Colombia’s military is ready to assert itself on the world stage by sending troops to Afghanistan to assist NATO and UN peacekeeping missions. Following talks between Colombia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), back in December, of Colombia possibly joining the misson. Its army is now set to deploy troops to Afghanistan, through NATO and the UN.
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El Colombiano reported Sunday that National Army Commander General Alberto Jose Mejia said, “We have been offered (by NATO) to participate in a deployment in (Afghanistan) … there are opportunities for first-line combat, training and capacity-building missions.”
The general aims to deploy 5,000 troops at the service of the U.N. and NATO, possibly joining the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) active in Afghanistan.
President Juan Manuel Santos is set to present a proposal before the U.N. General Assembly in September, requesting that Colombian security forces be sent to Afghanistan, and other regions of the world.
“There he will present his vision of Colombia’s intention to export security,” said Mejia, El Colombiano reported. “The main idea is to ensure that other countries do not suffer what Colombia has suffered.”
Colombia is currently enmeshed with its ongoing, and sometimes bumpy peace process to end its more than 52-year civil war, which has seen the country’s marginalized Campesino, Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities face the brunt of the suffering. Washington’s Plan Colombia military aid package launched in 2000 ended up helping escalate the conflict and violence and futher militarized the country. The decades-long conflict claimed the lives of more than a quarter of a million Colombians and displaced more than 7 million.
The historic peace agreement reached last year between the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the government after four years of negotiations is still very tenuous as a recent spike in deadly paramilitary attacks and a spate of killings of social movement leaders illustrates that right-wing violence has not abated.
In addition, protests and strikes, led mostly by Afro-Colombians and Indigenous peoples throughout the country over the course of the last month, seek to expose the country’s systemic racism and state-sanctioned violence.
The core of the protests has occurred in the country’s most impoverished Pacific Choco region, where the people on Saturday forced the Colombian government to negotiate an agreement to end their 18-day strike.
Still, Leonardo Montoya, a member of the Choco Civic Committee which organized the protests, warned that despite the agreement, if the government fails to fulfill its promises «Choco will resume the strike,» adding that «the timetable is not upon us. These are dates agreed to and signed by the government.”
Back in December, when President Santos announced he had begun the final discussions for his country to join NATO, Venezuela expressed “deep concern” about its neighbor.
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In an official statement, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said the announcement «breaks” a promise made in 2010 by Santos to late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to not join the military alliance.
«The Venezuelan government strongly rejects the attempt to introduce external organizations with nuclear capability into our region, whose past and recent actions claim the policy of war,» the statement from Rodriguez had said.
Venezuela had also argued that this would violate the principles of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, or NAM, which Colombia had once chaired, as it prohibits its members from forming part of international military alliances.