11-07-05, 8:26 am

Chemical Warfare in Colombia by Hugh O'Shaughnessy and Sue Branford Latin America Bureau

Why is Colombia being poisoned?

Not since the mass spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam has there been such a heinous crime against humanity as that now being perpetrated on the people of Colombia.

Thousands of people have been made ill, tens of thousands of domestic animals and innumerable numbers of wild animals have been killed.

It is devastating one of the most important ecologically sensitive areas in the world, the Amazon basin.

Why are the world's mainstream media silent about this scandal?

Probably for two reasons. First, there is a great and secretive silence surrounding the operation itself and, second, it is affecting mainly indigenous peoples who are poor, widely scattered and do not have the organisation or clout to raise too much of a fuss.

One can only hope that this excellent book, a wake-up call to the world, will change that.

It provides ample and detailed evidence of this crime against humanity and is written with erudition and journalistic flair by two of Britain's best-known campaigning journalists.

In the 1990s, after the demise of the socialist world and the return to democracy in most parts of Latin America, the US found it increasingly difficult to use the excuse of protecting its backyard from communism and send in troops where and when it wanted.

Under the guise of combating the cocaine trade, however, it was able to undertake a joint war with Colombia's military to eradicate the left-wing guerilla forces that have been operating there for decades.

Now, of course, with Bush's 'war on terror,' combating the guerilla movement in Colombia can also be conveniently included under that umbrella.
With the ready market for cocaine in the US, growing coca became more lucrative for Colombia's poor peasantry than subsistence crops.

The military and the right-wing paramilitaries began to dominate the trade, but the guerilla forces, too, realised that they could profit from it to fund their war against the corrupt military-backed regime.

Mass spraying of large areas of Colombia in joint US and Colombian operations has now been going on since the launch of Plan Colombia in 2000.

No-one knows what the chemical make up of this herbicide is, apart from its maker Monsanto.

Suffice to say that it is a greasy, sticky and toxic substance that clings to foliage, human and animal skin.

It soon destroys all foliage, causes eczema and boils on human skin and kills farm animals.

Those exposed to it also have symptoms of nausea and diarrhoea and, as has recently been established by Ecuadorean medics, it causes genetic mutation.

It has been amply demonstrated, not least by the decrease in the price of cocaine on the streets, both in the US and here, that this spraying is having little or no effect in terms of drug availability.

What it is doing, though, is destroying the lives of poor peasants, whose crops and animals are poisoned and whose children are now starving.

It has led to the displacement of tens of thousands of indigenous people and caused untold ecological damage.

The fact that most of the spraying operations have been carried out in areas like Putamayo, on the Ecuadorian border and where the FARC guerillas have their strongholds, tends to undermine the US-Colombian assertion that it is purely an anti-drugs operation.

As in Vietnam, its aim is to destroy ground cover for the guerillas and starve them out.

The strong US and British military presence in Colombia under the guise of combating the drug trade needs to be exposed and we must prevent the country being prepared as a staging post for future attacks on neighbouring Venezuela, something that is undoubtedly already planned.

LAB is to be congratulated for publishing another highly informative and excellently written book in their ongoing series on Latin America today.

From Morning Star