While most political figures do not consider private contractors to be paramilitaries, they do provide services that free the military for nothing but combat, boosting the number of available troops. In some cases they even operate and decipher data from unmanned surveillance planes.
Nations in Africa and South America, especially those suffering the ravages of civil wars, have a rather intensive paramilitary presence. These paramilitaries sometimes work so closely with the regular military that they are almost indistinguishable but it is, more often than not the paramilitaries who commit the atrocities.
In Latin America, especially Columbia, paramilitaries are used to bust unions. Almost 1900 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia since 1991, most of them by right-wing paramilitaries. Those right-wing paramilitaries have close ties to the regular military which receives funding from the US in the name of the alleged war on drugs and now the war on terror. General Carlos Ospina, head of the Columbian army and a former instructor at the School of the Americas, has attracted the attention of Human Rights Watch because of his participation in death squad atrocities.
Industry and oil play a large part in the activities of the paramilitaries in Colombia. The Coca Cola bottling plant in Carepa has become infamous for attacks on SINALTRAINAL union activists. Union leaders have been murdered and members forced to resign their union memberships at gunpoint. An explosion at the water treatment plant in May 2003 killed three Sintraemcali union members. The Sintraemcali Union had been involved in a long battle to keep the plant from being privatised.
The United Steel Workers and the International Labour Rights Fund have taken up the fight against paramilitaries attacking union members in Columbia and are making some headway, but the situation is far from resolved. The violence continues, with the Columbian government using US money to help fund the paramilitaries that perpetrate the violence. The USA isn’t the only country to support paramilitaries. Most countries, either officially or through private industry, have ties to groups that are really little more than mercenaries terrorising people for profit.
Talisman Energy of Canada bought into the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating company when it purchased Arakis in 1998. Greater Nile is a consortium of the China National Petroleum Corporation, Petronas Bhd of Malaysia, and Sudapet, which is owned by the Sudanese government.
The Sudanese government has a policy of removing people from areas where exploration and drilling are taking place. To do this they use government troops and pro-government paramilitaries. Villages are burned, women raped. Millions have been killed, injured or displaced. Talisman Energy points to investments in social development programs and takes no responsibility for its role its investment has played in the devastation. Talisman, under pressure from human rights groups, pulled out of Sudan but invested in Columbia, another country where paramilitaries work alongside government troops to commit human rights atrocities through the use of paramilitaries working alongside government troops. The Canadian government does little or nothing to stop its corporations from contributing to such human rights abuses.
In other instances the Canadian government contributes more directly. We contributed to the building of the Urrá dam in Colombia, even though local indigenous peoples warned of being displaced by the environmental damage and threatened by paramilitaries who had moved into the area. Kimy Pernia Domico, a Columbian human rights activist, spoke to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade and said, “Anyone who dares to speak out about Urrá is accused of being involved with the guerrillas and with that pretext, [paramilitaries] have declared our communities and leaders to be military targets.”
Kimy Pernia Domico was abducted by gunmen thought to be army-backed paramilitaries on June 2, 2001. His family and friends have not seen him since.
All G-8 countries are on a fairly level playing field when it comes to supporting paramilitaries either through direct means or, more often, indirectly through corporations and the actions of other governments. Natural resources, most often oil, are the main driving force behind the problem. Money meant for aid is often subverted. Forces working behind the scenes often push for projects in developing countries that benefit corporations but involve paramilitaries as security. Governments let it slide by avoiding direct responsibility. The US government doesn’t fund the paramilitaries in Columbia directly. Instead they fund the Columbian government who works with US corporations to train members of the paramilitaries while other US corporations use those same paramilitaries to protect their assets. Canada doesn’t fund paramilitaries, but it turns a blind eye or reacts slowly when those groups are seen to be committing atrocities in the defence of Canadian corporations or projects sponsored by our government.
France deals with militaries and paramilitaries in Africa, often in situations where the line between which is which has become so blurred as to be non-existent. The Ivory Coast is a recent example of this. The leader of the rebels, General Robert Guei, was killed by pro-government paramilitaries shortly after the uprising started. Since the rebels were largely composed of military members, it was mostly the pro-government paramilitaries that France dealt with while attempting to end the violence. The violence may not have started had the French not have been so keen on protecting their assets in the first place. To do so they had sided with an increasingly unpopular government while the military complained about poor conditions and low wages.
France was also dealing with paramilitaries in Rwanda before the genocide there. Meanwhile the US was dealing with paramilitaries in neighbouring Uganda. Multinationals from all over the world were taking advantage of growing unrest in Congo to increase their profits. Militaries and paramilitaries funded and supplied by foreign sources, corporate and governmental, may have extended the fighting in order to gain wealth from Congo’s natural resources, according to a 2002 report.
The involvement of wealthy foreign governments is an open secret in most places where atrocities happen. Usually that involvement has the air of plausible deniability, that all important diplomatic and electoral tool. A government that is protecting its assets...usually the presence and profits of a corporation or corporations...can deny it was involved in any wrongdoing. They usually act to protect their corporation though, or insist on applying an official slap on the wrist themselves.
That isn’t working and it is no longer good enough. If a government wants to further the causes of their corporations then that same government must be responsible, in international court, for the actions of its agents. If the government is not held responsible then it has no impetus to regulate its representatives abroad. If a foreign government is funding the militaries and paramilitaries of a foreign country, then that foreign government should be culpable for the actions and atrocities of that military and those paramilitaries.
Until we begin to hold those in positions of power, corporate or governmental, responsible for what happens under their authority, we will never put an end to disappearances and murders committed by paramilitaries. Until we are willing to prosecute anyone who breaks international law, no matter who they are or how much money they have, our world cannot move forward.
Recommended links:
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0303-02.htm
http://www.americas.org/News/Features/200307_JulyAugust/ColombiaUnionistMurders.htm
http://www.amnesty.ca/stoptorture/actColombia.htm
http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia158.htm
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/Columbia/TiesThatBind.html
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Reverend Blair was raised in Saskatchewan and currently lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He comes from a long line of social activists and cried on Tommy Douglas before his first birthday. His column appears biweekly on Vive le Canada.
Note: http://www.commondreams...
http://www.americas.org...
http://www.amnesty.ca/s...
http://www.colombiajour...
http://www.ratical.org/...
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Dave Ruston