The Clinton administration is moving to escalate significantly its military intervention in Colombia. Under the pretext of fighting drug traffickers, Washington is sending military personnel and equipment to bolster the Colombian regime's bloody counter-insurgency war in the countryside. The U.S. rulers are concerned that the Colombian government is politically too weak to defeat the decades-long guerrilla insurgency in the countryside as well as impose the economic austerity measures on working people that foreign capitalist investors demand. The guerrilla forces, which control large swaths of territory, have not prevailed either. The impasse has led to a social breakdown, with permanent instability and violence that pervades Colombian society.
Plans are under way to train further units.
Between 100 and 150 members of the U.S. military, including members of the Seventh Special Forces Group based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, train an Anti-Narcotics Battalion of the Colombian army. Worst depression in decades Colombia is reeling from the effects of the worldwide deflation in commodity prices, which has plunged the country into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The economy shrank by 7.6 percent in the second quarter of 1999, and production plummeted by more than 16 percent compared to the same period in 1998. Colombia depends on exports of raw materials and semi-finished goods, and is dominated by U.S. and other imperialist interests. Its main exports are oil, coffee, gold, and coal, as well as cocaine.