First of all,
"The members of the cartels are mostly former members of right-wing paramilitary groups," who are, in turn, former members of the military. That is why they operate with impunity. And it should be noted that this death-squad-connected military is receiving $7 BILLION in U.S. tax dollars--enough to fund a public health care option in the U.S. The article continues...
--
"Middle-ranking commanders and the foot soldiers of the AUC have since moved into drug smuggling.
Two weeks ago the military said it had killed 12 paramilitaries and taken 61 prisoner in an attack near San Juan.
The dead bodies of victims of turf wars between drug smugglers turn up almost daily but the media normally only reports them when several are killed at once.
The victims are usually members of one of the gangs but civilians are also killed at random.
Civilians live in fear of their lives and as a result are too frightened to inform the police or the military about smuggling routes or the loading of large quantities of drugs onto speedboats." http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/americas/news/article_1543000.php/Seven-people-shot-dead-in-Colombia--
"...have since moved into" (drug smuggling) implies that the AUC is no longer murdering political leftists, labor union leaders, human rights workers, community organizers, peasant farmers and others who oppose Colombia's narco-thug government. Amnesty International says that they are. Half the murders of union leaders in Colombia have been committed by rightwing death squads; the other half by the military itself.
"Two weeks ago the military said it had killed 12 paramilitaries and taken 61 prisoner in an attack near San Juan." We can believe what the Colombian military says about as much as we can believe the members of the Bush Junta and the Pentagon under Rumsfeld. They lie for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and then they go home at night and lie in their sleep. Lying is their M.O.* So, whatever they did in San Juan, we can be sure that it was not aimed at stopping official and semi-official murder and drug trafficking. (My guess would be that they were killing/arresting people who hadn't paid them off, and/or were running a rival drug operation that was cutting into the profits of military/government protected drug rings.)
"The dead bodies of victims of turf wars between drug smugglers turn up almost daily but the media normally only reports them when several are killed at once." We can be sure that "the media" also "normally" doesn't report the true circumstances of many murders including official (military) murders of the entire grass roots community/political leadership in some regions of Colombia*. Also, the CIA and its corpo-fascist press, as well as pro-fascist operatives here at DU, are constantly ragging on the high street crime/murder rate in Venezuela, while they completely ignore the mass murder occurring in Colombia, and while the Colombian government and "the media" in Colombia (in fear for their lives) cover up the high crime rate in Colombia, especially its official aspect.
"The victims are usually members of one of the gangs but civilians are also killed at random." According to Amnesty International, 92% of the murders of union leaders in Colombia are committed by the Colombian military (about half) and their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half), and a recent UN report attributes about 70% of the extrajudicial murders in Colombia (union leaders and all others) to the same parties (in about the same proportion). While some civilians may be killed "at random" in drug lord wars, the main carnage is
official political "cleansing" by means of murder.*
"Civilians live in fear of their lives and as a result are too frightened to inform the police or the military about smuggling routes or the loading of large quantities of drugs onto speedboats."This sentence fails to discuss the
other reasons that "civilians live in fear of their lives"--that the police and military are themselves involved in drug trafficking, and that the military and its death squads operate with near complete impunity on both political and drug war murders. You take your life in your hands, in Colombia, merely opposing the government, or organizing a union, or advocating for the poor. Tens of thousands of people have been murdered for these reasons alone--exercising their right of free speech, political/community organizing. The "drug wars"--including government/military-run drug traffic--merely add to the carnage.
"The members of the cartels are mostly former members of right-wing paramilitary groups whose national organization, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), has been officially dissolved." They are now known as the "Black Eagles," and everybody knows that they have NOT been "dissolved" at all--just re-named and re-organized.
There is no "more" to the article. This is it. I would say that the article (by Deutsche Presse Agentur) is a mixed bagged. It is trying to convey some of the truth in a limited way (as with "This kind of crime is rarely solved in Colombia") but overall it conveys the impression that authorities in Colombia are
trying to prevent drug trafficking and attendant murders and are only hampered by civilians being afraid. It fails to describe the REAL situation, that the "authorities" in Colombia, all the way to the top of the government, are themselves criminals immersed in the drug trade and are using murder, among many forms of repression, to maintain their power.
------------------------
*Up to 2,000 bodies were found in a recent mass grave in La Macarena, Colombia. The "authorities" say they are bodies of FARC guerillas killed by the military. Local people say that the bodies are of 'disappeared' local community activists. The Colombia military is notorious for lying about FARC guerilla 'kills.' They have lured young men with offers of jobs, murdered them and dressed their bodies up like FARC guerillas, to up the military "body count" (to impress U.S. senators? and get bonuses and benefits?). The grave dates (with no names) are 2005 through 2009. This is a recent and possibly on-going political purge, by means of murder. And La Macarena is furthermore a region of particular interest and activity by the U.S. military (and apparently by the U.K. military as well). So, we have not only the horror of U.S. funding of mass murder but also the likelihood of U.S. military participation in mass political murder in Colombia.
The La Macarena massacre (includes a description of, and links to docs about, U.S. ops in La Macarena)
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303The UK military connection
http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/02/04/silence-on-british-army-link-to-colombian-mass-grave/
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