How We Are Deceived: Disinformation and Colombia

Along with Colombia's successes in fighting leftist rebels this year, cities like Medellín have staged remarkable recoveries. And in the upscale districts of Bogotá, the capital, it is almost possible to forget that the country remains mired in a devilishly complex four-decade-old war.

But it is a different story in the mountains of the Nariño department. Here, and elsewhere in large parts of the countryside, the violence and fear remain unrelenting, underscoring the difficulty of ending a war fueled by a drug trade that is proving immune to American-financed efforts to stop it.

Soaring coca cultivation, forced disappearances, assassinations, the displacement of families and the planting of land mines stubbornly persist, the hallmarks of a back lands conflict that threatens to drag on for years, even without the once spectacular actions of guerrillas in Colombia's large cities.

A closer examination of Plan Colombia reveals its true objective to be the preservation of the political, social and economic status quo through the implementation of a "carrot and stick" strategy. As is evident in the initial installment of overseas aid--the $1.3 billion U.S. aid package--the Plan intends to utilize a huge stick while offering a tiny carrot. The stick, approximately 80 percent of the U.S. aid, is for the Colombian military and police. The remainder constitutes the carrot: eight percent is going to alternative development; six percent to human rights programs; four percent to the displaced; two percent to judicial reform; and less than one percent to support the ongoing peace process.

The Colombian military has one of the worst human rights records in the Western Hemisphere. Furthermore there is a substantial body of evidence that shows extensive linkages between the Colombian military and the paramilitary "death squads". These death squads are responsible for over 80% of all human rights abuses within Colombia where eight out of every twelve people murdered each day are non-combatants. Recent evidence has emerged which illustrates how the U.S. reorganized Colombian military intelligence in 1991 to solidify military / paramilitary linkages and is thus directly implicated in human rights abuses within Colombia. The picture becomes even murkier when we consider the fact that these very same death squads are said to be deeply involved in cocaine trafficking. The U.S. is thus indirectly funding the biggest drug lords.

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