Pubdate: Thu, 26 Jul 2001
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: T. Christian Miller
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Colombia

BROADER ROLE BY U.S. LIKELY IN COLOMBIA

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The United States is planning to expand its training 
role in Colombia, instructing military units to fight drugs in parts of the 
country where leftist guerrillas are becoming increasingly involved in 
narcotics trafficking, the top U.S. official in the country said Wednesday.

So far, the U.S. has focused its training efforts on three special 
counter-narcotics battalions that operate in southern Colombia, the source 
of nearly half the cocaine sold in the United States.

But a plan under consideration by American Ambassador Anne W. Patterson 
calls for the U.S. to begin training additional Colombian army units to 
take down drug labs protected by leftist insurgents elsewhere in the 
war-torn nation.

Under the plan, U.S. forces or private contractors would conduct the 
training, embassy officials said.

Patterson said she envisioned a modest training regime, working with 
perhaps one battalion at a time over the next several years. The plan would 
have the added benefit of helping reform the Colombian army, which has a 
long history of human rights abuses, she said.

"We can do a lot under the counter-narcotics rubric," Patterson said in 
extensive remarks to a group of reporters Wednesday at her heavily guarded 
residence in an upscale neighborhood of Bogota, the capital. "We think we 
can do a lot to professionalize the army."

News of the training plan comes just after several members of the U.S. 
House of Representatives expressed fears about deeper involvement in the 
Colombian conflict during debate on military, social and economic aid 
packages for Andean nations. The Senate will consider similar proposals today.

Opponents of current U.S. policy in Colombia said the plan would risk 
drawing Washington deeper into Colombia's messy, four-decade internal war.

"We're definitely getting further into this," said Adam Isacson, a Colombia 
expert with the Center for International Policy in Washington. "Not only 
would there be more battalions and trainers, but they would be in new, 
conflicted parts of the country."

Additional counter-narcotics troops could be used to help secure new 
coca-growing areas protected or controlled by the leftist Revolutionary 
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group, or by 
right-wing paramilitary forces, whose ranks have soared in recent years.

In addition to allowing police safe entry to wipe out the coca crops, the 
troops could have the additional effect of attacking a prime revenue source 
for both the guerrillas and the paramilitary fighters, who have become 
increasingly involved in the drug trade. Colombian police estimate that the 
guerrillas make more than $500 million a year taxing and trafficking in drugs.

"The urgent issue is to take the money [earned from drugs] out of the hands 
of the armed groups," Patterson said.

Part of the problem in Colombia is that military operations and recent 
aerial surveys have detected extensive and previously unknown fields of 
coca and opium poppies in rebel-held zones in the vast, mostly unpopulated 
eastern plains of Colombia.

With more coca in more guerrilla-held zones, more troops with narcotics 
training will be needed, embassy officials said.

"It's quite possible we've underestimated the coca in Colombia," Patterson 
said. "Everywhere we look there is more coca than we expected. There's just 
more out there than we thought."

Embassy officials said that the plan was only under consideration and that 
the money was still not in hand. Although funds are available from current 
State Department resources to support some aspects of the new training, 
money to bring in new Special Forces trainers and for other large training 
expenses would have to come from the Department of Defense budget now 
pending in Congress.

In the past, it has cost about $20 million to train a battalion, excluding 
costs for military hardware that may be needed, according to the Center for 
International Policy.

Still, embassy officials do not anticipate strong objection to the new 
training. In one form or another, the U.S. has been providing military 
instruction to troops in Colombia for decades; the training ranges from 
outboard motor repair to flying advanced helicopters.

"We don't think there is going to be a problem on the Hill with that. The 
U.S. Congress would be notified if that plan goes forward," Patterson said.

The exact scope of the plan is under consideration. One embassy military 
official recently told a visiting group of human rights workers that he 
envisioned the U.S. training one battalion in every Colombian army brigade, 
as well as supplying all of them with equipment.

Those battalions, the military official said, would be better able to 
protect Colombian infrastructure such as highways and oil pipelines, which 
are under constant attack by leftist groups.

"This is exactly the fear of mission creep that people have been having," 
said George Vickers, the executive director of the Washington Office on 
Latin America, who spoke to the embassy military official last week.

That fear was a focus of discussion on the floor of the House on Tuesday 
about whether the aid package was leading the U.S. into a quagmire similar 
to the Central American conflicts of the 1980s, when the U.S. trained 
troops to battle leftist guerrillas in places such as El Salvador.

In fact, the House explicitly voted down a White House request to lift 
strict caps on the number of U.S. citizens and military officials who can 
participate in operations in Colombia, citing mission creep as a concern.

Rep. John Conyers Jr., a Michigan Democrat who worked out a deal to keep a 
cap, said he worried that the embassy's new plan would lead the U.S. deeper 
into Colombia's civil conflict.

"These are the kinds of developments that make it clear that we have to 
monitor the activities between our government . . . and the rebels much 
more carefully," Conyers said in a telephone interview. "What it sounds 
like is that we may be in the process of erasing the line between the civil 
war, the rebel activity and the counter-narcotics initiative. It's not 
going to lead us in a good direction."

Patterson, however, stressed that U.S. training was devoted exclusively to 
fighting drugs, not rebels. The three counter-narcotics battalions, for 
instance, were instructed by Green Berets in how to seize a drug lab, avoid 
firing at the workers inside and secure the scene for processing by police.

"The political stomach for going into the counterinsurgency business is 
zero. It's not going to happen," Patterson said. "It's not an issue for 
debate. It wasn't under the Clinton administration, it's not under the Bush 
administration.

"When I do a briefing, I'm going to put up a sign: 'Colombia is not El 
Salvador,' " she joked.
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