After being evicted from the military base in Manta, Ecuador, the U.S. is planning to establish new military bases in Colombia. This threatens the peace and security of the entire region and will worsen human rights in Colombia. Here’s a message from Joseph Gerson followed by a press release from the Fellowship of Reconciliation regarding the delivery of a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Clinton from more than 100 peace groups and leaders calling for suspension of negotiations to establish military bases in Colombia. Also, please visit the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s website on Colombia. It is an excellent resource for background information, news and analysis, as well as primary documents.
>><<
Friends,
As you may have seen, the U.S. is planning to compensate for the loss of its base in Manta, Ecuador by building several bases in Colombia. To get around President Obama’s statement that the U.S. will not have bases in Colombia, as is the case in many other parts of the world, these bases may ultimately be called “Colombian” bases at which U.S. troops and weapons are based rather than U.S. bases. But, “a rose by another other name is still a rose” – or in this case, an infrastructure for war and imperialism.
We need to do what we can to prevent these bases from being built. Following is a press release about a letter to Secretary of State Clinton signed by many religious and grassroots leaders and organizations. I’ve followed it with a background article recently published by NACLA, the North American Committee on Latin America.
Please stay in touch with John Lindsay-Poland and others to work against the finalization of this arrangement.
For peace and Justice,
Joseph Gerson
American Friends Service Committee
++++
12 August 2009
For Immediate Release
Religious and Grassroots Leaders Urge Clinton to Suspend Military Base Talks with Colombia
Bases deal “presents enormous dangers for entire hemisphere”
Over one hundred religious, national, community organizations and leaders and academics today called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “suspend negotiations for expanded U.S. military access or operations in Colombia,” a plan that has generated a swell of protest among Latin American countries, including Colombia, the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the hemisphere.
“It is rational for regional leaders to see the installation of several U.S. military sites in Colombia as a potential threat to their security,” the groups said, because of U.S. support for trans-border attacks from Colombia, reported violations of the expiring base agreement with Ecuador, a Pentagon statement that it seeks access for “contingency operations” in the region, and the painful history of U.S. military intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“To broaden relationships with South America and value respect for human rights, the United States should not create a fortress in Colombia in concert with the region’s worst rights violators, the Colombian military,” the letter said.
Signatories included 20 national religious organizations and leaders and 32 U.S. peace and human rights groups, as well as community organizations, academics, and international NGOs.
The leaders wrote to Clinton as many South American presidents have expressed opposition to the increased U.S. military presence in Colombia. Brazilian President Lula da Silva urged President Obama to joined presidents from the South American Union to discuss the issue later this month in Buenos Aires, and Venezuela President Hugo Chavez said that “the winds of war are blowing” because of the plan for U.S. troops to operate in seven Colombian bases.
Contact:
John Lindsay-Poland, Fellowship of Reconciliation, 510-282-8983. johnlp@igc.org
Nnenna Ozobia, Transafrica Forum, 202-553-7186. nozobia@transafricaforum.org
Cristina Espinel, Colombia Human Rights Committee, 202-997-1358. colhrc@igc.org
Robert Naiman, Just Foreign Policy, cell: 217-979-2857. naiman@justforeignpolicy.org
Medea Benjamin, CODEPINK, cell: 415-235-6517. medea@globalexchange.org
For background documents on the military base negotiations between the United States and Colombia, see www.forcolombia.org/bases
++++
Colombia: U.S. Bases Stoke the Flames of Regional Conflict
Aug 10 2009
Roque Planas
It was a moment that promised to define a new era in U.S.-Latin American relations: Obama greeted Hugo Chávez at the Summit of the Americas with a smile and a handshake, and Chávez responded with a gift and a heavily accented “I wanna be your friend.” The Cold War-style chasm between Washington and the leftist leaders of the Andes that had widened during the Bush administration finally seemed to be narrowing a bit.
But a nearly completed agreement between Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and the Obama administration to grant the U.S. military access to Colombian bases is rapidly undermining whatever diplomatic progress was made in that fleeting moment.
The Uribe administration announced on July 12 that it had nearly reached an agreement on the terms of a decade-long lease to allow U.S. military personnel to use Colombian military bases to conduct anti-drug trafficking and anti-terrorism operations. No draft of the agreement has yet been made public. The increased access would serve to replace the U.S. lease at Manta, Ecuador, the only U.S. base of operations in South America until the lease was allowed by the Correa administration to expire this month.
President Uribe defended the agreement as a necessary step in his administration’s fight against drug traffickers and Marxist guerrillas at a public event in Santa Marta last week. “This agreement guarantees continuity in the era of an improved Plan Colombia,” he said, referring to the pact that has funneled $6 billion in U.S. aid to the Colombian government and military.
The lease agreement has drawn criticism from Colombian congressmen across the political spectrum, who argue that the executive does not have the authority to allow foreign troops into the country. Liberal Senator Juan Manuel Galán claimed that the Uribe administration “bypassed the Senate.” Senator Jairo Clopatofsky, an uribista of the right-wing Partido de la U, echoed Galán’s criticisms.
Senator Jorge Robledo of the left-wing Polo Democrático Alternativo Article 173 which states that the decision to “Permit the transit of foreign troops through the territory of the Republic” falls to the Senate.
Colombian and U.S. authorities have sought to calm critics by reassuring them that the agreement will not constitute the creation of an autonomous zone of U.S. military operation. “Any activity performed within the framework of the agreement has to be coordinated and authorized by the Colombian authorities,” said Minister of Defense General Freddy Padilla de León. U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield has reiterated the same point and has emphasized that the increased U.S. presence should not be misconstrued as a foreign military base. “They have their bases. This is a question of access,” he said.
The national controversy provoked by the possibility of an increased U.S. military presence in Colombia pales in comparison to the international dispute it has caused. As a neoliberal island in a Bolivarian sea, Colombia’s decision to host more U.S. military personnel has been interpreted by neighboring Ecuador and Venezuela as a security threat. Consequently, Colombia’s diplomatic and commercial relations with its neighbors are crumbling faster than a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Colombia’s relations with Ecuador have remained tense since March 2008, when the Colombian military attacked an encampment of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) located along the border, killing rebel leader Raúl Reyes and 16 other guerrillas. The Correa administration recalled its ambassador to Colombia in protest against the violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty.
The latent conflict erupted once more in June, when Ecuador filed an arrest warrant with Interpol against former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos for the murder of an Ecuadoran citizen killed during the March 2008 offensive. Santos is a close ally of president Uribe and rumored to be a presidential contender in 2010 if Uribe does not seek re-election. The Uribe administration responded by releasing a video of FARC commander Jorge Briceño claiming that the FARC contributed $100,000 to Corrrea’s presidential campaign. The video, which the Colombian government says was recovered from the computer of alleged FARC member Adela Pérez last May, was submitted to Interpol and leaked to the media. Correa denies any support of illegal armed groups in Colombia and has demanded that the FARC “say if they have donated money and to whom.” The Economist reports that Ecuador’s electoral commission has certified his campaign contributions.
Colombia’s relations with Ecuador were further soured by Uribe’s invitation of more U.S. troops, since Correa had only recently expelled U.S. military personnel from the Ecuadoran base at Manta. Correa promised in his presidential campaign to shut down the only U.S. military base in South America, although he later offered to renew it if the U.S. agreed to let Ecuador establish a military base in Miami. “If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an Ecuadoran base in the United States,” he said.
Correa has announced that any further aggressions from Colombia will invite a military response. An increased U.S. military presence in Colombia promises to ratchet up tensions with Ecuador. The U.S. president, in his first major statement on Latin America policy, said that “In an Obama administration, we will support Colombia’s right to strike terrorists who seek safe-haven across its borders…”
Venezuela’s Chávez has also characterized the increased U.S. military presence as a threat to his country’s national security. Chávez maintains that the United States supported an abortive coup in Venezuela in April of 2002—a charge that U.S. officials deny, though the Bush administration did not join the 19 Latin American countries who condemned the illegal seizure of power.
Largely in response to the Colombian government’s decision to increase the U.S. military presence there, an indignant Chávez ordered the withdrawal of the Venezuelan ambassador to Colombia on July 27 and has threatened to freeze imports from Colombia and nationalize Colombian companies if he perceives “one more act of aggression.” Venezuela is Colombia’s second largest trading partner, followed by the United States.
The crisis in Colombia-Venezuela relations was stoked by allegations from the Uribe administration that the Venezuelan government supplied Swiss anti-aircraft rocket launchers to the FARC. The Colombian military seized the weapons in question at La Macarena in October of 2008, but did not notify the Venezuelan government until early this month, according to a press release. The Swiss government has requested an explanation from the Chávez government. Chávez denied the allegations, saying “Anyone can take a rifle [sic] and put a Venezuelan seal and a serial number on it.”
Colombia’s more distant neighbors have also taken a keen interest in the military agreement. Brazilian President Lula da Silva commented that “An American base in Colombia doesn’t please me.” Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured along with her father by the Pinochet government following a military coup supported clandestinely by Washington, has called a meeting of the Union of South American Nations on August 10 in Quito, Ecuador, to discuss the issue. President Uribe is not expected to attend.
Far from the smiles and handshakes of April, the Obama administration now finds itself at the center of Latin America’s most explosive inter-state crisis. The “New Partnership in the Americas” promised by Obama on the campaign trail and at the Summit of the Americas looks increasingly elusive.
Leave a Reply