Cocaine Trafficking: Whistleblowers Make Serious Charges Against Colombian Army

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Whistleblowers within the Colombian military have accused the country’s armed forces of being involved in drug exports in the Región Bajo Cauca in the north of the Chocó department. The sources claim to have discovered a secret airstrip near a Colombian-Panamanian military base in Bajo Cauca, through which cocaine is presumably flown to the USA.

Colombia’s military would be paid to allow the drug shipments to pass, according to information from reports of the “Command Staff” secret military operation, which has investigated countless cases of corruption in the army. The reconnaissance operation was aborted after President Iván Duque took office.

The airstrip is located on the common lands of the Afro-Colombian communities of Cacarica and Salaquí, which, as all communities of Bajo Atrato, are fighting for the restitution of stolen land. They have been the victims of harassment and death threats by the paramilitary “Gaitán self-defense groups” (AGC) since 2016.

The AGC settled and spread out on the communal lands of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, while the military remained passive, as the ecumenical human rights organization Justicia y Paz (CIJP) has lamented several times in recent years.

The Bajo Atrato area, where drugs are purportedly exported with the support of the military, was the subject of bombings in 1997. The former Colombian paramilitary self-defense groups (AUC) have also spread there, according to the CIJP.

The AUC terrorized and expelled the communities at that time. Subsequently, large entrepreneurs occupied the abandoned areas to carry out agricultural mega-projects. Some of the displaced returned in 2000 and launched a political and legal struggle for the return of their communal lands. They also advocated the demilitarization of the area.

In 2014, the communities unsuccessfully opposed the illegal construction of the Colombian-Panamanian military base on their territory, which is located next to the airstrip. The CIJP notes that it has been denouncing the cooperation between the military and the drug trade for seven years. Shipments of chemicals for the production of drugs as well as trucks loaded with cocaine pass through military checkpoints in the area.

Cocaine is also loaded on land stolen from the Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities of Pedeguita Mancilla, Curbaradó and Jiguamiandó, laments the CIJP. Military whistleblowers have even assured that the army has been carrying drugs in its own trucks for many years.