[NYTr] Bush, Colombia and Narco-Politics

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Consortium News - Aug 8, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/080807a.html

Bush, Colombia & Narco-Politics

By Andrés Cala

George W. Bush’s strategy of countering Venezuela’s leftist president
Hugo Chávez by strengthening ties to Colombia’s rightist government has
been undercut by fresh evidence of high-level drug corruption and human
rights violations implicating President Alvaro Uribe’s inner circle.

These new allegations about Colombia’s narco-politics have tarnished
Uribe’s reputation just as Bush has been showcasing the Harvard- and
Oxford-educated politician as a paragon of democratic values and an
alternative to the firebrand Chávez, who has used Venezuela’s oil
wealth to finance social programs for the poor across the region.

Despite the corruption disclosures – and Uribe’s failure to stem
Colombian cocaine smuggling to the United States – the Bush
administration continues to shower Uribe’s government with trade
incentives and billions of dollars in military and development aid.

With other regional leaders unwilling to side with the United States
against Chávez, Bush may see little alternative but to stay the course
with the 55-year-old Uribe and hope Colombia’s corruption doesn’t draw
too much attention in the United States or across South America.

Ironically, the latest evidence against Uribe’s government emerged from
a U.S.-backed peace process that offered leniency to right-wing
paramilitary death squads and their financial backers in exchange for
giving up their guns and disclosing past crimes.

The right-wing paramilitaries and their cocaine-trafficking benefactors
testified that elements of the Colombian government collaborated in a
decade-long scorched-earth campaign that killed almost 10,000 civilians
while seeking to dislodge a leftist guerrilla army known as the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

The confessions include blood-soaked tales of political murders,
cocaine smuggling and staggering government corruption. As a result,
dozens of former and current congressmen, governors, government
ministers, military officers, prominent business leaders and
multinational corporations are being investigated or have been arrested.

This so-called “para-scandal” revealed that a counterinsurgency force,
known as the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia, or AUC,
collaborated with drug lords to control the cocaine trade and
simultaneously worked with Colombia’s elites, including Uribe’s family,
to fend off the guerrilla threat.

Another troubling offshoot of the peace process was the creation of a
safe haven for drug lords, who flocked to a 370-square-kilometer
sanctuary set up for the AUC.

Colombian mafia boss Fabio Enrique Ochoa Vasco, 47, who was indicted in
Florida in September 2004 for drug trafficking and money laundering,
claimed he was one of 10 U.S.-wanted traffickers who found protection
in the Santa Fe Ralito sanctuary.

AUC leaders “promised to include their financial backers in the
negotiation” as a way to shield alleged cocaine traffickers from
extradition to the United States, Ochoa Vasco told a Colombian magazine
in June.

It was all prearranged in 2001, according to paramilitary and drug lord
accounts. If Uribe won the presidency, paramilitary leaders would be
offered generous sentence reductions and be allowed to serve their time
outside prison walls if they demobilized and confessed.

Ochoa Vasco, who allegedly ships eight tons of cocaine monthly to the
United States, was told that he and other AUC allies would be sentenced
in Colombia to a maximum of 12 years, rather than face possible life
sentences in U.S. prisons.

Uribe’s History

The new disclosures also have brought back to public attention the
Uribe family’s long history of ties to drug lords and paramilitary
militias. Colombia’s Supreme Court announced in July that it was
investigating Senator Mario Uribe, the president’s cousin and his point
man in the Colombian Congress, for alleged links to the AUC.

Several paramilitary leaders have said Mario Uribe was one of their
allies and an intermediary with the government. He has denied any
wrongdoing.

But the family link to purported drug lords dates back several decades.
As a young man and an aspiring politician, Álvaro Uribe lost his
position as mayor of Medellín – after only five months on the job –
because the country’s president ousted him over his family’s suspected
connections to traffickers, according to media reports at the time.

His father Alberto Uribe, a wealthy landowner, reputedly had been a
close associate of the Medellín cartel and its kingpins, such as Pablo
Escobar and the Ochoa brothers, who were personal friends.

In 1983, Alberto Uribe was reportedly wanted by the U.S. government for
drug trafficking when he was killed in a kidnapping attempt by the
FARC. According to media accounts, his body was airlifted back to his
family by one of Escobar’s helicopters.

In the early 1990s, Álvaro Uribe’s brother, Santiago, was investigated
for allegedly organizing and leading a paramilitary militia that was
headquartered at the Uribe family hacienda. He was never charged and
the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. But Santiago was
photographed alongside Fabio Ochoa at a party even after the government
had declared Ochoa one of the most notorious Medellín cartel kingpins.

The incident with Santiago Uribe coincided with Álvaro Uribe’s eight
years in the Senate, where he opposed extradition of drug suspects. His
critics accused him of working for the Medellín cartel.

But the relationship between right-wing narco-financed paramilitaries
and the Colombian government has been a long and complex one, with
shifting alliances based on the self-interest of the moment.

In 1992, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the CIA and the U.S.
military, along with Colombian intelligence services, joined forces
with the Cali cartel to train, equip and coordinate an undercover group
of mercenaries known as the Pepes, an acronym for Persecuted by Pablo
Escobar. Among its leaders was Carlos Castaño, who would later run the
AUC.

Systematically, the Pepes assassinated Escobar’s top henchmen and their
families, finally killing Escobar himself in 1993. The Pepes then split
up. Some went on to create their own drug empires, while Castaño built
a paramilitary army financed by rich landowners and drug dealers.

Since the war on Escobar’s organization, Castaño and the Cali cartel –
as well as Colombian military officers – have claimed that they work
side by side with U.S. agencies, but U.S. authorities have denied such
an alliance.

The alienation from Washington widened in 1994 when President Ernesto
Samper came to power amid disclosures that his campaign had received
generous donations from drug cartels. President Bill Clinton cut most
aid and severed some military support to Colombia because of Samper’s
ties to drug traffickers.

With less U.S. aid, the Colombian army was unable to contain the FARC
and coca acreage soared. Colombia’s rulers responded with the creation
of paramilitary militias that used terror to reduce popular support for
the guerrillas.

The Samper government pushed what was known as the Convivir project. It
armed, trained and organized local defence cooperatives to provide
“special private security and vigilance services” alongside the armed
forces, creating another cover for right-wing paramilitary forces.

Rise of Uribe

Alvaro Uribe’s political rise was tied to the success of Convivir. In
1995, Uribe became the governor of Antioquia, a north-western district
with Medellín as the capital.

Uribe was the country’s most vocal supporter of the defence
cooperatives, authorizing dozens of them with almost 20 of these
Uribe-backed cooperatives run by paramilitary leaders, including the
AUC’s current top commander, Salvatore Mancuso. [Castaño, who operated
in a different state, wasn’t one of them.]

Castaño  is quoted in a biography as saying Uribe was the presidential
candidate of the AUC’s social support base.

“Deep down, he’s the closest man to our philosophy,” Castaño said,
adding that Uribe’s support for the Convivir was grounded on the same
principle that gave rise to paramilitarism in Colombia, the right to
self-defence against guerrillas.

When confronted with accusations of complicity between Convivir and
drug-connected paramilitaries, Uribe said that at the time nobody knew
who the right-wing leaders and the cocaine traffickers were.

After an international outcry, however, the government slowly phased
out Convivir. By the time it was outlawed in 1998, however, over 200
defence cooperatives, counting thousands of men, defied the order to
demobilize and joined Castaño’s new paramilitary alliance, the AUC.

The Convivir project had other long-term consequences. Beyond
establishing and arming paramilitary militias, the project created a
web of cooperation between Colombia’s military and right-wing death
squads. Some paramilitary leaders, such as Castaño, claimed the CIA and
DEA also gave the AUC discreet support.

At least two top paramilitary commanders have claimed that the
Colombian military coordinated counterinsurgency operations with the
AUC.

“I am living proof of state-sponsored paramilitarism in Colombia,” said
the AUC’s Mancuso in his deposition earlier this year.

The AUC leaders have named several high-ranking Colombian officers as
collaborating with the paramilitaries, including former General Rito
Alejo del Rio, Antioquia’s commanding officer during Uribe’s
governorship.

While running for the presidency in 2002, Uribe cited the perceived
success of the Convivir program in damaging the FARC’s infrastructure
in Antioquia as a key reason why Colombians should vote for him.

Despite the drug suspicions – and the links to paramilitary death
squads – Uribe benefited from public disenchantment with a sputtering
peace process that had failed to end the civil war. Uribe emerged as
the winner with 53 percent of the vote.

After Uribe’s election, several drug barons claimed they had financed
his campaign. Indicted drug trafficker Ochoa Vasco said he contributed
$150,000 of his own money at the AUC’s request.

Ochoa Vasco also said he witnessed a conversation between the AUC’s
leaders and supposed representatives of Uribe’s campaign before the
election.

“They talked about the peace process,” Ochoa Vasco said. “They said
anyone with problems with the U.S. could get involved. And in another
meeting, there were businessmen, landowners and drug traffickers who
[the AUC] thought they could also include, so they told them to get
ready for the peace process.”

All the paramilitary leaders who negotiated the peace agreement “know
the truth. They know that to be there, they invested more than 10
million dollars,” Ochoa Vasco said.

Government negotiations with the AUC began four months after Uribe took
office. Castaño repositioned himself as an opponent of the drug
corruption that, by then, clearly pervaded the AUC. He resigned as AUC
military leader.

In April 2004, Castaño was ambushed by 20 elite paramilitaries
following orders from the AUC’s top leaders. He was shot almost two
dozen times in the face, chopped into pieces, and burned.

Surviving AUC leaders and drug traffickers said Castaño was killed
because he was negotiating his surrender to the DEA along with all
trafficking information about the AUC and its government and military
allies. U.S. authorities have denied any negotiation.

Uribe-Bush Alliance

Meanwhile, Uribe lined up solidly behind President George W. Bush by
becoming the only South American leader to endorse Bush’s invasion of
Iraq. Uribe also sought more U.S. military aid as he defined the civil
war against the leftist FARC as part of the “global war on terror.”

The backbone of U.S. policy in Colombia is Plan Colombia, a mostly
military aid program to fight both drug production and irregular
armies, most notably the FARC and the AUC. Since 2001, Washington has
sent over $5 billion to Bogotá.

Nonetheless, Plan Colombia put little dent in cocaine production. The
coca acreage in 2006 was slightly more than in 2001, when Plan Colombia
was implemented. Acreage was reduced in 2003 and 2004 but shot up again
in 2005 and 2006.

But Uribe’s success in curbing political violence boosted his
popularity in Colombia. He vigorously pressed the war against the FARC,
forcing the leftist guerrillas into a tactical retreat. Overall, Uribe
reduced the number of murders, kidnappings and massacres by about
one-third.

The Uribe-controlled Congress also passed the Justice and Peace Law,
which launched a peace process with the right-wing paramilitaries that
demobilized 30,000 men and women. The law was written by Sen. Mario
Uribe, the cousin now being investigated for his AUC ties. Even the
Bush administration criticized the law’s terms as overly lenient.

With Uribe’s popularity soaring, he got his congressional allies to
change the Constitution to permit a second presidential term. Uribe
then swept to reelection in 2006, winning 62 percent of the vote.

Still, accusations of corruption and unpunished human rights violations
dogged him.

Several investigations, especially those led by Colombia’s Supreme
Court, slowly amassed evidence against former and current government
officials and prominent figures among the country’s elite.

Those implicated included dozens of current and former members of the
Congress; high-ranking military officers, including the current chief
of staff; entire army battalions allegedly working for drug cartels;
prominent businessmen; and some of Uribe’s closest allies, including
the father and brother of Colombia’s former foreign minister María
Consuelo Araújo.

In March 2006, a laptop belonging to a top paramilitary leader was
seized in a raid. The computer was found to contain detailed
information on drug-trafficking operations, killings committed during
the peace process, potential hit lists of other victims, the AUC’s plan
for influencing the government, and a list of contributors and
political allies.

One of the hit lists was linked to Colombia’s intelligence service and
to its director, Jorge Noguera, a close Uribe ally who the president
named consul in Milan after the initial investigation was opened.

Noguera was later arrested for his ties to the AUC and drug
traffickers, for filtering information to the AUC, for erasing
incriminating evidence of several drug traffickers and paramilitary
leaders, for complicity in the assassinations of several union leaders,
and for obstructing operations to capture his allies.

Other Colombian intelligence officials also were arrested, including
one high-level official, Rafael García, who testified that he erased
evidence at the request of Noguera. García also accused Noguera of
plotting to assassinate Venezuela’s president Chávez in coordination
with high-level officials in Uribe’s administration, though García
didn’t give their names.

Paramilitary leader Mancuso also accused Uribe’s Defence Minister Juan
Manuel Santos in his deposition of plotting with the AUC to kill
Venezuela’s Chávez, although it’s not clear whether Santos was one of
the men whom intelligence officer García was referring to. Santos
denied the accusation.

Then, in December 2006, embarrassed by the ongoing criminality in the
AUC’s Santa Fe Ralito safe haven, the government put some paramilitary
leaders in prison. But even there, they continued to live the high life
and kept on top of their criminal operations.

The local press published in May transcripts of police wiretaps
revealing AUC leaders continuing to order killings and to direct drug
trafficking from prison, while also enjoying dance parties, sexual
orgies and alcohol. They hosted “Mexican friends” and had unrestricted
access to cell phones and the Internet.

In one conversation, the frustrated former prison warden complained to
a colleague that her orders were constantly overruled by her superiors
when paramilitary leaders called to complain to the peace commissioner,
government ministers and even the president. The warden soon requested
to be relocated.

Infuriated by the wiretap disclosures, Uribe ordered the firing of the
top 12 generals in the police, but he said little about the evidence of
AUC criminality beyond promising another investigation.

AUC leaders also threatened to break off the peace process, accusing
the government of changing the terms. They felt betrayed, they said,
and threatened to incriminate all their elite allies, including
politicians, businessmen, and multinationals.

Regional Trouble

The Organization of American States, which has overseen the peace
process with the AUC, has been critical of the results. The OAS warned
that the paramilitaries are rearming and reorganizing under different
names, with stronger ties to drug traffickers, and are being led by
some of the same leaders who supposedly had surrendered.

OAS Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin said this year that the
AUC demobilization process might well fail to solve Colombia’s problem
with drug-financed paramilitary groups.

Colombia’s approach “could trigger a truth and justice process that
would put an end to paramilitary groups in the regions, and lead to
reconstruction of the State,” Ramdin said. “Or, on the other hand, it
could accentuate the influence of paramilitary groups linked to drug
trafficking.”

Despite Colombia’s problems – the corruption, the shaky peace process
and the shortcomings of its anti-drug program – Bush has continued to
show unstinting support for Uribe. Calling Uribe a true democrat and a
strong leader, Bush has visited Colombia twice, including earlier this
year, and met with Uribe several times in Washington.

“I’m proud to call [Uribe] a friend and strategic ally,” Bush said
during one of Uribe’s visits.  In Bogotá, the U.S. president said: “I
appreciate the [Colombian] president’s determination to bring human
rights violators to justice. … I believe that, given a fair chance,
President Uribe can make the case.”

Bush asked the U.S. Congress to increase financial support for Plan
Colombia, but Democrats cut military aid from 80 percent to 65 percent
of the total allocation, while increasing economic and humanitarian
aid. Moreover, the Democrats attached strict conditions on the total
$530 million.

Democrats also have conditioned their ratification of a free-trade
agreement with Colombia on Uribe improving the country’s human rights
record and prosecuting paramilitary leaders.

In South America, Uribe has slowly backed himself into a corner by
siding with Bush. While most South American countries have grown more
critical of U.S. foreign policy and its Free Trade Agreement of the
Americas, Colombia has staunchly supported Bush’s policies, distancing
itself from its neighbors.

Brazil and Ecuador have closer relations with Venezuela, as do most
countries in the region, in stark contrast to a decade ago. Colombia
has been kept out of South America’s Mercosur regional trade union,
while Venezuela is expected to join sometime this year.

Uribe also has lost some regional backing in his fight against the
FARC. Ecuador has resisted labelling the FARC a terrorist organization,
but did criticize Plan Colombia and sought reparations for collateral
damage inflicted by Colombian forces on Ecuador’s border population.

Meanwhile, the drug and corruption scandal keeps growing. Though Uribe
has denied most of the accusations, drug lord Ochoa Vasco has said he
is willing to negotiate his surrender to the DEA along with proof to
support his charges.

Ochoa Vasco said some AUC leaders and drug traffickers now are willing
to negotiate their surrender to U.S. law-enforcement agencies to avoid
being murdered in Colombia, as powerful forces seek desperately to
silence them and end the “para-scandal.”

In July, Henao Gómez Bustamante – the biggest reputed drug lord since
Pablo Escobar – was extradited to face trafficking charges in the U.S.
He is believed to have been a key player in right-wing politics and one
of the main financers of the AUC.

The target of at least half a dozen assassination attempts while he was
in prison, Gómez Bustamante told a magazine that he preferred being
extradited to being murdered. He also said he will disclose all the
information about drug corruption in Colombia, AUC infiltration, and
Mexican cartels, in exchange for a more lenient sentence.

Whatever is ultimately proven, however, the spilling out of evidence
linking Uribe to Colombia’s vast cocaine industry and to the country’s
history of political murders is bad news for President Bush as he
counts on Uribe to serve as the model for South America’s future and as
a bulwark against Hugo Chávez.

[Madrid-based Andrés Cala has written about Colombia’s civil conflict
since 1998. An award-winning journalist, he’s worked in six countries
for several outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones
Newswires, and the Associated Press. Cala's e-mail is
andres.cala at gmail.com.]