Thursday, January 09, 2014

The Army of Colombia, A Pawn of the CIA

FARC-EP : The Army of Colombia, A Pawn of the CIA

Alexandra Valiente

By Pablo Catatumbo – member of the secretariat of the FARC-EP.

In recent weeks the public opinion has known major international media revelations about the direct involvement of the US government intelligence community in our internal affairs, with serious implications in the context of the Colombian government’s relations with neighboring countries, as well as in the development of the social and armed conflict in Colombia.

These documents confirm many declarations made by the FARC-EP regarding the transnationalization of the Colombian conflict and the growing dependence and servility of the armed forces of the Colombian State to the U.S. military apparatus.

When we pointed out and denounced these facts a few years ago, people called us fanciful, exaggerated and even dinosaurs: the anti-imperialist rethoric – some people said – is something totally outdated and out-of-context in today’s world.

But now the harsh reality ratifies our declarations and puts everything in the right place again: the Colombian military apparatus is no more than a cog in the U.S. war machine. This shows that the Colombian insurgency is not only fighting against a local enemy, but also against the most powerful imperialism that has existed on the face of the earth.

In this sense it is right and necessary to highlight a central element of the disclosures in question. The way how the technology, that allows the realization of geo-referenced aerial bombings against the FARC-EP camps, was implemented, using the latest technology, against guerrilla fighters without any chance to defense or response.

The article refers to the leading role of the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá in this process, as well as the complex activity of the U.S. intelligence community on Colombian territory.

But the most appalling aspect of the revelations is that once the technology we’re talking about had been implemented, the CIA monopolized the knowledge about the encryption mechanisms of the bombs, and the Colombian government submissively accepted, hiding that decision from the Colombian people. In plain language, this means that the bombing could only be done if there was express permission of the Central Intelligence Agency, CIA.

What is denounced by the Washington Post is the clearly dependent nature of a mercenary army, which has increasingly lost its national character and assumes a role of lackey and of a pawn in the framework of a domination plan of the Empire.

To hand over the command of your military operations to a foreign army and hide it from the country for years, is a crime of the offended country; it is an outrage that stains our sovereignty and independence; a crime of treason.

Not even Chiang Kai-shek, a puppet president of the so-called nationalist China, accepted handing over the command of his troops during the war against Japan, when in the summer of 1944, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked him to transfer the command of his troops to General Stilwell, arguing that the United States was supplying them.Chiang Kai-Shek’s reply was the expulsion of general Stilwell and the request to send him back to Washington.

Under that direct foreign interference, our comrades Raúl Reyes, Jorge Briceño, Martin Caballero, Acacio Medina died heroically, together with dozens of other rebel martyrs of the struggle against imperialism.

None of these military victories are victories of the Colombian army. They are the merit of the military scaffolding of the U.S. empire, which is the enemy we fight against courageously every day.

Mendaciously, the regime has built a media matrix based on spectacular “facts”, which in no way corresponds to the law of nations, and on a false glory which is neither theirs, nor does it show any audacity, much less military capacity.

All this has been made public at a moment when the FARC-EP develops peace talks with the government of Colombia. The fact that, under these circumstances, we still keep up our commitment to peace and to the search of a civilized political solution to the conflict, is a sign of our sincerity and greatness as revolutionaries.

Parallel to this, almost from the beginning of the peace talks, and using “malwares” last generation (computer software intoxication and introduction of virus), covert operations started, trying to infect the computers on which the electronic contacts of the FARC-EP are managed, to perform operations of control and identification. At the same time there were intensive operations of disinformation and defamation against members of our delegation in Havana, using mass mailings, fake accounts on social networks and the conspiratorial echoing by some media.

Similarly, successive attacks are repeated against the servers of the FARC-’s web pages, both the official website of our organization, as well as the website of the Peace Delegation.The official account of the FARC Delegation on Facebook had to be changed repeatedly for sabotage wouldn’t let it work properly.

To this, we must add many open boycott actions against the peace process. The revelation made by Colonel Orozco, Army officer, to Álvaro Uribe, about the coordinates of the extraction of Comandantes Sergio Ibañez and Laura Villa, is one of them.

Same thing has happened with several misrepresentations to some statements and interviews given by members of our Peace Delegation. Or the successive “anonymous” campaigns that are widely covered by the media, taking up old issues, as the alleged bourgeois life of the Peace Delegation in Havana, the smear campaign against Santrich and Alexandra Nariño, Iván’s photo on a Harley Davidson motorcycle as if that were a crime, the catamaran pictures, the pictures of Ricardo Téllez in Havana, the alleged sex scandals by members of this delegation, their connection to illegal mining without any foundation and the fraudulent link by Semana magazine featuring Laura Villa as an ex-guerrilla.

The question is: Who could be behind all this?

These are campaigns of sabotage against the peace our people desire. The most recent of them sheds light on their origin.We refer to the campaign that was started by the network of radio stations from the National Army, distorting the statements of Comandante Pablo Catatumbo, member of the Secretariat of the FARC-EP, in an interview with journalist Natalia Orozco.

From the radio-stations of the Army and the website of the Third Division the content of his statements was distorted and presented as if he were a demobilized ex-guerrilla, enjoying privileges in Havana, Cuba.This corroborates the role of the Ministry of Defense behind all this media scaffolding.Which brings us to the following observation:

Is the Ministry of Defense outside the framework of the Santos government, whose campaign is that peace is possible through dialogue? Are the Minister of War Pinzón and his friends a reactionary island?

Or, on the contrary: the regime continues using the double policy of carrot and stick? To offer dialogue, but at the same time making it unfeasible, while they continue increasing the defense budget and their war apparatus, in order to sign a peace agreement without content.

The experience of four previous processes in the search for a political solution to the long conflict with the FARC-EP shows that this strategy doesn’t work.

That can only lead to increased mistrust between the parties and to avert the chances of reaching an agreement soon by consensus. An agreement, that means a true peace treaty towards the termination of the long armed conflict and that will lead Colombia towards a stable and lasting peace.

Havana, January 7, 2014

Last modified on Thursday, 09 January 2014 22:18

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