Plan Colombia: Chemical Warfare against the People

Aerial spraying against illicit crops has been rejected by all producing countries, including Afghanistan. The Colombian government is the only one in the whole world that allows and accepts this policy. Apart from Vietnam, where the United States used the defoliant Agent Orange as a weapon in its war strategy, the closest antecedent is the Israeli government’s aerial use of glyphosate to destroy Bedouin crops in what they consider to be “illegal settlements.”

Aerial spraying against illicit crops has been rejected by all producing countries, including Afghanistan. The Colombian government is the only one in the whole world that allows and accepts this policy. Apart from Vietnam, where the United States used the defoliant Agent Orange as a weapon in its war strategy, the closest antecedent is the Israeli government’s aerial use of glyphosate to destroy Bedouin crops in what they consider to be “illegal settlements.”

In these precedents, the method was used by force against civilians, as occurs in Colombia. Whereas the U.S. massacred over 5 million people in Vietnam during the war, the after-effects of Agent Orange have already left over one million babies born with terrible birth defects. Civilians continue to die, while the ones who are responsible are not brought to justice and do not even realize that the war continues.

While this is still going on in Asia, in the Middle East, the government of Israel has thrown its weight against the Bedouins in the form of Roundup (glyphosate), a product made by Monsanto, the same company that made the Agent Orange used in Viet Nam and that in 1947 signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defence to manufacture herbicides for chemical warfare.

The Americas were not to remain free of this assault and the decision to use aerial spraying of chemicals on crops for illicit use in Colombia was made in May 1984, disregarding warnings from Colombia scientists, who said: