{"id":2359,"date":"2004-05-04T18:50:19","date_gmt":"2004-05-04T22:50:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dbnews\/2004\/05\/04\/plan-colombia-hidden-agenda\/"},"modified":"2004-05-04T18:50:19","modified_gmt":"2004-05-04T22:50:19","slug":"plan-colombia-hidden-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/2004\/05\/04\/plan-colombia-hidden-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan Colombia – Hidden Agenda?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n
\n

Plan
\n Colombia<\/a>, an ambitious and comprehensive offensive against
\n drug traffickers and the guerilla violence that feeds off of them, was
\n proposed by the intelligence apparatus of the US government under President
\n Clinton in 2000. In it’s current form it involves drug crop destruction
\n and fumigation of vast tracts of coca and poppies, combined with a multi-front
\n military offensive against traffickers and the militias and guerrilla
\n bands that protect them.<\/p>\n

The entire effort is supported by the US in a number of ways; the Colombian
\n troops doing the actual fighting have been trained and supplied by US
\n military "advisors"; the arms, helicopters and communications
\n infrastructure are being provided by a number of US firms which have
\n been awarded multi-million
\n dollar no-bid contracts, and the entire operation depends heavily on
\n US intelligence in the form of satellite surveillance, electronic eavesdropping
\n from a high-tech listening post on a US airbase here in Manta, Ecuador,
\n and some actual on-the-ground infiltration of US trained observers and
\n agents.<\/p>\n

In the popular press here in Ecuador, the prevalent and somewhat paranoid
\n public opinion is that the entire Plan Colombia has nothing to do with
\n the war on drugs. People here believe that the US government, despite
\n its public posture, secretly tolerates and even in some cases encourages
\n the production of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, for three reasons. First,
\n they believe that the big drug cartels have secret links to the US government,
\n which uses them to make off-the-books profits which they use to fund
\n secret projects and slush funds out of sight of the public, the media and the Congress
\n (might the history of drug traffic funding for the Contas in Central
\n American have something to do with this?). Second, they feel the drug
\n trade gives the gringos a handle to infiltrate, pressure and corrupt
\n the governments, militaries and police infrastructures of their own countries.  And
\n third, they see the insatiable, multi-billion dollar demand for these
\n products in the US as the primary cause of their own drug problems, as
\n well as an invaluable and underhanded lever of control to manipulate
\n segments of the North American population, primarily youth and minorities.<\/p>\n

Instead, the widespread impression is that Plan Colombia is part of
\n a general, insidious plan to control one of the last true undeveloped
\n resources of the planet: the incomparable natural treasure chest which
\n is the Amazon River basin.  They believe the Plan Colombia is coordinated
\n with similar less publicized operations to infiltrate and establish bases
\n in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil, as part of some super future plot
\n to surround and exploit Amazonian.<\/p>\n

Here in Ecuador, there is a rising fear bordering on panic that the
\n current operative phase of Plan Colombia, called Plan Patriotism, which
\n involves massive spraying of suspected drug fields (which has led to
\n huge contracts to American companies), will have disasterous effects:<\/p>\n

\n

Among those with vested interests beyond the Colombian and US governments
\n are Texas’s Bell Helicopter Textron – which provides Huey helicopters
\n used to move troops and supplies, and Connecticut’s Sikorsky Helicopter,
\n which supplies Blackhawk choppers used to protect spray planes, as
\n well as Kansas’s Monsanto, which provides the Round-up Ultra used in
\n the spraying.
\n DynCorp, of Reston, VA, is the most vested of all: As the State Department’s
\n primary outsourcing company in Colombia it has a roughly $600 million
\n dollar contract to actually do the spraying and maintain the spray
\n planes and helicopters utilized in the fumigation operation. <\/p>\n

(from Narco
\n News<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Their specific fears are twofold.  First, that the sweeping hammer
\n blow about to fall on the Colombian drug mafias, leftist armies and death-squad militias, who
\n control key areas along the border with Ecuador, will bring a tremendous
\n wave of armed drug dealers, leftist guerillas and right-wing desperados
\n pouring across the porous border into relatively safe Ecuadorian territory.
\n And second, that the tremendous economic interests so threatened will
\n strike back at the nerve center of the American end of the effort – the
\n super-secret US Air Force spy base here in Manta, a veritable forest
\n of antennae, listening posts and electronic surveillance equipment,
\n all trained northward toward Colombia. There are tons of close-cropped
\n twenty-something
\n Gringos wandering around Manta these days – when the Dowbrigade inquired
\n innocently of one young lieutenant during our first few days in town
\n as to how many of our compatriots are stationed here, we got a "I could
\n tell you but then I’d have to kill you" look back and a terse "Can’t
\n say."<\/p>\n

For years word on the street in Ecuador has whispered of a secret deal
\n between the Ecuadorian government and the criminal cartels in Colombia.
\n Mafia and leftist leaders were supposedly quietly allowed to periodically
\n hide out in northern Ecuador to "cool down" while officials looked the
\n other way.  In return, the Colombians agreed not to allow the drug
\n processing plants, bank robbers and sophisticated kidnapping gangs
\n (Colombia is far and away the world capital of kidnapping) to operate
\n on this side of the border.  Today there is widespread fear that
\n this de facto deal is in danger of breaking down completely.<\/p>\n

If this happens it would he a major tragedy capable of making Ecuador
\n unlivable for foreigners, businesspeople and tourists in a very short
\n period of time, following the pattern laid down in Colombia.  The
\n Dowbrigade is old enough to remember when Colombia was one of the true
\n gems of Latin
\n America; incredibly rich agricultural land, fantastic fruits and vegetables,
\n world class coffee, cocoa and cannabis, friendly people, staggering natural
\n beauty and a rich cultural heritage. Tourism was their number two industry,
\n right behind coffee.  Now, you have to be crazy or suicidal to want
\n to visit the country.<\/p>\n

We will continue to follow this story and post updates in this space.<\/p>\n

Article from El
\n Universo<\/a> (Guayaquil, Ecuador – in Spanish)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plan Colombia, an ambitious and comprehensive offensive against drug traffickers and the guerilla violence that feeds off of them, was proposed by the intelligence apparatus of the US government under President Clinton in 2000. In it’s current form it involves … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1443],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-links"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dowbrigade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}