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Pubdate: Mon, 19 Mar 2001 Source: Inside The Army Copyright: 2001 Inside Washington Publishers Page: 1 Contact: P.O. Box 7167, Ben Franklin Station, Washington, DC 20044 Author: Chris Strohm STATE DEPARTMENT CALLS FOR MORE MILITARY ASSISTANCE IN SOUTH AMERICA A State Department plan for preventing the regional spillover effects of counternarcotic activities in Colombia will include military assistance to other countries in South America, officials said last week. The State Department is calling for increased military assistance to countries that border Colombia in the Andean region to prevent a crisis of drug production and trafficking from spreading, Inside the Army has learned. The recommendation is part of a follow-up proposal to an emergency $1.3 billion aid package for Colombia that was approved last year, officials said during department briefings and a policy forum last week. Part of the plan includes a military component for countries that neighbor Colombia in an effort to help them prevent drug traffickers and insurgents from coming over their borders, said James Mack, deputy assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Countries that border Colombia include Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela and Panama. Mack, who spoke during a March 13 forum sponsored by the Cato Institute, said Ecuador is at the top of the list to receive equipment from the U.S. government. The follow-on effort is called the Andean Initiative and is part of the State Department's fiscal year 2002 budget, said Joseph Bowab, acting director of the office of resources, plans and policies, during a State Department briefing on March 12. He said the exact funding level for the initiative has not been determined but will be a "fairly large chunk" of the total budget for international narcotics control and law enforcement, which will be about $950 million in FY-02. Officials said they could not discuss details of the plan or funding levels until after April 3, which is the date when President Bush is to deliver his budget request to Congress. Colombia is embroiled in a bitter war that involves drug traffickers, leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitary units. In 1999, the Colombian government crafted a six-year, $7.5 billion effort called Plan Colombia to fight the drug trade in its country, reform government institutions, end human rights abuses and revive an ailing economy. The U.S. contribution to Plan Colombia is $1.3 billion, about $750 million of which is in the form of military aid to equip and train three Colombian army counterdrug battalions. About 300 U.S. military personnel have been assigned to Colombia as trainers and advisers only; they are prohibited from participating directly in counterinsurgency operations. Mack said most of the assistance that will go to neighboring countries under the Andean Initiative will be in the form of "soft" aid, or aid that is targeted toward judicial and institutional reform and humanitarian programs. But the initiative will include a military component, he said. A spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, which has oversight of operations in South America, was unable to answer questions from ITA by press time (March 16) on what kind of military aid will be provided to other countries and how the command will meet the increased requirements. He said discussions between the command and State Department are ongoing. Debate continues over how the United States should address the crisis in Colombia and deal with spillover into other countries, which is commonly referred to as the "balloon effect." William Brownfield, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for western hemispheric affairs, said the U.S. government has realized from the beginning that a regional strategy would be needed in the Andean region. He said the initial effort focused on Colombia because that is where the core of the problem exists and because it offered a "starting point in terms of educating and convincing the American people" of the need for a second phase, which will be larger and more regional. "So my short and simple answer would be, we have had this sense [for a broader regional plan] all along. We don't believe we have been misleading, dissembling, or even understating, as we have talked publicly about it," Brownfield said during another State Department briefing on March 12. "We are, however, moving to stage two in what should be a two or three-stage process that should last a number of years[.]" Mack said the balloon effect is an "absolutely valid" concern. He also said he believes it would be "inappropriate" to end military aid to Colombia. Efforts to strangle the drug industry in Colombia primarily consist of using military and police troops to combat production and trafficking in the southern region of the country known as Putumayo, which borders Ecuador and Peru. Mack said he does not believe U.S. military assistance to those operations will end. "If we were to do that, that would mean that the government could not project its presence or mass in the southern parts of Colombia where, at present time, the Colombian [police] forces are unable to operate successfully," he said. "A lot of the assistance that we're providing to the Colombians is going to the purchase of helicopters which will enable them to move around fairly easily in that part of the country," he added. "That is an essential component of the eradication approach and the interdiction approach. And without the mobility that the helicopters provide and the trained counternarcotics troops that are part of the package, I think that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to begin to reduce substantially the amount of narcotics coming out of that part of Colombia." Russell Crandall, assistant professor of political science at Davidson College in North Carolina, said he believes U.S. policy toward Colombia will continue under President Bush in the same way it was executed by the Clinton administration. Speaking at the Cato Institute forum, Crandall said it does not appear the Bush administration will make a dramatic policy shift and most likely will not publicly raise the larger questions of what the United States is doing in South America. He also believes that the crisis in Colombia will spread to neighboring countries. "It's also clear that with the potential for a balloon effect and the destabilization from Putumayo into other areas, it's not [just] going to move into other areas of Colombia but also other countries," he said. "And that makes a domestic issue a regional issue overnight. And, as was initially proposed during the last months of the Clinton administration, I think it's clear that the Bush administration will continue with the idea that step two . . . is support some of Colombia's neighbors such as Ecuador and Peru in the spillover effects there." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake