Bush Continues to Support Colombia’s Para-State

6.03.07

Gary Leech
www.colombiajournal.org

As the Colombian government becomes increasingly engulfed by the rapidly evolving “para-politics” scandal, the Bush administration refuses to question the legitimacy of democracy in Colombia. The US government continues to stand firmly behind Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America, despite the fact that dozens of pro-Uribe legislators, the president’s former campaign advisor and head of Colombia’s secret police, the family of his foreign minister, and several top military officials have all been implicated in the scandal linking government representatives to right-wing paramilitary death squads. Despite all the overwhelming evidence suggesting a significant democratic deficit, the Bush administration has not once questioned the legitimacy of Colombia’s democracy or re-evaluated its massive funding of a government and military closely linked to paramilitaries on the US State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.

Apologists for President Uribe, both inside and outside the Bush administration, like to point out that the recent revelations exposing links between the Colombian government and paramilitaries belonging to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) are a result of the Colombian president’s peace process with the right-wing death squads. One such apologist is Alvaro Vargas Llosa, director of the right-wing think tank Center for Global Prosperity. In a recent column, Vargas Llosa reiterated the right wing claim that Uribe should be commended, not criticized: “Although the recent revelations confirm that many public figures were in cahoots with the AUC, observers are missing an essential point: Almost all of the disclosures stem from the process set in motion by Uribe’s government in pressuring the AUC to put down its weapons, confess its crimes and lift the veil of secrecy that concealed its ties to the establishment.”

Such claims are simply not true. While paramilitaries have provided valuable information under the terms of their demobilization regarding the whereabouts of mass graves and other human rights related issues, the AUC has not provided significant evidence that unveils the “secrecy that concealed its ties to the establishment.” In fact, when AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso confessed his crimes in order to obtain a reduced sentence under the Justice and Peace Law, the only government and military officials he named as collaborators with the paramilitaries were either dead or already in prison, thereby posing no threat to ongoing collusion.

Most of the information that led to the para-politics investigation was retrieved from the laptop of paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, also known as Jorge 40, who is also participating in the demobilization process. However, neither the laptop nor the information it contained were delivered to authorities as part of the demobilization process. The laptop was discovered in the possession of Jorge 40’s right-hand man when he was arrested last year. Investigators got their hands on this information following a criminal arrest that had nothing to do with the demobilization of the paramilitaries.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, the laptop contained evidence that unemployed peasants in northern Colombia were paid to act like paramilitary fighters and to participate in the demobilization process while the real paramilitaries continued committing crimes. These crimes, according to information on the laptop, included the killing of 558 individuals in just one region of northern Colombia during the cease-fire that the paramilitaries were required to implement in order to participate in the demobilization talks. The laptop also contained evidence of paramilitary links to local and national politicians as well as state security forces. It is this evidence found on Jorge 40’s laptop that spawned the para-politics investigation, not confessions or evidence obtained under the Justice and Peace Law.

President Uribe has responded to legislators who have used the revelations to criticize his government’s links to the paramilitaries by accusing them of being terrorists. The legislator most critical of the government’s collusion with paramilitaries is the Polo Democratico’s Senator Gustavo Petro, a former M-19 guerrilla who demobilized more than 15 years ago. In a recent reference to Petro and other former guerrillas-turned-legislators, Uribe claimed that they “simply went from being terrorists in camouflage to being terrorists in business suits.” Such an inflammatory accusation is not the sort of response one would expect from a president who was intent on getting to the bottom of the country’s democratic crisis.

Three paragraphs in a recent Boston Globe article clearly illustrate the enormity of the democratic crisis in Colombia. The article lists the most significant fallout from the scandal so far:

Eight pro-Uribe congressmen have been arrested for collaborating with paramilitaries, and dozens of national and regional politicians, some who have apparently fled the country, are under investigation. ... A decorated colonel has been relieved of his post, and other former military officials are under investigation.

On Monday, Uribe’s foreign minister, María Consuelo Araújo, resigned after the Supreme Court arrested her brother, an Uribe-allied senator, for involvement in the kidnapping of a political rival. Her father, a former governor, another brother, and a cousin are also under investigation.

On Thursday came the worst blow. Jorge Noguera, who served as Uribe’s campaign manager and later as head of Colombia’s secret police, was arrested by the attorney general. Noguera is accused of giving a hit list of trade unionists and activists to paramilitaries, who then killed them. Another former secret police official is serving an 18-year sentence for purging police records of paramilitaries and drug traffickers.

The Bush administration has repeatedly pointed out that while some of those closest to him have been charged with crimes, President Uribe himself has not yet been directly implicated in the scandal. But this contradicts the US stance towards other regional governments that Washington has worked hard to portray as un-democratic in recent years. Venezuela and Haiti are two such cases, despite the fact that the corruption in these governments, as well as the human rights implications of that corruption, has paled in comparison to that in Colombia. In April 2004, the United States led a coup to overthrow the democratically-elected president of Haiti Jean Bertrand Aristide following four years of economic sanctions imposed on the country because of its alleged democratic shortcomings. However, as is currently the case with Uribe in Colombia, there was no evidence directly linking Aristide to electoral irregularities or human rights violations by pro-Aristide groups.



In April 2002, the United States was the first, and one of the only, countries in the world to recognize the coup regime that overthrew Venezuela’s democratically-elected President Hugo Chávez. And since Chávez was re-installed in power two days later, the Bush administration has continued to go out of its way to suggest that he has “authoritarian tendencies” and “does not govern democratically.” In reality, many of the Venezuelan government’s policies criticized by the Bush administration as authoritarian and un-democratic, such as the media law and the restructuring of the country’s Supreme Court, were not implemented through presidential decree but by majority vote in the country’s National Assembly. In fact, the process was no less democratic than a Republican president such as George W. Bush being able to push desired bills through a Republican-controlled Congress.

Washington’s continuing claims that Venezuela’s democracy is under threat are both ludicrous and completely lacking in credibility given the Bush administration’s total failure to acknowledge Colombia’s democratic crisis. As Maria McFarland of Human Rights Watch recently pointed out with regards to the Bush administration, “They are prepared to criticize very harshly leaders they disagree with, but when their allies do something, they turn a blind eye.”

Historically in Colombia, most government officials and military officers who have colluded with right-wing paramilitaries have done so with impunity. But every once in awhile, diligent investigators succeed in shedding light on human rights abuses and even occasionally achieve justice. Likewise, the investigators in the para-politics scandal have succeeded in revealing the links between the government and the paramilitaries, not because of the Uribe administration’s policies, but in spite of them. This has always been the way that justice has been achieved in Colombia, and there is little evidence to suggest that the current scandal is any different.

If Uribe truly desires to receive credit for cleaning up Colombia’s democracy, then he should strip paramilitary leaders such as Mancuso of the benefits received under the demobilization agreement unless they fully confess everything they know. The fact that Mancuso only revealed paramilitary collusion with dead or imprisoned government officials and military officers when the evidence on Jorge 40’s laptop shows there is still active collusion proves that the Justice and Peace Law is the sham that critics always claimed it to be. It also proves that Uribe is not serious about dismantling the paramilitary structures and terminating government collusion with the death squads.

Meanwhile, rather than criticizing the paramilitarization of Colombian politics, the Bush administration has requested $586 million in aid for next year, more than 75 percent of it earmarked for Colombia’s state security forces. Unless there is a serious re-evaluation of US aid to Colombia, the already diminished credibility of the Bush administration’s global “democracy promotion” agenda will have to withstand yet another serious blow.

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