Interviews with Robin Kirk
Print interviews
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“Finding Some Truth in Colombia,” by Jon Elliston, The Independent (Durham, NC)
In an interview with the The Independent, Kirk discussed the state of U.S. policy toward Colombia.
The Independent: We get very little news from and about Colombia, and a lot of folks in the United States probably get their main impressions of the country from action movies. What are the misconceptions we may be harboring about Colombia?
Robin Kirk: One is that most Colombians are violent, or that Colombia is a culture of violence and that violence there is essentially insoluble. I think that is one of the most persistent and damaging preconceptions that Americans have. And the second one is that most Colombians are engaged in some way in the drug trade, and that the relationship between Colombia and the United States is one of Colombia essentially poisoning Americans with drugs.
On the first issue, as I've worked in Colombia for over a decade I've met infinitely more peaceful Colombians than violent Colombians and, as I try to show in my book, Colombians who sacrifice literally everything for peace and to find a nonviolent way. ... The whole 'culture of violence' thing is something I'm convinced is a myth, and I think that it's a dangerous myth because it allows us to simply write off places like Colombia.
The second is the relationship between the United States and Colombia in terms of the drug trade. Often in Washington, drugs are portrayed as a poison or as an evil, even as a weapon of mass destruction--that's the latest way that they're described. And that somehow we're victims of the drug trade, that Americans who buy and use drugs are somehow victimized by evil Colombians. And while I don't want to condone or stand up for people who sell drugs, it's a relationship of equals. You have buyers and sellers, people who make it and people who want it. And as long as that relationship exists in the way it is currently framed now, it will bring both countries tremendous troubles.
You've written about the various ways the United States is involved in the conflict, often, it seems, without us realizing it. How do our habits and policies feed the violence there?
If you only look at is as a foreign policy issue, and not as an economic relationship, you really miss the most powerful part of the relationship. As long as these American consumers are actively engaged in buying drugs and having that money go to Colombia, and lining the pockets of violent groups, whether they be left-wing or right-wing, Colombia's going to have human rights problems. In many ways the human rights crisis in Colombia is much more a product of U.S. behavior than any other situation, save what's going on currently in Iraq, in that we fund many of the violent deaths in Colombia through the purchase of drugs. This relationship is very intimate, but it's not really recognized.
How has the war on terror impacted the Colombian conflict?
There is now a profound difference in the way the conflict is described, both by Colombia's leaders and in the United States, and I think it's a very dangerous trend. There are several reasons this has changed. One is that the Colombians themselves have appropriated the rhetoric of the war on terror. At one point, Colombia's president [Alvaro Uribe] even argued that Colombia was a greater threat to world stability than Iraq--this was before the war. And this was clearly a bid for attention and funding, as the Colombians believe very deeply that to be able to maintain the current levels of [U.S.] military and economic support, they have to be part of the trend. And some people in Washington now are looking for links to Al-Qaeda in Colombia; I think that's all ridiculous. This is the same conflict, in its bones, that it has been for 40 years.
Finally, just a word on current events. It's incredibly damaging when the United States is seen to be flouting human rights, the latest version being the torture of Iraqi prisoners. This is especially harmful in places like Colombia, where the United States has, on paper at least, a human rights message. And here we have our army engaged in precisely the kind of torture that we're telling the Colombian army not to engage in.
What, besides gaining a better understanding of Colombia, can Americans do to promote peace there?
I think the whole idea of having a war on drugs is profoundly wrong. Our Congress people and the people who vote for them have to come to look at this program as a dramatically failed effort, and we have to look at drug use in the United States from a completely different point of view. We're not only damaging Colombia with this, we're also damaging ourselves. ... And finally, we need to spend a lot more attention on non-military aid to Colombia, including aid that will strengthen democratic institutions like the judiciary and civilian government. To send so much military aid, and so little democratic aid, is profoundly damaging for Colombia.