Pubdate: Thu, 06 Feb 2003
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Scott Wilson, the Washington Post

MILITARY TRAINING IN COLOMBIA MOVES BEYOND COUNTERNARCOTICS

SARAVENA, Colombia -- The arrival of U.S. Special Forces trainers in this
battered town last month signaled the beginning of a change that gives the
U.S. more direct military involvement in Colombia's long civil war and could
lead the country's two leftist guerrilla armies to broaden attacks against
U.S. targets.

Late last month, the smaller of the two Marxist-oriented guerrilla
movements, the National Liberation Army, kidnapped a British and an American
journalist in this rich oil region of eastern Colombia, saying the province
has become a "war zone declared by the North American government and the
Colombian state." Although meant as an explanation for the abduction of the
journalists, who were released Saturday after 11 days in rebel hands, the
warning stirred deep anxiety among Colombian civilians that the presence of
U.S. troops will prompt a sharp response from the guerrillas.

Over the course of this year, Arauca province is scheduled to become the
center of gravity for a U.S. effort costing $470 million (euro432.3 million)
a year to help President Alvaro Uribe cripple the enduring leftist
insurgency by strengthening Colombia's military. The training program here
will emphasize counterinsurgency rather than counter-narcotics techniques
that had been the focus of U.S. aid to date.

In expanding the training beyond counternarcotics, the U.S. has abandoned an
ambiguity that was once carefully cultivated by U.S. officials, promising to
make the U.S. a higher-profile player in Colombia's 39-year-old war.

Beginning this month, U.S. officials will start shifting military resources
once used in antidrug operations in southern Colombia to this province,
which lies on the Venezuelan border 220 miles east of Bogota, the Colombian
capital. Those helicopters will be used directly against the two guerrilla
armies, which the State Department considers terrorist organizations.
Additional helicopters and other military equipment are scheduled for
purchase under the program.

The effort has been presented as a way of helping Colombian troops protect
the government's economically important oil pipeline from guerrilla attack.
But it is clear in the training taking place on an army base here that
defending the pipeline will mostly entail offensive operations against the
seasoned guerrilla fronts that have prospered on this swampy stretch of oil
and coca fields. The first military unit selected for training, for
instance, is a counterguerrilla battalion, not a unit whose principle task
is pipeline protection.

"I look at this [program] more as one that is trying to establish security
in an area where there just happens to be a pipeline," a U.S. official said.

The 70 U.S. trainers in Arauca -- more than half here, the rest on nearby
bases in Cano Limon and Arauca city to the east -- are a useful propaganda
symbol for guerrillas, who have long warned of U.S. economic designs on
Colombia's natural wealth. The message has resonated all the more as the
U.S. prepares for a possible war in Iraq that could disrupt world oil
supplies.

The U.S. trainers, who aren't authorized to participate in military
operations, have arrived on this bewildering battlefield as the first phase
of a larger buildup.

In coming weeks, U.S. officials say, at least five UH-1H Huey II helicopters
will be sent from the south to support counterinsurgency here. Those
helicopters, funded under a $1.3 billion U.S. antidrug package, were
restricted to antidrug operations until the Bush administration received
congressional approval last year to allow their use in counterinsurgency.

About 25 U.S. trainers will remain in Larandia, the army base in southern
Colombia, preparing troops to carry out operations against drug labs and
coca crops. In addition, 15 U.S. trainers based in Tolemaida, west of
Bogota, are preparing a 300-man commando battalion to be used to hunt
important guerrilla commanders or destroy guerrilla command-and-control
centers.

Last week, troops from the 30th Counter-Guerrilla Battalion based in Fortul,
12 miles to the south, gathered to begin the 10-week course on "how to move,
communicate and shoot," in the words of one U.S. official. U.S. officials
hope to train two battalions of the 18th Brigade, about 800 men, this year.

Saravena, a city of 40,000 once dominated by guerrilla militia networks,
offers a surreal picture of Colombia's war. Despite the oil riches that
surround the city, the urban centerpiece is a bombed-out police station and
city hall, the rubble lined with sandbags and gun emplacements. The airport,
destroyed last year by guerrilla attacks, remains decorated with signs
sponsored by the chamber of commerce that cheerfully invite passengers to
return soon.

The National Liberation Army, a 5,000-member Cuban-inspired insurgency known
by its initials as the ELN, has profited from the oil pipeline, which runs
500 miles from Cano Limon to Covenas on the Caribbean Coast. In general, the
ELN bleeds funds from sympathetic nonprofit organizations and city halls
that get extra taxes and subsidies from pipeline royalties.

The ELN's larger cousin, the 18,000-member Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, has moved in more recently, seeking its own share of the
royalties.

Although both guerrilla groups have declared U.S. interests in Colombia to
be military objectives, they have usually reserved their attacks for
helicopters, counternarcotics spray planes and economic infrastructure. The
notorious exception was the FARC's 1999 killing of three American
indigenous-rights activists in Arauca, the result of a power struggle
between the guerrilla groups.

The most prominent guerrilla target has been the pipeline, jointly operated
by the government and Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. The
guerrillas, primarily the FARC, blew up the pipeline 170 times in 2001,
according to the state oil company, Ecopetrol. According to military
officials and provincial politicians, the objective of most bombings was to
force the ELN to share more of the proceeds.

The attacks cost the government $500 million in revenue in 2001, money the
U.S. wants Mr. Uribe to be able to invest in the war effort. Bombings
dropped to 42 last year with better security and a guerrilla agreement over
money.

Mr. Uribe last week ordered that Arauca's oil royalties, amounting to about
$42 million a year, must be managed by his administration rather than by the
provincial government in a move designed to choke off the ELN financing.
That angered regional political leaders, who say not a penny of promised
social aid has arrived since September, when Mr. Uribe declared the region a
special security zone.
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