Colombia has been embroiled in a nearly 40-year civil war that has devastated the countryside and taken the lives of some 34,000 people each year. Claiming to fight against the "drug trade," successive governments have waged military campaigns against the opposition guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which controls large swaths of the country.

The rightist paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces, supported by many army officers and funded by wealthy landowners, has terrorized working people in the countryside for years, massacring thousands of peasant leaders, trade unionists, and supporters of the FARC.

In the elections, Uribe, who projected himself as an outsider from capitalist politics, ran for president under a party he created, Colombia First. The former Harvard and Oxford student defeated candidates from the two main political parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. His vice-presidential running mate, Francisco Santos, hails from the millionaire family that owns El Tiempo, the main big-business paper in Colombia. Santos has built himself up as a crusader against "lawlessness and violence" after being kidnapped a decade ago by one of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar’s gangs.

The president-elect ran on a platform of using military might and cracking down on democratic rights in order to deal death blows to the FARC and to dismantle the paramilitary forces. Uribe promised to double both the size of the army’s combat force to 100,000 troops and the National Police to 200,000. He projected building a million-member civilian force of government informers, expanding the state’s powers to detain those branded as "terrorists," and enabling the government to use wiretaps of phones and electronic communications.

Uribe announced he would negotiate with the FARC and the paramilitaries if they each declared a cease-fire. Many Colombians see the announcement as a move to take a softer approach to the paramilitaries. Uribe is closely associated with military officers responsible for abuses against working people and publicly works with ultrarightist Colombians.  
 
Washington offers military weaponry
Washington eagerly embraced the president-elect. Ambassador Anne Patterson visited the winner’s campaign headquarters just hours after polls closed, and reaffirmed the U.S. rulers’ backing of Bogotá’s military campaign to deal blows to the FARC.

"Colombia and the U.S. have many big issues to deal with, drug trafficking, human rights and the fight against terrorism," she said.

The U.S. government has used Bogotá’s "anti-drug" rhetoric to pour billions of dollars into the Colombian military’s brutal campaign against the FARC, a smaller guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army, and others who oppose the regime.

Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid, after Israel and Egypt. Congress passed a $1.3 billion infusion of funds engineered by the Clinton administration for training army battalions, and sent 18 Blackhawk helicopters, 42 Huey military transports, and other war materiél as part of "Plan Colombia." There are some 400 U.S. military and 400 civilian personnel in the country training and operating with the Colombian government forces.

The Bush administration is pressing to end Congressional restrictions on aid to Colombia to allow Bogotá to use the helicopters and other equipment in its war on the rebel forces. "We need the resources from Plan Colombia, the helicopters and equipment" Uribe told the press prior to the voting.

Since the election, vice-president-elect Santos has requested further aid. "We need you guys," he said. "I know you have big problems in the Middle East and Afghanistan, but this is the backyard. And the backyard is on fire." He continued, "We don’t need your troops. But we need help with intelligence, with communications, with training, with weapons--everything you can give us."

The Bush administration is providing $98 million to train an elite rapid response brigade to protect Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum’s oil pipeline that runs from the interior of Colombia to the coast. Uribe has suggested that he may also call on the United Nations to send in troops to help prop up the Colombian regime.  
 
 
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