HISTORY TEACHES US? Beginning shortly after World War Two, the United States supported an imported regime in Vietnam that ultimately led to the trauma of the Vietnam War. As a consequences of this war, the narcotics traffic in Vietnam and surrounding countries -- the Golden Triangle -- grew enormously -- accounting for majority of percentages of heroin and opium entering the United States. The war itself grew to such bitter proportions that it threatened the existence of our own form of government. Beginning in the late eighties we began supporting the Afghanistan Mujehedin, to fight what was estimated to be a massive Soviet push -- (our bad intelligence did not recognize the soon death of the USSR). Along with this CIA-supported Mujehedin, we created generations of new terrorists. Sadly our do-goodism created the Golden Crescent -- a new melange of countries exporting the majority percentages of heroin and opium entering the United States. Now we are told that we must fight the new drug threat by supporting a narco-terrorist counterinsurgency in Colombia. From that traffic, they tell us, 70 to 80 percent of the narcotics entering the U.S., emanates. Can this new war generate massive new percentages of drugs -- 170% to 180% -- flooding our shores? I fear that the new war on drugs will create agonies for the United States. What will be the impact of this narco-war on the streets of Los Angeles? I predict that this new war on drugs will enflame the entire region. Would it not be wise now, before the new war gets out of hand, to reconsider our policies. What does history teach us? Ralph McGehee http://come.to/CIABASE ------------------------------------- The U.S. is to step up military and economic aid to Colombia [to fight] the drug-financed Marxist guerrillas there. U.S. officials warned President Andres Pastrana that he risks losing U.S. support if he makes further concessions to the insurgents to restart stalled peace negotiations. But White House drug policy director McCaffrey and State's Thomas Pickering, also told Pastrana the U.S. will increase aid if he develops a comprehensive plan to strengthen the military, halt the nation's economic free fall and fight drug trafficking. Security assistance already stands at $289 million this year. The U.S. [has already] resumed helping the army and expanded intelligence sharing and is training a 950-man Colombian army counternarcotics battalion. The U.S. is planning to fund at least two more such battalions. Colombia produces 80 percent of the world's cocaine and about 70 percent of the heroin sent to the U.S. Two Marxist guerrilla groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), with about 15,000 combatants, and the National Liberation Army (ELN), with about 5,000 -- control about 40 percent of territory and receive hundreds of millions of dollars from protecting drug trafficking routes, airstrips and laboratories. 7,000 right-wing paramilitary troops, who also derive millions of dollars from cocaine trafficking, control about 15 percent of the territory. In a world with a lot of bad policy options toward Colombia, we are taking the worst one, said Winifred Tate of the Washington Office on Latin America. "By strengthening the military you are strengthening an abusive, corrupt institution that has resisted civil control and human rights reforms..." while U.S. aid should be focused on fighting drugs, the line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency has blurred so much that it is almost meaningless. The immediate increase in military aid will focus on upgrading a sophisticated intelligence and listening post in Tres Esquinas, and U.S. training of new, special units in the Colombian army. Washington Post 8/29/99 A1. -------------------------------- From an earlier post. In Colombia, one major consideration is how the increase in United States military involvement in Colombia reflects the Vietnam War. The population numbers of the two countries are similar, and the existence of revolutionary movements somewhat similar. How heavily have these movements organized that population? In Vietnam the Communists organized millions of South Vietnamese who committed themselves totally to their victory -- while our intelligence blinded itself and counted only a fraction. Are we doing this again in Colombia? Another major issue is the Colombian military which is corrupt, supports drug traffickers and sponsors death squads. Can such an organization demand the loyalty of the people and the unquestioning support of the United States? Does this not mirror Vietnam realities? The White house has a plan for a new global strategy for the next century -- that calls for U.S. military intervention in trouble spots and says the U.S. is facing it biggest espionage threat in history. The attacks could be nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, bombs or cyber attacks on our systems. The strategy statement represents a road map for how 21st century policy-makers...should influence events abroad -- a road map for how 21st-century policymakers should use America's strength to influence developments overseas and at home. It foresees an active military. "We must be prepared to use all appropriate...national power to influence the actions of other states...to exert global leadership..." Washington Times 8/24/99 A1. ------------------------------------------------- What the Other Side Says -- Colombian Guerillas Explain Their Aims LUIS AUGUSTO GARCIA GUERERO of the Camilista Union -- National Liberation Army (UCELN) explains some of the background to Colombia today and the origins of the guerilla struggle. The three guerilla organizations originated in the social, student, peasant and workers movements of the 1960s and were influenced by the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. The decision to undertake armed struggle arose when state terror and the violence of the oligarchy closed off all other alternatives for social change. On July 4, 1964, the National Liberation Army (ELN), which identified with the Cuban Revolution, was formed in the department of Santander, an oil-rich area controlled by United States multinationals with a militant workers tradition. The guerilla priest Father Camilo Torres Restrepo was an early member of the ELN. A month earlier the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), linked to the Communist Party of Colombia (PCC), was formed from organisations established by peasants in the Pato and Guayabero regions to protect themselves against the attacks of rich landlords. In 1968, as a result of an earlier split in the PCC and the creation of the PCC (Marxist Leninist), the People's Liberation Army (EPL) was formed in Llanos del Tigre, a zone with a strong tradition of peasant struggle. Each group separately engaged in revolutionary struggle until 1987. In 1984 social upheaval led to the formation of the United Workers Centre, the development of peasant unity and the coordination of civic movements. Large mobilizations and strikes resulted from this unity and its influence led the armed organisations to unite in the Simon Bolivar Guerilla Coordinating Committee (CGSB). The small regional guerilla nuclei of three decades ago have won sufficient support from the Colombian people to consolidate themselves into an alliance that has a political and military presence in 700 of Colombia's 1050 municipalities. More than 10,000 combatants are organised in 120 fronts and guerilla columns. (Colombia's population is 33 million.) This increasing strategic capacity has been based on the guerilla forces winning popular support. The minister for agriculture, Cecilia López Montano, admitted in January, "The insurgency is winning the war in the impoverished countryside, where misery, the product of social injustice, is the impetus of subversion." The guerilla movement offers an alternative model of power, a people's power which fights tyranny and oppression. We encourage the exercise of true national democracy in accordance with the people's social and cultural identity and encourage communities to analyse, understand and propose self-sustaining solutions to their problems. This is often the first time that such communities have had the chance to start to take control of their own lives and begin a process of social transformation. This process is the lifeblood of the revolution. The CGSB's alternative economic strategy aims to "humanize" the country. Our program, "New Colombia", is based on democracy, sovereignty, welfare and life for the majority, the impoverished, marginalised and exploited communities. These people will form the basis of national liberation and the construction of a Latin American socialism in harmony with nature and rooted in our regional and cultural diversity. Our revolutionary ethic is based on honesty, openness and permanent struggle against a regime based on exploitation, environmental destruction and drug trafficking. The Colombian ruling class will not allow social change to occur peacefully. The only democracy and legal guarantees that exist are purely for the traditional parties of the oligarchy to contest elections. Whenever opposition parties or movements have won support, questioned economic and social structures and proposed alternatives, they have been totally annihilated. Organized workers, peasants, indigenous peoples and community activists have met with the same fate. To impose its policies of privatisation and neo-liberalism the regime has also murdered those it considers "disposable": street children, beggars and prostitutes. Millions of peasants have been displaced by military and paramilitary activities. According to the National Union School, at least 614 unionists have been murdered in the last five years. (It is said that it is easier to organize a guerilla column than a labour union.) Several presidential candidates have been assassinated in recent years. Last year the church-based Intercongregational Commission for Justice and Peace alleged that the military and paramilitary forces assassinate five people a day. Democracy has been further restricted by the spread of corruption and the infiltration of political and military institutions by the drug cartels. Big international capital, national industrial monopolies, large land-holders and drug traffickers have been allies in the development of counter-insurgency strategy. This death and terror machine is coordinated by the US government and implemented by the military high command. US military advisers are present in 15 bases. The US also trains military cadre and provides military aid under the guise of assistance in the war against drugs. The workers barely surviving on low salaries, the unemployed and underemployed live in "misery belts" surrounding the cities. The peasants, indigenous people and blacks who have been forced off their land by oil, coal, gold and lumber companies now live in these areas. At the bottom of the social pyramid are the 55,000 children who die of hunger and curable disease each year, while at the top the governing minority and multinationals pillage and export the nation's wealth and resources. The guerilla movement has opened up political and social processes for the great majority, the politically and economically excluded. Our proposal for peace with social justice and dignity will ensure radical transformations in social relations and government and the open, rather then hidden, exercise of power. Green Left Weekly (Date not recorded.)