U.S. intervention in Colombia intensifies
By Andy
McInerney
A series of recent moves by the Pentagon highlights the
dangers of growing U.S. intervention in Colombia. In order to
maintain the dominance of Wall Street banks in both Colombia
and Latin America as a whole, U.S. generals have embarked on
the beginning of a "total war" scenario against the Colombian
people.
Colombia is already the third-largest recipient of U.S.
military aid in the world. Congress and the Clinton
administration are working out a massive new aid package for
the Colombian military that could reach $2 billion over the
next three years. This aid would go directly into the hands of
the Colombian armed forces, which is waging a murderous
counterinsurgency war against several revolutionary liberation
movements.
While the exact amount of the package is still being
debated, the overall U.S. policy toward Colombia is clear. The
Pentagon is desperately trying to shore up the corrupt and
brutal Colombian armed forces. If that effort fails, the U.S.
generals have given every sign of staging direct intervention
in the oil- and mineral-rich South American country.
On Oct. 18, the Pulsar news agency reported that the Central
Intelligence Agency is already recruiting a mercenary army to
fight against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP). The account, originally
exposed by the Brazilian magazine Isto E, quotes a Brazilian
military pilot saying that he had been approached by the CIA
and offered between $10,000 and $12,000 per combat mission
against the FARC-EP.
According to the pilot, the CIA is conducting training
sessions in Chile. From there, the mercenaries would be sent to
Colombia to fight the people's insurgencies.
At the same time, head of the U.S. Southern Command Gen.
Charles Wilhelm traveled to Bogotá, Colombia's capital,
to meet with Colombia's top brass. The Oct. 20 daily El
Espectador reported that Wilhelm announced plans to fund and
train a new "intelligence"agency in Colombia. The new agency
would coordinate counterinsurgency efforts by the Colombian Air
Force, Army and National Police.
Clinton administration officials have toured South America
in recent months trying to build support for a "multinational"
intervention force--led, of course, by the United States.
Colombia is currently suffering its worst economic recession
since the 1930s. Unemployment has soared to over 20 percent.
Prices are soaring after currency regulations were lifted,
sending the Colombian peso into a free fall.
On top of this recession, Colombian President Andres
Pastrana is trying to impose an International Monetary Fund
program of austerity and privatizations. This policy has
provoked a series of massive strikes by powerful Colombian
union and peasant organizations.
This economic instability is rampant across Latin America
after a decade of unbridled looting by U.S. banks under the
cover of "neoliberal" economic policies and centuries of
imperialist exploitation.
But in Colombia, the economic instability is accompanied by
a militant mass movement of workers and peasants. The
revolutionary insurgencies--the FARC-EP, the National
Liberation Army, and several smaller ones--together administer
nearly half of the Colombian countryside.
The fear of losing their domination of a major South
American country--and the possibility of losing others--is the
governing factor driving both the Clinton administration's and
the Pentagon's policy of increasing aggression against the
Colombian people.
The hope of seeing 40 million people liberated from the rule
of Wall Street and its brutal mercenaries is the factor driving
a growing world movement of support for the Colombian people
and against U.S. intervention.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
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