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Fortsetzung: Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace?

Alice Coulter

Militarisation of US foreign policy

The dominance of military support within the US aid package surprised those expecting an integrated and balanced plan for peace, but examination of recent US policy towards Latin America reveals a trend towards militaristic approaches. While there has been a long history of U.S. support for Colombia’s security forces - "Since at least the 1960s, Washington has provided assistance for Colombia’s anti-guerrilla operations, first in the name of fighting communism and later to fight drugs"[24] - the 1990s has witnessed an intensification of the militaristic approach. "Today, military contacts and activities are playing such a central role in bilateral relationships that they threaten to overshadow diplomatic ties, economic cooperation, and democratic development."[25]

Increasingly the US military conducts training and ‘engagement’ programmes with the armed forces of other countries. The approval and consent of Congress is not usually required for these operations, which claim to promote democracy and strengthen regional security cooperation. However, these programmes promote the use of the military irrespective of its suitability or human rights background. They also provide a convenient substitute for diplomatic involvement. "The spread of freewheeling, unsupervised military programs - amid a decline in diplomatic contacts and economic aid - inclines Washington to choose military solutions to problems in Latin America".[26]

This pattern of substituting diplomatic involvement with increasingly militarised foreign policy has echoes with more general tendencies in contemporary America. The dominance of the Pentagon in US politics reflects a broader shift towards unilateralism within the US Congress. Increases in military spending may simply reflect the strength of business interests among major lobbyists, such as producers of military equipment. Or perhaps military spending is just something that appeals to the American electorate.

"The militarization of U.S. policy toward Latin America is not the result of some sinister hidden strategy. More than anything else, it is a symptom of Washington’s tendency to turn to the Pentagon because the money is there. Increases in defense spending are simply easier to attain than increases for almost any other priority."[27]

While it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore the patterns and theories behind US politics in general, it is nonetheless important to note the shift towards increasing militarisation in US foreign policy. It is also clear that the focus on military solutions, no matter how benignly intended, has potentially serious implications for human rights, particularly when the armed forces in question have as dubious a human rights record as that of the Colombian Armed Forces.

Human rights

"The military assistance the U.S will provide will be limited to training Colombian units that have been carefully vetted to weed out human rights violators." - US Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs fact sheet, 2000[28]

Colombia is in the midst of one of the world’s worst human rights crises. About two thirds of the (approximately) 4,500 people killed each year in the country’s civil conflict are civilian non-combatants. According to a Colombian commission of jurists, guerrilla groups carried out approximately 23% of the killings.[29] State security forces are directly responsible for only 2%, but this is a misleading figure considering the well-documented links with paramilitary groups, who are responsible for about three quarters of the total of all killings and disappearances.

The violence has also driven more than a million Colombians from their homes since 1997.[30] This figure is set to increase with the planned "Push into Southern Colombia". Even supporters of the Plan estimate that between 30,000 and 40,000 peasants could be forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of this offensive.[31] This may prove to be an underestimate in the light of unsolicited paramilitary pledges to "spearhead" the campaign.[32]

As considered in the introduction to this paper, links between paramilitary groups and the Colombian armed forces can be traced back to the immediate post-violencia period. In February 2000, a Human Rights Watch report found that nine of the eighteen brigades of the Colombian Army have maintained links to paramilitary activity.[33]

In an effort to stem these links, US support for Plan Colombia included conditions restricting military assistance to the Colombian armed forces until the Secretary of State certified that the following conditions were met:

The President of Colombia has issued a written order requiring trials in civilian courts for all Colombian Armed Forces personnel who face credible allegations of gross human rights violations;
The Commander-General of Colombia’s armed forces is promptly suspending from duty all military personnel who face credible allegations of gross human rights violations or of assisting paramilitary groups;
Colombia’s armed forces are cooperating fully with civilian authorities’ investigations and prosecutions of military personnel who face credible allegations of gross human rights violations;
The Colombian government is vigorously prosecuting paramilitary leaders and members, and any Colombian military personnel who aid or abet paramilitary groups, in civilian courts;
The Colombian government has adopted a strategy to eliminate all coca and poppy production by the year 2005. This strategy must include alternative development programs, manual eradication, aerial spraying of herbicides, "tested, environmentally safe" mycoherbicides (fungi that attack drug crops), and the destruction of narcotics-production laboratories; and
Colombia’s armed forces are developing and deploying a Judge Advocate General Corps in their field units to investigate misconduct among military personnel.

These conditions were immediately weakened, however, by the addition of a waiver if the President considers it to be in the interests of "national security". In August 2000, President Clinton chose to waive all but the first of these conditions.[34] The justification for this move was the claim that peace can only come if Colombia can negotiate from a position of (military) strength.[35] However, given the persistent relationship between the Colombian Army and the paramilitaries, waiving these conditions sends out a dangerous message about US disregard for human rights.[36]

Regional opposition - the spill-over effect

While the ‘Push into Southern Colombia" concerns international human rights organisations, it is also causing anxiety within neighbouring countries. Colombia’s bordering countries, Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela, all fear some kind of spill-over from the operation, including the spread of refugees, illegal drugs production and violence. Despite the inclusion of funds for the region as a whole as part of the US package, in a specific attempt to allay these fears, many countries in Latin America remain wary about US intervention in the area.

"The [Colombian] problem is a domestic problem, We are not interested at all in any kind of Brazilian intervention in Colombia." - Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, October 2000.

Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller expressed concern in September 2000 about "the cancerous tumor being removed from Colombia and metastasizing in Ecuador."

And the former President of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, claimed in late August of the same year, "the regional security and that of the Andean community is in peril before a $3 billion military project that Colombia plans to implement along the next two years." [37]

Concern about the spread of drugs largely explains the vocal opposition to the plan, yet there are other issues of concern for regional governments. Within the region there has long been a deep sense of resentment concerning US drug policy. While the US continues to ‘evaluate’ Latin American countries’ performance in reducing drugs production, many leaders of these countries believe that the US (and Europe) do not accept enough responsibility for fuelling the industry through domestic demand, which has been traditionally low in the producing countries.

The lack of regional consultation during the formulation of the Plan created a further point of contention for several governments in the region and contributed to the general air of suspicion regarding US intervention in the area. The lack of open discussion regarding the Plan has been a common complaint for many civilian organisations throughout the region, especially within Colombia itself, and poses a serious problem for Pastrana, who needs to count on regional support if he is to succeed in ending the country’s long-running civil war.

[24] Ibid.
[25] Adam Isacson, "Militarizing Latin America Policy," Foreign Policy in Focus, 6(21) (May 2001).
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] United States Support For Colombia, Fact Sheet released by the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (28 March 2000). http://www.state.gov/www/regions/wha/ colombia/fs_000328_notvietnam.html
[29] Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, Panorama de los derechos humanos y del derecho humanitario en Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia, February 2000, as quoted in Adam Isacson, "US Military Aid to Colombia: The Human Rights Implications," The Center for International Policy’s Colombia Project, (Autumn, 2000) http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/090001.htm
[30] Ibid.
[31] Vaicius and Isacson, "Plan Colombia"
[32] Karl Penhaul, "Judgment Day looms in Colombia," Reuters, May 22, 2000 http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/ MilitaryAidColombia.htm.
[33] Human Rights Watch, "The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links," New York, February 2000. http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/colombia/.
[34] The White House, "Memorandum of Justification in Connection With the Waivers Under Section 3201(A)(4) of the Emergency Supplemental Act, as Enacted in the Military Construction Appropriations Act, 2001," Washington, (23 August 2000) http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R? urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/8/23/7.text.1.
[35] Robert Charles, in Toward Greater Peace p.27.
[36] "Plan Colombia: U.S. Anti-Drug Aid Fuelling Brutal Civil War," WOLA
[37] As quoted in, Michael Shifter, "This Plan Isn’t Working: U.S. Military Aid Alarms Colombia’s Neighbors," in the Washington Post, (10 December 2000).

Fortsetzung: Plan Colombia: Plan for Peace?