Thousands Of Ex-Paramilitaries Active In Colombia - Study

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Published December 01, 2008 9:29 PM | A A A Dow Jones Newswire
Thousands Of Ex-Paramilitaries Active In Colombia - Study

BOGOTA (AFP)--More than 10,000 demobilized paramilitary fighters are currently active in gangs working for Colombian drug lords, according to a study out Monday.

The gangs operate in about a quarter of Colombia, said a report by the Nuevo Arco Iris, or New Rainbow, nonprofit group.

Gang members are made up of mostly former right-wing paramilitary fighters with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, which formed in the 1980s to fight leftist guerillas.

The AUC demobilized in 2006 and disarmed its 32,000 members as part of the peace process with the government of President Alvaro Uribe.

AUC-linked violence killed thousands of Colombians over the years, and the group was involved in a series of grisly crimes.



Read more: http://www.smartmoney.com/news/ON/?story=ON-20081201-000652-2128&hpadref=1

[flamingdem]

1. Smart Money magazine has the story!?

Hmm. Are they a good investment? Seriously that is a horrible result of the US funded war, perhaps similar to El Salvador. So now there is another force of poor young men who are trained in torture and the use of weapons.. great. Pretty soon they'll be making their way to South Florida.

[judasdisney]

2. Bolivia, Ecuador & Venezuela have ZERO death squads. But Colombia is our ally?

Watch out Obama. Your first crisis is the Venezuelan "Bay of Pigs" designed to divide Obama from Chavez, and make Obama ally with fascist Colombia & Uribe.

[Judi Lynn]

3. No doubt that's eminently possible. Of course you recall your reaction when you found out about

Operation Northwoods. As crude, and vicious as that was, as sinister, dishonest, dirty, it was all the way back in the 1960's. Think how much time the same kind of people have had since then to refine, fine-tune this kind of manipulation of public perception. We know it happens, starting in our own country's history with the attack on the USS Maine, in Havana Harbor, then we also have vivid memories of the Bay of Tonkin. This underhanded way of tricking the US public into supporting outright filthy wars against innocent people has been with us for a very long time, unfortunately.

U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba
Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba
By David Ruppe
N E W Y O R K, May 1, 2001


In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. However, the plans were not connected to the agency, he notes.

The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years.

"These were Joint Chiefs of Staff documents. The reason these were held secret for so long is the Joint Chiefs never wanted to give these up because they were so embarrassing," Bamford told ABCNEWS.com.

"The whole point of a democracy is to have leaders responding to the public will, and here this is the complete reverse, the military trying to trick the American people into a war that they want but that nobody else wants."

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662

The people who back this kind of action are NOT the same people our puffed-up, swaggering chickenhawk patriots should feel have made our country's history noble, pure, and proud. There's a vast gulf between the pompous, condescending claims of superior virtue made for a country with this history, and the simple truth itself.

[judasdisney]

5. Operation Northwoods -- you're absolutely right, Judi Lynn

Unlike nearly all my Democratic brothers & sisters, I am dreading January 20.

The day that Obama sides with Uribe, and against Chavez & Morales & Correa, out of expediency or naivete or ignorance or gullibility, I can no longer remain another day in the U.S.

I can't stomach what's coming.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Plan Colombia Devastates Afro-Colombian Communities

December 1, 2008
Plan Colombia Devastates Afro-Colombian Communities
by Garry Leech

~snip~
In 2000, the Clinton administration launched the multi-billion dollar counter-narcotics initiative called Plan Colombia. The primary objective was to eradicate cocaine at its source: the coca plant. Almost 50 percent of the coca cultivated in Colombia at the time was located in the southern department of Putumayo. In the ensuing years, as increasing amounts of coca were fumigated in that region, cultivation shifted to neighboring departments, including Nariño. Coca cultivation in San José and its surrounding environs began in 2001, suggesting that it resulted from the process of coca displacement caused by Plan Colombia’s intensive aerial spraying in Putumayo.

The continued presence of coca along the Tapaje River illustrates the failure of Plan Colombia to attain its principal counternarcotics objective of reducing coca cultivation by 50 percent in five years. In fact, according to a recently released U.S. congressional report, coca cultivation increased by 15 percent between 2000 and 2006 despite more than $5 billion in U.S. funding for Plan Colombia. Furthermore, the arrival of coca and Plan Colombia in Nariño has resulted in the region having more armed fighters per square meter than anywhere in the world outside of Iraq.

Afro-Colombians constitute the overwhelming majority of the residents of San José and as such, under Law 70 of 1993, the village and its surrounding land exist under collective title. Many residents farm on small plots of land outside the village, cultivating cacao, bananas, papaya, corn and their only viable cash crop, coca. According to many residents, villagers turned to coca cultivation in 2001 in order to improve their dire economic situation. However, Plan Colombia’s aerial fumigation operations soon began targeting the department of Nariño, including the Tapaje region.

According to Colonel Fredy Cruz of the Colombian army’s Special Counternarcotics Brigade based in the city of Tumaco, his units fumigated 32,700 hectares of coca in the first six months of 2008—a total that did not include the number of hectares sprayed by the counternarcotics units of the Colombian National Police. But as has occurred in other parts of Colombia, the spraying killed not only coca, but also food crops.

~snip~
Plan Colombia and President Alvaro Uribe’s Democratic Security Strategy have not only brought fumigations to this remote region, they have also brought violence in the form of the Colombian military. In its efforts to gain control of the country’s remote rural regions, much of which has traditionally been the domain of the FARC, the national government is establishing a presence in many villages. However, this state presence often only consists of soldiers. Such is the case in San José and other communities along the Tapaje River. The arrival of the Colombian army’s 19th Mobile Brigade in 2007 led to massive displacement and killings. More than a thousand villagers were forced to flee their homes and to make their way downriver to the towns of El Charco and Guapi—the latter in the neighboring department of Cauca.

Numerous killings occurred in San José and in the surrounding villages. Many locals blame the military and the paramilitaries for the violence. “I don’t call what the government is doing ‘democratic security,’ in my way of thinking it is increasing the violence.” said one displaced villager who is now living with more than 300 other displaced people in El Charco. “We didn’t have problems with illegal groups before, but under ‘democratic security’ we now have to deal with a single group where we live: the paramilitaries. The government says that there are guerrillas in our communities but that’s not true. Democratic security has only brought us more violence.”

More:
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia299.htm