[(Translated from an article in Le Monde Diplomatique by Colombia Support Network’s translator Sharon Bagatelle]

Last October 9, the US Congress raised the restriction that limited to 400 the number of US soldiers that are able to operate in Colombia. The measure allowed Washington to double the number to 800, and to 600 the number of ³contractors² (mercenaries). The Patriot Plan, a continuation of ³Plan Colombia², legalizes the activities of private companies and their mercenaries, now common in that country.

In the 2004 Tour de France, the CSC cycling team won third place, both as a team as well as individual (the latter thanks to Ivan Basso). But very few fans know that the acronym stands for Computer Science Corp., and even fewer know that it is a multinational connected to US security forces. This relationship was reinforced in March of 2003 when CSC acquired DynCorp, one of Washington¹s favorite Private Military Companies (PMC).

DynCorp has been in Colombia since the end of 1993. Its activities supposedly fall under the war on drug trafficking, but the company participates, together with more than 30 PMC¹s, in the war against the guerilla groups, the FARC ­ Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia -, the ELN ­ National Liberation Army — , and the repression of social movements. Contracted directly by the State Department, the Pentagon or the US Agency for International Development (US AID) (1), these PMC¹s defend, in fact, the interests of the ³superpower.² Through them, Washington created the the other major private conflict in the world besides Iraq.

On September 23, 1999, then President Andres Pastrana returned from Washington after having obtained $1,700 million from President Bill Clinton to finance the Plan Colombia. So as not to irritate public opinion and to avoid the negative psychological impact that a very visible intervention would have created, they limited to 400 the number of US military personnel authorized to work in ³anti-drug² operations within Colombia. If they try to avoid open intervention ­ as in Granada in 1983 or in Panama in 1989 ­ it¹s important for Washington to support Bogota, offering effective systems of information, formation, and training. Upon approving the plan in July, 2000, the US Congress authorized not only the presence of the military, but also up to 400 civilian ³subcontractors², a numeric limitation that could easily be taken as a joke. Since the law speaks of ³Americans², the State Department and the companies like Dyncorp contracted Guatemalan, Honduran, or Peruvian personnel, easily passing the established limits.

In practice, the ³Plan Colombia² doesn¹t do more than legalize the activities that the various companies were alreadycarrying out. In fact, in making an abstraction of their flaming importance and their level of preparation, the PMC¹s aren¹t anything new in that country. In 1987, under the appproving view of the government, large rural landholders and drug traffickers linked to the Medellin cartel went to the Israeli security complany Hod He¹hanitin (Spearhead Ltd) to train paramilitaries. The training work was done at installations and lands held by Texas Petroleum Co., and ex-officials of the Israeli army and the Mossad (2), such as Lt. Coronel Yair Klein (3), and ex-commanders of the British SAS were in charge.

The mercenaries taught ³antisubversive techniques² that would be used to ³clean out² banana and oil zones, eliminating those suspected of suppporting the guerrillas. The techniques were also used to perpetrate the murders, between 1987 and 1992, of Jaime Pardo Leal and Bernardo Jaramillo (Patriotic Union), Carlos Pizarro (M-19), and Luis Carlos Galan (Liberal), all presidential candidates oppposed to the establishment.

According to a document from a special informant of the United Nations, presented in February 1990 to the Human Rights Commission of the UN, more than 140 paramilitary groups operated at that time in Colombia, tightly linked with the army and police. These militias attacked not only guerilla sympathizers, but also workers, unionists, and farmers, victimizing thousands(4). The term ³paramilitary², used broadly as a euphemism, fundamentally attempts to hide the army and the political forces that promote this type of political extermination (5). Carrying out the ³dirty war² in place of the armed forces, these groups permitted the others to keep their image clean, allowing them to seek US help that was otherwise prohibited because of massive human rights violations.

Since this political terror didn¹t succeed in eradicating the rebels, Washington entered the conflict through the back door. The petroleum companies in Colombia, the arms manufacturers and the PMC¹s spent $6 million on lobbying to get the US Congress to aprove the ³Plan Colombia.² Once achieved, the contracts allow the investment to easily be paid back.

Of the $1,300 million assigned by the US to the ³Plan Colombia², $1,130 miilion will be spent without a single Colombian functionary seeing a cent. Even the funds coming from the World Bank for the Plan will be channeled by Washington toward the PMC¹s.

The first investment made with this money consisted of the Pentagon buying an RC-7 spy plane for $30 million. The aparatus was to replace one similar that had crashed into the Patascoy hill, near the Ecuadorian border, on July 23, 1999, when it was trying to obtain information about the FARC. The death at this time of five US drug agents unleashed a scandal, exposing the extent of Washington¹s interference in the conflict. (6) The new plane was lent to a PMC, the Northrop Grunman Corp., in order to continue the work. The subcontractors also arrived, years ago, at Three Corners and at Larandia, US special force bases in the south of Colombia. All that is consumed and used there is imported from the US by the PMC. It was fundamentally at these bases where the thousands of soldiers and paramilitaries in charge of recapturing the Caguan zone were trained, the Caguan zone being the area in which the government of Andres Pastrana had initiated negotiations with the FARC.

Contact with those private companies is made through ³someone² in the US embassy. No Colombian authority has the right to control them, their planes, their crews, or their cargo. Their men enter into the country with a tourist visa but enjoy diplomatic protections. The few times that, in a burst of dignity, the Colombian authorities dared to protest, Washington threatened to suspend its economic aid.

In Colombia there exist all types of PMC¹s. The most versatile is DynCorp, providing even cooks. Arine constructs systems for replenishing fuel for the airstrips. The Rendon Group teaches police and army officials how to explain the ³Plan Colombia.² ACS Defense offers logistical support and advice to embassy personnel (involved in the Plan). Lockheed-Martin offers ­ among other loans ­ help with combat helicopters and troop transport planes. Northrop installed and manages seven powerful radars, coordinated with a sophisticated system of aerial espionage. The company also trains the military and paramilitaries in ³special operations.² (7) Other signatures like MariTech, TRW, Matcom or Alion, use advanced technologies to photograph from space, intercept communications, and analyze them. This information is transmitted to the Southern Command Reconnaissance System of the US Army (Southcom) and the CIA, which doctors it and redistributes it when they choose. The armed forces of Colombia are the last to be informed. The Pentagon, the State Department,and the USAID clearly indicated that the majority of military and logistical support programs, as well as intelligence programs, won¹t be able to be transferred quickly to the Colombians, since the Colombians don¹t have the ³technical capacity² necessary to manage them. (8) One would have to ask, then, what purpose the contracted instructors serveÅ 

Mercenaries and Drug Traffic Since 1998 more than 20 mercenaries have died, almost all in ³strange² circumstances that were immediately covered up. From what is known, Eagle Aviation Service and Technology (EAST), a subcontracting firm of DynCorp, another implicated in the Iran-Contragate by CIA accounts (9), registered the first two deaths in July of 1998. Officially, they had lost their lives in the crash of a fumigating plane over a coca plantation. According to another version, the aparatus had been shot down by guerillas. Michael Demons, of DynCorp, died on August 15, 2000, before arriving at the hospital of the Colombian city of Florencia. The autopsy revealed that he had succumbed to a heart attack produced by an overdose of cocaine and morphine. Demons worked on the base in Larandia. Alexander Wakefied Ross, also employed by DynCorp, died accidentally in August 2002, cut into pieces by the propeller of an airplane, according to the official version. But they told his mother that he had been murdered since he knew too much about the participation of some of his companions in the drug trade.

Is this only rumors? These types of suspicions have foundations. he magazine ³Semana² ­ that finally dealt with the topic after the US media did ­ stated that ³the gringos that fumigate within the framework of Plan Colombia are a band of Rambos, without God or law, and were implicated in the heroine trafficking scandal.² (10) In fact, on May 12, 2000, the police at Eldorado airport in Bogota found ten jars that contained 250 grams of a liquid that, after analysis, turned out to be a mixture of oil and numbing latex, the base of heroine. To the disgrace of DynCorp, its men had used a private company ­ Federal Express ­ to send the precious merchandise to its installations at Patrick Air Force Base, a US military base in Florida. But the Colombian police remained silent until a year later the US media made public a report of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Another ten employees of DynCorp were implicated in amphetamine traffic in 2000. The elements of the investigation developed by the Colombian Ministry of Justice ³disappeared² mysteriously, while the firm simply fired or transferred the people involved. Washington does everything possible to avoid this type of case become known widely since it could put in danger the operations that the Pentagon carries out with DynCorp in various countries, fundamentally in Iraq. This explains the little spread there was of the news of the capture and detention by the FARC on February 12, 2003, of three employees of the California Microwave Systems ­ whom the media named ³hostages² that ³carried out intelligence operations² (11) in the south of Colombia.

From the ³Plan Colombia² to the ³Patriot Plan² Before the attacks in New York on September 11, 2001, the Colombian guerillas were considered belligerent political forces. After that, the State Department began to call them ³terrorist² organizations. In 2002, the Congress of the United States approved the increase of special forces sent to Colombia ­ up to 500 in number ­ at the same time it eliminated the limit of authorized ³subcontractors.² In the same way, it permitted the use of military ³anti-narcotics² help for the counterinsurgency fight. Such help implies the subcontractors and the PMC¹s as well.

In reality, Washington has stopped looking for excuses and has made official what always existed. This change that establishes the continuity has a name ­ the Patriot Plan ­ and marks the displacement of the axis of the war, fundamentally toward the petroleum zones near the Venezuelan border. The guerillas obstruct the exploitation and transport of petroleum, considering this activity of benefit only to multinationals and an infinitesimal minority of Colombians. The first company that used mercenaries to protect its infrastucture was Texaco. In 1997 and 1998 the British Defence Systems collaborated with the army while at the same time they trained paramilitaries paid for by British Petroleum, Total and Triton, relying on the Israeli firm Silver Shadow to acquire arms.

On December 13, 1998, various helicopters bombarded some cabins in Santo Domingo, a village situated near the border of Venezuela. According to the army there they found a column of guerillas. In fact, the 18 victims were peasant farmers. The objective had been found and fixed by the mercenaries who worked for Occidental Petroleum, on whose lands a part of the operation was prepared. It was also from there that Florida Air Scan planes took off carrying on board three US citizens, among them a soldier on active duty. Since then nothing has been heard of the planes, and the US government won¹t allow them to be turned over to the Colombian justice system. (12)

In September of 2003, Bogota signed an agreement with Washington, through which the Colombian government promised not to send to the International Criminal Court US citizens that had comitted crimes against humanity, except when the United States authorizes it. It follows to ask, then, who will take responsibility for punishing the crimes committed by the mercenaries that work for the PMC¹s. Another problem: the politics of ³democratic security² of President Alvaro Uribe support the creation of a contingent of 25 thousand ³peasant soldiers², from local security fronts in the neighborhoods and a network of a million ³informers.² Those ³informers² have generated waves of mass detentions of supposed ³guerilla agents² based on false accusations.(Espinoza, page 14). Who will control the new actors of a war every day more dangerously prinvatized? From the paramilitaries to ³peasant soldiers² to the PMC¹s, this definitively deals with the broadening and modernization of a strategy theorized in 1967: ³When a limited conventional war runs too many risks, the paramilitary techniques can be a sure and efficient way to utilize force with political ends.² (13).

Notes: 1. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), created in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy, is an autonomous government organization, promoting cooperation for development and humanitarian aid. 2. Organism of information and special operations of Israel. 3. Yair Klein also was implicated in an exchange of ³diamonds for miliatry training² in Liberia and Sierra Leone in 1997. He was jailed in Freetown, but was able to get away. 4. At the end of the 1990¹s, the paramilitaries acquired various helicopters and provided the personnel for maintenance and flight training. 5. H. Calvo Ospina, ³Terrorism of the State in Colombia², Le Monde Diplomatique, Southern Cone Edition, April 2003. 6. Caicedo, Castro, German, With Hands Up. Episodes of the war in Colombia, Planeta, Bogota, 2001. 7. Cahier d’etudes strategiques, n° 36-37. Cirpes, París, June, 2004

8.- El Tiempo. Bogota. 20-6-03. 9.- Ken Guggenheim, ‘Iran-Contragate: Financing scandal of the Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries with benefits from the sale of US arms to Islamic Iran, in spite of the embargo,² Associated Press, 5-6-01. 10.- ‘Mercenarios’, Semana, Bogota, 13-7-01. 11.- ‘Mercenarios S.A.’, El Tiempo, Bogota, 20-6-04. 12.- Caicedo Castro German, op. cit. 13.- ‘War in the Modern World’, Magazine of the Armed Forces, Bogota, May ­August, 1976.

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