The Christian Science Monitor is running a series on “The Drug War”. In the first installment they report on the ironic massacre of US trained and financed Columbian police by US trained and financed members of the Columbian army.

Christian Science Monitor's Danna Harman: Jamundi, Colombia – Arcesio Morales Buitrago is in charge of the keys at Mi Casita. A soft-spoken man diagnosed as schizophrenic, he is the doyen of the patients at the leafy psychiatric home.

On May 22, right after the Monday afternoon bingo game, three cars skidded to a halt in front of Mi Casita. Ten men in blue jeans and police vests, and one man in a ski mask, piled out.

“Judicial police! Open up!” they shouted.

Morales, as the one responsible for the keys, scurried down the path to comply.
As he reached the green iron gate, however, Sergio Berrio, the administrator of the home, leaned out from the balcony above and screeched: “Stay back! Don’t open!”

Morales froze. That’s when the shooting started: a torrent of bullets and grenades rained down on the police from the forest above.

“The war came here,” Morales recalls incredulously, “…all the way here.”
What followed in the next 45 minutes was the massacre of one of Colombia’s best counter narcotics police units – all hand-picked and trained by the US. None survived.

This is the story of that police team killed in Jamundi four months ago – and the members of Colombia’s military that killed them. The Attorney General alleges the ambush was ordered by narcotraffickers.

The brutal attack stunned this nation, and it has prompted the US Congress to temporarily freeze funding for Plan Colombia, the $4.7-billion effort to stop the illicit drug trade. It’s the most expensive US foreign aid program outside the Middle East.

But it’s the fact that US-trained Colombian soldiers were shooting US-trained Colombian police that has shaken officials in Washington and Bogatá. And the Jamundi massacre is fueling critics who say that after almost six years, this plan to fight the drug war isn’t working – and its time for a change.

Hat Tip: Hugo.

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