The International Criminal Court (ICC) just published [Nov 2012] its Interim Report on Colombia (1).\u00a0\u00a0 It is an interesting read, revealing as much about the ICC itself as it does about Colombia.\u00a0\u00a0 In the Report, the ICC explains that Colombia has been under preliminary examination by the ICC since June 2004.\u00a0\u00a0 This is quite curious given the ICC\u2019s conclusion in the report that the worst crimes of the Colombian military \u2013 the \u201cfalse positive\u201d killings in which the military killed around 3,000 innocent civilians and dressed them up to appear as guerillas \u2013 \u201coccurred with greatest frequency between 2004 and 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other words, the military carried out its most notorious violations while under the ICC\u2019s Clouseau-like scrutiny.\u00a0 Perhaps the ICC was too busy trying Africans \u2014 apparently the sole target of ICC prosecutions \u2013 to have done anything to deter such crimes.<\/p>\n
In any case, the ICC\u2019s conclusions about the \u201cfalse positives\u201d scandal raise many questions about the Colombian military, and, more importantly, about its U.S. patron.\u00a0 Thus, the high water mark for the \u201cfalse positives\u201d (2004 to 2008) also corresponds with the time in which the U.S. was providing the highest level of military aid to Colombia.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And, this appears to be more than a coincidence.<\/p>\n
The ICC describes the \u201cfalse positives\u201d phenomenon as follows:<\/p>\n
State actors, in particular members of the Colombian army, have also allegedly deliberately killed thousands of civilians to bolster success rates in the context of the internal armed conflict and to obtain monetary profit from the State\u2019s funds.\u00a0\u00a0 Executed civilians were reported as guerillas killed in combat after alterations of the crime scene.\u00a0\u00a0 . . .\u00a0\u00a0 The available information indicates that these killings were carried out by members of the armed forces, at times operating jointly with paramilitaries and civilians, as a part of an attack directed against civilians in different parts of Colombia.\u00a0\u00a0 Killings were in some cases preceded by arbitrary detentions, torture and other forms of ill-treatment.<\/p>\n
The ICC concluded that these killings were systemic, approved by the highest ranks of the Colombian military, and that they therefore constituted \u201cstate policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The killings \u2013 which the ICC characterized as both \u201cmurder\u201d and \u201cforced disappearances\u201d \u2014 were not random, but rather, as the ICC concluded, were directed at \u201cparticular categories of civilians,\u201d including \u201cmarginalized\u201d individuals from remote areas, such as unemployed persons, indigents and drug addicts;\u00a0 political, social and community activists; indigenous persons, minors, peasants and persons with disabilities.\u00a0\u00a0 Moreover, the regions most affected by these killings, in descending order were Antioquia, Meta, Hila and Norte de Santander.\u00a0 As the ICC noted, the \u201cfalse positive\u201d victims many times ended up in mass graves.<\/p>\n
The ICC, relying upon the findings of the UN Special Rapporteur, found a peculiar fact \u2013 that the \u201cfalse positives,\u201d though occurring with varying frequency back to the 1980\u2019s, began to peak when the threat of the guerillas themselves were actually decreasing in the early 2000\u2019s.\u00a0\u00a0 As the ICC, quoting the UN Special Rapporteur, explains:<\/p>\n
\u2018As security in Colombia began to improve from 2002, and as guerillas retreated from populated areas, some military units found it more difficult to engage in combat.\u00a0\u00a0 In such areas, some units were motivated to falsify combat kills.\u00a0 In other areas, the guerillas were perceived by soldiers to be particularly dangerous and soldiers were reluctant to engage them in combat.\u00a0 It was \u2018easier\u2019 to murder civilians.\u00a0\u00a0 In still other areas, there are links between the military and drug traffickers and other organized criminal groups.\u00a0\u00a0 Local military units do not want to engage in combat with the illegal groups which they are cooperating, so killing civilians falsely alleged to be part of these groups make military units appear to be taking action.\u2019<\/p>\n
One thinking about U.S. policy toward Colombia should be greatly concerned by these details.\u00a0\u00a0 First of all, it is apparent that during the period that the U.S. was providing Colombia with the greatest amount of military assistance under Plan Colombia (from 2000 to 2009), the Colombian military was engaged in its worst crimes\u00a0and<\/span>\u00a0quite unnecessarily so, at least if the stated goal of eradicating drugs was indeed the real goal.\u00a0\u00a0 Thus, the Colombian military was knowingly killing civilians in lieu of killing guerillas while also taking a hands-off policy towards drug traffickers and other organized criminal groups because the military was actually working with these groups.<\/p>\n As the ICC explained, an example of the organized criminal groups which the Colombian military has been closely working with are the right-wing paramilitaries which, as the ICC explained, \u201cassisted the Colombian military in their fight against the FARC and ELN guerillas\u201d by attacking, not the guerillas themselves, but the civilian population \u2013 for example, through \u201cmass killings of civilians; selective assassination of social leaders, trade unionists, human rights defenders, judicial officers, and journalists; acts of torture, harassment, and intimidation; and actions aimed at forcing the displacement of entire communities.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 And, in terms of the displacement, the ICC concluded that this took place in \u201cresource-rich regions of Colombia.\u201d<\/p>\n One does not have to ponder the \u201cfalse positive\u201d scandal or the military-paramilitary assault on civilians to conclude the obvious \u2013 that the war of the Colombian state, backed by the U.S., is targeted at least as much, if not more, against the civilian population, as it is against guerillas and drug traffickers.\u00a0\u00a0 Certainly, it appears to be the case that the Colombian military, in engaging in its \u201cfalse positives\u201d campaign, did so in order to justify continued aid from the U.S. by showing the U.S. results in the form of claimed dead combatants.\u00a0\u00a0 However, I believe that this \u201cbody count mentality\u201d explanation is not the complete explanation, for it can\u2019t in my view explain the need for the military to have tortured the \u201cfalse positive\u201d victims first as the ICC found they did in many instances.\u00a0 I would posit that at least one major reason for such a policy is to terrorize the civilian population into submission and to retreat from their land \u2013 especially \u201cresource-rich\u201d land as the ICC concluded.\u00a0 This policy is working, at least as judged from the results, with Colombia now being the country with the largest internally displaced population in the world at over 5 million.<\/p>\n And, in addition to the oil, coal, gold and other important minerals being extracted in Colombia by multi-national concerns, a critical resource which is now growing exponentially in Colombia is African palm, the oil from which is used for biodiesel.\u00a0\u00a0 As we learn from Gary Leech in his wonderful article, \u201cThe Oil Palm Industry:\u00a0 A Blight on Afro-Colombia\u201d (2), palm oil production in Colombia grew by 70% between 2001 and 2006 \u2013 that is, in the initial years of Plan Colombia and at roughly the same time the military was targeting civilians for assassination with greatest frequency.\u00a0 In addition, the just-passed Colombia Free Trade Agreement is encouraging the growth of palm oil as well.\u00a0 (3)\u00a0 Moreover, 3 of the 4 departments most affected by the \u201cfalse positive\u201d scandal (Antioquia, Meta, and Norte de Santander) are palm growing regions, Meta and Norte de Santander being two of the major regions for this crop.\u00a0 (4)<\/p>\n Olivia Gilmore, in an article entitled, \u201cFueling Conflict in Colombia:\u00a0 Land Rights and the political ecology of oil palm\u201d (5), explains the grim reality that<\/p>\n Poor indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities have been disproportionately affected by this phenomenon, as they often are less likely to have formal land titles or access to legal avenues through which to address their grievances.\u00a0 Individuals and communities are forced off of their land by large, multinational palm oil corporations, paramilitaries, or often a collaborative effort of the two. Armed incursions, murders, and massacres related to palm oil interests have become the norm in all of the major palm oil complexes throughout the country. The central Colombian government, with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), actively promotes palm oil expansion as a crop substitution for coca, to meet the demands of a growing and lucrative bio-fuel market, and to promote economic development at both the local and national levels.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As such, palm cultivation in Colombia has increased dramatically in recent years, making it the fastest growing agricultural sector in Colombia and the fifth-largest producer in the world.<\/p>\n Since the rise of palm oil production in the early 2000\u2019s, nearly all areas of expansion of palm plantations have coincided geographically with paramilitary areas of expansion and presence.\u00a0Much like coca\u2019s role in funding guerillas and paramilitaries, the costs involved in the production process of palm oil make growers an easy target for armed groups.\u00a0There have been numerous allegations of palm oil companies meeting with paramilitaries in order to arrange the violent displacement and illegal appropriation of people\u2019s lands. Earlier this year, the office of Colombia\u2019s Prosecutor General charged 19 palm oil businesses of allying with paramilitaries after investigations linked the economies of palm oil and funding to such groups.\u00a0While some farmers have been able to escape from the violence and coercion of guerilla groups by switching to crops other than coca, the link between palm oil and the funding of violent conflict still exists.\u00a0So strong is this correlation that a study conducted by the Universidad de los Andes argues that a legal product such as palm oil has an equal capacity to finance armed groups as similarly lucrative illegal products.<\/i><\/p>\n In the end, the civilian population of Colombia, particularly in the countryside, is viewed as the enemy by both the Colombian state and the U.S. which continues to back that state.\u00a0\u00a0 While the violence takes different forms, and is fueled by various material incentives, the result is the same over these many years \u2013 the destruction of the peasantry, including the Afro-Colombian and Indigenous populations, which are inconveniently living on land designated for multi-national exploitation and expropriation.\u00a0\u00a0 Colombia, with one of the worst distributions of wealth and land in the world, with its multiple free trade agreements, and with its over-bloated military aid from the U.S., is a quintessential example of unrestrained capitalism and neo-colonialism.<\/p>\n In my recent interview with Kambale Musavuli about the Congo, he stated that there is no \u201cC\u201d in R2P (\u201cresponsibility to protect\u201d), meaning that this doctrine does not apply to the Congo.\u00a0\u00a0 It equally means that it does not apply to Colombia, or other like countries, whose designated role is to the serve the U.S. and its insatiable need for fuel and other key resources.\u00a0\u00a0 And, this is why the horrendous atrocities committed in countries like Colombia and the Congo rarely make the headlines in our newspapers, and why the ICC\u2019s interim report on Colombia was barely spoken of in the press.<\/p>\n As Noam Chomsky has often commented,\u00a0the foregoing is a function of the maxim of Thucydides that \u201cthe strong do as they wish while the weak suffer as they must.\u201d\u00a0 And, this maxim also explains why the ICC, which has yet to prosecute anyone in Colombia for these high crimes, will certainly never prosecute the top intellectual authors of these crimes residing in the United States (6).\u00a0 Indeed, in the ICC\u2019s 93-page report, the United States which has funded these crimes for years is not mentioned even once.<\/p>\n Notes:<\/b><\/p>\n (1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The full report can be found at\u00a0http:\/\/www2.icc-cpi.int\/NR\/rdonlyres\/3D3055BD-16E2-4C83-BA85- 5BCFD2A7922\/285102\/OTPCOLOMBIAPublicInterimReportNovember2012.pdf<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n (2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0https:\/\/nacla.org\/files\/A04204032_1.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n (3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/www.citizenstrade.org\/ctc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/FoE_Colombia_talking_points_2011.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n (4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/portal.fedepalma.org\/\/oil_col.htm<\/a><\/p>\n