Now the excuse is 'terrorism'
New threats against movement in Colombia
By Andy McInerney
What will be the fate of the U.S. client regimes in Latin
America, given the current Pentagon military offensive in the
Middle East?
Nowhere is that question more sharply posed than in
Colombia. That South American country of 40 million people has
been the scene of a civil war, with two powerful armed
insurgencies and a militant labor movement pitted against a
death squad government armed to the teeth by its U.S.
backers.
Colombian President Andres Pastrana was in New York on Nov.
11 for a meeting with U.S. President George Bush and other top
Washington politicians. His mission: to ensure that the flow of
cash and weapons continues. Colombia has been the third-largest
recipient of U.S. military aid in the world, after Israel and
Egypt.
Pastrana's argument for the press and politicians marked a
change in rhetoric to suit the times. The Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) and the National
Liberation Army (ELN), the main revolutionary organizations in
Colombia, were now painted as "terrorists" with a "worldwide
reach" like Al Qaeda.
"If we are going to combat terrorism, we need all the arms
at our disposal to do it," Pastrana argued on Nov. 9. He was
asking the members of Congress to lift token legal restrictions
on using U.S. military aid in counterinsurgency campaigns.
The official response was muted. While officials assured
Pastrana that military aid would continue to flow, one State
Department official told the New York Times on Nov. 11, "It was
wishful thinking on the part of those Colombians who would like
us to be more involved."
Another congressional aid described U.S. policy toward
Colombia as on "auto pilot."
Those declarations, however, may reflect a certain wishful
thinking on the part of U.S. politicians--a hope that the
contradictions between oppressed and oppressors around the
world will somehow wane while the world's only superpower
carries out its campaigns of destruction.
Contradictions intensify
The political situation in Colombia has been dominated for
the last three years by talks between Pastrana's government and
the FARC-EP. Both sides committed themselves to addressing the
social causes of the armed struggle that has been raging, in
its present form, since 1964.
As a precondition to the talks, Pastrana agreed to withdraw
government troops from five municipalities, roughly the size of
Switzerland, in central Colombia to insure a safe zone for the
talks. He also committed his government to ending paramilitary
death squad violence--a terror tactic employed covertly by the
government armed forces to try to keep the civilian population
from supporting the insurgencies.
The dialog process has revealed a fundamental contradiction
for the Pastrana government. On the one hand, it is committed
on paper to addressing the causes of the armed conflict. On the
other hand, its base of support--the Colombian business elite,
sectors of the military high command and landowners, and their
U.S. backers--are the ones who benefit most from the
exploitation at the heart of the conflict.
The Colombian ruling class agreed to the talks with two
goals in mind. First, it needed time to recoup its losses after
a string of heavy political and military defeats. Second, it
clearly hoped to co-opt the FARC-EP leadership into a series of
concessions that could further weaken the revolutionary
movement.
The failure of the second goal has led to growing calls,
both in the Colombian and U.S. ruling classes, to abandon the
dialog process.
Since Sept. 11, these calls have gathered strength.
Although Pastrana on Oct. 7 extended the dialog zone for
three months, the Colombian military has been waging a series
of provocations against the zone. Military planes are flying
over it. Troops have attempted to infiltrate the zone,
disguised as civilians or paramilitaries. The government has in
effect imposed an economic blockade on the zone.
All these measures have pushed the talks to the point of
collapse. In a Nov. 6 letter, FARC-EP Commander-in-Chief Manuel
Marulanda demanded that the government end its provocations
against the talks.
"In case the government does not accept our proposals,"
Marulanda wrote, "it will be necessary to agree on a date for
the parties to meet in the open to summarize the situation of
the zone, and officially turn over the five municipalities in
the presence of the mayors, councilors, and representatives of
the facilitating countries.
"From that moment, the government can militarily occupy the
encampments."
The end of the zone, of course, would mean the end of the
talks--and the beginning of a new phase of the struggle between
the FARC-EP and the Colombian ruling class.
Behind the provocations
From the beginning of the talks, the government has fallen
back on provocations and slanders to avoid any substantive
concessions. But the new threats to the process are the most
serious yet, and are a direct result of the changed world
situation after Sept. 11.
Colombian militarists and opponents of the dialog strategy
are emboldened by new threats from the U.S. government--despite
the latter's claim that the policy is on "auto-pilot."
For example, on Oct. 16, State Department
"counter-terrorism" head Francis Taylor told the Associated
Press that the FARC-EP and the ELN would receive "the same
treatment as any other terrorist group." He said that the U.S.
would fight "terrorism" in Latin America using "all elements of
our national power as well as the elements of the national
power of all the countries in our region."
Within a week, the U.S. ratcheted up the rhetoric. On Oct.
25, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson warned that
leaders of the FARC-EP and ELN would be subject to extradition
to the U.S. And on Nov. 2, it added the FARC-EP and the ELN to
groups whose funds would be investigated and seized by the U.S.
government.
The FARC-EP and the ELN have been designated as "terrorists"
by the U.S. government along with Irish, Palestinian and other
resistance fighters who are struggling against U.S.-backed
client regimes. The list of "terrorist" organizations once
included the African National Congress, which led the struggle
against apartheid in South Africa.
The Colombian death squad group AUC was also placed on the
terrorist list in September. The designation was clearly for
public consumption only, since the death squads receive most of
their financing and intelligence from the U.S.-funded Colombian
army.
The statements of U.S. officials, along with promises of new
aid for Colombia's counterinsurgency war, show that U.S.
intervention in Colombia is far from over--and in fact may be
on the verge of a new escalation.
They coincide with a sharp rise in death squad terror. Death
squads assassinated 12 civilians in El Choco on Nov. 11,
accusing them of being ELN sympathizers.
Ten other peasants were killed in Alejandria on Oct. 20,
accused of being FARC supporters. The same day, an oil workers'
leader was shot in Barrancabermeja for leading protests.
Close to 100 civilians have been killed in Colombia by
paramilitary death squads since Sept. 11. These death squads
and their government backers are terrorists in the genuine
meaning of the term: forces that use violence with the sole aim
of sowing fear among the civilian population.
A second front
Clearly, the U.S. ruling class would rather not have to risk
an expanded war front in the Western Hemisphere at this time.
It would rather devote all its resources to the effort to widen
its stranglehold over the Middle East.
But the driving factor in the class struggle in Colombia--as
in the rest of Latin America--is not the will or desires of
politicians or generals. It is the strength of the contending
classes and the stakes of the class struggle.
In Colombia, the stakes include state power--a goal that the
Colombian revolutionaries have always upheld. And it is exactly
to prevent a change of power from the oligarchy to the workers
and peasants that the U.S. ruling class is committing so much
to Colombia even as it wages war elsewhere.
According to the new military doctrine unveiled over the
summer by the Bush administration, the Pentagon is preparing to
"decisively defeat" one enemy while preventing the victory of
another.
However, the Colombian working class continues to take to
the streets against U.S.-backed IMF austerity. Half a million
state workers and farmers staged a one-day general strike on
Nov. 1 to protest the government's economic measures,
depression-level unemployment and violence against trade
unionists.
Protests against the U.S. war in Afghanistan have also led
to clashes between students and police--a sign of the
widespread anti-imperialism among the Colombian masses. One
student was killed at a Nov. 7 protest at the National
University in Bogotá.
The growing struggle in Colombia is not isolated. In
neighboring Venezuela, a major oil exporter to the U.S., the
democratic process led by President Hugo Chávez
continues to inspire millions of Venezuela's poor and working
people into political action.
As U.S. capitalism uses the mantle of "fighting terrorism"
to try to stifle opposition to its exploitation both at home
and around the world, it will be crucial for activists to stand
with all those fighting against U.S.-backed exploitation. The
FARC-EP and the ELN are part of the movement in Colombia that
is fighting for national liberation.
For that "crime," the U.S. government labels them
terrorists. That label belongs instead on those who use terror
to try and stop this genuine people's revolutionary
struggle--which deserves the support of all progressive and
anti-war forces.
Reprinted from the Nov. 22, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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