Secretary Rice gives thumbs up to Colombia's death squad government

by Socialist Resistance
London (UK), June 2005

In late April US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia to give enthusiastic backing to the right-wing Uribe government, which has utilised death squads and the Colombian army to commit hundreds of murders against leaders of peasant and other radical movements.

Rice stated on her visit that the notorious 'Plan Colombia', passed by the US congress four years ago, had been "highly successful". The plan was posed as an attempt to crush Colombia's drug lords, but in reality the bulk of the $4 billion spent by the US on the plan so far has been spent on the Colombian military, to aid them in the fight against the FARC and ELN leftwing guerrillas.

After 9/11 the pretence that the programme was about drugs fell away, and now it is presented as part of the 'war on terrorism'. The money is used to boost the Colombian Army and defend an oil pipeline partly owned by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum.

U.S. funds have paid for a Colombian army commando battalion charged with hunting down guerrilla leaders. U.S. personnel have helped set up Special Forces, mobile brigades, river-based Marines and other specialized units all over the country. The United States is also heavily supporting Plan Patriota (Patriot Plan), a massive, year-old military offensive in the guerrilla jungle strongholds of southern Colombia.

This offensive requires significant logistical support, intelligence and advice from U.S. military and private contractors, so the Southern Command asked Congress for a doubling to 800 of the number of U.S. troops who may be in Colombia at a time. It also got a 50 per cent increase in the U.S. citizen contractor presence (to 600).

The use of 'civilian' contractors from private military companies enables the direct particaption of Americans in combat to be deniable.

After years of US training and military build up, last year, the Colombian army launched Plan Patriota, the largest military operation in modern Colombian history, which, according to the New York Times, was designed "to make potentially oil-rich regions safe for exploration by private companies and the government-run oil company."

Civilians bore the brunt of that operation and more than 250,000 people were displaced from their homes.

However in terms of dealing a crushing blow to the FARC and ELN the operation was a fiasco.

The guerrillas simply melted away into the selva, and refused to give open battle. This year however the FARC have come back strongly with a massive counter-offensive.

In March five US soldiers --supposedly training local troops in anti-guerrilla and anti-narcotics techniques-- were arrested after 16 kilos of cocaine were found in the aircraft taking them from a military base in southern Colombia back to the US.