Le Socialiste
16th September 2013, 00:08
The obvious answer would be that yes, it is and has been. Interesting article nonetheless:
Is the U.S. Enabling the Humanitarian Crisis in Colombia?
Millions remain displaced and war crimes are ongoing, but U.S. military aid keeps flowing.
BY JEREMY KRYT
As the fighting drags on, and accusations of abuse at the hands of the armed forces continues, Santos’s cozy relationship with the Obama administration has a growing chorus of critics crying foul over the way the Colombian armed forces have been using all the high-tech toys and funding they’ve been getting from Uncle Sam.
It’s a cruelly hot day in rebel-held territory. On a crumbling and abandoned plantation, in the insurgency riddled Cauca region of southwestern Colombia, more than three dozen indigenous leaders have gathered in the shade of the old manor house for a tribal meeting. Children’s murals and peace-themed banners cover the white-washed adobe walls. Outside, in the mortar-cratered fields that once grew sugar cane for the California market, shirtless men labor in the noon heat to plant beans and squash.
“We’re in a hard place,” says Ernesto Conda, a ruling council member of the Nasa tribe, one of several indigenous groups native to Cauca. Conda is 44 and wears his hair in a sleek black queue streaked with gray.
“Our people are always under fire here—always in range of the mortars and machine guns,” he says, taking a break from the tribal council to show this reporter around the former plantation, which the Nasa have occupied in a bid to raise subsistence crops. The twenty or so families who now squat here were driven from their homes in Cauca’s jungle-covered mountains by fighting between leftist guerrillas, right-wing militias, and Colombian troops.
These Nasa families are among the 4.7 million internally displaced Colombians produced by five decades of civil war, according to a recent study by a government-sponsored truth commission called the National Center for Historic Memory. The report revealed that the number of internal refugees in this resource-rich Andean nation is the highest of any country on earth. The struggle between Bogota’s armed forces and right-wing proxy militias and the nation’s largest, leftist insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has claimed more than 220,000 lives, 82 percent of them civilians. Untold thousands of native Nasa have also been killed in the world’s longest-running civil war. In the Cauca region alone at least 128 native peoples have been slain in conflict-related violence since the start of 2012.
Peace talks aimed at ending the war with FARC have been dragging on in Havana, Cuba, since last fall. Little progress has been made so far, and the fighting continues apace. At least 48 government troops have been killed in the last two months, and at least 12 insurgents lost their lives to airstrikes in August. August also saw civilians erupt over the root causes of the armed conflict—vast poverty and stark inequality of land ownership. Massive protests aimed at land reform and curtailing economic globalization shook the country. Despite a crackdown on demonstrations by President Juan Manuel Santos, the ongoing protests continue to paralyze shipping and transportation, especially in war-torn rural regions like Cauca.
In spite of its poor track record on human rights, Colombia remains a close regional ally of Washington, and, under the umbrella of the Drug War, receives more military aid than any other nation in the hemisphere. But now, in the wake of the truth commission report and Bogota’s brutal response to the nationwide protests, a growing chorus of international observers contend that U.S. foreign policy—including military aid and trade agreements—could be helping to fuel the violence and contributing to the plights of those caught in the crossfire, like Conda’s displaced Nasa families.
“Free trade agreements, and globalization in general, have winners and losers,” says Adam Isacson, of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), in an interview with In These Times. “When they protest what is being done to them, those on the losing end are often accused of sympathizing with guerrillas, and end up facing a response from Colombia's security forces. The same forces that have been aided and strengthened by many years of U.S. assistance.”
'A real humanitarian crisis'
Desperate living conditions among Colombia’s displaced and rural poor sent tens of thousands of small farmers and indigenous into the streets on August 19, in a series of mass protests that shook the nation. Demanding land reform and an end to U.S.-brokered free-trade agreements that undercut the local economy, the farmers were soon joined by teachers and union workers in setting up road blocks at 72 major arteries across the country. On the last weekend of the month, 30,000 demonstrators marched on Bogota itself. After initially declaring that the protests did not exist, the government declared martial law. So far, clashes between demonstrators and police have left six protestors dead, with scores more wounded as authorities have repeatedly opened fire on peaceful marches with tear gas and even live rounds.
“This is a real humanitarian crisis,” says Judith Maldonado, director of the Bogota-based law firm Luis Carlos Peroz, which specializes in human rights cases. “The farmers feel they have been abandoned by the government. They look around and they see that they have no education system, no medical centers, and no future. So they are manifesting themselves in peaceful demonstrations,” Maldonado says. “But the government can’t tolerate mass protests.”
To stem the protests, Colombian President Jose Santos ordered the mobilization of 50,000 troops to occupy Bogota and other urban zones. Nasa chief Conda says such an iron-fisted response by the government will do nothing to ease the widespread suffering and harsh living conditions that inspired the popular uprising.
“The fighting has been going on now since the middle of the last century,” says Conda, clutching the tasseled, silver-capped baton that is a symbol of his tribal authority. “It’s a perpetual social crisis for our communities—especially for our young people, because they don’t see a way out.”
The rest of the article may be found here (http://inthesetimes.com/article/15475/us_military_aid_and_colombias_human_rights_crisis/).
Is the U.S. Enabling the Humanitarian Crisis in Colombia?
Millions remain displaced and war crimes are ongoing, but U.S. military aid keeps flowing.
BY JEREMY KRYT
As the fighting drags on, and accusations of abuse at the hands of the armed forces continues, Santos’s cozy relationship with the Obama administration has a growing chorus of critics crying foul over the way the Colombian armed forces have been using all the high-tech toys and funding they’ve been getting from Uncle Sam.
It’s a cruelly hot day in rebel-held territory. On a crumbling and abandoned plantation, in the insurgency riddled Cauca region of southwestern Colombia, more than three dozen indigenous leaders have gathered in the shade of the old manor house for a tribal meeting. Children’s murals and peace-themed banners cover the white-washed adobe walls. Outside, in the mortar-cratered fields that once grew sugar cane for the California market, shirtless men labor in the noon heat to plant beans and squash.
“We’re in a hard place,” says Ernesto Conda, a ruling council member of the Nasa tribe, one of several indigenous groups native to Cauca. Conda is 44 and wears his hair in a sleek black queue streaked with gray.
“Our people are always under fire here—always in range of the mortars and machine guns,” he says, taking a break from the tribal council to show this reporter around the former plantation, which the Nasa have occupied in a bid to raise subsistence crops. The twenty or so families who now squat here were driven from their homes in Cauca’s jungle-covered mountains by fighting between leftist guerrillas, right-wing militias, and Colombian troops.
These Nasa families are among the 4.7 million internally displaced Colombians produced by five decades of civil war, according to a recent study by a government-sponsored truth commission called the National Center for Historic Memory. The report revealed that the number of internal refugees in this resource-rich Andean nation is the highest of any country on earth. The struggle between Bogota’s armed forces and right-wing proxy militias and the nation’s largest, leftist insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), has claimed more than 220,000 lives, 82 percent of them civilians. Untold thousands of native Nasa have also been killed in the world’s longest-running civil war. In the Cauca region alone at least 128 native peoples have been slain in conflict-related violence since the start of 2012.
Peace talks aimed at ending the war with FARC have been dragging on in Havana, Cuba, since last fall. Little progress has been made so far, and the fighting continues apace. At least 48 government troops have been killed in the last two months, and at least 12 insurgents lost their lives to airstrikes in August. August also saw civilians erupt over the root causes of the armed conflict—vast poverty and stark inequality of land ownership. Massive protests aimed at land reform and curtailing economic globalization shook the country. Despite a crackdown on demonstrations by President Juan Manuel Santos, the ongoing protests continue to paralyze shipping and transportation, especially in war-torn rural regions like Cauca.
In spite of its poor track record on human rights, Colombia remains a close regional ally of Washington, and, under the umbrella of the Drug War, receives more military aid than any other nation in the hemisphere. But now, in the wake of the truth commission report and Bogota’s brutal response to the nationwide protests, a growing chorus of international observers contend that U.S. foreign policy—including military aid and trade agreements—could be helping to fuel the violence and contributing to the plights of those caught in the crossfire, like Conda’s displaced Nasa families.
“Free trade agreements, and globalization in general, have winners and losers,” says Adam Isacson, of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), in an interview with In These Times. “When they protest what is being done to them, those on the losing end are often accused of sympathizing with guerrillas, and end up facing a response from Colombia's security forces. The same forces that have been aided and strengthened by many years of U.S. assistance.”
'A real humanitarian crisis'
Desperate living conditions among Colombia’s displaced and rural poor sent tens of thousands of small farmers and indigenous into the streets on August 19, in a series of mass protests that shook the nation. Demanding land reform and an end to U.S.-brokered free-trade agreements that undercut the local economy, the farmers were soon joined by teachers and union workers in setting up road blocks at 72 major arteries across the country. On the last weekend of the month, 30,000 demonstrators marched on Bogota itself. After initially declaring that the protests did not exist, the government declared martial law. So far, clashes between demonstrators and police have left six protestors dead, with scores more wounded as authorities have repeatedly opened fire on peaceful marches with tear gas and even live rounds.
“This is a real humanitarian crisis,” says Judith Maldonado, director of the Bogota-based law firm Luis Carlos Peroz, which specializes in human rights cases. “The farmers feel they have been abandoned by the government. They look around and they see that they have no education system, no medical centers, and no future. So they are manifesting themselves in peaceful demonstrations,” Maldonado says. “But the government can’t tolerate mass protests.”
To stem the protests, Colombian President Jose Santos ordered the mobilization of 50,000 troops to occupy Bogota and other urban zones. Nasa chief Conda says such an iron-fisted response by the government will do nothing to ease the widespread suffering and harsh living conditions that inspired the popular uprising.
“The fighting has been going on now since the middle of the last century,” says Conda, clutching the tasseled, silver-capped baton that is a symbol of his tribal authority. “It’s a perpetual social crisis for our communities—especially for our young people, because they don’t see a way out.”
The rest of the article may be found here (http://inthesetimes.com/article/15475/us_military_aid_and_colombias_human_rights_crisis/).