Top Issue 1-2024

12 March 1998 Edition

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Colombian cover-up unravels

By Dara Mac Neil

It appears the Colombian army has acquired the services of a good public relations firm. Dogged by repeated allegations - and substantial evidence - of collusion with right wing death squads, the army recently moved against the very forces they have ably assisted for so long. Or so it seemed.

In early February, as reported in this column two weeks ago, death squads massacred 48 civilians in the towns of Puerto Asis and La Hormiga. The military tried implicitly to shift the blame onto left wing guerrillas, by claiming there were no ``armed paramilitaries'' in the area at the time of the massacre.

However, survivor testimony and evidence produced by church groups quickly smothered that particularly ham-fisted attempt at black propaganda.

The army was forced to retract and began a belated search for the killers - long after they had fled the area, of course. However, the army's arrival didn't exactly inspire confidence in the people of La Hormiga and Puerto Asis. The entire population of both towns fled.

Their decision to vacate the area ahead of the arrival of the military was doubtless based on long years of experience. Equally it would have been prompted by eyewitness accounts that told how the killers had been ferried into the area aboard ``official helicopters.'' The perpetrators of the massacre were never found.

However the army, aware of the damage done to its already tarnished image, promptly announced an offensive against the death squads, many of which are funded by large landowners and drug traffickers.

Thus, in recent weeks the Colombian army actually managed what must rank as an historic first by capturing and arresting alleged death squad members.

In mid-February, they announced the capture of 23 such individuals, in the province of Choco.

And in early March, there was an announcement of a further large-scale arrest. On this occasion, eleven supposed `paramilitaries' were taken into custody.

Interestingly, this latest mass seizure took place near the town of Puerto Barrio, in central Colombia. The region has long been known as a stronghold of the right-wing paramilitaries.

However, what was curious about the Puerto Barrio arrests was that they occurred just as the selfsame paramilitaries were confronted by members of the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In the ensuing battle, the rebels inflicted heavy casualties - including several fatalities - on the right wing militias.

Coincidentally, the army arrived in the region and seized a supposed arms cache and eleven militia gunmen.

FARC pointed to the army's remarkable sense of timing and claimed that the `capture' amounted to little more than an elaborate rescue mission.

Official intervention, they said, had merely saved the militias further casualties at their hands.

The guerrillas' scepticism was matched by a number of Colombian human rights groups, who dismissed the army's triumphant announcement as little more than ``a joke.''

Equally, the alleged capture took place ahead of 8 March congressional elections in Colombia. Colombian commentators regard the `offensive' against the extreme right as little more than a ``government promotion'', an attempt by President Samper to ``improve his image.''

Meanwhile, the government has embarked on a massive offensive against the FARC guerrillas. The offensive has resulted in some of the bloodiest battles between guerrillas and the army in the history of the 35 year-old conflict.

There have been an estimated 120 casualties so far - 70 soldiers and 50 guerrillas. Earlier military claims that they had killed some 500 rebels have been rubbished.

The offensive - involving thousands of troops and specially trained counter-insurgency units - began early last week when the army moved on a guerrilla stronghold in the Caguan region, some 600 kilometres south of the capital, Bogota.

Observers have pointed to the discrepancy between the ferocity of the offensive launched against the guerrillas, and the virtual non-event that passed for an offensive against the country's right wing paramilitaries.

The latter have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians in recent years.

The guerrillas also claim that the selfsame paramilitaries are actually fighting alongside the Colombian army in the offensive.

The FARC - which was formed in 1964 - is the oldest insurgency movement in Latin America. It is estimated to have some 12,000 members.


Not such a New World Order



In 1945 the victorious Allied powers began the construction of their very own New World Order, reshaping the world after their own desires.

Reflecting upon the changes being wrought, the then British Prime Minister articulated what was to be the essential principle governing this task:

``The government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations, who wished nothing more for themselves than what they had. If the world-government were in the hands of hungry nations, there would always be danger. But none of us had any reason to seek for anything more. The peace would be kept by peoples who lived in their own way and were not ambitious.

Our power placed above the rest. We were like rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations.''

Almost half a century later, in 1990, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Peregrine Worsthone, outlined his vision of the New World Order then being shaped. A veritable archetype of the `rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations' Worsthone opined that it would be necessary to ``help build and sustain a world order stable enough to allow the advanced economies of the world to function without constant interruption and threat from the Third World.''

Worsthone went on to note that this would require ``instant intervention from the advanced nations'' or possibly ``pre-emptive action.'' Certainly puts the recent fuss over Iraq into perspective. How things change.

(Taken from World Orders, Old & New by Noam Chomsky. Published by Pluto Press, London.)

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