The Washington-Bogotá axis and the mainstream media in both the United States and Colombia have blamed the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for the collapse of the peace process. President Andrés Pastrana used the FARC’s ongoing military activities during negotiations as justification for ordering the Colombian military’s invasion of the rebel safe haven. But while the FARC has been repeatedly condemned for continuing to wage war outside the rebel zone, few questioned the fact that the Colombian military and the paramilitaries were doing exactly the same thing.
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Targeting Colombia’s “Evil-doers”
The U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Anne Patterson, announced last week that the United States will provide Colombia with counterterrorism aid as part of Washington’s new war on terrorism. But many critics are concerned the new aid signifies an escalation of U.S. involvement in Colombia that might result in direct military intervention. Patterson’s announcement followed on the heels of a declaration by the State Department’s top counterterrorism official, Francis X. Taylor, that Washington’s strategy for fighting terrorism in the western hemisphere will include, “where appropriate, as we are doing in Afghanistan, the use of military power.” Taylor left little doubt about who would be the “appropriate” target when he stated that Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), “is the most dangerous international terrorist group based in this hemisphere.”
Good Terrorists, Bad Terrorists: How Washington Decides Who’s Who
The U.S. State Department has included Colombia’s two leftist guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), on its annual list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) for the past four years. This year it also listed the right-wing paramilitary organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), as a terrorist group. However, unlike the two guerrilla groups, the AUC was not included on the FTO list, but rather on a secondary list that, according to the State Department’s acting Coordinator for Counterterrorism Edmund J. Hull, means the AUC’s activities have “caught our attention and caused us to look more closely at this organization.” Consequently, the AUC is not subject to the same legal sanctions that apply to the FARC, the ELN and other groups included on the FTO list.
Death Falls from the Sky in Colombia
On December 19, 2000, the Colombian army’s two U.S.-trained anti-narcotics battalions arrived in Putumayo, Colombia’s principal coca growing region. For the next six weeks U.S.-supplied Huey helicopters swooped down almost daily to unload soldiers to prevent attacks against the fumigation planes by leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. In early February, with 62,000 acres of coca destroyed, the politicians and generals in Washington and Bogotá were calling Plan Colombia’s initial fumigation campaign a success. But on the ground in Putumayo it was clear that more than coca had been eradicated.
Interview with FARC Commander Simón Trinidad
In January 1999, newly-elected Colombian president Andres Pastrana ceded an area of southern Colombia the size of Switzerland to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas as part of an agreement to begin peace talks. Although there is no cease-fire agreement while the talks are being carried out, the Colombian Armed Forces have withdrawn all their forces from the region known as the Zona de Despeje (Clearance Zone). The FARC’s headquarters in Los Pozos, a small village located 18 miles from San Vicente del Caguan in the Zona de Despeje, has been host to the peace talks as well as public conferences where all sectors of Colombian society can come to participate in discussions about Colombia’s future. On June 14, 2000, I traveled to Los Pozos to interview Simón Trinidad, a FARC commander and a spokesman for the guerrilla group. Trinidad was a professor of economics and a banker before joining the FARC 16 years ago.
Garry Leech 