Coca has a variety of uses, including nutrition, 
medicine and cosmetics.

The covert component -- the true essence of Plan Colombia -- is to 
annihilate the insurgency. This objective was not achieved either, but 
instead exacerbated the conflict in Colombia through the persecution and 
killings of innocents and non-combatants, as well as state repression 
and state terrorism.

This succinct condemnation of Plan Colombia is corroborated by activists 
in Colombia's social movements and others.

"What we see is that drug trafficking was strengthened and there was a 
lot of repression, a lot of contamination of the environment, and the 
level of violation of human rights of Colombians increased," Nidia 
Quintero, General-Secretary of the campesino rights group Fensuagro, 
told TeleSUR.


    Women a Particular Target of Plan Colombia

Women were amongst those who have suffered the most under Plan Colombia 
and the insecurity and impunity it created in Colombian society. A joint 
survey by women's rights organizations, published in 2011, presents 
harrowing figures:

- six women were raped every hour in Colombia during the first nine 
years of Plan Colombia;
- some 489,678 women were victims of some type of sexual violence; and
- 7,752 were forced into prostitution between 2000-2009.

This violence against women is far from coincidental; it is but part of 
a direct military strategy. Human rights lawyer Milena Montoya, 
secretary of the executive board for the human rights group Lazos de 
Dignidad (Ties of Unity), told TeleSUR, "Raping a woman is a spoil of 
war. To violate a woman creates terror in other women. So, this has been 
one of those practices that military groups, the Colombian army as well 
as the U.S. army, have implemented in order to keep the population 
submissive and living in terror."

Montoya pointed out that forced prostitution also tended to increase 
around U.S. military bases. These bases were generally established 
around poorer rural communities where there are very few job 
opportunities for women and youth, she said.

A report commissioned by the Colombian government and the FARC informs 
that U.S. soldiers and military contractors sexually abused at least 54 
Colombian girls between 2003-2007. These crimes "occurred with absolute 
impunity because of the bilateral agreements and the diplomatic immunity 
of United States officials," said Renan Vega of the Pedagogic University 
in Bogota, who co-authored the report.

Many women were also made the sole breadwinners for their families due 
to the mass killing of men in many communities, a situation worsened by 
the destruction of the coca crops.

Reparations for all these crimes and hardships is on the agenda of the 
peace talks in Havana, but the new Plan Colombia indicates that the U.S. 
imperialists and Colombian elite seek to deny the people the 
long-overdue justice they deserve.

(With files from FARC, TeleSUR)

-- 
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