Pubdate: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA) Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co. Contact: PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191 Fax: (619) 293-1440 Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/ Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX Author: Larry Rohter, New York Times News Service BRAZIL BEEFS UP ITS BORDER AS COLOMBIA DRUG WAR LOOMS TABATINGA, Brazil -- Until recently, this town sitting on the corner of the frontiers of Brazil, Peru and Colombia was one of the most sleepy, remote and overlooked parts of the Amazon. But that was before the fighting upriver among army troops, guerrillas and paramilitary forces on Colombia's side of a largely unmarked, 1,021-mile border started to intensify. Suddenly, the Brazilian government is stepping up river patrols and air surveillance and destroying clandestine airstrips, driven by a concern that the $1.3 billion the United States has promised Colombia to bolster its army may further fuel the long war against drug traffickers and their guerrilla allies and send it spilling into Brazil. "We know that once the gringos have strengthened the army's hand there, we may get whacked too," said Mauro Sposito, head of the new Brazilian force based here. "So this operation was undertaken as a preventive measure, in anticipation of whatever problems may come our way." Although it is a modest effort involving 180 police officers, 18 patrol boats, two airplanes and a helicopter, Operation Cobra is only the most visible sign that a full-scale militarization of the Amazon and beyond is under way, as Colombia's war threatens to draw in its neighbors. From Panama to Bolivia, governments and armies are girding for the worst by strengthening their defense forces every way they can. Already, refugees from Colombia have been crossing borders to flee the violence, and guerrilla forces are increasingly coming to see neighboring countries as safe bases and supply areas for their operations. But the larger fear is that these problems will only worsen with Plan Colombia, the official name for the American-financed program to aid Colombia's army, a force with a lackluster record on human rights and in the battlefield. Peru and Venezuela have stepped up troop deployments along their borders with Colombia, and Ecuador, by far the weakest country in the area, has said it will seek an aid package of its own from Washington. But it is Brazil that exercises sovereignty over the largest and most vulnerable piece of the world's biggest jungle, and it is Brazil that is now engaged in the most ambitious, extensive and costly effort to occupy and defend its sparsely populated Amazon frontiers. For Latin America's largest country, that focus marks a historic shift in priorities. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Brazil was focused on its southern border with Argentina, where the biggest concentrations of troops and military equipment have always been deployed, and has largely neglected its northern borders. The key to the beefed-up Brazilian effort in the Amazon, which accounts for 60 percent of the country's territory, is a $1.4 billion radar project called the Amazon Vigilance System, known as Sivam, from its acronym in Portuguese. The American-financed system, which consists of 19 fixed and six mobile radar posts, was begun in 1997 to monitor deforestation, fires and illegal mining. It has taken on great military significance with the deteriorating situation in Colombia, and is now considered a vital tool by both Brazilian and American officials to track the movements of guerrilla and drug operations, which often use small private aircraft to ferry their wares. "We have all of Brazilian airspace controlled, except for the Amazon," Gen. Alberto Cardoso, the government's national security minister, explained in an interview in Brasilia. "Now, the Sivam project is going to fill that void and permit us to defend our territory" and "fulfill our responsibility to protect our airspace." In mid-October, Brazil offered to share data gathered from Sivam with neighbors and the United States. "With Sivam and our own electronic intelligence-gathering capacity, I expect to see us working together and sharing information in an unprecedented fashion so that we can each benefit from what we know and need to know about drug-trafficking activity," said the American ambassador to Brazil, Anthony S. Harrington, in a recent interview. In 1998, the Brazilian Congress approved legislation that would allow the Air Force to shoot down any aircraft that enters Brazilian airspace illegally. Peru and Colombia have similar laws, but "ours is broader," Cardoso said, and "has to be regulated by a decree that is still being discussed, due to the sensitivity of the problem," before it can be put into effect. As part of its effort to control the sky over the often-impenetrable jungle, the Brazilian government has also announced a long-delayed program to re-equip its air force. Over the next eight years, Brazil intends to spend about $3.5 billion to buy new supersonic fighter planes and troop transport planes and to refurbish 100 combat jets, with much of the equipment intended for Amazon service. Faced with the sweeping scale of both the terrain and the problem, Brazilian officials are well aware that an effort as modest as Operation Cobra clearly cannot hope to eliminate such traffic. "Our border with Colombia is more than 1,000 miles long, so extensive and with an area of jungle so inhospitable that even if we multiplied by 10 or 15 the forces deployed there, we would still be short of people," Cardoso said. The Brazilian army has stationed 22,000 troops in the Amazon, about 10 percent of its total strength. But the Brazilian government officially maintains that, in Sposito's words, "The guerrillas do not exist in Brazil, only narco-traffickers," and has made it clear that it intends to keep its forces as far removed as possible from the combat in Colombia. "Brazil is not willing to send units of the army or the police to fight alongside their Colombian counterparts, whether against the guerrillas or narcotics traffickers," Minister of Foreign Affairs Luiz Felipe Lampreia said in Brasilia. Any additional dispatch of troops that may occur, he said, will be intended exclusively "to strengthen our military presence on the border in order to defend and safeguard our frontier." But Brazil is already peripherally involved in the Colombian conflict. Late in 1998, Colombia's main left-wing guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, attacked and briefly held Mitu, a provincial capital in Colombia just across the border. Colombian troops were forced to withdraw to Iauarete, a base in Brazilian territory. Pressures on the Brazilian government to assume a higher profile in the Amazon will, of course, be likely to require more money and a larger commitment of security forces. But in contrast to a decade ago, when resentment of 21 years of military dictatorship still lingered, it is clear that popular support for such a buildup is a certainty. "If there is one positive aspect to the emergence of these problems with Plan Colombia, it is that all of society has now awakened to the necessity of the defense of the Amazon," Cardoso said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D