YDS Statement on Colombia

Although there are many global problems, there is one that needs the progressive community's immediate attention: "Plan Colombia".

"Plan Colombia" is the most recent $1.3 billion installment of aid to the Colombian government, 75% of which is dedicated to military aid. The package is reported to include, among other things, 60 helicopters and training for three army "counter-narcotics" battalions of 900 troops apiece. Most of the military aid to Colombia has been excused as needed for the counter-narcotic measures in the country, the United State's primary source of cocaine. Through many human rights and faith-based organizations' reports, however, it has become more and more evident that military aid is the last measure that Colombia needs as the country struggles to end a 35 year old civil war.

The Young Democratic Socialists find that "Plan Colombia" is troubling for several reasons:

First, the counter-narcotics measures taken by the Colombian police and military, and by extension the paramilitary groups (such as the AUC) with which the government has pervasive links, only foster the civil war with the rebel groups in the country, the most prominent being the FARC.

For Plan Colombia in particular, President Clinton commissioned a report on human rights in Colombia from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America for the period of August to December 2000. These organizations reported a dramatic deterioration of respect for human rights in Colombia through that time. Despite the seething report, President Clinton used legal loopholes to grant Plan Colombia to the Colombian government. By doing this, Clinton assured that there would be no public review of the horrible record of Colombian human rights abuses. This includes the lack of reform of the overburdened Colombian judicial system, which is unable to uphold the rule of law and allows military personnel to be tried in military courts rather than civil courts and often not be sentenced for their crimes. Because the paramilitary is directly linked to the Colombian government, the Plan Colombia money will be funneled to the group that has been responsible for myriad massacres and human rights violations.

The Plan's mission statement includes the directive to "establish military control of the south for eradication·" of coca plants that are used to make cocaine - usually grown by peasants as the only crop that fetches a decent market price. The most common form of eradication is to spray crops with poison from above. This poison affects all the living beings in the area - creating health risks for people and destroying legitimate crops. The south is also where the leading revolutionary group (the FARC) is strongest which, in a country that has coca plants in almost every region, raises suspicion about the support for the government's counter-insurgency motives in the name of counter-narcotic measures.

US military funding also strengthens the existing barriers that stand in the way of union organizing within Colombia. More than a third of the country's union organizers have been assassinated by the paramilitary because of possible connections with the FARC or socialism in general. Military aid will, again, only increase the paramilitary's ability to kill organizing efforts around the country. We will not stand for this level of violence directed at the workers' inalienable right to organize.

Most troubling, Plan Colombia increases US involvement in a war that has been waged for over a generation between rebel factions, the military, and government supported paramilitary groups. Nearly all independent monitors cite both the leftist guerrillas and the paramilitary fronts for violations of human rights. We do not condone massacres of any kind, but Colombia is immersed in a war and it is very important to note the overwhelming amount of deaths that are attributed to the AUC as compared to the FARC. According to the latest Human Rights Watch report, the Colombian paramilitary groups, the groups to which US aid is given through the Colombian government, are responsible for 78% of Colombian massacres. Recent US military aid and massive refugee flight to Colombia's neighboring countries are just a few indicators of how US aid promises to escalate this war and to drag neighboring countries into the fray. This entire process is eerily similar to the sequence of events in Vietnam, where thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese perished.

Plan Colombia is the latest in a long line of military aid that has continued in the region since the Monroe Doctrine. It further asserts American domination over the Western Hemisphere and makes certain that US capitalist hegemony continues often times despite democratic elections of progressive governments. It is the extension of the "white man's burden" that has influenced U.S. involvement in Chile, Nicaragua and nearly every other Latin American country. We have seen the disastrous consequences of similar military interventions in the area, including tremendous loss of life and human rights violations.

Military aid to Colombia is not the way to fight the "War on Drugs." Even if the Colombian coca fields are all eliminated, the demand for cocaine and its derivatives will still be high. Production will move somewhere else if it has to. If the U.S. is serious about ending addiction here at home, investment needs to be directed towards social services that help those in need. If the U.S. expects farmers to stop growing the lucrative coca leaves, funding should go to support the development and support of alternative industries. On this topic, it should be clear that YDS supports the development of self-sustaining industries rather than the prominent international investment that has proven to exploit workers in the region.

It should also be noted that the United States stands alone in the international community with their massive aid package. YDS considers it a telling situation when the European Union recently voted 474 to 1 against the Plan Colombia and when the International Union of Socialist Youth, our international body, passed a resolution against military funding to Colombia.

YDS is by no means supporting the FARC as an alternative to the current state of affairs of Colombian politics. Their political values are weak and their level of peasant support is questionable. Although there is not a strong progressive presence within the Colombian political spectrum right now, there is a party brewing from the old members of the M-19 movement for democracy, El Partido Socialista Democratico de Colombia. We support this fledgling democratic movement wholeheartedly and enthusiastically.

The Young Democratic Socialists stand in opposition to Plan Colombia, shoulder to shoulder with our sister organizations in Latin America, Europe, and the people of Colombia, who suffer the most. We will not rest until US aid is re-directed to help rebuild the country's infrastructure and support the peace process to resolve this barbarous civil war. The US' role in conflicts should not be to exacerbate but to ameliorate. Plan Colombia is most certainly an exacerbation.

We call for:

• A real investment by the US government to ending drug addiction at home through investment in social services, thus ending demand.
• Investment in Colombia to help rebuild their infrastructure, the reform the justice system, and promote sustainable industries. NGOs within Colombia that have little affiliation with any of the warring factions should control this money, not by the US or the Colombian government. This should be coupled with a lifting of the neo-liberal economic policies that are imposed on Colombia by international financial institutions.
• A full investigation into the relationship between the Colombian military, the paramilitary organizations, and Colombian right-wing parties.
• The reinstatement of the unencumbered right to organize of the Colombian workers, whatever their industry.

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