From: Pakito Arriaran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:00:26 -0500 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Washington's "Private Warriors" The "war on drugs" has had a devastating impact on working class communities. From hundreds of thousands of non-violent drug "offenders" thrown into prison to the increasing militarization of our communities by police and federal law enforcement agencies, the drug war has evolved into a critical aspect of domestic counterinsurgency. Deploying "quality of life" strategies that target the most vulnerable and defenseless members of the working class, "just say no" is all the license the cops need for "up against the wall!" The article below explores the new face of U.S. intervention in Colombia. ____________________________________________________________________ WASHINGTON'S 'PRIVATE WARRIORS' ____________________________________________________________________ by Tom Burghardt Editor, Antifa Info-Bulletin (SAN FRANCISCO)--As drug trafficking death squads linked to the military and the ruling elite lay waste to Colombia's countryside, the Bush administration is turning to "plausibly deniable" privateers supplied by U.S. corporations to eradicate a decades-long insurgency by leftist guerrillas under cover of Washington's "war on drugs." Pentagon and CIA counterinsurgency specialists learned a crucial lesson from the Vietnam experience: when U.S. troops start coming home in body bags, public opinion heads south. In the Central American conflicts of the 1980s, Washington modified its Southeast Asian strategy of placing U.S. troops in the line of fire to one of funding, arming, training and deploying proxy armies to do the dirty work. In Colombia today, the U.S. government has "outsourced" frontline duties to "civilians". But--surprise--the "civilian" specialists are "retired" combat veterans working for U.S. corporations. Under contract to the State Department, U.S. mercenaries conduct aerial spraying of suspected drug crops, working closely with their Colombian military counterparts--a veritable Praetorian guard hired to defend extensive U.S. petrochemical and mining investments. These days the management of empire is a very private affair. "Plan Colombia," a $1.3 billion boondoggle rammed through Congress last year by the Clinton administration, is expected to be enhanced when, as expected, legislators on both sides of the aisle hand the Bush regime an additional $676 million to fund the so-called "Andean Counterdrug Initiative". Buried within the appropriations bill is language not only giving the executive branch broad authority to dispatch as many mercenaries as it desires, but to send them in heavily armed with broad rules of engagement. The main beneficiary of State Department largess is the Reston, Virginia-based DynCorp. A Fortune 500 company, DynCorp has secured some $600 million in lucrative contracts--with little risk of oversight by a submissive Congress that does what its told. Currently the company has deployed some 80 military and intelligence specialists in Colombia with more on the way--as many as 300 according to a recent New York Times report. DynCorp operations are nominally supervised by a secretive faction in the State Department's Narcotic Affairs Section and its Air Wing, staffed with unreconstructed cold warriors from the Central American interventions of the 1980s. Working hand in glove with U.S. military brass, Narcotic Affairs is supposedly limited to conducting drug war operations such as running aerial fumigation missions against drug crops. Reality however, has a strange way of intruding into the best laid plans. Given the corrupting influence of a $3 trillion annual global drug trade, it was no surprise when reports surfaced that some DynCorp employees might be dabbling in narcotics trafficking themselves. As a July 3, 2001 article in the New York-based weekly The Nation revealed, last year the Colombian National Police (CNP) intercepted and opened a U.S.-bound Federal Express package at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport. According to a DEA report obtained by The Nation under the Freedom of Information Act, the parcel "contained two (2) small bottles of a thick liquid" that "had the same consistency as motor oil." The DEA reported that the substance "tested positive for heroin" and that the "alleged heroin laced liquid," soluble in motor oil and thus, easily extracted "weighed approximately 250 grams." According to investigative reporter Jason Vest, the package belonged to an unnamed DynCorp employee who was sending the parcel to the company's Andean operation headquarters at Patrick Air Force Base in Florida. Corporate spin doctors denied the samples contained heroin and tried to blame the Colombians use of "faulty equipment" for producing "an incorrect reading." The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, while not blaming test results on faulty equipment were clueless as to the eventual fate of the seized samples. The terse statement closed by saying the embassy "has asked the CNP to clarify the status of any investigation of this matter." Translation: "we don't know and don't want to know." Nearly two decades ago, Lt. Col. Oliver North dreamed of conducting U.S. foreign policy with "off-the-shelf, stand-alone" entities immune from Congressional oversight or troublesome questions by journalists or the American public. "Plausibly deniable" corporations such as DynCorp seem to fit the bill. Sources: Peter Gorman, "Ex-Navy Seals on Pay-Per-Kill Mission. Plan Colombia's Mercenaries," The Narco News Bulletin, February 19, 2001, http://www.narconews.com/iquitos1.html Garry M. Leech and Eric Fichtl, "Are They Civilians or Mercenaries?" Colombia Report, February 26, 2001, http://www.colombiareport.org/colombia52.html Jeremy Bigwood, "DynCorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War," CorpWatch, May 23, 2001, http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/military/featured/2001/dyncorp.html Jason Vest, "Drug War, Inc." In These Times, May 28, 2001, http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2513/vest2513.html Jason Vest, "DynCorp's Drug Problem, The Nation, July 3, 2001, http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=vest20010703 Jason Vest, "Plan Colombia Broadens," The Nation, July 17, 2001, http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=vest20010717 Juan Forero, "U.S. Pilots Fight Coca in Colombia," The New York Times, August 17, 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/17/international/17COLO.html **************************** Red Palante! Comunicacion Antagonista y Resistencia Cultural [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://inquilino.net/palante _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ ****************************
