A series of recent moves by the Pentagon highlights the
dangers of growing U.S. intervention in Colombia. In order
to maintain the dominance of Wall Street banks in both
Colombia and Latin America as a whole, U.S. generals have
embarked on the beginning of a "total war" scenario against the Colombian
people.
Colombia is already the third-largest recipient of U.S.
military aid in the world. Congress and the Clinton
administration are working out a massive new aid package for
the Colombian military that could reach $2 billion over the
next three years. This aid would go directly into the hands
of the Colombian armed forces, which is waging a murderous
counterinsurgency war against several revolutionary liberation movements.
While the exact amount of the package is still being
debated, the overall U.S. policy toward Colombia is clear.
The Pentagon is desperately trying to shore up the corrupt
and brutal Colombian armed forces. If that effort fails, the
U.S. generals have given every sign of staging direct
intervention in the oil- and mineral-rich South Americancountry.
On Oct. 18, the Pulsar news agency reported that the
Central Intelligence Agency is already recruiting a
mercenary army to fight against the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP). The account,
originally exposed by the Brazilian magazine Isto E, quotes
a Brazilian military pilot saying that he had been
approached by the CIA and offered between $10,000 and
$12,000 per combat mission against the FARC-EP. According to the pilot, the
CIA is conducting training sessions in Chile. From there, the mercenaries
would be sent to Colombia to fight the people's insurgencies.
At the same time, head of the U.S. Southern Command Gen.
Charles Wilhelm traveled to Bogot , Colombia's capital, to
meet with Colombia's top brass. The Oct. 20 daily El
Espectador reported that Wilhelm announced plans to fund and
train a new "intelligence"agency in Colombia. The new agency
would coordinate counterinsurgency efforts by the Colombian
Air Force, Army and National Police. Clinton administration officials have
toured South America
in recent months trying to build support for a
"multinational" intervention force--led, of course, by the United States.
Colombia is currently suffering its worst economic
recession since the 1930s. Unemployment has soared to over
20 percent. Prices are soaring after currency regulations
were lifted, sending the Colombian peso into a free fall.
On top of this recession, Colombian President Andres
Pastrana is trying to impose an International Monetary Fund
program of austerity and privatizations. This policy has
provoked a series of massive strikes by powerful Colombian
union and peasant organizations. This economic instability is rampant across
Latin America
after a decade of unbridled looting by U.S. banks under the
cover of "neoliberal" economic policies and centuries of
imperialist exploitation.
But in Colombia, the economic instability is accompanied
by a militant mass movement of workers and peasants. The
revolutionary insurgencies--the FARC-EP, the National
Liberation Army, and several smaller ones--together
administer nearly half of the Colombian countryside.
The fear of losing their domination of a major South
American country--and the possibility of losing others--is
the governing factor driving both the Clinton
administration's and the Pentagon's policy of increasing
aggression against the Colombian people.
The hope of seeing 40 million people liberated from the
rule of Wall Street and its brutal mercenaries is the factor
driving a growing world movement of support for the
Colombian people and against U.S. intervention.
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