Ties still bind Colombia to SOA CSN Home | Monthly news home

Rolando de Aguiar
from the SOA Watch/NE newsletter

Continuing a long-documented trend, the Colombian military still supports the activities of murderous paramilitary death squads throughout Colombia. Human Rights Watch (HRW), in "The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links" 1, presents evidence that at least half of the 18 brigades in the Colombian Army have links to paramilitaries. Meanwhile, the United States sends $300 million in overt military and "counter-narcotics" aid to Colombia, and the congress is currently considering a $1.7 billion aid package presented by the White House. The aid package passed the House easily (but not as easily as expected), but has not yet come up the Senate, and has opposition from both sides of the aisle, including Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Arlen Specter (R-PA).

Even without this latest package, Colombia is the largest U.S. aid recipient in the world, outside of the Middle East (it trails only Israel and Egypt). Perhaps not surprisingly, over the last ten years, it has "achieved" the worst human rights record in the hemisphere—an average of over 3,500 non-combat political deaths every year (including outright political assassinations, massacres, and killings of street children, prostitutes and homosexuals). In 1999, according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists (Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, CCJ), paramilitaries and their military allies were responsible for 80% of the human rights and humanitarian law violations in Colombia, while guerrilla groups were responsible for the remainder 2.

"The Ties That Bind" documents the activities of the third, fourth and thirteenth Colombian army brigades based in Cali, Medellín and Bogotá, respectively (the largest Colombian cities) and their links to paramilitaries. HRW has determined that at least seven members of those brigades, implicated as paramilitary contacts, were also trained at the SOA.

• Gen. Jaime Ernesto Canal Albán received cadet orientation training at the SOA in 1980. Since then, he has risen in the ranks of the Colombian military, and now commands the Third Brigade in Cali. The HRW report quotes a Colombian government investigator, who said, "The Calima Front and the Third Brigade are the same thing." The Calima Front is a paramilitary group, formed in southern Colombia, which HRW links to the Peasant Self-Defense Group of Córdoba and Urabá (Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba and Urabá, ACCU), which is commanded by the notorious, mysterious drug trafficker, landowner and paramilitary leader, Carlos Castaño.

• Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle, now head of Colombia's fourth army division (there are five), received cadet orientation training at the SOA in 1967. The Colombian attorney general's office determined that Ospina's fourth brigade, in Medellín, had close links with Castaño's ACCU. In October 1997, while Ospina was still leading the fourth brigade, paramilitaries closely linked to his unit carried out the El Aro massacre, which is recounted in the HRW report.

• Major David Hernández Rojas, of the fourth brigade, received SOA training at least twice. According to an article last October in El Tiempo, he is now directly paid by the ACCU. As a cadet, he took the "orientation for combat weapons" in 1985. In 1991, he received three months' of psychological operations training. The HRW report's findings suggest that this second class at the SOA may have been helpful in his intimidation and threats against various soldiers under his command, whose families he threatened to have killed if they disobeyed his orders to lie about atrocities his forces committed. Hernández claimed to be forming a paramilitary group within the Fourth Brigade, called "La Muerte" ("Death"), which was to be closely aligned with both the military and police. HRW quotes "Valentín," a former radio operator and witness for the Colombian attorney general's investigation, who testified that Hernández also ordered the ambush and robbery of Alex Lopera, a former government official, and his two companions, who were bringing a cash ransom to guerrillas to release a kidnapping victim.

• Capt. Diego Fernando Fino, who received Cadet Orientation training at the SOA in 1989, was working under Hernández at the time. According "Valentín", Fino organized the ambush, which ended up with all three victims dead. They were shot at point blank range, and the ransom was then "divided up among the soldiers."

• Colonel Jesús María Clavijo Clavijo, also implicated by "Valentín," took an orientation class and weapons training for cadets, at the SOA in 1981. As a major in the fourth brigade, he worked closely with paramilitary groups, and "Valentín" testified that "everywhere that Major Clavijo went, there were disappearances, murders, and wherever he was there was always a flood of reports of abuses." Clavijo was implicated in another attorney general's investigation, which detailed phone communications between members of the army and known paramilitary leaders. Clavijo has since been promoted to Colonel and his forces accused in the case of Edgar Quiroga and Gildardo Fuentes, two leaders of displaced people, who were disappeared last November. According to the Cimitarra River Peasant Association, Clavijo's men attacked peasants in the Cimitarra River valley in January.

• Major Álvaro Cortés Morillo, who took the SOA class on weapons orientation for cadets in 1984, was also implicated in the investigation of phone records.

• Col. Jorge Plazas Acevedo, according to an investigator for the Colombian attorney general's office, was at the SOA in 1977, in a class on infantry tactics. He is currently on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Benjamin Khoudari, an Israeli businessman. As the head of the intelligence unit for the thirteenth brigade in Bogotá, Plazas was responsible for many kidnappings and murders, according to his indictment for Khoudari's murder.

These cases are taken directly from "The Ties That Bind" and name only those officers in the three brigades investigated in that report. Needless to say, SOA-trained officers' influence in the Colombian army is enormous, and their capability for human rights atrocities is apparent.

But still, the U.S. is trying to send between $1.1 and $1.6 billion to Colombia for supposed "counter-narcotic" batallions. However, this is a thinly veiled attempt to continue the dirty counter-insurgency war in Colombia--and these dollars will end up in the hands of human rights violators in the armed forces, and the brutal paramilitaries.

The aid is part of Colombian president Andres Pastrana's "Plan Colombia", in which he is going to the European Union and the U.S. for foreign aid to support his domestic programs. Of course, the U.S. stepped up to fund the military operations. The result was the Clinton administration's $1.6 billion proposal in January, which was frightening in its scope, and was passed, largely unamended, by the House. As of this writing, a very different version ($1.1 billion) is waiting for a vote in the Senate.

There are currently serious issues with the Colombian aid legislation in Congress. First of all, and most importantly, the bill has not passed the Senate. Senators' minds can be changed, regardless of their political party. There are serious concerns on both the Democratic and Republican sides, and while a surprising 183 representatives voted against the aid in April, there may be even more opposition in the Senate. Secondly, even if the aid were to pass, there are large differences (of over $500 million) between the House and Senate versions. While certainly not impossible, these may be difficult to resolve in Committee. Finally, there are some great amendments on the table, like a proposal by Senator Wellstone to change $225 million in funding from crop eradication (in Colombia) to drug treatment (here in the States). This follows a recent Rand study which found that treatment is 20 times as effective as crop eradication in reducing drug use3. All of these factors make legislative changes worth fighting for.

The HRW report shows that the ties between the SOA, the Colombian Army, and the paramilitary "self-defense" forces are deep and strong. By sending more money to fight the so-called "war on drugs," the U.S. is strengthening these ties, and encouraging the forces which have ravaged Colombian civil society for many years.