Ryan Devereaux, a reporter for The Intercept, on Tuesday discussed how U.S.-trained Colombian fighters became involved in the assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse.
As Devereaux explains, the U.S. military involvement first began around the 1960’s, but began to pick up particularly in the 90’s and early 2000’s, noting that the Colombians involved in the assassination are believed to have been trained by the U.S. from 2001 to 2015.
Over the course of the U.S. anti-drug cartel initiative, Plan Colombia, the Colombian military soon came to work “hand-in-glove” with the U.S., as Devereaux puts it.
“As that sort of relationship evolved, as the Colombians developed a reputation for being the sort of most advanced military in Latin America, their stock rose in the private security and mercenary sphere,” Devereaux said, pointing to how heavily Colombians were recruited by private military companies like Blackwater.
Devereaux also pointed to the enormous amount of money, roughly $10 billion, that was spent on courses that Colombian forces went through by way of the United States.
“At $10 billion, no other country aside from Israel and Egypt received that kind of military aid over that period of time,” he said.
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