Pubdate: Thu, 21 Aug 2003
Source: Hartford Advocate (CT)
Copyright: 2003 New Mass. Media, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.hartfordadvocate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/182
Author: Patrick Rucker
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Plan+Colombia

IN COLOMBIA, A CAPTIVE OF REBELS

Local Man Held Hostage In South America

Refugees who have fled the violence of the conflict live in large shanty towns
like this one called Nueva Colombia. Jo Rosano never worried about the safety
of her son, Marc Gonsalves, during his eight-year career as an Air Force
intelligence officer. He spent most of that time on the ground. Only later --
when Gonsalves left the service and began flying drug reconissance missions
over Colombia for a private contractor -- did she grow anxious.

"It sounded dangerous," Rosano explains from her Bristol home. "I did not know
much about Colombia then, but I knew that they had problems, that his plane
could get shot at."

Rosano was right to worry. Last February Gonsalvez and four crewmates of a
Cessna light aircraft loaded with spy equipment crash-landed in the rebel-held
territory of Colombia's southern Caqueta province.

Guerrilla forces captured the crew, killed two who tried to escape and then
absconded into the jungle depths with Gonsalves and the three remaining crew
members.

Rosano learned of her son's capture several weeks later. "I have been crying
ever since," she says.

Now in the hands of the FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Gonsalves
and the two other American prisoners have become pawns in Colombia's civil
strife and, ultimately, Rosano believes, America's clandestine war on drugs.

FARC has called Gonsalves and his co-captors "mercenaries" at the service of
the U.S. Department of Defense and has included their names among those of
prisoners of war that they hope to exchange for their comrades in the hands of
Colombian military.

A spokesman for California Microwave Systems, Gonsalves' employer, would not
discuss the firm's efforts to secure Gonsalves' release except to say that
company officials are deeply concerned and working closely with the State
Department.

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Bogota also said little about attempts to free
Gonsalves, though his plight almost certainly will be part of discussions this
week when U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visits political and
military leaders in Colombia.

Since Gonsalves' capture, Rosano has learned much more about her son's work and
American dealings in the region. What she has found, she says, breaks her
heart.

Begin-Colombia receives about a half-billion dollars in U.S. aid to disrupt
cocaine traffic and, she says, much of those resources are used in a secretive
campaign to quell civil unrest.

"It's very obvious that they are keeping this hush-hush," Rosano says of U.S.
efforts in Colombia. "They are involved in things that they don't want people
to know about or understand."

"It's perfectly plain," says Larry Birns, director of the Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington think tank, "that they were military
contractors pursuing U.S. policy in as low profile a manner as possible."

Birns says the Pentagon has largely turned the Colombian drug war over to
sub-contractors like California Microwave Systems, a division of defense
technology giant Northrup Grumman Corp.

A spokesman for California Microwave Systems explains the firm's work as
"providing airborne surveillance systems, and various other communications
systems" for the U.S. military, other government agencies and international
defense organizations. Rosano understood that her son was spotting coca
cultivation zones.

In any case, Birns says, such private firms are now tasked with work that would
traditionally fall to military personnel. Army training, surveillance and
intelligence are carried out by private firms unencumbered by Congressional
oversight and legislation that limits American military involvement in the
country, Birns says.

Congress caps the number of U.S. military personnel in Colombia at 400 but
there is no limit to the number of private contractors that can do similar
work.

"This is how the White House limits its political exposure," Birns says. "We
are there but we're not there."

Supporters of U.S. policy claim that the only way to disrupt the drug trade is
by attacking groups like the FARC, which enrich themselves on drug profits and
exploit the local people.

But both leftist groups such as the FARC and their right-wing paramilitary
pursuers profit from the drug trade, Birns says, and most human rights
atrocities -- about 80 percent -- are committed by the right-wing paramilitary
groups and the Colombian military. Those forces assassinated over 2,000 leaders
of the FARC's political wing, the Patriotic Union, in 15 years of political
organizing.

If Gonsalves' fate is tied to a final settlement of the Colombian conflict, his
mother might be right to despair.

The FARC is not a group of guerrilla dilettantes. Formed 40 years ago to defend
a Communist-backed peasant cooperative, the armed group has been waging war
ever since with a force that is now estimated to exceed 18,000 irregulars and
control about half of Colombian territory.

The FARC is said to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in "war taxes" on drug
cultivation and smuggling in their territory, and millions more in extortion
and kidnapping.

Talks between the FARC and the Colombian government begun in the early nineties
yielded a truce by the end of the decade but peace was fleeting. The settlement
broke down. The FARC renewed its campaign. Then, last year, Colombians elected
get-tough President Alvaro Uribe.

Vowing to wipe out leftist rebels, Uribe ordered the military to intensify
their campaign against the FARC. Well funded and resourceful, the FARC has
shown no signs they will be defeated.

But, experts say, the FARC has grown deeply unpopular and they know it. In
desperation, they might be willing to provoke the United States into escalating
its campaign and so convert their marginal peasant struggle into a campaign of
nationalist self-determination. If that is the case, the U.S. government -- and
contractors like Gonsalves acting on its behalf -- might be playing right into
their hands.

"Under the law, the U.S. can have no more than 400 soldiers on Colombian soil
with one exception: search and rescue missions," says Adam Isacson, head of the
Colombia Project of Washington's Center on International Policy.

"This incident has led to the largest-ever presence of U.S. soldiers in
Colombia," Isacson says. "FARC wants that presence and now they have it."

Recently, 150 Special Forces joined the Colombian military's full-time search
for the men, pushing U.S. troop numbers above the "non-emergency" level.

Those soldiers now work in tandem with the American contractors assigned to
find Gonsalves. The search led to further tragedy last March when three
civilian contractors were killed when their aircraft crashed during a search
mission.

The close cooperation between the U.S. military and civilian contractors in
Colombia is nothing new, says Bill Leogrande, dean of the School of Public
Policy at American University and an expert on regional affairs. Washington has
long used former U.S. forces to conduct security and military-style operations
in Latin America.

"This policy goes back to the Reagan years, Central America and the War Powers
Act," says Leogrande. "It's often lucrative for a serviceman to leave his Air
Force salary for the private sector. He's basically doing the same work but for
much better pay."

That was certainly true in Gonsalves' case. "They were paying him something
like $140 thousand a year. He could not believe it," Rosano remembers.

What the government buys, Leogrande says, is political cover when things go
wrong.

"This way it's not American servicemen killed or captured in Colombia," says
Leogrande.

"What's interesting is how routine this has become," he goes on. "The
government certainly gets what it pays for."

This has all been part of Rosano's political education but she is most
concerned about her son.

"What I want is public awareness," she says. "There are people who just do not
know about this. I understand why. It is very obvious that [President] Bush is
keeping this hush-hush."

For now, all Rosano can do is wait for her twice-weekly call from the State
Department saying that there is no news, and keep up her public campaign.
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