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<div class="entry-date">January 29, 2014<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/29/the-u-s-assassination-program-in-colombia/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/29/the-u-s-assassination-program-in-colombia/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><big><b>Why Are We Only Learning of This
Now?</b></big></div>
<h1 class="article-title">The U.S. Assassination Program in Colombia</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by DANIEL KOVALIK</div>
<div class="main-text">
<p>On December 21, 2013, <i>The Washington Post</i> published a story
entitled, “Covert action Colombia,” about the intimate and critical
role of the CIA and the NSA in helping to assassinate “at least two
dozen” leaders of the Colombian FARC guerillas from “the early 2000s”
to and through the present time. The author of the story, Dana
Priest, claims that the story is based on “interviews with more than 30
former and current U.S. and Colombian officials.”</p>
<p>While <i>The Washington Post</i> story reads like an advertisement
for the CIA and NSA, there are some truths buried in the piece which
are worthy of consideration. The most illuminating statement is that
while the CIA and NSA, allegedly in the interest of fighting drug
trafficking and terrorism, have assisted the Colombian government in
hunting down and murdering Marxist FARC guerillas with U.S.-made smart
bombs, “<i>for the most part, they left the violent paramilitary groups
alone</i>.”</p>
<p>This is an important point, for as the piece itself acknowledges,
the paramilitaries are indeed “violent,” and, with the help of the
U.S.-backed Colombian military, have been engaged in a decades-long
campaign of terror against the civilian population. And
consequently, the U.S. officially designated the predecessor of the
current paramilitaries – that is, the AUC — as a terrorist
organization. Meanwhile, it is well-accepted that both the Colombian
paramilitaries and their military allies are major drug traffickers in
their own right.</p>
<p>In short, the U.S. is aligning with known terrorists and drug
dealers in Colombia in the name of fighting terrorism and drugs.
While this may seem preposterous, there is indeed a logic to it.</p>
<p>First of all, the U.S. is all for terrorism in Colombia. Indeed,
paramilitary terror in Colombia, and in Latin America in general, is
the brain child of the U.S. and a part and parcel of the “National
Security” doctrine initiated by President Kennedy in 1962. As Noam
Chomsky has explained on numerous occasions, this doctrine, and the
death squads that went with it, was initiated in response to both the
Cuban Revolution of 1959 as well as the doctrine of Liberation Theology
and its “preferential treatment for the poor” which arose in response
to Vatican II. [1]</p>
<p>The result of the implementation of the “National Security” doctrine
was massive repression of popular, democratic forces, and the murder,
disappearance, imprisonment and torture of those struggling for social
justice, such as trade unionists, peasant organizers and priests
advocating for the poor. As to the latter group, at least 80 Catholic
priests have been murdered in Colombia since 1984.</p>
<p>As Chomsky again notes, “[i]t is not seriously in question, as John
Coatsworth writes in the recently published Cambridge University <i>History
of the Cold War</i>, that from 1960 to ‘the Soviet collapse in 1990,
the numbers of political prisoners, torture victims, and executions of
nonviolent political dissenters in Latin America vastly exceeded those
in the Soviet Union and its East European satellites.’ Among the
executed were many religious martyrs, and there were mass slaughters as
well, consistently supported or initiated by Washington.”</p>
<p>Thus, there is a seamlessness to the decades-long policy of the U.S.
in siding with right-wing death squads which inflict terror against the
Colombian population – terror which includes the mass displacement of
millions of peasants, with Colombia now having the largest internally
displaced population in the world at over 5 million; forced
disappearances, with Colombia now far exceeding the former Latin
American leader, Argentina under the military junta, with over 50,000
disappeared persons; and the “false positive” scandal in which over
3,000 innocent young men were lured to their deaths by the Colombian
military which killed them and then falsely passed them off as
guerillas in order to justify continued backing by the United States.</p>
<p>Similarly, the U.S. is not against drug trafficking per se, but
rather, is only concerned with making sure that its friends – both
military and corporate — benefit from the trade. First of all, as
noted above, it is well-established that the U.S.-backed Colombian
military and its paramilitary allies are some of the chief drug
traffickers in Colombia. And again, the U.S. has left their
trafficking alone because it is content for these forces to profit from
the trade.</p>
<p>As <i>The Guardian</i> recently explained, the entire Western
banking system is propped up by billions of dollars of Colombian drug
monies. [1] Therefore, it is not in the U.S. interests to too
effectively combat drugs. And, sure enough, it has utterly failed to
do so despite the over $9 billion it has spent on the ostensible “war
on drugs” in Colombia and the greater Andean region. Rather, in what
is well-known as the “balloon effect,” all that the U.S. has managed to
do is force the drug trade out of parts of Colombia and south to places
like Peru, and north to Mexico where over 60,000 innocents have now
been killed in the ostensible “war on drugs.”</p>
<p>Of course, <i>The Washington Post</i> story on the CIA/NSA program
to assassinate FARC leaders, and its accompanying charts which purport
to show a decrease in overall drug trafficking, at least from Colombia,
fails to point any of this out. As noted above, <i>The Washington
Post</i> story reads like an advertisement for the CIA and NSA and
their secret “black ops” programs which are funded by Congress, but
which the U.S. public knows little to nothing about. And, the U.S.
government would largely like to keep it that way. In this case, I
suspect that the CIA and NSA cooperated with <i>The Washington Post</i>
story in order to justify future “black ops” funding as well as to
impact the ongoing peace talks which are now taking place in Havana,
Cuba between the Colombian government and the FARC.</p>
<p>On this latter issue, it is my belief that at least sectors of the
U.S. government want to scuttle the ongoing peace talks between the
Colombian government and the FARC – as the U.S. has done so often
before. [3] In this case, <i>The Washington Post</i> story seems
designed to bolster the sectors in Colombia that already oppose the
peace process – namely, former President Alvaro Uribe, his political
allies and the right-wing paramilitaries which the U.S. has
intentionally left alone – by painting the false impression that the
civil war in Colombia is militarily winnable.</p>
<p>As we enter the 50<sup>th</sup> year of the conflict, it is now
evident to any rational person that this not a winnable war for either
side, and that a negotiated settlement is the only hope for peace in
Colombia and for the civilians caught in the middle of the war. It is
critical that those in the U.S. interested in peace join at this
pivotal moment with those brave souls in Colombia who are risking their
very lives – indeed, 29 members of the pro-peace Marcha Patriotica have
been murdered in the past year and a half — to promote a political
solution to the half century old conflict in that country. [4]</p>
<p><em><b>Daniel Kovalik</b> teaches International Human Rights at the
University of Pittsburgh School of Law.</em></p>
<p><em>Notes. </em></p>
<p>[1] See, <a
href="https://www.bostonreview.net/noam-chomsky-responsibility-of-intellectuals-redux"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.bostonreview.net']);">https://www.bostonreview.net/noam-chomsky-responsibility-of-intellectuals-redux</a></p>
<p>[2] See, <a
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/02/western-banks-colombian-cocaine-trade"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.theguardian.com']);">http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/02/western-banks-colombian-cocaine-trade</a></p>
<p>[3] See, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"> <a
href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-why-colombia-produces-less-cocaine"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.economist.com']);">http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-why-colombia-produces-less-cocaine</a></span>,</p>
<p>[4]<b> </b>See,<b> </b><i>Killing Peace: Colombia’s Conflict and
the Failure of U.S. Intervention</i> (2002), by Garry Leech.</p>
<p>[5] To hear some of the brave Colombian voices of peace and their
suggestions for how the U.S. can constructively support the peace
process, go to <a
href="http://www.wola.org/video/livestream_perspectives_on_colombia_s_peace_process_and_opportunities_for_us_engagement"
onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','http://www.wola.org']);">http://www.wola.org/video/livestream_perspectives_on_colombia_s_peace_process_and_opportunities_for_us_engagement</a>
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