Pubdate: Sun, 13 Aug 2000 Source: Baltimore Sun (MD) Copyright: 2000 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper. Contact: 501 N. Calvert Street P.0. Box 1377 Baltimore, MD 21278 Fax: (410) 315-8912 Website: http://www.sunspot.net/ Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro Author: Jay Hancock U.S. STEPS UP DRUG WAR, AND ECUADOR QUAKES Officials Fear Influx Of Drugs, Refugees As Aid To Colombia Increases WASHINGTON - Throughout two decades of revolt, murder and drug production along the Andean spine, Ecuador has remained a surprising haven of peace and relative order. Its indigenous tribes are as poor and disenfranchised as those of its neighbors. Its high yunga valleys are just as friendly to the coca shrub that produces cocaine. Its government is as precarious and prone to corruption. But somehow Ecuador has avoided the coups, insurgencies and extensive cocaine production that have racked Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. But the Ecuadorean government, U.S. officials and Latin American specialists fear that a multibillion-dollar, Washington-backed plan to root out drug production in Colombia could destabilize Ecuador and possibly set it up as the next major narcotics source in South America. "Ecuador justifies the most concern and demands the most attention" of all countries bordering Colombia, said Michael Shifter, a democracy specialist at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank focused on Latin America. "Ecuadoreans are deeply concerned about the prospect of growing violence and refugee flows from Colombia." Shifter noted that Ecuador would face threats from Colombian turmoil even without the coming anti-drug initiative, called Plan Colombia. But U.S. officials and Ecuadoreans believe that Plan Colombia raises the risks of disruption for Quito, although they disagree on the degree of threat. U.S. intelligence reports confirm local accounts of recent incursions into Ecuador by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the rebel group that finances itself by extorting money from the coca industry. The guerrillas evade border security, store weapons and exact taxes on local oil wells, according to humanitarian groups and Ecuadorean officials. Three weeks ago, Colombian Economics Minister Augusto Ramirez Ocampo said coca cultivation was spreading into Ecuador and that Ecuadorean factories were supplying the dynamite used in FARC terror attacks. Colombian refugees have also been passing into Ecuador, according to United Nations officials, although the officials dispute accounts putting the number as high as 5,000. Governments and agencies have mobilized to reduce the threat to Ecuador, but independent Andean experts are skeptical that the measures will be sufficient. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has opened an office in Colombia's Putumayo province in case of population displacement. Ecuador intends to create a special military unit to guard its border. A month ago, the government announced plans to designate the border an emergency zone before reversing course, deciding that an emergency decree might create panic. Much of the recent instability and precautionary measures along the border stem from Congress' approval last month of $1.3 billion in extra U.S. aid to battle Colombian drug production. On top of the $300 million annually that Washington already gives Bogota, the money will put deadly teeth into Colombia's drug war by bolstering military training and providing 60 armed helicopters. As evidence of Washington's concern for spillover effects, the appropriation contains $20 million for Ecuadorean crop substitution and military development. Colombia has promised to devote $4 billion to Plan Colombia. The initiative will hatch in coming months, when a powerful force of Blackhawk and Huey helicopters, fumigation planes and jungle patrols will descend on the lush Putumayo region. The force, staffed by Colombians and trained by several hundred Americans, will poison coca fields, fight guerrillas protecting the farms and try to persuade peasants to switch crops. U.S. and Colombian officials hope the offensive will cut cocaine shipments to the United States, stanch the flow of revenue to local revolutionaries and reduce the lawlessness and violence that have convulsed Colombian society. But many in Washington and Quito worry about side effects. They fear that an established pattern is about to repeat itself, that the coca lords will evade the latest crackdown by slipping across a border and spread havoc to a country that lacks the means to fight them. It happened in Colombia, when anti-drug efforts in Bolivia and Peru led directly to a sharp rise in Colombian cocaine production and to the heightened anarchy that grips much of that nation. That might happen in Ecuador. Besides worrying about the foreign political consequences of spreading drug production, U.S. officials are concerned about the $1.3 billion American investment. Transplantation of Colombian cocaine sources into Ecuador or elsewhere would undercut U.S. eradication efforts and refill the narcotics pipeline to American cities. By many accounts, Ecuador is in the greatest danger of such a transfer. "Ecuadoreans are worried, and they have good reason to be," said Donald Schulz, a Latin American security specialist at Cleveland State University in Ohio, who has testified before Congress on the threat posed to Colombia's neighbors by escalated drug fighting. "You already have a spillover, and I think it's going to be accelerated. I don't think this has adequately been accounted for by the folks who put together Plan Colombia, including the United States." With Peru and Bolivia continuing to pressure drug growers and Brazil providing mediocre conditions for coca, the road to Ecuador could be the line of least resistance for Colombian cocaine producers. Crippled by a deep recession, Colorado-sized Ecuador lacks the funds and, many believe, the political stability to mount a stiff defense of its border. Its indigenous tribes are starting to assert themselves politically, incited, Ecuadorean officials believe, by Colombian FARC guerrillas. Ecuador has operated as a democracy since the 1970s and is listed by travel guides as one of the safest countries in South America for Americans. But in January, Indians joined the Ecuadorean military in mounting a briefly successful coup before the military yielded authority to Gustavo Noboa, who had been vice president. While U.S. officials acknowledged the threat posed to Ecuador, they argued that it has been exaggerated by some, particularly the Ecuadorean press. "Certainly we are not walking into this with rose-colored glasses," said the Clinton administration official. "We know there is the potential for a number of problems. But we are trying to help the Colombians and the Ecuadoreans, if the problems occur, to confront them." Pressure on Putumayo coca growers and any resulting spillover will be gradual, the official said, because the Colombian back country is vast and the eradication force, despite its multibillion-dollar price tag, is limited in comparison. Plan Colombia "is going to be real, but it's going to be slow and gradual," he said. "This isn't like the German army meeting Russia in 1941." According to U.S. sources, a U.N. official told Ecuador to prepare for an influx of up to 30,000 refugees once Plan Colombia begins. The prediction was widely quoted in the Ecuadorean media, but U.N. officials are disavowing it. "This number of 30,000 people ... is totally over the top and is not from us," said Panos Moumtzis, spokesman in the Washington office of UNHCR. Refugee flows into Ecuador in recent months have been "insigificant," he said, disputing a report by Spanish news agency EFE last month that said Ecuadorean religious officials were estimating that 5,000 Colombians had fled to Ecuador this year. Even so, UNHCR is concerned about the potential for population disruption. Along with its recently opened Putumayo office, the agency has drawn up a confidential contingency plan for dealing with the humanitarian effects of the offensive, Moumtzis said. The most pessimistic analogy for Ecuador is to Cambodia, where secret U.S. attacks on Vietnamese insurgents in the 1970s preceded a government collapse and mass murder on a horrific scale. Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas are inextricably tied to the cocaine trade. As Plan Colombia steps up the pressure, FARC will "strategically or tactically withdraw into Ecuador, and the [Colombian] army will go looking for guerrillas," argued Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "You're going to witness a secret war there, a la Indochina." - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens