The coming robot and counterinsurgency armies

Hello from Alberta. I’m here giving a few talks with En Camino, a collective I belong to that works principally on Colombia solidarity. I have a series of talks that I’ve given in over the past few months that might be worth writing out and posting, I may do that as a series here.

Alberta is an interesting place, a very different part of Canada, and one that anyone who is concerned about Canada and what it is doing should study and understand. The city I am in, Calgary, and its University, created and supplies the intellectual basis for the regime that is currently in power in Canada. The ideas and policies, the networks and organizations, are developed here. The deals are made here. The money was made here. And so on. It is certainly something I’ve been thinking about and have been meaning to study more carefully.

When on the road I do things I don’t normally do, like read magazines (my reading is generally from books or online), and I picked up a copy of Harper’s on the road from Edmonton to Calgary.

Two articles caught my interest. The first, by Edward Luttwak of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on counterinsurgency, and the other by freelance writer Steve Featherstone, on “the coming robot army”.

The counterinsurgency article was more interesting, so I’ll deal with it second. Featherstone’s piece on robots describes in scary detail the operation of the next generation of remote-control military equipment.

There are already unmanned drones of all kinds, but the next generation has more power: robots that can climb walls, coordinate with other camera-carrying, intelligence-gathering robots to create a complete picture of the battlefield. The robots are part of a “kill chain” that will enable the US military (which is the only one I think could afford such things) to inflict more casualties and do more damage with reduced casualties. The generation of robots after this one will be able to make decisions and operate quite independently of remote control.

Featherstone extrapolates ethical issues that I don’t think are the right ones. He raises a hypothetical: suppose a drone, following orders, kills a family in the home of an insurgent. Who is responsible? I don’t think this is such a complex issue: it has never been the case that soldiers who commit war crimes are solely culpable. It has always been the case that militaries (and bureaucracies) are organized specifically to diffuse responsibility away from individuals. So people who make the decision to go to war are culpable just as soldiers are. And to the degree that a society is democratic, we’re all culpable to the degree that we have the power to change a policy and don’t.

What I wonder though is whether the robotification of the army has limits. Does the complexity and expense of the organization of an army that uses robots heavily create vulnerabilities? Is such an organization good at some things and not others? And, leading into Luttwak’s article, given that no military can stand against the US military and we’re talking about an army that will be fighting relatively defenceless populations, what are the effects of using such an army on a population?

Luttwak’s argument is as follows. Counterinsurgency is a political and not a military problem and so the astounding and increasing firepower the US brings to bear in Iraq (or Afghanistan), and its ability to kill without taking casualties (which the US population is sensitive to) becomes irrelevant in the face of insurgents who will hide among the population, passively protected by the population, rather than fight against vastly superior firepower. Why does the population support insurgents, Luttwak asks? Because the insurgents are willing to out-terrorize the occupier. Cooperation with the occupier is punished with terrible reprisals. The political solution to this, used by the Romans, the Ottomans, the Nazis, is to be willing to out-terrorize the insurgents. Some high profile massacres will do the job, but the US, because of principled opposition to massacres, won’t do so. The only thing that might help the US if it is unwilling to out-terrorize, is to be willing to govern. But since the US wants to leave governance to the locals, its counterinsurgency program is doomed.

I thought about this a while before I could identify the problems with it, and there are several.

The first is that it assumes that the US has benevolent intentions – Luttwak says that the problem is that Iraqis and Afghans prefer local oppression to the freedoms brought by occupiers. But Luttwak knows that empires (from the Romans to the Nazis) don’t occupy for benevolent reasons.

From the assumption of benevolent empires, it is natural to suggest that support for insurgency comes from terrorizing the population. The reality is more complex. Reprisals are part of the picture, to be sure. So is nationalism, dignity, vengeance against the occupier, and legitimacy, which Eqbal Ahmad, for example, emphasized in his writings on anti-colonial warfare.

Third, the assumption that principle prevents the US from massacring people is false. The US did massacre people in Fallujah, mainly for the demonstrative reasons that Luttwak argues the US would never massacre. There is something to the idea that communication of atrocities to populations with a degree of control over decision-makers can reduce atrocities (something that didn’t exist in Roman or Ottoman times). But if that communication must take place through centralized media corporations and propaganda systems that are part of the system of power, that frees empires to commit the demonstrative massacres Luttwak argues would bring places like Iraq under control.

If Luttwak is wrong, a couple of possibilities follow. One is that Iraq is, for US purposes, under control. That’s hard to believe, but I do think the current situation is more beneficial to the Bush regime, and those who wanted the war in Iraq in the first place, than many think. The alternative though is that the reason US counterinsurgency “fails” (and I repeat that I think it’s more successful than many) is for some reason other than its unwillingness to terrorize. I think it is probably a question of legitimacy – but Iraq, like Palestine, is a place where anyone with any legitimacy is targeted for destruction by the empire. When no one has legitimacy, there is chaos. And chaos, while it may not be as good for empire as stable imperial control, might be a good imperial second choice.

The second phase of Plan Colombia

So, we’ve had seven years of Plan Colombia which was initiated, famously, with 1.3 billion from the US and an additional 4-5 billion of Colombians’ money. The money paid for helicopters, mainly, and other military hardware and support to the Colombian army to fight ‘drugs’ – mainly to provide military support for aerial fumigation. It’s been 7 years with no effect on drug supply or demand, though there have been ‘successes’ in other realms – to which I’ll return. But first, the news – that after 7 years of Plan Colombia, they’re entering a second phase, according to El Tiempo, Colombia’s national newspaper (article below). Its features:

-It is around $44 billion pesos to start, which is about $23 million USD
-The “international community” will provide 30%
-It is a 6-year plan, going to 2013
-Over the course of the plan, some $3.6 billion USD will come from the US, $9 billion USD from Europe and Asia
-86% of the plan will go to ‘development’, 14% to military expenditure against ‘drugs’.

The first plan had the following features.

-Between 2000-2006, the US put $4.7 billion USD into Plan Colombia, the Europeans about $1 billion, and Colombia $7.5 billion.
-57% of this went to ‘fighting drugs’, 43% to ‘social investment’

In the very same edition of El Tiempo, we get a sense of the success of Plan Colombia. I have been a bit derilect in covering this here, but the shining jewel in the crown of Plan Colombia is the government’s negotiation with the paramilitaries, by which these mass murderers, who were always supported and trained and armed by the army and the US, confess their crimes, ‘reintegrate’ into society, and ‘put down their weapons’. The major media event in this is paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso’s ongoing confessions of his massacres, torture, and assassinations. This process, in which the government negotiates with itself and gives itself some benefits, has given rise to a movement of victims, families of victims of paramilitary massacre who have demanded truth and justice and who have entered the judicial process to have their voices heard.

One such courageous witness was Yolanda Izquierdo, who was murdered yesterday by a couple of gunmen on motorcycles. Her husband is dying. She had been threatened and had announced the threats in El Tiempo. Others: Freddy Abel Espitia, president of the Committee of the Displaced of Cotorra, killed on December 28.

The same article on Izquierdo’s murder provides a summary of some of the statistics from the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a human rights group, for the past 4 years.

20,102 killed
11,292 killed outside of combat
75.1% of killed outside of combat attributed to the state
397 per year, on average, killed by the guerrillas
1060 per year, on average, killed by the paramilitaries
1741 people killed in massacres
823 people tortured
6192 people arbitrarily detained

More than anything, this is a (partial) balance sheet of Plan Colombia itself, and one of the measures of its success. A full balance sheet would include the territories and resources that changed hands in the ‘agrarian counter-reform’ by which the paramilitaries displaced 4 million people from their land by way of these killings and massacres in order to hand the territory over for megaprojects. It would also include 3 more years of this. And changes to the constitution, the mining code, the labor law. The destruction of the labor movement and the social organizations. Someone is certainly profiting from all this, and wants to ensure that it continues, all the way to 2013.

Febrero 1 de 2007

Asesinan a mujer que asistió como representante de las víctimas a declaración de Salvatore Mancuso
Eran cerca de las 2 de la tarde cuando Yolanda y su esposo fueron abordados en la puerta de su casa por los dos sicarios.

Desde su asistencia a la primera versión libre del ex jefe paramilitar, en diciembre, comenzaron a llamarla para que se quitara del camino. Ayer, con seis tiros, dos sicarios sellaron las amenazas.

Yolanda Izquierdo acababa de salir a la puerta de su casa del barrio Rancho Grande de Montería, un humilde sector de la margen izquierda del río Sinú, para recibir a su esposo Francisco Torreglosa.

Dos hombres en motocicleta se les acercaron, cruzaron varias palabras con ellos y luego el parrillero disparó.

La campesina, que con el agricultor Manuel Argel encabezó la fila de víctimas de los paramilitares en las pasadas audiencias del ex jefe de las autodefensas Salvatore Mancuso, quedó tendida en el piso con seis tiros en el cuerpo. Su esposo, malherido, sigue en una clínica de Montería.

Corrieron a socorrerlo los vecinos, que desde agosto del año pasado vieron a Yolanda ir y venir en la búsqueda de certificados, mapas y escrituras que documentaban que ella y al menos otras 700 personas habían sido obligadas por los ‘paras’ a vender las parcelas que en 1990 les entregó la Fundación para la Paz de Córdoba (Funpazcor). Esta fue creada por los hermanos Castaño Gil y a través de ella Fidel, el fundador de las Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá (Accu), entregó 10.000 hectáreas a 2.500 campesinos cuando se desmovilizó, en el 90, en respuesta al desarme del Epl, uno de los grupos que combatió.

Yolanda y Manuel se habían convertido en los voceros de los campesinos de esas tierras arrebatadas, vendidas o abandonadas a la fuerza desde el 2000, cuando comenzaron la presiones.

Yolanda denunció las amenazas en su contra a EL TIEMPO en la tercera semana de enero: “Cuando nos devolvimos para Córdoba, el 22 de diciembre, nos informaron que había una orden para matar a la mujer que coordinaba a las víctimas de Funpazcor, o sea a mí. Quieren que dejemos las cosas así”.

Personas cercanas al trabajo de los desplazados dicen que el crimen fue cometido por hacendados que están explotando las tierras que reclaman los campesinos.

La última advertencia para que Yolanda se quitara del camino fue el pasado jueves. “La llamó una mujer que dijo: Yolanda y Manuel, piérdanse que los van a matar”, le contó a este diario el abogado Mauricio Caballero, que representa a 863 víctimas de las Auc.

El jueves, el viernes, el lunes y ayer martes Yolanda fue a la Fiscalía a pedir protección. Los cuatro días, denuncia Caballero, le dijeron que debía esperar ocho días para que la solicitud hiciera trámite. “Yolanda era la que los alentaba a todos para que reclamaran sus tierras. Si no se hace nada, el próximo muerto va a ser Manuel”, afirma el abogado. El ataque contra la campesina, que a duras penas cargaba en el bolsillo lo del bus, es el tercero contra víctimas de las Auc en 15 días. Como si la idea fuera acabar con quienes están pidiendo justicia y reparación.

Los otros ataques

1. El domingo 28, desconocidos mataron a Freddy Abel Espitia, presidente del Comité de Desplazados de Cotorra (Córdoba).

2. El 20 de enero, le prendieron fuego a la sede de la Liga de Mujeres Desplazadas de Turbaco (Bolívar).

Buscó techo a muchos

Desde su desplazamiento, Yolanda Izquierdo lideró en Montería la Organización Popular de Vivienda (OPV), que dio techo a dos mil familias desplazadas.

Ella presentó el proyecto entre 1997 y 1998 y fue respaldado por la Alcaldía de la capital cordobesa.

“Nos dijeron que había una orden de matar a la mujer que coordinaba a las víctimas de Funpazcord, o sea a mí”.

Datos de 4 años

La Comisión Colombiana de Juristas presentó un informe sobre la situación de derechos humanos y del Derecho Internacional Humanitario, correspondiente al lapso junio de 2002 y julio de 2006. Algunos datos son:

Muertos: 20.102 personas murieron durante ese tiempo, incluyendo las muertes en combate.

Asesinatos: 11.292 personas fueron asesinadas o desaparecidas fuera de combate.

Estado: El 75,1 por ciento de las muertes fuera de combate se le atribuyeron al Estado.

Guerrilla: En promedio asesinó a 397 personas por año.

‘Paras’: En promedio asesinaron o desaparecieron a 1.060 personas cada año.

Masacres: 1.741 personas fueron muertas en masacres

Tortura: 823 personas fueron víctimas de este delito.

Detenciones: 6.192 colombianos fueron detenidos arbitrariamente durante este lapso.

The Children of Men

Watched “Children of Men” tonight. For those who don’t know, it’s one of those British dystopia movies – I think 28 Days Later and V for Vendetta fall into the category. It’s set in 2027, in a kind of business-as-usual bleak scenario, with an ongoing insurgency and an authoritarian government, but with the twist that no babies have been born in 18-some years. When a girl is found to be pregnant and is in the hands of the resistance, the protagonist has to try to get her to safety from the various groups that would do her harm or use her. I thought it was okay. It had some things that bothered me.

-The only trustworthy people in the movie were white… those in the resistance who turned out to be traitorous were black/brown.
-The pregnant girl, the quintessential single mother, happened to be black.
-The Islamic and Arab aspect of the rebellion in the refugee camp was overstated, I think, for the UK in 2027.
-The incompetence and lack of politics of the rebels was grating.
-I found it hard to believe that ordinary human and family relationships had been wiped out to that extent – even after 20 years of not having babies.

Perhaps these latter dislikes of mine are due to the writers being able to see farther than I can, as opposed to the writers’ limitations.

What I liked about the film:

-It seemed to capture the broad contours of a bleak future. Probably because it captures the broad contours of the bleak present. Dispossession, propaganda, violence, alienation, nowhere safe, no one to trust, a collapsing society and environment, and seemingly random violence.
-It captures this with very spectacular cinematography and effects. I didn’t like some of the military aspects of the major battle in the refugee camp, but it had some very significant realism as well, and captured the sights and sounds and terror of such situations very well.

But I return to the political problems that were inadequately handled. Were the writers just seeing to a future when genuine alternatives had been destroyed, when the process of their destruction had left resistances that long since lost their own ethical framework and could offer nothing to the population? Or was envisioning a battle between an authoritarian, diffuse, collapsing capitalist society and a genuine alternative, politically fought, beyond the ability of our moviemakers today? I mean, I think the future is as bleak as anybody, but I also think that there are people and organizations out there that are inspiring. I don’t think the fight for the future will be so bereft of decency, which can be found in some terrible situations. But maybe not all of them.

Israel, Apartheid, Avnery…

I read Uri Avnery’s piece in Counterpunch on Israeli Apartheid, cautioning against the use of the Apartheid analogy. Stephen Friedman and Virginia Tilley replied, providing interesting facts from the record on South African Apartheid.

When I read Avnery’s piece I thought it was a good conversation opener. There are things in it I disagreed with, some of which Friedman and Tilley address. And things that I think are good fodder for discussion.

The apartheid analogy has several merits. First, as pointed out by Avnery and by Friedman/Tilley, there are major elements that the systems of South African apartheid and Israeli apartheid share (Avnery thinks of these as methods, Friedman and Tilley argue that there is also substance). Uri Davis’s book, ‘Apartheid Israel’, describes the Israeli system very well. Second, when South Africa claimed that there were plenty of oppressive regimes in the world, the world replied that legally-enforced racism was a special affront that deserved a very high priority of international attention and pressure.

Avnery raises several cautions. One, the demographics are different. This is true, and makes Israel relatively stronger than South Africa was compared to the people it is trying to displace and destroy. Two, South Africa depended on indigenous labor, while Israel has successfully replaced Palestinian labor. Three, and Avnery doesn’t say it quite like this, but Israeli apartheid isn’t a system for exploitation, but ultimately for replacing the Palestinian population. I believe, and Friedman/Tilley may disagree with me, that Israel’s stance towards the Palestinians is fundamentally genocidal and it has opportunities and means for carrying this out that the South African white regime did not. This puts the Palestinians in a more precarious position than Black South Africans were in. And although Friedman/Tilley point out the facts of ethnic cleansing of Africans by whites in South Africa, the usefulness of the apartheid analogy should not blind us to the extra precariousness of the Palestinian situation and the genocidal campaign of Israel, exemplified by what is happening in Gaza.

I agree with Friedman/Tilley about how the limits of the apartheid analogy don’t necessarily lend support to Uri Avnery’s preferred solution to the conflict, a two-state solution. I also agree with Friedman/Tilley that the basis for a binational solution, with the right of return guaranteed (I wrote a little fiction about it a while ago) is not religious fundamentalism, as Avnery argues.

Some other differences. I’d like to remind readers of a nice piece by Joel Kovel in Tikkun arguing about how to end Israeli apartheid, making comparisons to South Africa, from May 2003. Here’s a very nice quote from that piece, on the differences:

There are of course important differences between Israel and apartheid South Africa. The latter was only a secondary (though not insignificant) client of the United States, inasmuch as it lacked strong domestic constituencies in America, and more importantly, was not a factor in controlling an area so strategic as the Middle East. Because South Africa is a wealthy and largely self-sufficient powerhouse, while Israel would collapse like a house of cards without the support of its patron, a much greater role would be given to organizing within the United States in the struggle against Zionism compared to the struggle against Apartheid. At the same time, the depth of the American-Israeli tie makes that organizing much more arduous, even as the present state of war and looming expulsion of the Palestinian people (ethnic cleansing was not significant for South Africa) gives it an immediate urgency. Prevention of the latter catastrophe necessarily provides the entry point into the struggle against Zionism, without altering the long term goal. And this is defined by the deep structural similarities between the two racist states.

Apartheid analysis leads naturally to the idea that the apartheid state should be isolated internationally, economically and politically, until it changes. And as Kovel says, this would lead in Israel to very rapid shifts. On the flip side, Israel is completely integrated with North American power, and will not be so easily isolated. Indeed, isolating Israel means defeating the political elites of the US (and Canada, for those interested, and so on) in a significant way: Israel is not something they will compromise on. That might be the most important thing an anti-apartheid campaigner can remember.

The reason they won’t give up easily is two-pronged. On the one hand, it is because supporting a “western” country like Israel to ethnically cleanse a west asian population comes naturally in the west. Racism means Israel is part of the family, Palestinians are not. On the other hand, it is the use of anti-racist feeling. The very reason that made it possible to isolate South Africa – that racism is a special affront – is a reason for many who don’t fully grasp what is being done to the Palestinians to support Israel. Jews have a long history of being the victims of racism. The struggle against anti-semitism is a moral issue. When support for Israel can be cast as part of that historical struggle, instead of the abomination of that struggle that it is, it can be cast as a moral issue that people will fight very hard for.

The history and even the particular forms that anti-semitism has taken (boycotts, for example) make thinking carefully about the tactics of a boycott/divestment/sanctions campaign against Israel imperative. Tactics that worked against South Africa can’t be adopted wholesale. Mostly white academics telling other white academics that they are not welcome because they represent the South African apartheid state looks different from mostly white academics telling Jewish academics they are not welcome because they represent the Israeli apartheid state. The massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich olympics means that a sports boycott against Israel would evoke very different feelings than the sports boycott against South African athletes.

Having discussed the differences, let me return to Kovel and the similarities by way of conclusion:

Here we need to remind ourselves that we are talking about changing the Israeli state. A state is not a society, a nation or a territory, but a mode of regulation and control, and the disposition of official violence. States control and direct society, contain nations, and command territories. The racist state aggrandizes one group by annihilating others, who essentially stand helpless before it. The Holocaust happened to state-less Jews, Gypsies, etc, who became the victims of the nihilism of a racist, Nazi state; similarly, state-less Palestinians have become victims of the nihilism of the racist, Zionist state. Given the nihilistic violence built into the Zionist state, it is reasonable to say that such an outcome is in the interests of both the bodily and spiritual survival of the Jewish people.

Being “thrown into the sea” is a fantasy of projected vengeance. It is predicated on sustaining a racist state-organization into the future, forever surrounded by those it has dispossessed and humiliated. Therefore the chief condition to strive for is creation of a society in which the wheel of vengeance is put out of commission. And if this seems completely off the scale, especially so given the extreme violence built into the Israeli state, it is most important to recall the bringing down of the murderous apartheid state of South Africa—and to realize that if so great an accomplishment could be done there, then an equivalently great accomplishment can take place in Israel/Palestine.

… (snip) …

In a vision of a post-racist society we find, however, the moral force capable of inspiring and drawing in people of good will from all sides of the conflict. If such people were able to demand the downfall of apartheid, why should they not do the same for Zionism, and unify themselves under this banner? It will be a long and hard struggle, and only a vision worthy of its sacrifices will suffice for the path ahead.

To which I can only add that it will be a long and hard struggle, but one on which we’ll all have to account for the side we were on.

The Genocide Option in Iraq

An important commentary by Ed Herman on ZNet, where he makes the comparison to Vietnam that actually matters: that the US pursued genocidal policies in Vietnam and is moving towards the same in Iraq. I’ve written before that I dislike talk of how the US was “defeated” in Vietnam and I dislike any talk of “quagmire” for imperialists – the US walked away from Vietnam after having killed several million people and no one in the US answered for it. As for “quagmire”, it is an inversion of reality, implying that the US “can’t” leave for some reason, when in fact it can leave whenever it decides to, and isn’t leaving because it doesn’t want to. There is nothing to celebrate in these “defeats”. Iraq is deliberately created chaos, in which hundreds of people are being murdered every day. The planned US operations for the next few months are going to make things worse. Mass murder is occurring while we watch. It seems that our desensitization is proceeding on schedule.

Did the Americans kill the Ecuadorian Defense Minister?

Too early to know, but not too early to suspect foul play for Ecuador’s new Defense Minister for a left government that was planning a different relationship between Ecuador’s military and the United States, whose helicopter crashed very close to the US Manta Air Force Base, which the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa promised to close upon coming to power. Remember Guadalupe Larriva, and may her death, whether it was an accidental tragedy or a planned atrocity, hasten the removal of the air force base from that country.

From ALTERCOM

LA MINISTRA DE DEFENSA DE ECUADOR GUADALUPE LARRIVA MURIO EN UN ACCIDENTE EN LA BASE AEREA DE MANTA

Altercom*
25 de enero de 2007
COMPAÑERA Y HERMANA GUADALUPE LARRIVA
¡PRESENTE! – ¡HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!
***
«Las personas que transitan por la vida sembrando utopías, como una estrella en el firmamento, no mueren y se mantienen, por siempre, en el corazón de sus pueblos.» Guadalupe Larriva, Altercom, 26 de agosto de 2004
***
La Ministra de Defensa Nacional del Ecuador y Presidenta Nacional del Partido Socialista Ecuatoriano Guadalupe Larriva ha muerto, junto a los dos tripulantes de su helicóptero militar, en las inmediaciones de la Base Aérea de Manta, ocupada parcialmente por fuerzas extranjeras de origen estadounidense que realizan operaciones de caracter electrónico y vuelos sobre Ecuador y Colombia.
El accidente ocurrió pasadas las 20 horas. Los informes son todavía confusos, aunque se conoce por testigos presenciales que chocaron dos helicópteros de fabricación francesa. La hija de Guadalupe, Claudia Ávila Larriva, de 17 años, viajaba junto a su madre y también murió en el accidente.
La destacada dirigenta socialista, maestra, geógrafa, historiadora, escritora, ex legisladora, ocupó por nueve días la cartera militar del gabinete del Presidente Correa. Fue la primera mujer en ocupar ese ministerio en Ecuador, mantuvo en alto la tesis de revisar el denominado «Libro Blanco de las Fuerzas Armadas», rechazar las fumigaciones uribistas en nuestra frontera norte y negarse enfáticamente a que nuestros soldados intervengan en el Plan Colombia. Su prioridad fue la de vincular a las Fuerzas Armadas en el cambio profundo que reclama su pueblo y en que sean baluartes de la defensa de la Soberanía Nacional.
Guadalupe Larriva se destacó por su lealtad a la causa revolucionaria y al pueblo ecuatoriano, sufrió cárcel por sus ideas y su combate por la liberación de los oprimidos. Maestra destacada, profesora universitaria, fue presidenta de la Unión Nacional de Educadores de Azuay.
El colectivo de ALTERCOM, que fue honrado con su amistad y cooperación, se une al dolor que aflige a las revolucionarias y revolucionarios ecuatorianos por la pérdida de la destacada militante socialista. Lloramos su muerte y reclamamos su legado de integridad, honradez y valentía para la historia del Ecuador.
Altercom exige una investigación inmediata, plena y transparente de este accidente y sus circunstancias.
La Base Aérea de Manta debe volver a ser territorio soberano de la Patria de Guadalupe Larriva.
Altercom
Agencia de Prensa de Ecuador. Comunicación para la Libertad.

Colombia is the model for Afghanistan

An AP article sent to me by Anthony Fenton describes how a US General (Pace) says that Colombia’s drug war is the model for the Afghanistan drug war.

I’m reproducing it below. The article contains critique from the decent and intelligent Adam Isacson, who notes that Colombia’s drug war is a disaster by any sane or decent measure.

But of course the stated goals of drug wars have little to do with the actual goals, as I’ve noted in my own comparison between Afghanistan and Colombia months ago.

In particular, the aspects of the model that aren’t discussed include:

-Getting the resources of the country in the hands of friends and allies

-Funding and arming forces to control territories and populations; handing those forces political and military power in exchange

-Establishing permanent bases and military control in a country as a foothold into an entire region; establishing military forces close to perceieved ‘threats’

These are the military logic of these campaigns, for which drugs are just a useful pretext…

See the article below.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press
All Rights Reserved
Associated Press Worldstream

January 20, 2007 Saturday 12:54 AM GMT

SECTION: INTERNATIONAL NEWS

LENGTH: 593 words

HEADLINE: U.S. military chief sees anti-drug Plan Colombia a model for Afghanistan

BYLINE: By JOSHUA GOODMAN, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: BOGOTA Colombia

BODY:

The United States’ top military official said Friday that American-backed anti-drug and counterinsurgent operations in Colombia the world’s largest producer of cocaine should serve as a “model” for the Afghan government.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Colombia’s campaign to “rid certain areas of terrorists” followed by relief and jobs programs for the poor was a “good model for (Afghan) President Hamid Karzai to consider as he looks at how to reduce the amount of drug trafficking in his country.”

Afghanistan has been plagued by skyrocketing heroin production. But critics say it would be a mistake for the country to duplicate Colombia’s model, which they say has been ineffective despite costing American taxpayers more than US$4 billion (euro3 billion) since 2000.

Pace’s comments, at the end of a two-day visit here, were made in the presence of William Wood, who on Thursday was nominated by the White House to become its next ambassador in Afghanistan.

Wood has served as U.S. ambassador to Bogota since 2003.

Pace also thanked the government of President Alvaro Uribe Washington’s staunchest ally in Latin America for the way “he has reached out to Karzai and his government to provide experience and teams of experts” in combatting drugs.

Colombia, at the urging of the United States, has sent several missions of police and anti-drug experts to train Afghan police and advise Kabul. Opium production in Afghanistan last year rose 49 percent enough to make about 670 tons (607 metric tons) of heroin.

Many Afghan oppose spraying herbicides to kill fields of poppies, which are used to make heroin. The method is seen as likely to anger farmers and scare local residents.

Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world’s opium production, although Colombia is the main supplier of heroin to the United States.

In Colombia the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia have financed their four-decade old leftist insurgency through the drug trade, while in Afghanistan rising poppy production is blamed for fueling an increase in Taliban-led attacks against U.S. troops.

Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said Colombia “was more than willing to continue and increase” counter-narcotic cooperation with U.S., British and Afghan officials.

Since 2000, the U.S. government has provided Colombia with more than US$700 million (euro540 million) in annual military aid to chemically eradicate fields of coca the base ingredient of cocaine and train troops fighting the FARC. Another US$125 million (euro96 million) are devoted to humanitarian relief and programs to encourage poor farmers to switch to growing legal crops.

Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid outside the Middle East.

But despite record aerial eradication campaigns a cornerstone of the U.S.-backed anti-drug policy critics say the costly Plan Colombia has fallen well short of its goal to halve the country’s production of coca.

The latest U.S. government survey found 26 percent more land 144,000 hectares (355,000 acres) in 2005 dedicated to the plant than the previous year’s survey.

“It would be a disaster for Afghanistan if they were to copy the character and model of Plan Colombia,” Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington-based Center for International Policy, told The Associated Press.

“If Afghanistan began fumigating across its country, Colombia has shown us that after five or six years later you’ll have just as much drug crop being grown and a lot more angry people who don’t trust their government and continue to be poor,” he said.

Politics in classrooms, “terrorism” at union meetings…

A little more on the case I mentioned yesterday, in which a teacher tried to get a boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) resolution passed in a Ontario teacher’s union.

The forces mobilized against the resolution, Canada’s Globe and Mail reports, included B’nai Brith and the Jewish Defense League (JDL). .

The JDL is on the US State Department’s terrorist list.

Continue reading “Politics in classrooms, “terrorism” at union meetings…”

Don’t bring POLITICS into the CLASSROOM!

Back in the summer we at ZNet published a fine piece by a very intelligent teacher named Jason Kunin on how to talk about Israel/Palestine issues to unionists. In Canada, activists in unions are trying to push a boycott/divestment/sanctions (BDS) campaign to force Israel to stop its ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies against the Palestinians. Goes without saying that this is an uphill battle. This is, after all, the same jurisdiction where a children’s book that talked about children in Israel and Palestine was banned.

Uphill, indeed. Kunin tried to pass a motion in his union on BDS. It seems that Kunin’s school board took it upon themselves to suspend him and investigate his teaching. They have suspended him, the preliminary reports say, for bringing politics into the classroom. The irony of this seems to have escaped them.

The motion is copied below. If I hear more on how to support this case I will publish it here.

BIRT D-12 STBU bring the following motion to AMPA 2007:

BIRT that AMPA 2007 express its concern about the humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by taking the following actions:

a) Requesting the PE to endorse the recommendations of Amnesty International, in its report “Israel & the Occupied Territories: Road to Nowhere” (December 1, 2006)

b) Requesting that the Provincial Executive write a letter to the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, copied to the Prime Minister of Canada as well as to the leaders of the opposition stating OSSTF’s endorsement of the recommendations of Amnesty International, in its report “Israel & the Occupied Territories: Road to Nowhere” (December 1, 2006)

c) request the provincial HRC to educate OSSTF members to the present crisis and to develop moral and other supports for students, teachers, unions, or other organizations in the Occupied Territories and Israel as may be appropriate.

d) Develop ways OSSTF can demonstrate its support of the growing international call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel.

Moved: Jason Kunin
Seconded: Hayssam Hulays