------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Sept. 5, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
ELITE TROOPS AND "CIVILIAN MILITIAS": NEW PRESIDENT REMILITARIZES COLOMBIA By Teresa Gutierrez The war-ravaged nation of Colombia is rapidly becoming ever more militarized as the new president, Alvaro Uribe Velez, moves to carry out his aggressive program. On Aug. 17, just five days after taking office, Uribe declared a state of emergency. Uribe was Washington's candidate in the election. The emergency decree authorizes the government to immediately impose a one-time assets tax on wealthy Colombians and is designed to raise $778 million quickly. The money is to be allocated to create two elite mobile army battalions, to recruit 10,000 police and to fund a 100,000- member informant program. Under the emergency decree, the Uribe government is allowed to impose extended curfews; prevent access to certain areas without prior court approval; censor the media; and seize land, equipment and professional expertise from private citizens. (Washington Post, Aug. 13) It requires Colombians, especially those living in rural areas, to inform the government of their travel plans at least two days before they leave town. The government can also suspend elected officials contributing to "public unrest." PARAMILITARIES IN GUISE OF 'CIVILIAN DEFENSE FORCE' The Uribe administration also announced that it would arm 15,000 peasants as part of his plan to create a "civilian defense force." The recruits will receive a small salary, uniforms and boots. The government is looking into the cost of supplying them with assault rifles, machine guns, mortars and grenade launchers. (Associated Press, Aug. 23) Uribe has used such tactics before. In the mid-1990s, as mayor of Medellin, he helped arm and supply paramilitary forces also called civilian defense groups. He created 69 such units, providing them with radios and motorcycles and authorizing them to carry guns. Earlier, as head of the civil aviation administration in the early 1980s, Uribe's policies had served the interests of the international drug trade. He authorized permits for the construction of private airstrips in Medellin (Washington Post, May 20). These did more for the drug cartel than for the peasants, who desperately needed roads, not airstrips, to sell their goods. Uribe's plan now is to create a militia of 1 million civilians to help the armed forces. And who are more willing to enlist in these civilian militias than the paramilitaries? The election of Uribe, fully backed by the U.S. government, strengthens the hand of the very force that has carried out the most horrific kind of terror against the people of Colombia. For decades the paramilitaries have committed countless atrocities. Best known as the AUC--standing for the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia--they are led by Carlos Casta�o as well as by Colombian army officials. The AUC has its roots in paramilitary armies built up by drug lords, according to a British Broadcasting Corporation report of Jan. 7: "As the drug lords became land owners, buying up vast tracts of Colombia--some 3.5 million hectares of agricultural land--they took over local self-defense groups and set up their own, to protect not the local population but their own interests." Although the U.S. and Colombian governments have paid lip service to criticisms of the paramilitaries, neither has done anything to stop them. In this day and age of Bush's so- called "war on terror," this is proof that they serve at the pleasure of the capitalist rulers. Human rights organizations, even those based in the U.S., admit that the paramilitaries are the main abusers of human rights in Colombia. Their terror against the peasants, trade unionists and others they suspect to be in league with the rebels is well known. Because of worldwide pressure, these death squads have been forced to change their tactics. In July, the founding leaders of the AUC, in a move clearly intended to help clean up the image of the incoming Uribe administration, announced they were dissolving the organization because they had been infiltrated by drug traffickers and had lost their and principles." But the killings have continued with impunity. (Washington Post, June 24) What changed was the tactic. Now peasants are being killed three at a time instead of 30 at a time. This more selective killing is not labeled a massacre by human rights groups. Even Stratfor.com, an online thinktank whose name stands for "strategic forecasting" and that sells political analysis to corporate and government clients, said in a July 19 report that the AUC's dissolution could mean "that violence in Colombia likely will increase as some regional paramilitary groups, now free of any central control, may engage in more frequent and bloodier human rights atrocities." It added that a new paramilitary organization "could seek an arrangement with Uribe that would give it political legitimacy and possibly a more structured cooperative role in the coming war against the FARC and the ELN." A WAR FOR SOCIAL CHANGE The FARC-EP is the main rebel force in Colombia. The acronym stands for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia--People's Army. It has been fighting for social change in this highly polarized country for many decades. Uribe's escalation of war and repression will not be directed against those who have brought miserable conditions for the people of Colombia, but against those who wish to end those miserable conditions. Uribe appointee Gen. Carlos Alberto Ospina now controls the Colombian army. Ospina served as an instructor at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., which has become known as the School of the Assassins because Latin American officers trained there have gone on to carry out some of the worst atrocities in the hemisphere. The election of Alvaro Uribe means the strengthening of an unholy alliance between U.S. imperialism and the ruling oligarchy of Colombia. Only the people's struggle in Colombia and the worldwide anti-war movement can break up this deadly alliance. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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