Drugs, Guns, and Money: US in Colombia

Recently, the RAND National Defense Research Institute
published a report entitled, "Arms Trafficking and
Colombia." As RAND explains, the report is based on
federally-funded research "supported by the Office of
the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the unified
commands, and the defense agencies . . . ." What RAND
found is fascinating, while at the same time likely
disappointing to these "sponsors" as well as the NRA
which just held its national convention here in
Pittsburgh.

Colombia has the highest murder rate in the world —
77.5 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants. To put this in
context, if the U.S. had the same murder rate, we would
suffer approximately 230,000 murders per year as
compared to the 18,000 a year we now endure. And,
according to Colombia’s own National Police, 85% of
Colombia’s murders are committed with small arms.
Colombia has more than 3 million illegal small arms in
addition to 1 million legal ones. RAND concludes that
the proliferation of small arms is fuelling the
violence in Colombia. As RAND concludes, "small arms
proliferation remains among the most serious of the
country’s problems" and is one of the chief factors
contributing to the violence and instablility in
Colombia — a country suffering from intense violence
and a decades-long civil war involving the the
Colombian military and its paramilitary allies
(organized under the umbrella known as the AUC) on the
one side, and two chief guerilla groups, the ELN and
the FARC on the other. RAND concludes that the AUC, ELN
and FARC — all designated as "terrorists" by the U.S.
State Department — depend upon their very survival and
growth on a ready supply of arms, particularly small
arms. As the report states, "[s]ustained access to
weapons and ammunition supplies is crucial to . . . to
each group’s organizational strength, power and
influence."

And, RAND concludes that armed groups in Colombia have
a ready supply of small arms to continue the war and
that small arms trafficking has "contributed to the
escalation of violence in Colombia, revealing an
important dynamic between weapons trafficking and
political violence." Even more ominously, the Rand
study concludes that "small arms transfers have had a
negative impact on regional stability in Latin America.
Ready access to weapons has helped to both entrench and
empower guerilla and parmilitary forces in Colombia.
Not only has this situation threatened the security
ofthe fourth-largest economy in Latin America, it has
also triggered highly deleterious cross-border flows of
refugees, drugs and violence that have already had a
negative impact on Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and
Ecuador."

What is most striking about this report, and which
should cause great concern among U.S. citizens and
policy makers is RAND’s conclusions about how these
small arms have been made and continue to be made
available. Thus, RAND relates that a large portion of
the arms being shipped into Colombia are coming from
"Cold War-era weapons stockpiles in Nicarauga,
Honduras, [and] El Salvador." And, of course, these
stockpiles largely came from the United States to begin
with. Indeed, the Rand report notes that a large
portion of these "Cold War-era weapons," including 20
to 75 thousand pounds of small arms and ammunition,
were provided to various Central American governments
illegally by the U.S. government through what is now
known as the "Iran-Contra Affair." The Rand report
notes that "[m]any of these weapons are still available
throughout Latin America" and are making there way into
Colombia, with disastrous effects. Indeed, the Rand
report concludes that the small arms delivered to
Central America illegally through the "Iran-Contra
Affair" "consitute an important component of Latin
America’s black market."

As the reader may recall, the "Iran-Contra Affair,"
some refer to it as a "scandal," involved the Regan
Administration’s illegally and secretly providing
financial and military support to the Nicaraguan
Contras after Congress had expressly cut-off and
forbidden any aid to the Contras. This support to the
Contras was in turn funded by illegal sales of arms to
Iran, which at the time was designated a "terrorist"
state by the U.S., and to which arms sales were
therefore prohibited. Finally, as the Senate Committee
Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy
(chaired by Senator John F. Kerry) reported, "it is
clear that individuals who provided support for the
Contras were involved in drug trafficking, the supply
network of the Contras was used by drug trafficking
organizations, and elements of the Contras themselves
knowingly received financial and material assistance
from drug traffickers." In short, as RAND reports, this
illegal and secret guns, money, and drugs scheme
carried out by high-ranking officials of the Reagan
administration are being felt today throughout Latin
America, and in Colombia in particular, in tragic ways.

Next, RAND concludes that the three armed groups in
Colombia all obtain arms from the Colombian military
itself. To wit, as RAND explains, the ostensibly left-
wing ELN and FARC obtain arms from the military through
theft and force, and the right-wing AUC paramilitiaries
through voluntary donations by the military which
collaborates with these paramilitaries. What is most
significant about this is that the U.S. is providing
assistance to the Colombian military at record levels.
Colombia, which is received over $2.5 billion in
military aid from the U.S. since the year 2000 is now
the 3rd largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the
world.

In short, RAND has concluded that the U.S.’s military
assistance is finding its way into the hands of
designated "terrorist" groups. And, in the case of the
AUC paramilitaries, this military assistance is being
voluntarily offered to these terrorists. Indeed, the
U.S. government is quite aware of this fact, with the
U.S. State Department reporting in its 2002 and 2003
human rights reports on Colombia that the military
cooperates with the paramilitaries in a number of way,
but most notably by "providing them with weapons and
ammunition, and joining their ranks while off duty."

This is quite disconcerting for at least 2 reasons.
First, while the U.S. is claiming to be fighting
terrorism in Colombia, the AUC is undeniably the
biggest perpetrator of terror in Colombia. Indeed, the
well-respected Colombia Commission of Jurists has
concluded that the paramiltiaries are responsible for
80 to 85% of the political assassinations in Colombia.
Second, the AUC is also the single biggest drug
trafficker in Colombia, accounting for 40% of
Colombia’s drug trafficking according to our own Drug
Enforcement Administration ("DEA"). And, not
surprisingly, the AUC uses its drug proceeds to
continue purchasing weapons — again, in large part
from the caches of arms dumped into Latin American
through the "Iran-Contra Affair." The conclusion is
unmistakable. As RAND itself states, much to the
chagrin of its federal sponsors, the U.S. has, by the
above, "fanned the flames of the violence in Colombia."
And, it continues to do so through continued military
assistance for Colombia. In terms of the moral and
policy implications, the U.S. must now act to stop
fueling this conflict in Colombia by, at a minimum,
ending military aid to Colombia, prohibiting its allies
from continuing to provide arms to Colombia (again,
arms which largely came from the U.S. to begin with),
and demand that the Colombian state and military cease
their supplying of the paramilitaries and other
criminal groups with arms necessary for these groups’
survival.

Daniel Kovalik is a Labor & Human Rights Lawyer living in Pittsburgh

ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=9&ItemID=5375