Pubdate: Sun, 15 Sep 2002
Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Copyright: 2002 The Seattle Times Company
Contact:  http://www.seattletimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/409
Author: T. Christian Miller, Los Angeles Times

IN COLOMBIA, PIPELINE IS SAFE, BUT PEOPLE AREN'T

ARAUCA, Colombia - Under pressure from United States-based Occidental 
Petroleum and the U.S. government, the Colombian military has redeployed 
its forces to protect a key oil pipeline, leading to an explosion of 
violence in the undefended countryside.

The army has reassigned most of its troops in the province to patrol the 
pipeline, which is jointly owned by Occidental and the Colombian state oil 
company. Leftist guerrillas battling the government shut down production 
for months in 2001, but this year attacks on the pipeline have plunged.

Civilians in the countryside of Arauca, the province that surrounds the 
pipeline, have paid the price. In the absence of any sustained military 
presence since late last year, Colombia's violent right-wing paramilitary 
squads quickly moved in, unleashing a campaign of murder and terror.

Hundreds of politicians, journalists, businessmen and ordinary civilians 
have been kidnapped and killed. Brutal combat between the paramilitaries 
and leftist guerrillas has forced thousands to flee their homes. Scores of 
people have simply disappeared.

Arauca is now the most violent province in one of the most violent 
countries in the world.

"Here, there is fire on all sides," said one man who was fleeing recent 
fighting, using his tractor to pull a wagon piled high with household goods.

Until now, U.S. aid in Colombia has been limited to fighting drug 
trafficking. But as soon as next month, the first U.S. instructors will 
arrive to launch a controversial training program to help Colombian 
soldiers better protect the pipeline. The United States is also planning to 
send helicopters and improve intelligence-sharing with the Colombian army.

Critics charge that the plan forces U.S. taxpayers to provide security for 
a private company, Occidental. And human-rights groups say the local 
Colombian army unit, the 18th Brigade, has aided the paramilitary advance, 
meaning that U.S. trainers may become party to human-rights abuses.

"If you bring in more troops, this conflict is only going to get worse," 
said Enrique Pertuz, executive director of a local human- rights group. "If 
your enemy tries to overcome you with more arms and soldiers, you respond 
in kind. There are going to be more killings, more massacres, more repression."

The Colombian army has long been accused of cooperating with the 
paramilitaries because both sides share a common enemy in the guerrillas. 
The paramilitaries, financed by drugs and large landowners, use massacres 
and torture to fight the rebels in areas that Colombia's thinly stretched 
armed forces have neglected.

U.S. and Colombian officials defend the plan, saying the training will 
protect oil flow along the pipeline, which provides an important source of 
revenue for the Colombian government. The additional income from the 
protected pipeline will allow the Colombian government to step up efforts 
to combat the rebels and paramilitaries, they argue, as well as the drugs 
that flow to U.S. streets.

Colombian army officials don't dispute that their focus on the pipeline has 
hampered their ability to maintain order in the disputed region, although 
they strenuously deny paramilitary links.

"If I could free up 30 percent of the troops that are guarding the pipeline 
in order to be able to go after the guerrillas and paramilitaries, things 
would be different," said Gen. Carlos Lemus, the commanding officer of the 
18th Brigade.

Impoverished Arauca province was long forgotten by the central government 
in the faraway capital, Bogota. The neglect allowed Colombia's 
second-largest rebel army, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, to take 
almost complete control. The rebels determined who took public office 
through vote-buying and intimidation, and extracted "taxes" from local 
landowners.

Then, in 1983, oil was discovered. Occidental teamed up with the Colombian 
government to develop the 1.3-billion-barrel Cano Limon oil field, located 
along the border with Venezuela. A 483-mile-long pipeline was built.

By law, part of the oil profits had to return to Arauca. The budget for the 
local government - dominated by ELN sympathizers and allies - jumped from 
$300,000 per year to $60 million to $80 million as a result of oil royalties.

A tour of Arauca shows how little of that money found its way to the 
community. The province is filled with incomplete building projects, the 
result of money siphoned away by guerrillas. There is a half-built water 
park, a half-built bus terminal, even a half-built velodrome.

"The guerrillas got rich," said one Occidental executive.

By 1999, the money had attracted the interest of Colombia's largest rebel 
group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC. The FARC 
demanded a share of the money. The local ELN-controlled government refused. 
And the so-called "royalty war" began.

Beginning in 2001, the FARC unleashed a bombing campaign against the 
pipeline that brought a halt to production - and thus the revenues that the 
ELN relied upon to finance its army.

Occidental officials watched with growing nervousness as the FARC planted 
as many as five bombs a day along the length of the pipeline. Oxy's oil 
field - which accounts for about 5 percent of the company's total world 
production of 133 million barrels of oil - was shut down for nearly four 
months beginning in March 2001.

Top Occidental executives began meeting with Colombian and U.S. officials 
in an effort to persuade them to step up pipeline protection. Their 
argument was that Occidental wasn't the only one losing money in the 
attacks. The Colombian government was giving up an average $40 million a 
month in oil royalties, equivalent to 2 percent of the national budget.

"We made them realize that they could not allow the attacks to continue," 
one Occidental official said.

The effort to increase pipeline protection began in July 2001. The military 
sent in a special-forces unit for two months that successfully stopped 
attacks against the pipeline. That convinced the Colombian military to 
redeploy more troops permanently.

Colombia more than doubled the size of the force protecting the pipeline, 
adding three more battalions to the two already assigned there. So far this 
year, there have been only 29 attacks on the pipeline, as opposed to 170 
last year. But the improved pipeline protection has meant disaster and 
terror for the rest of Arauca.

"There has been a huge amount of uncertainty and fear," said Luis Eduardo 
Velez, the deputy governor of the province. "People had learned how to live 
with the guerrillas. Now they have to learn to deal with a totally 
different group."

Occidental executives said they regretted the violence and noted the 
company had recently boosted its own spending on social-development 
programs in Colombia from $2 million to $3 million a year.
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