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Colombia–United States relations

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United States of America-Colombia relations have evolved from mutual cordiality during most of the 19th and early 20th centuries to a recent partnership that links the governments of both nations around several key issues, including fighting communism, the War on Drugs, and especially since 9/11, the threat of terrorism. During the last fifty years, different American governments and their representatives have become involved in Colombian affairs through the implementation of policies concerned with the above issues. Some critics of current US policies in Colombia, such as Law Professor John Barry, consider that US influences have catalyzed internal conflicts and substantially expanded the scope and nature of human rights abuses in Colombia. [1] Supporters, such as Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman, consider that the U.S. has promoted respect for human rights and the rule of law in Colombia, in addition to the fight against drugs and terrorism. [1]

Historical overview

19th century

Both countries have maintained mutual diplomatic relationships since the early 19th Century. In 1846 the US Polk administration signed a treaty with Colombia, which owned Panama at the time. A railway across the ithmus was opened in 1855. [2] Under the treaty U.S. troops landed in Panama six times in the nineteenth century to crush rebellions, ensuring that the railway wasn't hindered. [3]

Early 20th century

Further information: [[:History of the Panama Canal, Santa Marta Massacre]]

In 1903 the US and Colombia negotiated a new treaty. The representative of the company which owned the railway publicly predicted and threatened that Panama would secede if the Colombian Senate rejected the treaty. [4] In 1903, despite US threats, the Colombian senate refused to ratify the Hay-Herran Treaty. [5] The United States encouraged an uprising of historically rebellious Panamanians and then used US warships to impede any interference from Colombia. [6] The new Panamanian government then negotiated a treaty favorable to the US for the Panama Canal. [7]

In 1928, US business interests were again threatened in Colombia. The workers of the US corporation United Fruit banana plantations in Colombia went on strike in December 1928. The workers demanded "written contracts, eight-hour days, six-day weeks and the elimination of food coupons". [8]

An army regiment from Bogotá was brought in by United Fruit to crush the strike. The Colombia soldiers erected their machine guns on the roofs of the buildings at the corners of the main square, closed off the access streets [9] and after a five minute warning, they ordered "Fuego!", [10] "opening fire into a dense crowd of plantation workers and their wives and children who had gathered, after Sunday Mass, [11] to wait for an anticipated address of the governor of the region. [12] Between forty-seven to 2,000 workers were killed. [13]

A populist Colombian Congressman, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, became a national hero to the poor for visiting the site of the United Fruit massacre the same week, then returning to Bogotá and arguing passionatly in Congress for the workers, arguing that the army acted not to protect Colombian but US interests. [14]

Mid-20th century

Further information: [[:La Violencia, Alliance for Progress, William P. Yarborough]]

In 1948, Gaitán, as a presidential candidate, was assassinated in Bogotá. [15] Gaitin's assassination began La Violencia, a second Colombian civil war which lasted until the mid-fities and killed an estimated 200,000 Colombians. [16] To escape the violence, peasants fled to the countryside and formed peasant enclaves for self-protection. [17] The Colombia government saw these enclaves as "independent republics" and as a threat to their own power. In addition, the American government saw these peasant enclaves as potential threats to US business interests in Colombia. In May 1964, as part of Kennedy's Alliance for Progress, a CIA backed program was initiated, called Plan LAZO. US trained Colombian military troops invaded these largest peasant enclaves, using bomber aircraft with Napalm, in an attempt to destroy this threat. Many of the peasants escaped, and two years later part of this group formed the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The FARC is today the oldest and largest revolutionary guerilla movement in the Western Hempishpere, the longest running guerilla movement in Latin American history. [18] The FARC is also the largest threat to the Colombia government [19] and American multinationals [20] today. Critics consider that the US government has focused on the destruction of the FARC and other left-wing gurrilla movements, ignoring and even supporting other violent and destablizing elements in Colombian society.

As La Violencia was ending a "US Special Survey Team" composed of worldwide counterinsurgency experts arrived in October 1959 to investigate Colombia's internal security. Among other policy recommendations the US team advised that "in order to shield the interests of both Colombian and US authorities against 'interventionist' charges any special aid given for internal security was to be sterile and covert in nature." [21] This recommendation is a form of plausible denial, which is common in secret US government documents which are later declassified. [22] Plausible deniability is the term given to the creation of loose and informal chains of command in government, which allow controversial instructions given by high-ranking officials to be denied if they become public. As this paper will show, by utilizing paramilaries, the United States and Colombia are practicing another form of plausible denial.

In February 1962, three years after the 1959 "US Special Survey Team", a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia for a second survey. [23] In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yarborough encouraged a stay-behind irregular force and its immediate deployment to eliminate communists representing a future threat:

"A concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed later. This should be done with a view toward development of a civil and military structure for exploitation in the event the Colombian internal security system deteriorates further. This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents. It should be backed by the United States." [24]

Interrogation procedures and techniques, including regular questioning of rural villagers "who are believed to be knowledgeable of guerrilla activities" were advised. "Exhaustive interrogation of the bandits, to include sodium pentathol and polygraph, should be used to elicit every shred of information. Both the Army and the Police need trained interrogators." [25] Pentathol, or truth serum, was originally used by doctors for relaxation, but in the 1970s it was reported used by some Latin American militaries to induce "paralysis, agony, and terror." [26] The use of truth serum would later be encouraged in SOA manuals. [27]

"In general, the Yarborough team recommended that the US provide guidance and assistance in all aspects of counter-insurgency...Civilian and military personnel, clandestinely selected and trained in resistance operations, would be required in order to develop an underground civil and military structure. This organization was to undertake 'clandestine execution of plans developed by the United States Government toward defined objectives in the political, economic, and military fields'...it would…undertake...'paramilitary, sabotage, and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents'." [28]

Ultimately Yarborough's recommendations formed the core of the US reorganization of the Colombian military troops. [29] This new counter-insurgency policy debuted with Plan LAZO in 1964. [30] Following Yarborough's recommendations, the Colombian military selected and trained civilians to work alongside the military in its Counter-insurgency campaign and paramilitary "civil defense" groups which worked alongside the military. [31] The United States supplied and trained civilian intelligence networks which were closely linked to the military, the system was established to gather "intelligence and providing early warning against bandit or guerrilla attacks". [32] In 1965 Colombian President Guillermo Leon Valencia Munoz issued Decree 3398. [33] Because of the decree, eleven separate civilian intelligence networks had been established with agricultural co-operatives. [34] In 1968, Decree 3398 became Colombia law with the enactment of Law 48 of 1968. This law allowed for the creation of "civil patrols" (paramilitaries) "which received weapons restricted for the exclusive use of the armed forces from the Ministry of Defense." [35]

With Plan LAZO paramilitaries who would be responsible for the overwhelming majority of Colombia human right violations twenty years later were born, although it was not until the early part of the 1980s that the Colombian state began to heavily rely on counter intelligent warfare recommended by Yarborough in 1962. [36]

And what are some of the indications that someone is a "communist"? The 1970 US army manual entitled Stability Operations was translated into Spanish and used to train thousands of Latin American military officers in counter intelligence. [37] "The manual extends its definition of subversion beyond armed insurgents and explicitly links civil society organizations to the problem of insurgency." [38] Targets for Counter intelligence operations include, "ordinary citizens who are typical members of organizations or associations which play an important role in the local society." [39] The manual explains that insurgents usually work with union leaders and union members, and those organizations which demand "immediate social, political or economic reform may be an indication that the insurgents have gained a significant degree of control." [40] The manual explains that the indicators of communist/insurgent infiltration include:

Refusal of peasants to pay rent, taxes, or loan payments. Increase in the number of entertainers with a political message. Discrediting the judicial system and police organizations. Characterization of the armed forces as the enemy of the people. Appearance of questionable doctrine in the educational system. Appearance of many new members in established organizations like labor organizations. Increased unrest among laborers. Increased student activity against the government and its police, or against minority groups, foreigners and the like. An increased number of articles or advertisements in newspapers criticizing the government. Strikes or work stoppages called to protest government actions. Increase of petitions demanding government redress of grievances. Proliferation of slogans pinpointing specific grievances. Initiation of letter-writing campaigns to newspapers and government officials deploring undesirable conditions and blaming individuals in power. [41]

Late 20th century

Drug trade

Further information: [[:Plan Colombia, Leahy Law]]

The State Department focuses on guerrillas, but the most wanted drugs trafficker on the web site of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was, up until his 2004 disappearance, [42] Carlos Castaño Gil, the founder of the AUC. [43] In 2000 former AUC leader Carlos Castaño Gil was asked on national televion how he bankrolled the AUC and he said "drug trafficing and drug traffickers probably finance 70%. The rest come largely from extortion." [44]

The RAND Corporation is "one of the most important architects in the construction of American foreign policy for over half a century". [45] RAND officially is a private organization, but it has an incredibly long and close relationship with the U.S. government. [46] In 1986, the US Defense Department funded a two year study by RAND which found that the use of the armed forces to interdict drugs coming into the United States would have minimal or no effect on cocaine traffic and might, in fact, raise the profits of cocaine cartels and manufacturers. The 175-page study, "Sealing the Borders: The Effects of Increased Military Participation in Drug Interdiction," was prepared by seven researchers, mathematicians and economists at the National Defense Research Institute, a branch of the RAND and was released in 1988. The study noted that seven prior studies in the past nine years, including one by the Center for Naval Research and the Office of Technology Assessment, had came to similar conclusions. Interdiction efforts, using current armed forces resources, would have almost no effect on cocaine importation into the United States, the report concluded. [47]

During the early to mid-1990s, the Clinton administration ordered and funded a major cocaine policy study again by RAND. The Rand Drug Policy Research Center study concluded that $ 3 billion should be switched from federal and local law enforcement to treatment. The report said that treatment is the cheapest way to cut drug use, stating that drug treatment is twenty three more times effective than the supply-side "war on drugs". [48] This was completely contradictory to what Clinton's predesessor, George Bush Sr. had said, "The logic is simple. The cheapest way to eradicate narcotics is to destroy them at their source....We need to wipe out crops wherever they are grown and take out labs wherever they exist." [49] Despite asking for the study, President Clinton's drug czar's office "balked" at slashing law enforcement spending. [50]

In a 1992 Central Intelligence Agency report, the agencies states that "we do not believe that the drug industry [in Colombia] would be substantially disrupted in the short term by attacks against guerillas. Indeed, many traffickers would probably welcome, and even assist, increased operations against insurgents. [51] In 1994, the DEA came to similar determinations, developing three major conclusions. First, any connections between drug trafficking organizations and Colombian insurgents are merely "ad hoc 'alliances of convinence'". [52] Second, rebuting Colombian military forces which claim that the FARC are involved in independent coca cultivation and laboratory operations, the report states that "the independent involvement of insurgents in Colombia's domesitc drug productions, transportation, and distribution is limited…there is no evidence that the national leadership of either the FARC or the ELN has directed, as a matter of policy, that their respective organizations directly engage in independent illicit drug production, transportation, or distribution. [53] Third, and most important, the report determines that the DEA "has no evidence that the FARC or ELN have been involved in the transportation, distribution, or marketing of illegal drugs in the United States. Furthermore it is doubtful that either insurgent group could develop the international transportation and logistics infrastructure necessary to establish independent drug distribution in the United States or Europe…[54] DEA believes that the insurgents never will be major players in Colombia's drug trade." [55] Thus there is a major discrepancy between the public justifications for the funding of the Colombian military and the view's of the USA's own intelligence community about who the actual drug traffickers are. [56]

Why did America ignore these studies when America's stated public policy for being in Colombia is the "War on drugs"? Mainstream foreign policy offers no answers. Only the revistionist continuity theory, by Stokes, offers a plausible explanation: that the War on drugs is a pre-text and this war, just as the Cold War that preceded it and the War on Terror that followed it, was principally about Northern Hemisphere competition to control and exploit Southern Hemisphere natural resources, in other words, "the maintenance of a world capitalist order conductive to US economic interests." Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this competition for third world resources continues, thus there is "continuity" in US foreign policy. [57]

Military aid

Counterterrorism

Even before September 11, 2001, the official US justification for its involvement in Colombia was changing from the War on Drugs to a War on Terror.

In 1999, the US State Department began sharing real-time intelligence about the guerrillas with the Colombian military. Officials told the Washington Post that they feared "Colombia is losing its war against Marxist-led insurgents." [58]

In May 2001, the Bush administration introduced the Andean Regional Initiative (ARI), which broadened U.S. intervention throughout the entire region, directing another $800 million to the project over Plan Colombia. [59] The ARI supplies military support and economic assistance and to seven Andean countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. [60] The prediction of Brazil president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva appears to be being fulfilled: "The intensification of Plan Colombia is extremely dangerous. It could produce a Vietnam-isation of the region, that is to say, an extension of the conflict to neighbouring countries, especially Brazil." [61]

After heavy lobbying from US oil companies, Amnesty International explains the results:

In July 2002, the US Congress passed an emergency supplemental spending bill that lifted a previous provision limiting US assistance to counter-narcotics efforts. Under the new rules, US security assistance can be used against "organizations designated as terrorist organizations..." The new US strategy makes US assistance to Colombia available for counter-insurgency activities for the first time, including direct action against armed groups. The US is now providing military aid for direct use in counter-insurgency operations specifically to protect US operated oil installations, such as Caño Limón. [62]

In this spending bill included these budget appropriations included Congress' approval of a provision coined as 'expanded authorities,' whereby U.S. supplied training and equipment could be used not only in counter-drug efforts, but in counter-terrorism efforts as well. [63]

After September 11, 2001, the US government officials began to immediately link the FARC to terrorists and Osama Bin Ladin. [64] Senator John McCain stated that the United States now "abandons any fictional distinctions between counter-narcotic and counter-insurgency operations" [65] "Thus in the aftermath of September 11th the US has dropped the pretence that its military assistance has been driven solely by counter-narcotics concerns and has now started to overtly couch its funding in terms of a strategy of counter-terrorism targeted at the FARC, who are now being linked to international terrorism as well as drug trafficking." [66]

With the inconvenient "fictional distinction" of the war on drugs gone, "in a significant shift in American policy" in November 2002 the US began sending advisors to Colombia under a $94 million counterinsurgency program to protect five hundred miles Colombian pipeline. [67]

Human rights

School of the Americas
Main article: Torture manuals
Main article: SOA

The SOA is a US training center for Latin American military officers, that since its establishment in Panama in 1946, has trained 82,767 [68] Latin American officers in counter-insurgency doctrine and combat skills. [69] Colombia was one of the first countries to send military officers to the SOA. [70] Disturbingly, more Colombian SOA graduates have been implicated in human rights violations than SOA graduates from any other Latin American country. [71] In 1996, after years of denials [72] the US Pentagon declassified translated excerpts from seven training manuals. [73] These manuals were prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses at the U.S. Army School of the Americas and were also distributed by Special Forces Mobile Training teams to military personnel and intelligence schools in Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Peru. [74] The manuals taught counterintelligence agents to use "fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false imprisonment, executions and the use of truth serum" [75] The manual entitled "Handling of Sources" teaches, "The CI [76] agent could cause the arrest of the employees [77] parents, imprison the employee or give him a beating" to coerce cooperation.

Based on the history of the SOA, it is not surprising that in a 1981 study, the leading United States authority on human rights in Latin America, Lars Schoultz, discovered that US aid "has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American governments which torture their citizens...to the hemisphere's relatively egregious violators of fundamental human rights." [78] Also in 1998, Latin American professor Martha Huggins found "that the more foreign police aid given (by the United States), the more brutal and less democratic the police institutions and their governments become." [79]

Paramilitaries
Main article: Paramilitaries

"'Paramilitaries' is a term used to describe various types of illegal rightwing armed groups which work alongside the armed forces." [80] Today, the paramilitaries are responsible for three quarters of all Colombian political killings, [81] 52% of the massacres (guerrillas are responsible for 20%), [82] and 49% of the refugee displacements (guerrillas are responsible for 29%). [83] "Over the past 10 years, the paramilitaries [which the Colombian military] works with have killed some 15,000 trades unionists, peasant and indigenous leaders, human rights workers, land reform activists, leftwing politicians and their sympathizers." [84] To fully understand the present day human rights catastrophe in Colombia, it is important to analyze America's central historic role in creating the paramilitaries.

In 1990, the US created a fourteen member team whose members included representatives of the CIA, the U.S. Southern Command, U.S. Embassy's Military Group, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (produces intelligence for the United States Department of Defense) [85] in order to give advice on the reshaping of several of the Colombian military's local intelligence networks. The official reason for this restructuring was to aid the Colombian military in their counter-narcotics efforts. [86]

Col. James S. Roach, Jr., who was the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) country liaison and U.S. Military Attache in Bogotá during the meetings told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that: "The intent [of the meeting] was not to be associated with paramilitaries. But we knew from Colombian news reports and [even] from Colombian military reports that they were still working with paramilitaries." [87]

The result of these meetings was Order 200-05/91, which was issued by the Colombian Defense Ministry in May 1991. [88] HRW obtained a copy of the Colombian Armed Forces Directive No. 200-05/91. [89] The report has little to do with illegal narcotics, in fact the entire 16 pages has no mention of narcotics. [90] Instead the Colombian armed forces, "based on the recommendations made by a commission of advisors from the U.S. Armed Forces," presented the US plan to better combat "escalating terrorism by armed subversion." [91]

The Colombian defense minister acknowledged to HRW that the document was authentic. HRW states that: "Order 200-05/91 laid the groundwork for continuing an illegal, covert partnership between the military and paramilitaries and demonstrates that this partnership was promoted by the military high command in violation of [Colombian] Decree 1194, [92] which prohibits such contact. Although the term "paramilitaries" is not used in the order, the document lays out a system similar to the one present under the name of MAS and its military patrons in the Middle Magdalena. " [93] HRW argued that this situation allowed the Colombian government and military to plausibly deny links or responsibility for paramilitary human rights abuses. [94] Further, far from diminishing violence in Colombia, the military intelligence networks created by the U.S. reorganization appeared to have dramatically increased violence. [95]

Studies carried out by both the United Nations and Human Rights Watch argue that paramilitaries maintain close ties to the Colombian military . [96]

HRW explained that the existing partnership between paramilitaries and the Colombian military was "a sophisticated mechanism, in part supported by years of advice, training, weaponry, and official silence by the United States, that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it." [97]

The UN states that “The security forces also failed to take action, and this undoubtedly enabled the paramilitary groups to achieve their exterminating objectives.” [98] This evaluation was also confirmed by the US Department of State in its annual report which states:

Government forces continued to commit numerous, serious abuses, including extrajudicial killings, at a level that was roughly similar to that of 1998. Despite some prosecutions and convictions, the authorities rarely brought officers of the security forces and the police charged with human rights offenses to justice, and impunity remains a problem. At times the security forces collaborated with paramilitary groups that committed abuses; in some instances, individual members of the security forces actively collaborated with members of paramilitary groups by passing them through roadblocks, sharing intelligence, and providing them with ammunition. Paramilitary forces find a ready support base within the military and police, as well as local civilian elites in many areas. [99]

Amnesty International (AI) reported that the war on drugs is “a myth” stating that Colombian security forces worked closely with paramilitaries, landlords and narco-traffickers to target political opposition, community leaders, human rights and health workers, union activists, students, but principally peasants. Amnesty International reported that “almost every Colombian military unit that Amnesty implicated in murdering civilians two years ago was doing so with U.S.-supplied weapons”. [100]

The paramilitaries use many of the same tactics as the School of the Americas training manuals teach, targeting union leaders, members of the civil society and human rights workers. [101] On September 28, 2000 the AUC, Colombia's largest paramilitary group, issued a press release stating, "The AUC identifies the human rights workers and especially members of Credhos as guerrilla sympathizers, and for this reason from this moment forward we consider them military targets of our organization." [102]

SICOFAA

Colombia is an active member of SICOFAA.

Notes

  1. ^ "Marc Grossman Subsecretario de Estado para Asuntos Políticos Universidad de Georgetown Conferencia Uniendo esfuerzos por Colombia" (HTML). US Embassy of Colombia. September 2, 2002. Retrieved March 27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: year (link) Template:Es icon (English version available)
  1. ^ Grace Livingstone, Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War 7 (Rutgers Univ. Press 2004).;
    Justin Podur, The other kind of violence, Z-net, Mar. 02, 2003, available at http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=3166. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
  2. ^ Camilo A. Azcarate, Psychosocial Dynamics of the Armed Conflict in Colombia, Online Journal of Peace and Conflict Resolution, available at http://www.trinstitute.org/ojpcr/2_1columbia.htm. (last modified Mar. 1999). [hereinafter Dynamics]
  3. ^ Robin Kirk, More Terrible than Death: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War 6 (Colombia Public Affairs 2003).
  4. ^ Doug Stokes, America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia (Zed Books 2005). p. 68.
  5. ^ John Barry, From Drug War to Dirty War: Plan Colombia and the U.S. Role in Human Rights Violations in Colombia, 12 Transnat'l L. & Contemp. Probs. 161, 164 (Spring, 2002). [Hereinafter Dirty War]
  6. ^ Doug Stokes, Why the End of the Cold War Doesn't Matter: the US War of Terror in Colombia, Bristol Univ. Politics Dept., available at http://www.aqnt98.dsl.pipex.com/choms.htm. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
  7. ^ Doug Stokes, America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia 13 (Zed Books 2005).
  8. ^ 2001 Report on Foreign Terrorist Organizations, US Dept. of State, Wash. DC, 2001, available at http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/rpt/fto/2001/5258.htm. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
  9. ^ George Kennan, Review of Current Trends, U.S. Foreign Policy, PPS/23, Top Secret, Included in the U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the US, 1948, 1, part 2 524-525 (Wash. DC Gov. Printing Office 1976).
  10. ^ James R. Zink, Race and Foreign Policy in Refugee Law: A Historical Perspective of the Haitian Refugee Crises, 48 DePaul L. Rev. 559, 560 (Winter, 1998).
  11. ^ John Major, Prize Possession: The United States and the Panama Canal 1903-1979 15 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1993). [Hereinafter Prize]
  12. ^ Robert A. Friedlander, A Reassessment of Roosevelt's Role in the Panamanian Revolution of 1903, W. Pol. Q., Jun. 1961, at 538-39.
  13. ^ Prize, ibid. p. 31.
  14. ^ Prize, ibid. p. 31.
  15. ^ Prize, ibid. p. 41.
  16. ^ Prize, ibid. p. 41-44.
  17. ^ The United Fruit Historical Society, Archive.org available at http://web.archive.org/web/20050307140322/http://www.unitedfruit.org/chronology.html. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
  18. ^ Ana Carrigan, The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy 16 (1993 Four Walls Eight Windows). [Hereinafter Palace]
  19. ^ Eduardo Posada-Carbo, Fiction as History: The bananeras and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Journal of Latin American Studies, May 1998, at 397. [Hereinafter Bananeras]
  20. ^ Palace, supra note 37.
  21. ^ Marcelo Bucheli, Bananas and business: The United Fruit Company in Colombia, 1899-2000 133 (NYU Press 2005).
  22. ^ Bananeras, supra note 38 at 405.
    The number of dead at the massacre has always been hotly disputed. This is in part, because the soldiers allegedly dumped the bodies of the dead into the river and put the bodies on trains.
  23. ^ Id. at 406.
  24. ^ Grace Livingstone, Inside Colombia: Drugs, Democracy, and War 41-42 (Rutgers Univ. Press 2004). [Hereinafter Inside Colombia]
  25. ^ Id. at 68.
  26. ^ Stokes, ibid. p. 72.
  27. ^ Id. at 5.
  28. ^ General James T. Hill, Fiscal 2005 Budget: Defense Programs, Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony, Apr. 1, 2004 at 3.
  29. ^ Juan Forero, New Role for U.S. in Colombia: Protecting a Vital Oil Pipeline, New York Times, Oct. 4, 2002, at A1.
  30. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 155.
  31. ^ Lesley Gill, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas 6 (Duke Univ. Press 2004). [Hereinafter SOA]
  32. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 155.
  33. ^ Id. at 169.
  34. ^ Unmatched Power, Unmet Principles: The Human Rights Dimensions of US Training of Foreign Military and Police Forces, 2002 Report of Amnesty International USA 45 (Mar. 2002), available at http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/msp.pdf; Bill Quigley, The Case for Closing the School of the Americas, 20 BYU J. Pub. L. 1, 4 (2005); Arthur Jones, Pentagon admits use of torture manuals: training books used for Latin Americans at Ft. Benning school, National Catholic Reporter, Oct 4, 1996 at 1.
  35. ^ Dana Priest, U.S. Instructed Latins On Executions, Torture; Manuals Used 1982-91, Pentagon Reveals, The Wash. Post, September 21, 1996, at A01. [Hereinafter Torture]
    The entire manuals were declassified in 2004 and can be now found at Prisoner Abuse: Patterns from the Past, The National Security Archive, available at http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/index.htm. (last modified Mar. 2004).
  36. ^ SOA, supra note 50 at 49.
  37. ^ Torture, supra note 54 at A01.
  38. ^ Lars Schoultz, U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights Violations in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis of Foreign Aid Distributions, Comp. Pol. 13, n. 2, January 1981.
  39. ^ Martha Knisely Huggins, Political Policing: The United States and Latin America 6 (Duke Univ. Press 1998).
  40. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 194.
  41. ^ Id. at 6; Colombian Drug War, Talk of the Nation, available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1079924. (last modified Mar. 25, 2000).
    When attempting to get support for Plan Colombia, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey's claimed on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" that the guerrillas, not the paramilitaries, were responsible for the majority of the Colombian human rights abuses.
  42. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 11.
  43. ^ Id. at 29.
  44. ^ George Monbiot, To crush the poor First it was Reds, then drugs, then terror. So who have the US really been fighting in Colombia?, The Guardian, Feb. 4, 2003, available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/colombia/story/0,11502,888496,00.html. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
  45. ^ Dennis M. Rempe, Guerrillas, Bandits, and Independent Republics: US Counter-insurgency Efforts in Colombia 1959-1965, Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 6, No. 3, Winter 1995 at 304-327, available at http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/colombia/smallwars.htm. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006). [Hereinafter Bandits]
  46. ^ Examples include:
    1) The training files of the CIA's covert "Operation PBSUCCESS," for the 1954 coup in Guatemala. "Among the documents found in the training files of Operation PBSUCCESS and declassified by the Agency is a CIA document entitled "A Study of Assassination." A how-to guide book in the art of political killing, the 19-page manual offers detailed descriptions of the procedures, instruments, and implementation of assassination." The manual states that to provide plausible denial, "no assassination instructions should ever be written or recorded."
    See Kate Doyle, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 4 CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents, National Security Archives, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
    2) CIA and White House documents on covert political intervention in the 1964 Chilean election. The CIA's Chief of Western Hemisphere Division, J.C. King, recommended that funds for the campaign "be provided in a fashion causing (Eduardo Frei Montalva president of Chile) to infer United States origin of funds and yet permitting plausible denial."
    Chile 1964: CIA Covert Support In Frei Election Detailed, The National Security Archives, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20040925/. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
    3) The 1974-1975 Senate Church Committee conducted an investigation of the intelligence agencies. In the course of the investigation, it was revealed that the CIA, going back to the Kennedy administration, had plotted the assassination of a number of foreign rulers, including Cuba's Fidel Castro. But the president himself, who clearly was in favor of such actions, was not to be directly involved, so that he could deny knowledge of it. This was given the term plausible denial, to quote the Church Committee: "Non-attribution to the United States for covert operations was the original and principal purpose of the so-called doctrine of "plausible denial." Evidence before the Committee clearly demonstrates that this concept, designed to protect the United States and its operatives from the consequences of disclosures, has been expanded to mask decisions of the president and his senior staff members."
    Quoting Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross Examining American Ideology 16 (Perennial 1991).
    See Church Committee Reports United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Senate, Nov. 20, 1975, II. Section B Covert Action as a Vehicle for Foreign Policy Implementation at 11.
  47. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 155.
  48. ^ Visit to Colombia, South America, by a Team from Special Warfare Center, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Headquarters, U.S. Army Special Warfare School, 26 Feb. 1962, Kennedy Library, Box 319, National Security Files, Special Group; Fort Bragg Team; Visit to Colombia; 3/62, "Secret Supplement, Colombian Survey Report."
  49. ^ Id.
  50. ^ M. McClintock, Instruments of Statecraft, US Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency & Counterterrorism, 1940-1990 223 (Pantheon Books 1992); Quoting, Report of Torture, Amnesty International (Duckworth 1975) at 55-58.
  51. ^ Torture, supra note 54 at A01.
  52. ^ Bandits, supra note 64.
  53. ^ Stokes, ibid. p. 71.
  54. ^ Id.
  55. ^ Id. at 72.
  56. ^ Bandits, supra note 64.
  57. ^ Third Report on the Human Rights Situation in Colombia, Inter-Am. C.H.R., OEA/ser. L./V./II.102, doc. 9 rev. 1, 11 (Feb. 26, 1999), available at http://www.asylumlaw.org/docs/colombia/oas99_colombia.pdf. [Hereinafter IACHR]
  58. ^ Bandits, supra note 64.
  59. ^ IACHR, supra note 76.
  60. ^ Stokes, ibid. p. 74.
  61. ^ Id. at 63.
  62. ^ Id. at 64.
  63. ^ Stability Operations—Intelligence, US Dept. of the Army, FM 30-21, 1970 at 43, 73-74, 77, 78, E1, E1-E7.
    An updated list with some of the same indicators listed verbatim, can be found on the, Insurgent Activity Indicators, US Marine Corps, available at http://www.tpub.com/content/USMC/mcwp211/css/mcwp211_333.htm. (last modified Jun. 5, 2001).
  64. ^ Id.
  65. ^ Id.
  66. ^ Defense Intelligence Agency, Wikipedia, available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Intelligence_Agency. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
  67. ^ Colombia's Killer Networks: the Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States, Human Rights Watch, available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killertoc.htm. (last modified Nov. 1996). [Hereinafter The "Killer Networks"].
  68. ^ Id.
  69. ^ Killer Networks, supra note 86 at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killer3.htm.
  70. ^ Killer Networks, supra note 86 at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killerapendixa.htm.
    This is the copy of the directive.
  71. ^ Id. at 84.
  72. ^ Id.
  73. ^ Killer Networks, supra note 86 at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killer2.htm.
    In Jun. 1994, Decree 1194, established criminal penalties for members of the armed forces and civilians who finance, organize, lead, promote, recruit, train, or belong to "the armed groups, misnamed paramilitary groups, that have been formed into death squads, bands of hired assassins, self-defense groups, or groups that carry out their own justice."
  74. ^ Killer Networks, supra note 86 at http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killergl.htm.
    "Muerte a Secuestradores, Death to Kidnappers. MAS was formed by drug traffickers in 1981. The name was also adopted by army-organized paramilitaries in the Middle Magdalena region, some of which later allied with drug traffickers. The name is now generic and is used throughout Colombia by paramilitary groups."
  75. ^ Id. at 86.
  76. ^ Id.
  77. ^ Title inspired by William Blum, Atomic Diplomacy: Needless Slaughter, Useful Terror, available at http://members.aol.com/bblum6/abomb.htm#end. (last visited Apr. 9, 2006).
  78. ^ Walter Lafeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America 5 (W. W. Norton & Company 1993).
  79. ^ The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links, Human Rights Watch, available at http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/colombia/. (last modified Feb. 2000).
  80. ^ Id. at 86.
  81. ^ UN report cited in Martin Hodgson, Bogotá's link to far-right militias, Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 26, 2000, at 4.
  82. ^ Annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, US Dept. of State, Wash. DC, available at http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1999_hrp_report/colombia.html. (last modified 1999).
  83. ^ Naom Chomsky, The Umbrella of US Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of US Policy 50 (Seven Stories Press 1999); Quoting Amnesty action: The Colombia Papers, Amnesty International, Winter 1997.
  84. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 19-20.
  85. ^ Colombia Human Rights Certification II, Wash. Office of Latin America, available at http://www.wola.org/Colombia/hr_joint_rpt_certification2_appendixb.htm. (last modified at January 2001).
    Credhos is the regional human rights organization.
  86. ^ Colombia: AUC chief assassinated, Latinnews Daily, September 21, 2004.
  87. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 109.
  88. ^ Id. at 110.
  89. ^ Robert E. Hunter, Think Tanks: Helping to Shape U.S. Foreign and Security Policy, U.S. Dept. of State International Information Programs, available at http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/0300/ijpe/pj51hunt.htm. (last modified Mar. 2000).
  90. ^ Id.
  91. ^ Peter H. Reuter, Sealing the borders: the effects of increased military participation in drug interdiction (RAND 1988); Robert E. Kessler, Study: Military Can't Curb Drugs, Newsday, May 23, 1988 at 23; Military support would have little effect on drug smuggling, study says, United Press International, Mar. 4 1988.
  92. ^ C. Peter Rydell, Controlling Cocaine: Supply Versus Demand Programs (Rand Drug Policy Research Center 1994).
  93. ^ Peter R. Andreas, Dead-End Drug Wars, Foreign Policy, n. 85.,Winter, 1991-1992.
  94. ^ Dennis Cauchon, White House balks at study urging more drug treatment, USA Today, Jun. 14, 1994, at 2A.
  95. ^ Narco-Insurgent Links in the Andes 8 (Central intelligence Agency July, 29 1992) available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB69/col24.pdf.
  96. ^ Drug Intelligent Report, Insurgent Involvement in the Colombian Drug Trade 16 (Drug Enforcement Administration Jun. 1994), available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB69/col33.pdf. [Hereinafter Report]
  97. ^ Id.
    "Some officials in the United States and Colombia have accused the FARC of becoming directly involved in refining and exporting cocaine on the international market. Many experts, including Klaus Nyholm, Director of the United Nations Drug Control Program in Colombia, maintain that the accusations against the FARC are unfounded."
  98. ^ Id.
  99. ^ Stokes, ibid. p. 87.
  100. ^ Id. at 13.
  101. ^ Douglas Farah, U.S. Widens Colombia Counter-Drug Efforts Restrictions Loosened on Data Sharing, Wash. Post, July 10, 1999 at 1.
  102. ^ Hale Sheppard, The Andean Trade Preference Act: Past Accomplishments and Present Circumstances Warrant Its Immediate Renewal And Expansion , 34 Geo. Wash. Int'l L. Rev. 743, 775 (2003). [Hereinafter Andean]
  103. ^ War For Sale, supra note 170 at 320.
  104. ^ Inside Colombia, supra note 43 at 141.
  105. ^ Colombia A Laboratory of War: Repression and Violence in Arauca, Amnesty International, available at http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR230042004. (last modified Apr. 20, 2004); [Hereinafter Laboratory]; Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003, Pub. L. No. 108-7, 117 Stat. 11, 172-73 (2003).
    "Funds available to the Dept. of State for assistance to the Government of Colombia shall be available to support a unified campaign against narcotics trafficking, against activities by organizations designated as terrorist organizations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia ("FARC"), the National Liberation Army ("ELN"), and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia ("AUC"), and to take actions to protect human health and welfare in emergency circumstances, including undertaking rescue operations."
  106. ^ Laboratory, supra note 124.
  107. ^ Hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee International Campaign Against Terrorism, Federal News Service, Oct. 25, 2001.
    Secretary of State Collin Powell compared the FARC to Al-Queda stating that "And so there's no difficulty in identifying him # ^ as a terrorist and getting everybody to rally against him. Now, there are other organizations that probably meet a similar standard. The FARC in Colombia comes to mind."
    Garry Leech, Who Are the Real Terrorists in Colombia?, available at http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia229.htm. (last modified Feb. 20, 2006).
    Florida Senator Bob Graham stated: “The FARC are doing the same thing as global level terrorists, that is organizing in small cells that don’t have contact with each other and depend on a central command to organize attacks, in terms of logistics and finance. It is the same style of operation as Bin Laden.”
    P. Mitchell Prothero, Claim of FARC-Al Qaida link rescinded, United Press International, Aug. 9, 2002.
    The Assistant Secretary of State, Rand Beers argued under oath that "It is believed that FARC terrorists have received training in Al Qaida terrorist camps in Afghanistan", which he later admitted was a lie.
  108. ^ John McCain, Speech by Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), Center for International Policy, available at http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/02060604.htm. (last modified Jun. 6, 2002).
  109. ^ Stokes, ibid. p. 106.
  110. ^ Juan Forero, New Role for U.S. in Colombia: Protecting a Vital Oil Pipeline, New York Times, Oct. 4, 2002 at A1.

Further reading

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