Possible War In South America?

[The Wiseman]

Chavez Closes Embassy In Columbia

War Brewing As Columbia Raids Ecuador

Chavez Orders Troops To Columbian Border

Dyncorp, Blackwater's main competition for mercenary contractors, has been in Columbia for quite some time now. Their particular job is to eradicate coca crops on the border of Ecuador and Columbia, funny because they have been violating Ecuador's sovereignty for the duration of their contract. So its far from unreasonable to assume an axis of paramilitaries from the U.S. and the Columbia collaborating with the Columbian military. Support from Mexico is very likely as well. The axis of Chavez will include Ecuador and people's militias from Venezuela collaborating with the Venezuela military. Support from Cuba and Bolivia are very likely as well.

I don't know what to think of this situation, a continental war has both negative possibilites (i.e. rollback of gains made in Latin America from the past decade, many dead civilians, a continental arms race, etc.) and good possibilities (i.e. breaking the Columbia state to create revolutionary conditions for the FARC, defeat of U.S. imperialism, etc.).

[Victor]

When first hearing this most people, including myself, see it as a hopeless battle and disaster for the socialist movements in Latin America. Then I thought about the instability of the Columbian terrorist state. The U.S.'s support is pretty crucial, but it wont mean much against the masses of people opposing the Columbian government. From what I know they are an extremely narrow ogliarchy.

Either way, it could still be devastating to the countries.

[kittenslayer]

I would support Venezula tho

[betoAYAK]

its spelled colOmbia.

btw, colombia already has sent troops to the venezuelan border a year ago.  nothing is going to happen.  please refer to my post in the venezuela thread.

[Godfather of Soul]

Okay, but Colombia didn't commit a serious territorial violation either.

[marcos]

Okay, but Colombia didn't commit a serious territorial violation either.

you mean Venezuela?

[Godfather of Soul]

No, in his prior post he said that this has happened before and I said that Colombia didn't do what it did in Ecuador last time.

[marcos]

oh, I thought you meant that Venezuela hadn't commited a violation to give Colombia the excuse to move troops to the border.

I also doubt anything will happen. It will be bad for both sides, but especially for Chavez if/when the US gets involved militarily.

[SetuT]

Leaders say Colombia crisis over

The crisis over Colombia's cross-border raid into Ecuador is over after the presidents of the two countries shook hands at a regional summit.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who had backed Ecuador's Rafael Correa in condemning Colombia's actions, also embraced Colombia's Alvaro Uribe.

Earlier there had been heated exchanges between the heads of state at the Rio Group summit in the Dominican Republic.

The crisis had threatened political stability in Latin America.

Verbal sparring

Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Bogota and sent troops to their borders after the Colombian operation on Saturday which left 20 Farc rebels dead, including a senior Farc commander, Raul Reyes.

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, who had also broken off diplomatic ties with Colombia, said they would be re-established after the presidents shook hands.

The handshakes were broadcast live on television across Latin America in response to a special request from the summit's host, Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernandez.

Presidents Correa and Uribe had clashed at the opening of the summit.

Mr Correa condemned Colombia's "aggression", while Mr Uribe accused his counterpart of having links with the Farc rebels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7284597.stm




   

[The Wiseman]

http://www.counterpunch.org/brittain03122008.html

Was the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders?
By JAMES J. BRITTAIN

While virtually every country in Central and South America, including the Caribbean, has waged in on the debate of the Colombian state conducting an illegal military campaign within Ecuadorian sovereign territory, resulting in the deaths of various high ranking officials in the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia-Ejército del Pueblo, FARC-EP), the United States have remained virtually silent. Such silence from the US is quite perplexing consdiering the administrations of Ronald Regan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have wielded a twenty-two year old assault on this insurgency movement.

The United States have deemed the FARC-EP to be, what it considers, a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Therefore, would one not expect, during the so-called ‘war on terror,’ some attention from Washington - other than a few sentences by state officials - following the deaths of both Comandante Raúl Reyes and Comandante Iván Ríos within less than six days of each other; two of the seven highest-ranking members of the organization (lest we forget the hourly visual barrage of images related to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003 or his execution in 2006). The following makes a case that the United States’ silence has far more to do with a plausible connection to the deaths of Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos rather than simple disinterest.
The Case of Comandante Raúl Reyes (Murdered March 1, 2008)
It has become general knowledge that shortly after midnight on March 1, 2008, the President of Colombia Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderón, and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos sanctioned an illegal air and ground assault against the 48th Front of the FARC-EP, which resulted in the death of Comandante Raúl Reyes, one of the members of the insurgency’s Secretariat of the Central High Command, Julian Conrado, a member of the Central High Command (and the insurgency’s most recognized cultural icon through his work as a revolutionary folk-musician), and twenty other members of the FARC-EP.

Hours after the assault had taken place Defense Minister Santos reiterated that Colombian forces began the operation with an air assault followed by a group of Colombian soldiers engaging in a ground combat against members of the FARC-EP Front. Santos expressed that recently obtained intelligence information related to a satellite phone used by Comandante Reyes enabled the Colombian military to pin-point the location of the encampment, subsequently enabling the campaign to take place.

During meetings of the OAS, state officials and representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and Peru condemned the assault. Unsurprisingly, one of the only backers of the illegal military incursion was the US. Nevertheless, President George W. Bush and J. Robert Manzanares, the United States’ representative during the OAS meetings, had very little to say about the greatest achievement ever realized by the United States’ principal ally in Latin America’s forty-four year old civil war with the FARC-EP.

When asked if the Uribe and Santos administration had informed Washington preceding the transgression on Ecuadorian soil, Tom Casey, a spokesman for the US State Department, hesitantly stated “No, I’m not aware that we found out about this other than after the fact”. Less than assuring complete impartiality, Colombia’s Chief of Police, General Oscar Naranjo declared that “I can say for sure that the operation was autonomous”. As General Naranjo continued his press conference he did however reveal that the United States had, in fact, been involved in operations connected to the Colombian military assault in Ecuador, albeit indirectly,.

General Naranjo asserted that no external forces were involved in the FARC-EP-targeted attack but he did offer that “it is no secret that … a very strong alliance with federal agencies of the US” exists between the Colombian military. Shortly following this statement, a high ranking official within the Colombian Defense Ministry leaked that the United States had been involved in the March 1, 2008 operation. In actuality, the US, through satellite intelligence gathering over southern Colombia and Northern Ecuador, had been able to retrieve signals from the FARC-EP’s 48th Front and handed over the identification of the satellite telephone being used by the insurgency to intelligence sectors of the Colombian police. The informant went on to add that it was only then that Colombian officials were able to process the data, thereby enabling the Colombian state to decipherer the exact location of Comandante Reyes. The informant’s account of the satellite phone effectively mirrors that made during Defense Minister Santos’ first press conference. The leaked information demonstrated that the US was, at the very least, indirectly involved in the actions of March 1, 2008. That was until March 7, 2008.

On Friday, Ecuador’s Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval announced that after further investigation of the area targeted during the March 1 attack it was revealed that the site had been bombarded with at least five bombs (‘Smart Bombs’). All five detonations were within a 50-meter diameter during a nocturnal attack, a virtually impossible achievement when concerning the military capabilities and resources of the Colombian Air and Armed Forces. Sandoval claimed that the arms used during the incursion can only be deployed through the use of aircraft which have the capacity to fly at a considerable height and velocity, weaponry that is again not found within the Colombian Air Force. The only Air Force in the region with such an arsenal is the United States.

While the US and the Colombian governments claim that the United States were not involved in the attack that resulted in the death of Comandante Raúl Reyes, it is quite likely that the United States played more than an informal role in the aggression.

The Case of Comandante Iván Ríos (Murdered March 4, 2008 or March 7th, 2008)
On the afternoon of March 7, 2008, the country of Colombia was once again the witness of an interruption by Defense Minister Santos taking precedence on both television and radio. Similar to his announcement made six days earlier, Santos announced that a member of the FARC-EP’s Secretariat had been killed. To the great surprise of many, the Defense Minister claimed that Comandante Iván Ríos had been killed by another member of the FARC-EP named Rojas (in association with two other combatants associated with the insurgency) on March 4, 2008.

The Defense Minister proceeded to tell the press that after those deemed responsible had killed Comandante Ríos they severed his right hand in order to prove to Colombian officials that the youngest member of the Secretariat was dead. It was then stated that the three insurgents took the severed limb, along with Comandante Ríos’ laptop and identification and handed them over to members of the Colombian Army and the Colombian Attorney General Office’s Technical Investigation Body (Cuerpo Técnico de Investigación, CTI). During a brief press conference related to this incident, Defense Minister Santos said that the Colombian army had launched an operation designed to capture Comandante Ríos on February 17, 2008 after (again) receiving intelligence that he was located in a mountainous region in the Department of Caldas. Unlike the March 1, 2008 press conference, however, Santos did not entertain any questions or reveal any additional information other than that listed above and that Comandante Iván Ríos had been officially pronounced dead.

Confusion immediately began to envelop the events presented by Defense Minister Santos. The reason for the uncertainty was that previous to the ‘official’ pronouncement ofe Comandante’s Ríos death another state official within the Prosecutors Office of Colombia had given a different account concerning the death of the FARC-EP leader.

An anonymous official had prematurely contacted the press and reported that Comandante Ríos had been killed on March 7, 2008 during an attack carried out by a  unit of the Colombian Army in conjunction with members of the CTI in Aguadas, just outside the Samaná Municipality within the department of Caldas. This again mirrors events as revealed in the case of Comandante Reyes death; intelligence provided to state officials, upper level official presenting sanitized sanctioned accounts explaining the deaths of the FARC-EP’s high command, and lower-level officials disseminating alternative accounts of the actual on goings during said transgressions.

Another strange complexity related to Comandante Ríos’ death is simply, where is Rojas? One would think that the state would put forth details concerning who Comandante Ríos’ murderer was, what his social background or personal identification is, how the killing occurred, what has happened to Rojas, etc. Interestingly, however, nothing related to the above queries concerning Rojas were released.

If Comandante Ríos was, in fact, murdered by Rojas, such events surrounding the death are quite perplexing due to the actual structure and formation of the FARC-EP. It is difficult to understand how one FARC-EP combatant let alone three were capable of breaking rank and violently reacting against not only a highly-ranked officer but a leader within the FARC-EP’s Secretariat. Each Comandante associated with the Secretariat has a cadre of more than a dozen immediate personnel which are not only responsible for the Comandante’s protection but oversee the on goings of the guerrilla camp in which the leader is situated. From first-hand experience, all meetings and interactions with the Comandante are coordinated each day and formally scheduled. Prior to each meeting, the party invited must wait and ask for approval to enter the Comandante’s barracks. Once approval has been arranged it is only then that a member is escorted into the Comandante’s quarters by at least one other armed guard. How is it then that not only one but three armed FARC-EP combatants were able to violently enter into Comandante’s Ríos’ barracks directly in front of an entire FARC-EP Front, which includes two FARC-EP Companies and two FARC-EP Guerrilla Squads which contain, on average, at least twelve combatants per squad?

For any researcher, academic, environmentalist, or journalist who has spent any significant deal of time within FARC-EP-controlled territory since 2002, the Defense Minister’s ‘official’ account of ‘Rojas’ and two other so-called FARC-EP combatants being solely responsible for the murder of Comandante Ríos is highly problematic. The discussion of Comandante Ríos’ limb being removed by a FARC-EP member is greatly out of character to any informed analyst of the Colombian civil war. There has not been one confirmed case of any FARC-EP combatant in its forty-four years of existence of employing such tactics; however, such a tactic has been systemically employed by paramilitaries, privately funded ‘security forces’, and right-wing civilian vigilantly groups dating back to the 1940s and increasingly carried out over the past decade.

Plausible Paramilitary Role in the Deaths of both Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos

Over the past two years the Uribe and Santos administration have increasing promoted the story that Colombian paramilitarism has come to and end with the demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, AUC) throughout 2003-2006. Such proclamations are in direct contradiction to existing evidence, eye-witness reports, and escalating violence targeted at civilians critical of the Colombian state and political-economic structure. More accurately the AUC has decentralized its actions and activities through various small-scale organizations rather than that experienced between 1997 and 2006 where a single umbrella organization consolidated leading paramilitary organizations into one dominant structure.

The actions related to Comandante Ríos’ murder are symbolic of those carried out by Colombia’s many far-right paramilitary groups. However, if it was to get out to the general international public that paramilitarism has, in reality, continued within Colombia there could be awkward political and economic consequences.

The Colombian state cannot afford to have a paramilitary group claim responsibility for the murder of Comandante Ríos. This would, once again, demonstrate to the state has either failed in its political capacity to demobilize the paramilitary, or more accurately, that the state has been complicit in covering up the actions of Colombian paramilitarism which are rampant throughout the Colombian countryside.

Rather than supporting the claim that ‘FARC-EP combatants’ committed the assault and subsequent amputation of Comandante Ríos’ hand it is more likely that what transpired was a tactic which has been widely utilized by the paramilitaries over the past several years. Countless researchers and journalists have exposed how reactionary forces dress up in fatigues, making themselves appear to be FARC-EP combatants. Paramilitaries have regularly presented themselves as members of the FARC-EP so as to commit atrocities against civilians in the hopes of creating false condemnations aimed at the insurgency.

Plausible US Role in the Deaths of both Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos

The Bush administration has had great difficulty in getting a new Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) with Colombia passed. Internal congressional protests by sectors of the Democratic Party have opposed the legislation, due to allegations and proven atrocities committed by the paramilitaries, crimes that the Colombian state has allowed to go unpunished. Many of these politicians argue that the Colombian state and the US government and military have failed to quell the illicit drug-trade or decrease the FARC-EP’s strength throughout the Colombian countryside even though billions of US dollars have been spent. Therefore, if the Bush administration was able to claim even the slightest victory over the FARC-EP than they could argue that their counter-insurgency funding has been successful and that a new FTA should be supported in Congress. 

There is a distinct possibility that the United States may have been involved in the actions leading up to Comandante Ríos’ death. US Special Forces and Marines have been illegally engaged in counter-insurgency campaigns within the country of Colombia for years. Even though the legal number of US troops cannot exceed 800 state forces (and 600 private forces), thousands have been operating in campaigns against the FARC-EP. For example, Peter Gorman published that as far back as 2002 roughly 1,100 US counter-insurgent troops were on “orders to eliminate all high officers of the FARC”. This does not even highlight what possible actions private US-based contradicted counter-insurgent forces may be carrying out.

There is a two-fold psychological effect  inculcated by  propaganda related to the deaths of Comandante Reyes and Comandante Ríos, which is being disseminated through the centralized media, primarily El Tiempo.

1) Systemically exposing sectors of Colombia’s general public to photographs of the bullet ridden and mutilated corpse of Reyes on an hourly basis or the ‘cooler’ containing Ríos’ severed limbs is a tool utilized to intimidate and to deter sympathizers with the insurgency, political activists, and state opponents within Colombia from criticizing the state’s political dominance and promotion of far-right economic policies.

2) Telling the world that Comandante Ríos’ was murdered by his own comrades is a tactic employed to decrease external solidarity from sectors of the international community, who may now falsely believe the argument that the largest and most powerful Marxist-Leninist revolutionary social movement in Latin America is loosing ground, power, and influence in the Colombian countryside. At the same time, such accusations are internally disseminated in the hopes of destabilizing the FARC-EP itself. Claiming  the rank-and-file have abandoned the leadership and that the movement is collapsing is a strategy to destabilize the insurgency’s many Squads, Companies, Columns, and Fronts.

James J. Brittain is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada and the co-founder of the Atlantic Canada-Colombia Research Group. He can be reached at james.brittain@acadiau.ca.

[The Wiseman]

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16841

By Toni Solo


Toni Solo's ZSpace Page




On March 1st Colombian government armed forces, supported by US military surveillance resources, massacred a group of over 20 people located at a FARC encampment on Ecuadoran territory near the border with Colombia in the area of Sucumbíos. Although most media reports describe the victims as members of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces, some reports from Ecuador suggest that as many as five or six of the people murdered may have been Mexican students researching the Colombian conflict. (1) The complete sequel to the Bush-regime backed massacre will probably take many weeks to play out completely.

The Colombian cross-border raid posed a serious and immediate threat to its neighbours' security and stability. It cut short for the time being well-advanced negotiations for the release of around a dozen prisoners of the FARC, including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three US mercenaries and various members of the Colombian security forces. The forceful response from Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa was backed by almost all the region's governments and leaders. The Colombian government was left isolated and its arguments discredited.

Peace may seem to have been made at the March 8th Rio Group summit between the parties involved - Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. But that peace is unlikely to be accomplished except in the most fragile way. Colombia's narco-terror President Alvaro Uribe committed implicitly to respect in future the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of neighbouring Ecuador, Venezuela and - with respect to the two countries' continuing maritime dispute - Nicaragua. Colombia failed to persuade other governments to include a description of the FARC as "terrorists".

The Declaration (2) simply notes that Colombia regards irregular groups like the FARC as terrorists. This is a very important diplomatic setback for President Uribe's narco-terror regime and for its supporters in the US government. The non-reporting of that outcome in NATO country media indicates that the low intensity war against Venezuela specifically - and against the member countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) in general - works in converse synchronization with every downward ratchet of US global influence and prestige.

The governments of Venezuela and Ecuador are insisting on the correct application of international law, just as Nicaragua did during the US government organized terrorist aggression of the 1980s. But as Ecuador's President Rafael Correa pointed out during his speech at the Rio Group Summit, it is hard to deal with someone as cynical and deceitful as Alvaro Uribe. (3) Both Correa and Chavez have been very clear in stating what they think about Uribe. Prior to the summit Chavez declared, "President Uribe is a criminal - not just a liar, a paramilitary leading a terrorist State...." (4)

So they travelled far and fast during the day-long proceedings of the Santo Domingo summit in order to reach agreement with the other members of the Rio Group, including Colombia. In the end, Jose Miguel Insulza,  Secretary General of the Organization of American States, said Chavez "made an extensive speech, considered, reflexive, very conciliatory and I certainly think it played an important role" in resolving the conflict. (5) Even Peru's chameleon  buffoon-President Alan Garcia was reported as agreeing that President Chavez was  one of the promoters of "a good settlement and rapprochement" between the leaders of Ecuador and Colombia. (6)

The outcome of the latest Rio Group Summit provided a welcome breathing space, if not a full stop, to the developing drift towards regional instability and conflict. Not for nothing did both President Correa and President Chavez voice concerns that the US government is seeking to transplant its Middle Eastern modus operandi to the Andes. In Iraq, the Bush regime promoted regionalization favouring the Kurds. It is doing the same in the resource rich provinces of Bolivia in favour of the oligarchy in the resource rich "media luna" region.

After having invaded Iraq and bankrolled Israeli aggression for decades, the US blithely accuses Iran and Syria of destabilizing the region.  In the Andes, it accuses Venezuela. Sensible defensive measures by Venezuela to fend off possible violations by Colombia similar to the raid into Ecuador get described by the Bush regime and by US persidential candidate Hilary Clinton as "provocation". One looks in vain in the Western Bloc/NATO country  propaganda media for any reference to the absurd double standards such remarks imply.

The UK Guardian newspaper continues to be a useful bellwether for Western Bloc propaganda in the liberal news media. In February, the Guardian/Observer web site carried baseless allegations by John Carlin alleging that the Venezuelan government was involved in narcotics dealing (7). In March, in a piece systematically misrepresenting the crisis, Isabel Hilton, whom some might see as a doyenne of British liberal media foreign affairs reporting, deploys classic British colonialist hauteur to denigrate Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

The interesting thing about this is that Hilton and Carlin were both important media players in perception management of the Contra war against Nicaragua. Carlin reported on the Nicaraguan war for  the Independent and Hilton was the Independent's Latin America editor. In those days they did their level best not to report the mass terrorism practised by the Contra. In the best traditions of NATO-friendly social-democrat "balance", the Independent's editorial line in those days was to disparage the Sandinista revolution as incompetent and foolish. Now, on Venezuela, while Carlin offers bogus, fact-averse "reporting", here we get Hilton editorializing, "It has been a farce but this crisis needn't end in tragedy." (

So not only are the same old political Iran-Contra Reaganaut players in Washington driving the 4th generation war against Venezuela but the same media managers and writers are back in action as well. Gangster politicians like John Negroponte, Elliot Abrams and the rest have their messages reinforced by  journalists like Carlin and Hilton.  Managing rich-country mass opinion is part of the total war at grass roots level in which low-intensity conflict consists. Mainstream corporate media outlets by definition tend to favour views that reinforce the propaganda line of the corporate elite and their political front-persons.

So after a swift, skewed, de-contextualized, opposition-style account of the situation in Venezuela, Hilton writes, "Despite Correa's leftwing credentials there is little love lost between him and Chávez, and Correa set about marking out the contrast, building diplomatic support in Latin America's capitals where neither Uribe nor Chávez enjoy favour." In fact, Correa's whirlwind tour in search of support took in Peru, Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Panama. On March 8th Correa declared "Chávez knows he can count on us, when Venezuela needs us we'll be there." (9)

So much for Correa distancing himself from Chavez. Later on,  Hilton recoups some credibility by grudgingly acknowledging Chavez' role in negotiating the release of people held by the FARC and acknowledging that Uribe may have used the raid into Ecuador to boost his chances of a second re-election so as to serve a third Presidential term.  But the main argument of her piece is that somehow Chavez was "humiliated" by Uribe when in fact as events turned out it was Uribe who was left isolated and lacking credibility. Meanwhile, President Chavez and his ALBA partners, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Bolivia's Evo Morales, consolidated their supportive relationship with President Correa.

In Venezuela, over 180 rural workers have been murdered during land disputes since 2001. Colombian paramilitaries are thought to have been hired by local landowners for their expertise in such killings. Along the Colombian border and elsewhere in Colombia various paramilitary groups calling themselves "Aguilas Negras" are reforming the former AUC paramilitary groups supposed to have "demobilized" during President Uribe's two periods in office. The Venezuelan authorities accuse Colombian paramilitaries of running narcotics smuggling and food and fuel contraband operations along the borders of Tachira and Zulia provinces.

More broadly, in an important interview published by Ecoportal, Hector Mondragón has noted (10) that :

"The harvest of terror has isolated Colombia from all the processes going on in Latin America. In a place where workers' rights are demolished, where rural workers are robbed of their land, where thousands of indigenous leaders have been murdered, so from where are you going to draw a left wing like the Ecuadoran one or the one in Bolivia? We cannot. We live opposite processes and so the results are the opposite. In Colombia there is an extreme right wing emergency embodied in the government of Uribe and in his "peace agreement" with the paramilitaries whose objective is to instituionalize what before was criminal activity. Parapolitics is just that, for them to be the government.........To say that paramilitarism does not exist is a great big lie, of course it continues. But the problem is not that. Something much more important is that the economic results of paramilitarism are present. That is to say, the economic benefits obtained by the companies that financed it, like Chiquita Brands, remain. What they achieved for their business is a fact, it was business to finance the paramilitaries and control the fight against the banana workers. All the connections between businesses and the paramilitaries remain. Those connections' results prevail."

Writers like Luismi Huarte (11) argue that current conditions include all the elements necessary for a Nicaraguan Contra style war of attrition. The objective is not to defeat Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution but to wear it down, sustain an atmosphere of constant crisis and deprive the Chavez government  of popular support. The Colombian incursion into Ecuador to murder a FARC leader trying to promote moves towards negotiations and peace was clearly part of that war of attrition. The recent Rio Group Declaration is unlikely to stop the current US government or its successor from trying to reproduce its Middle Eastern policies in the Andes. Both Rafael Correa and Hugo Chavez have already noted that such is their intent.

Notes
1. "Conflicto se trasladó a México, Ecuador confirma oficialmente que víctimas eran estudiantes de esa nacionalidad", Agencias. aporrea.org , 07/03/08
2. Declaration of the 20th Summit of the Rio Group held in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (toni's tranlsation) :
" The Heads of State and Government of the Permanent Mechanism for Consultation and Political Cooperation  - the Rio Group - together for the 20th Summit Meeting in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, alert to the situation prevailing between Ecuador and Colombia, have agreed to make the following Declaration:
1.  The events that took place on March 1st 2008 are the cause of deep concern for the whole region, when forces of Colombia's military and police entered Ecuadoran territory in the Sucumbíos province without the express consent of the Ecuadoran government, in order to carry out an operation against members of the irregular Combian Revolutionary Armed Forces group who were clandestinely camped in the Ecuadoran frontier area
2. We reject this violation of  Ecuador's territorial integrity and therefore reaffirm the principle that a State's territory is inviolable and cannot be subject to military occupation or other measures of force taken by another State, directly or indirectly, for whatever motive, even temporarily.
3. We note with satisfaction the full apologies offered by President Alvaro Uribe to the Government and people of Ecuador for the violation of the territory and sovereignty of that sister nation on March 1st 2008 by the public forces of Colombia.
4. We also note the commitment by President Alvaro Uribe in his country's name that these events will not be repeated in the future under any circumstance in compliance with the dispositions of Articles 19 and 21 of the Charter of the OAS.
5. We note the decision of President Rafael Correa to receive documentation offered by President Alvaro Uribe and which would have reached the Government of Colombia following the events of March 1st, so that the Ecuadoran judicial authorities may investigate possible violations of national law.
6. We recall too the sacred priniciples of international law, respect for sovereignty, abstention from the threat or use of force and non-intervention in the internal affairs of other States, stressing that Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States states that No State or Group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly for whatever motive in the internal or external affairs of any other. The foregoing principle excludes not just armed force but also other forms of intervention or tendency against the State's personality or the political, economic and cultural  elements that constitute it.
7. We repeat our commitment to peaceful coexistence in the region based on the fundamental precepts of international law contained in the Charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States, as also is stressed in the essential objectives of the Rio Group, the peaceful solution of international disputes and its vocation to keep the peace and search jointly for solutions to conflicts that affect the region.
8. We repeat our firm commitment to fight threats to the security of all its States proceeding from the action of irregular groups or from criminal organizations, in particular those linked to narco-trafficking. Colombia considers those organizations as terrorists.
9. We support the resolution approved by the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States of March 5th 2008. Likewise, we express our support for the Secretary General in fulfilling the responsibilities that he has just been assigned, via the resolution mentioned, to head a Commission that will go to both countries to visit those places that the parties indicate and write up a report of his observations to the Consultative Meeting of Foreign Ministers and propose formulas for a rapprochement between the two countries.
10. We urge the parties involved to keep open respectful channels of communication and to seek formulas for lowering tension.
11. Taking into account the valuable traditions of the Rio group as a basic mechanism for promoting understanding and the search for peace in our region, we make clear our complete support for all efforts at rapprochement. In that spirit we offer to the governments of Colombia and Ecuador the Group's good offices to contribute to a satisfactory solution for which reason the Group's Troika remains attentive to the results of the Consultative Meeting of the Foreign Ministers.
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. March 7th 2008.
3. (Video) "Correa: "No puedo aceptar las falacias de Álvaro Uribe" "Aporrea / TeleSUR / Yvke Mundial 07/03/08 - http://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/n110395.html
4. http://encontrarte.aporrea.org/noticias/n8576.html
5. "Insulza: Intervención del presidente Chávez en la Cumbre de Río fue “decisiva y tremendamente constructiva”  ",  Aporrea / Antv Noticias,  09/03/08
6. "Alan García reconoce que Hugo Chávez promovió acuerdo pacífico en Cumbre de Río",  TeleSUR, aporrea.org,  08/03/08
7. http://toni.tortillaconsal.com/carlin.html
8. "It has been a farce, but this crisis needn't end in tragedy", Isabel Hilton,  The Guardian,  March 7th 2008
9. "Rafael Correa: "Chávez sabe que cuenta con nosotros, cuando Venezuela nos necesite, allí estaremos" ", Aporrea / TeleSUR,  aporrea.org, 08/03/08
10. "Entrevista a Héctor Mondragón, Convergencia Campesina, Negra e Indígena de Colombia",  Aloia Álvarez Feáns, ecoportal.net, March 4th 2008
11. "Paramilitarismo colombiano en Venezuela: otro factor más de desestabilización", Luismi Huarte, Rebelión, 09-03-2008

[The Wiseman]

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/

Did U.S. Mercenaries Bomb the FARC Encampment in Ecuador?

by Tom Burghardt

As diplomatic and military fallout from the March 1 Colombian raid into Ecuador escalate regional tensions, allegations from Ecuadorean sources link the unprovoked attack to the U.S. Manta airbase and charge the American mercenary firm DynCorp with piloting the planes that killed FARC commander Raúl Reyes and 24 others.

According to investigative journalist Kintto Lucas,

A high-level Ecuadorean military officer, who preferred to remain anonymous, told IPS that "a large proportion of senior officers" in Ecuador share "the conviction that the United States was an accomplice in the attack" launched Mar. 1 by the Colombian military on a FARC...camp in Ecuador, near the Colombian border.

"Since Plan Colombia was launched in 2000, a strategic alliance between the United States and Colombia has taken shape, first to combat the insurgents and later to involve neighbouring countries in that war," said the officer. "What is happening today is a consequence of that." ("Ecuador: Manta Air Base Tied to Colombian Raid on FARC Camp," Inter Press Service, March 21, 2008)




Ecuadorean Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval said an investigation into whether the Manta airbase was used in the attack should be carried out by Ecuador's armed forces. According to the leasing agreement, the Manta base can only be used for counternarcotics operations.

While U.S. Ambassador Linda Jewell assured Ecuadorean Foreign Minister María Isabel Salvador that the planes at Manta "were not involved in any way," the military source told the IPS reporter that "the technology used, first to locate the target, in other words the camp, and later to attack it, was from the United States."

Sandoval had earlier said that "equipment that the Latin American armed forces do not have" was used in the Mar. 1 bombing, according to Lucas.

Commenting on the tactical modalities employed in the raid, Sandoval said,

"They dropped around five 'smart bombs'," the kind used by the United States in the First Gulf War (1991), "with impressive precision and a margin of error of just one metre, at night, from planes travelling at high speeds," said the minister.

The military source said that "an attack with smart bombs requires pilots who have experience in such operations, which means U.S. pilots. That's why I think they did the job and later told the Colombians 'now go in and find the bodies', which is when Colombian helicopters and troops showed up" at the site of the raid.

The U.S. role in the raid could have been even greater. The officer claimed that the bombing raid was actually led by "U.S. pilots, possibly from DynCorp." While demonstrable evidence for these explosive charges has yet to surface, the statements by the Ecuadorean officer seem plausible, particularly when one considers the role played by American military- and mercenary personnel in coordinating Plan Colombia.

Claiming that the aircraft "took off from the Tres Esquinas air base in the southern Colombian department of Caquetá," the officer went on to describe how "the planes used to fumigate coca crops or to attack the guerrillas are piloted by serving members of the U.S. military or (former) military men at the service of companies like DynCorp."

More than $5.5 billion dollars has been poured into the region by the United States since 2000, allegedly for "counternarcotics operations." A key strategic goal of America's "war on drugs" is to take the "battle" to the source--coca growing, processing and exporting Andean nations, and DynCorp has been a major beneficiary of U.S. largess in the area.

Meanwhile, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa warned on Saturday that diplomatic tension with Colombia will rise "if an Ecuadorean was among the dead," in the March 1 raid Reuters has reported. "It would be extremely grave if it is proven that a Ecuadorean died. We will not let this murder go unpunished."

Citing Uribe's "dodgy dossier," the Associated Press claims "that the FARC gave money to Correa's 2006 presidential campaign." Without skipping a beat, or apparently examining the files, denounced as forgeries by investigative journalist Greg Palast who actually did, the AP reporter avers, again citing Uribe that "Correa's ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, planned to give the rebels US$300 million."

As a key "private partner" of Plan Colombia, DynCorp's aerial spraying of herbicides over portions of the Colombian countryside has caused wide-spread ecological damage with no discernible diminution of the flow of narcotics into Europe and the United States.

Indeed, according to a February 2008 report published by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), "intensive aerial herbicide spraying of coca crops in Colombia has backfired badly, contributing to the spread of coca cultivation and cocaine production to new areas of the country and threatening human health and the environment." The WOLA report, citing UN figures, goes on to describe how cocaine production in Colombia has risen from 617 metric tons in 2001 to 640 metric tons in 2005, a wretched failure considering the inestimable cost in human lives and habitat destruction.

Since 2002, congressional authorization for the program has permitted "counternarcotics" funds to be siphoned-off into scorched-earth counterinsurgency operations by the Colombian Army and their paramilitary allies. Some 300 U.S. Special Forces "advisors" serve as "mentors" to elite Army units in what has become another front in the U.S.-led "war on terror."

Analyst Doug Stokes describes how Plan Colombia has morphed into an all-out war against Colombia's left-wing opposition:

In the case of Colombia, civil society organizations, especially those that seek to challenge prevailing socio-economic conditions, are construed by the U.S. government as potentially subversive to the social and political order, and in the context of counter-insurgency, legitimate targets for "paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist" attack. [T]he 1991 post-Cold War U.S. reorganization of Colombian military and paramilitary networks and the massive levels of post-Cold War U.S. funding of the Colombian military serves to underline the continued relevance of counterinsurgency for destroying movements that may threaten a stability geared towards U.S. interests. ("The U.S. War of Terror in Colombia, Colombia Journal, December 2, 2002)

The controversial mercenary outfit, like its better-known cousin, Blackwater, has a dodgy history and has been fingered by investigators in human rights and other abuses in countries where it operates.

According to a CorpWatch profile,

DynCorp began in 1946 as a project of a small group of returning World War II pilots seeking to use their military contacts to make a living in the air cargo business. Named California Eastern Airways the original company was soon airlifting supplies to Asia used in the Korean War. By 2002 Dyncorp, headquartered in Reston, Virginia, was the nation's 13th largest military contractor with $2.3 billion in revenue until it merged with Computer Sciences Corporation, an El Segundo, California-based technology services company, in an acquisition worth nearly $1 billion.

The company is not short on controversy. Under the Plan Colombia contract, the company has 88 aircraft and 307 employees--139 of them American--flying missions to eradicate coca fields in Colombia. Soldier of Fortune magazine once ran a cover story on DynCorp, proclaiming it "Colombia's Coke-Bustin' Broncos." ("CSC/DynCorp," Company Profiles, CorpWatch, no date)




While attempting to fly below the public radar, DynCorp's questionable Plan Colombia operations surfaced when a group of Ecuadorean peasants filed a class action lawsuit against the outfit in 2001. The suit alleges that herbicides spread by DynCorp aircraft in Colombia drifted across the border, killing their crops and causing widespread livestock and human illnesses; in several cases, aerial fumigation led to the death of several children.

Washington responded by attempting to have the suit squashed. According to CorpWatch, "Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers intervened in the case right away telling the judge the lawsuit posed 'a grave risk to US national security and foreign policy objectives.'"

In a 2001 article profiling DynCorp's Latin American operations, investigative reporter Jeremy Bigwood wrote,

DynCorp's day to day operations are overseen by a secretive clique of officials in the State Department's Narcotic Affairs Section (NAS) and the State Department's Air Wing, a group that includes unreformed cold warriors and leftovers from the Central American wars of the 1980's. Working hand-in-hand with U.S. military officials, Narcotic Affairs is supposed to be part of the drug war only, running the fumigation operations against drug crops. But there are indications that it is also involved in the counter-insurgency. In areas that are targeted for fumigation by Narcotic Affairs, Colombian right-wing paramilitaries arrive, sometimes by military helicopter, according to a human rights worker living in the Putumayo who asked for anonymity. Members of these paramilitaries "clear the ground" so that the planes spraying herbicides, often piloted by Americans, are not shot at by angry farmers or insurgents. ("DynCorp in Colombia: Outsourcing the Drug War," CorpWatch, May 23, 2001)

Whether or not DynCorp pilots bombed Ecuador on behalf of America's ally, the paramilitary-linked regime of Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, it is clear the United States will not willingly relinquish the Manta airbase when its lease expires in November 2009.

In 2001, a retired Ecuadorean army colonel, Fausto Cobo, told IPS that "Manta, for the purposes of Plan Colombia is a U.S. aircraft carrier, on land."

As one of four "forward operating locations (FOLs), along with Curaçao, Aruba and El Salvador, Manta is a critical strategic base for U.S. "counternarcotics" and "counterinsurgency" operations in Latin America--and as a possible launching pad for an attack on Venezuela.

While the furor surrounding Colombia's allegations against Ecuador and Venezuela may have fallen off the media's radar, congressional efforts to have Venezuela declared "a state sponsor of terrorism," have not.

In Latin America, the "public-private partnership" in repression with well-paid mercenary outfits like DynCorp taking the lead, it is a near certainty that incidents like the March 1 raid will continue as Washington seeks to shore-up the periphery of its shrinking imperialist empire.

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.