As part of the massive "aid" package, more U.S. military personnel will be sent to train three Colombian "antinarcotics" army battalions. Between 100 and 150 members of the U.S. military, including members of the Seventh Special Forces Group based in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, are training an Anti-Narcotics Battalion of the Colombian Army. Washington has built radar and electronic surveillance stations in the country.

The U.S. government will also supply the regime with an armada of 18 Blackhawk and 42 Huey military helicopters to ferry troops, and will hand $500 million to the Colombian army and police. In addition, $52 million will go to regional "antidrug" programs in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

Washington has sharply escalated its involvement in Colombia in the last two years. U.S. "counternarcotics aid" to the regime went from $50 million in 1998 to $309 million last year, mushrooming to $1.3 billion for the next two years. The Colombian government is now the fourth-largest recipient of U.S. military funding after the regimes of Israel, Egypt, and Jordan.

The U.S. government and big-business media claim this growing foreign intervention in Colombia is essential in waging a "war on drugs." The U.S. Senate's approval in late June of the $1.3 billion package "will greatly enhance counterdrug efforts in Colombia and neighboring Andean countries in their struggle against illicit production and trafficking, and drug-funded criminal organizations," stated Gen. Barry McCaffrey, White House "drug policy director" and former Gulf War military commander.

In fact, it is widely acknowledged in the capitalist media that the U.S. military "antidrug" efforts are inseparable from the Colombian government's bloody counter- insurgency war, which targets the guerrilla movement and working people in the countryside. The main guerrilla organizations are the 20,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which controls up to 40 percent of the country, and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).

Drug production and trade is a massive capitalist business, controlled by billionaires in both Colombia and the United States. Drug-trafficking capitalists are big landowners who fund private armies and death squads with strong ties to the Colombian military. These paramilitary gangs and the army carry out a campaign of terror against peasants and workers in the rural areas.  
 
Regional U.S. military presence grows
U.S. moves in Colombia are part of a larger effort to beef up Washington's military presence in the region. At a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee March 23, Gen. Charles Wilhelm, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Southern Command, labeled Colombia the most "threatened nation" in the Southern Command's "Area of Responsibility." In addition to Colombia's strategic position, he pointed to Panama as an area of U.S. interest.

Ever since the U.S. rulers were compelled to hand back the Panama Canal to Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, and transfer the Southern Command to Puerto Rico, they have been seeking another base of operations in Central and South America. In his statement to the Congressional subcommittee, Wilhelm outlined his view of "disquieting changes during the past year in the region's political climate." In addition to the guerrilla insurgency in Colombia, he pointed to instability in Panama and insisted on Washington maintaining the military capability to "ensure the permanent neutrality of the canal".

"We must better position our assets to conduct sustained operations" throughout the region, said Wilhelm. The U.S. Southern Command has established the port of Manta, Ecuador, as a major base of operations, and signed a 10-year access agreement with the Ecuadoran government last November. The U.S. base "in Manta is my number one priority," the general declared. The Southern Command also plans to set up bases on the Dutch colonies of Curaçao and Aruba.

The U.S. rulers are worried about the social upheaval throughout that region of South America, from Peru to Venezuela. One source of concern is Ecuador, where popular rebellions have already toppled two governments in the past three years in response to those regimes' brutal attempts to impose economic austerity measures. Massive protests have also shaken Bolivia and Paraguay recently.

While U.S. capitalist politicians decry drug trafficking in Colombia and seek to pin responsibility for it on the antigovernment guerrillas, they fail to mention that the production and trade of drugs is a capitalist business in the hands of billionaires both in Colombia and the United States. The capitalists in both countries fund, organize, and reap the benefits of the drug business.  
 
 
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