Monday, June 27, 2016

Operation Condor

Operation Condor

Operation Condor Formulated to Eliminate Exiled Left-Wing Activist


Operation Condor named after the largest carrion bird of the world had been formulated to eliminate thousands of exiled left-wing activists who had ventured to confront the military dictators ruling the continent during the 70s and 80s. Operation Condor also known as Plan Condor was said to be a campaign of political suppression together with state terror which involved intelligence operation as well as assassination of adversariesthat had begun in 1968. It had been implemented officially in 1975 by the right wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America.

The program was envisioned to eradicate communist or Soviet influence together with ideas in order to subdue active or possible opposition movement against the contributing administrations. Owing to its secret nature, the accurate number of deaths directly linked to Operation Condor is very doubtful. Some have estimated that that were at least 60,000 deaths which could be credited to Condor and probably more. Victims comprised of rebels and leftist, union and peasant leaders, students and teachers, priests and nuns, intellectuals together with suspected guerrillas. The main members of Condor were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil.

Technical Support/Military Aid – United States Government


Technical support and supplied military aid to the participants had been provided by the United States government, till at least 1978 and again after Republican Ronald Reagan had become the President in 1981.These types of support were often directed through the Central Intelligence Agency. Ecuador and Peru later on joined the process in more peripheral roles and these attempts like the Operation Charly assisted the local juntas in their anti-communist subjugation.

It seemed to be a planned programme of state-sponsored murder wherein US-backed commands devised to hunt down, kidnap and kill political opponents across South American and yonder.The correct number of the victims may not be known though the recent judges in Buenos Aires would deliver their judgment on the first court case in order to state focus on the conspiracy. Former military officers, eighteen in number, including Argentina’s last dictator Reynaldo Bignone – 88, would be sentenced on charges including kidnapping, torture as well as forced disappearance while seven other defendants inclusive of Jorge Videla, the general who had headed Argentina’s junta at the time of its bloodiest first three years had died when the trial had started in 2013.

Operation Condor Ended – Argentina Defeated Military Dictatorship in 1983


As per secret documents excavated after democracy had returned to the region, Operation Condor had been initially drawn up at a secret 1975 meeting of intelligence chiefs from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay which later extended to include Brazil. The minutes of the meeting had been signed for Chile by Colonel Manuel Contreras, the dreaded head of the Dina secret police of that country. The dictatorship and their intelligence services had been responsible for tens of thousands of missing and killed people during the period between 1975 and 1985.

 The `terror archives’ had revealed an amount of cooperation by Colombia and Venezuela, for instance, Luis Posada Carriles who was possibly at the meeting ordered the bombing of Orlando Letelier’s car. Alianza Americana Anticommunista, a Colombian paramilitary organization could have cooperated with Operation Condor. Mexico along with Costa Rica, Canada, France, the UK, Spain and Sweden received several fleeing from the terror regimes as refugees. Operation Condor eventually ended when Argentina had defeated the military dictatorship in 1983 and re-established democracy.

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