At the end of October, the Bush administration announced it will provide the Colombian government with "counter-terrorist aid" in addition to the multibillion dollar military package already given to the regime allegedly to fight drug trafficking. An October 26 Associated press release said that this latest round of military aid will be to "to train and equip elite anti-kidnapping and bomb squads, assist civilian and military counter-terror investigators," according to Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia.

Backing this effort, "U.S. senators have already called for Colombia's war against drugs to evolve into the war against terrorism," commented an October 27 Financial Times article. The U.S. State Department has placed on its list of foreign terrorist organizations the 20,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)--which controls up to 40 percent of the country--and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).

In July 2000 the U.S. Congress passed a two-year $1.3 billion military aid package to the government of Colombia. This included supplying the regime with an armada of 18 Blackhawk and 42 Huey military helicopters, and providing some 150 military "advisers" to train Colombian army battalions for use in fighting rebel organizations. Landlord and capitalist forces in the country also back rightist paramilitary groups with close ties to Colombia's army, which are used to conduct a campaign of terror against peasants and working-class fighters. They've carried out thousands of documented political killings over the past several years.

Just as "the Taliban regime and Osama bin Laden do not represent Islam," Patterson arrogantly proclaimed, "the terrorist and drug trafficking groups in Colombia show their cynicism and hypocrisy when they say they are seeking social justice."

Patterson made clear that plans for this stepped-up aid and "intelligence" assistance was already in the works prior to the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but now these efforts are "intensifying."

U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell said that the FARC was in the same league as al-Qaeda, bin Laden's organization. According to a Financial Times article, "President George Bush has summoned Mr. Pastrana to Washington" for a November 11 meeting. This move, the financial daily notes, "reflects a growing frustration with President Andres Pastrana's failure to deal with his warring factions in the name of terrorism." One of the additional steps that Washington is seeking is the extradition of rebel and rightist paramilitary members to face charges in the United States.

The new moves to deepen U.S. military intervention in Colombia comes amidst a sharpening of a long-term economic crisis in the country. Some 600,000 state workers held a 24-hour national strike November 1 against the austerity policies of the Pastrana regime and a rising unemployment estimated at about 25 percent. "There are also 2 million people displaced by violence and an impoverished peasantry," said Julio Gomez, president of the General Workers of Colombia.

Washington's interest in defeating the armed opposition forces also stems from the potential to increase oil imports from the country, as 30 oil companies, nine of them new to Colombia, have signed exploration contracts for nearly 50 oil fields. Though currently with less than 1 percent of the world's total proven reserves, Colombia is Latin America's third-largest oil exporter. Some 16 percent of U.S. oil imports currently come from Venezuela, a country that Washington has increasingly shaky relations with.

In addition to the growing military collaboration with the Colombian regime, the U.S. government signed a 10-year lease for use of a military base in Manta, Ecuador, at the end of 1999. Washington has upgraded the facility for the stationing of some 200 U.S. military and civilian personnel there. According to Gen. Charles Wilhelm, the commander in chief of the U.S. Southern Command, this facility "enables us to achieve full coverage of Peru, Colombia, and...areas of Bolivia."  
 
Expanding U.S. military bases in region
The U.S. military has also exclusive use of the Comalapa International Airport in El Salvador and airfields in the Dutch colonies of Aruba and Curaçao.

In Argentina, the U.S. rulers are also targeting the working-class resistance centered around the northern province of Salta, justifying their moves once again in the name of fighting terrorism. Workers and peasants there have been involved in ongoing protests against wage cuts and attacks on other social gains. From August 22 through September 11 the Pentagon conducted what it described as its "largest joint combined service exercise" in the region, with 400 U.S. troops joining 900 military personnel from nearby South American countries for these operations.

U.S. officials have also raised the charge of terrorism against Daniel Ortega, the candidate for president of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua. Washington, through its political statements and expenditures of $5.6 million to intervene in this election, has made clear that they are strongly opposed to Ortega once again becoming president of this Central American country. Ortega, who led the FSLN government in Nicaragua from the triumph of the revolution there in 1979 until 1990, was defeated by Liberal Party candidate Enrique Bolaños in the November 4 contest.

On October 4 "the State Department issued a statement reviewing the U.S. government's list of 'grave reservations' about the FSLN, adding to it 'ties to supporters of terrorism,'" according to the Washington Post. The following day, "a State Department official participating in a conference at the University of Pittsburgh, singled out three FSLN leaders--Tomás Borge, Lenin Cerna and Alvaro Baltonado--for harboring violent extremists from the Middle East, Europe and Latin America," the news story reported.

Washington has also announced that it is renewing military assistance to the Nicaraguan Armed Forces for the first time since the time that the dictatorial regime of Anastasio Somosa was in power in the 1970s. This will include joint naval operations under a treaty supposedly aimed at drug trafficking that went into effect at the end of October.

Meanwhile, Washington is boosting its military presence in the Philippines. About 30 U.S. "advisers" are on the southern island of Basilan to assist the Philippine Army in conducting operations against the Abu Sayyaf group. U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the troops were there for "advice and assessment."

"But," noted an October 30 New York Times article, "American officials did acknowledge today that the military advisers were likely to offer more than advice in coming days."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home