July/August 2002

Editorial: A Humane Approach to Colombia

by Richard Deats

After Israel and Egypt, Colombia is the largest recipient of US military aid. US involvement in Colombia’s civil war, greatly widened during the Clinton presidency, has continued to grow as the Bush Administration melds the "war on drugs" in Colombia into the "war on terrorism." This approach was strengthened in May’s election of a hawkish right wing Colombian as president.

Multilateral fighting among right-wing paramilitaries allied with the army, left-wing guerrilla groups, and government forces has been intensified by struggles over lucrative resources. First, a pervasive and vastly wealthy drug trade influences all the actors in the decades-long conflict that has brought so much violence to this rich and beautiful country. The US response has concentrated on the interdiction of drugs and crop eradication rather than dealing with the demand for drugs in our own society and funding drug education and rehabilitation programs. Similarly US policy regarding Colombia’s extensive oil resources is determined, as in the Middle East, by our society’s addiction–an ever-increasing need for oil. We should instead be developing renewable sources of energy and energy efficiency.

Critics of US Colombia policies draw parallels with the disastrous American intervention in the conflict in Vietnam. There too a military approach by the US caused enormous destruction and loss of life, while neglecting the societal injustices that started and then fueled the conflict. It is the Colombian paramilitaries, who carry out most killings of civilians, who are the chief beneficiaries of current US policy. Neither the American nor the Colombian people appear to profit from that policy at all.

A humane approach to Colombia would address the deep poverty and misery of the majority of the Colombian people. It would extend aid to the nearly two million Colombians displaced by the conflict; it would be a strong advocate of human rights; it would call for a negotiated end to the conflict; and it would stop sending gunships and military trainers into the war.

Those agencies, groups, and individuals working for justice and peace in Colombia in the face of government intransigence need to receive our encouragement and support. Perhaps chief among these are the remarkable Colombian villages that have chosen to become Peace Communities, rejecting the proponents of violence on all sides. Responding to their courage, FOR is currently sending volunteers to do human rights accompaniment in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Further FOR delegations to the region will help build understanding that can in turn awaken US citizens at home to the situation in Colombia.

We also need to encourage those Colombians seriously working for nonviolent alternatives to the present course of Colombian society. In April I participated in a five-day Fifth World Conference on Nonviolence held in Medellín, capital of the state of Antioquia. The conference, which grew out of three years of nonviolence education and training by Bernard Lafayette and Charles Alphin, was hosted by the governor of Antioquia, Guillermo Gaviria: Gaviria's state government has launched a serious effort to foster a nonviolent peaceful society. Thirty-three hundred people came to the conference to hear speakers like Mairead Maguire, Glenn Paige, and Naomi Tutu. They participated in workshops on such topics as Nonviolent Resistance in Latin America; The Role of the Church and Spiritual Institutions in Nonviolent Social Change; Nonviolence in Prisons; Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Women’s Issues.

Before the conference began, Caicedo, one of the nonviolent communities of Antioquia, had its coffee crop stolen by guerrillas. Telling the army to stay away, Governor Gaviria called for a five-day march from Medellín to Caicedo to show support for the people of Caicedo. Over a thousand people joined the march. As we neared Caicedo, the guerrillas informed Gaviria that we would not be allowed into the town. Gaviria, in good faith, went to talk with the guerillas. He was accompanied by a former defense minister who advises him on peace issues, a priest, and Bernard Lafayette. The priest and Lafayette were allowed to return to the march, but Gaviria and his associate are still being held incommunicado as this is written.

This tragic event should not be cause for a violent response–something totally opposed by Gaviria, who sought to follow the nonviolent path.

People know the cost of war, but seem surprised to discover there are costs of peace as well. Gaviria and thousands of other Colombians have risked their lives in the quest to find a way out of Colombia’s violent culture. Let’s find life-giving ways to further a nonviolent Colombia. If you want to help, see the box below.

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©2002 Fellowship of Reconciliation