Elite troops and 'civilian militias'
New president remilitarizes Colombia
By Teresa Gutierrez
The war-ravaged nation of Colombia is rapidly becoming ever
more militarized as the new president, Alvaro Uribe Velez,
moves to carry out his aggressive program.
On Aug. 17, just five days after taking office, Uribe
declared a state of emergency. Uribe was Washington's candidate
in the election.
The emergency decree authorizes the government to
immediately impose a one-time assets tax on wealthy Colombians
and is designed to raise $778 million quickly. The money is to
be allocated to create two elite mobile army battalions, to
recruit 10,000 police and to fund a 100,000-member informant
program.
Under the emergency decree, the Uribe government is allowed
to impose extended curfews; prevent access to certain areas
without prior court approval; censor the media; and seize land,
equipment and professional expertise from private citizens.
(Washington Post, Aug. 13)
It requires Colombians, especially those living in rural
areas, to inform the government of their travel plans at least
two days before they leave town. The government can also
suspend elected officials contributing to "public unrest."
Paramilitaries in guise of 'civilian defense
force'
The Uribe administration also announced that it would arm
15,000 peasants as part of his plan to create a "civilian
defense force." The recruits will receive a small salary,
uniforms and boots. The government is looking into the cost of
supplying them with assault rifles, machine guns, mortars and
grenade launchers. (Associated Press, Aug. 23)
Uribe has used such tactics before. In the mid-1990s, as
mayor of Medellin, he helped arm and supply paramilitary forces
also called civilian defense groups. He created 69 such units,
providing them with radios and motorcycles and authorizing them
to carry guns.
Earlier, as head of the civil aviation administration in the
early 1980s, Uribe's policies had served the interests of the
international drug trade. He authorized permits for the
construction of private airstrips in Medellin (Washington Post,
May 20). These did more for the drug cartel than for the
peasants, who desperately needed roads, not airstrips, to sell
their goods.
Uribe's plan now is to create a militia of 1 million
civilians to help the armed forces. And who are more willing to
enlist in these civilian militias than the paramilitaries?
The election of Uribe, fully backed by the U.S. government,
strengthens the hand of the very force that has carried out the
most horrific kind of terror against the people of
Colombia.
For decades the paramilitaries have committed countless
atrocities. Best known as the AUC--standing for the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia--they are led by Carlos
Castaño as well as by Colombian army officials.
The AUC has its roots in paramilitary armies built up by
drug lords, according to a British Broadcasting Corporation
report of Jan. 7: "As the drug lords became land owners, buying
up vast tracts of Colombia--some 3.5 million hectares of
agricultural land--they took over local self-defense groups and
set up their own, to protect not the local population but their
own interests."
Although the U.S. and Colombian governments have paid lip
service to criticisms of the paramilitaries, neither has done
anything to stop them. In this day and age of Bush's so-called
"war on terror," this is proof that they serve at the pleasure
of the capitalist rulers.
Human rights organizations, even those based in the U.S.,
admit that the paramilitaries are the main abusers of human
rights in Colombia. Their terror against the peasants, trade
unionists and others they suspect to be in league with the
rebels is well known.
Because of worldwide pressure, these death squads have been
forced to change their tactics.
In July, the founding leaders of the AUC, in a move clearly
intended to help clean up the image of the incoming Uribe
administration, announced they were dissolving the organization
because they had been infiltrated by drug traffickers and had
lost their and principles."
But the killings have continued with impunity. (Washington
Post, June 24) What changed was the tactic. Now peasants are
being killed three at a time instead of 30 at a time. This more
selective killing is not labeled a massacre by human rights
groups.
Even Stratfor.com, an online thinktank whose name stands for
"strategic forecasting" and that sells political analysis to
corporate and government clients, said in a July 19 report that
the AUC's dissolution could mean "that violence in Colombia
likely will increase as some regional paramilitary groups, now
free of any central control, may engage in more frequent and
bloodier human rights atrocities."
It added that a new paramilitary organization "could seek an
arrangement with Uribe that would give it political legitimacy
and possibly a more structured cooperative role in the coming
war against the FARC and the ELN."
A war for social change
The FARC-EP is the main rebel force in Colombia. The acronym
stands for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia--People's
Army. It has been fighting for social change in this highly
polarized country for many decades.
Uribe's escalation of war and repression will not be
directed against those who have brought miserable conditions
for the people of Colombia, but against those who wish to end
those miserable conditions.
Uribe appointee Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina now controls the
Colombian army. Ospina served as an instructor at the School of
the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., which has become known as
the School of the Assassins because Latin American officers
trained there have gone on to carry out some of the worst
atrocities in the hemisphere.
The election of Alvaro Uribe means the strengthening of an
unholy alliance between U.S. imperialism and the ruling
oligarchy of Colombia. Only the people's struggle in Colombia
and the worldwide anti-war movement can break up this deadly
alliance.
Reprinted from the Sept. 5, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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