Pubdate: Sun, 09 Mar 2003
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2003 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service

U.S. MAKES PLANS TO GIVE WAR BACK TO COLOMBIA

Involvement Will Decline After Hunt Ends For Americans

FLORENCIA, Colombia -- One day last month, a U.S.-registered Cessna Caravan 
radioed a mayday call to report engine trouble as it approached this town 
from Bogota, the capital 240 miles to the north. Minutes later, the plane 
carrying four Americans and a Colombian army sergeant, who were embarking 
on an intelligence mission, crashed in the jungle.

The Colombian sergeant and one of the Americans were killed by rebel 
gunfire immediately after the Feb. 13 plane crash. Since then, thousands of 
Colombian forces have searched for the three surviving Americans, 
apparently now in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia 
(FARC), a Marxist guerrilla group designated a terrorist organization by 
Washington. The United States sent 150 U.S. military and civilian officials 
to Colombia after the crash. The number of U.S. military officials in 
Colombia is now 411, the highest number ever stationed there.

But the increased U.S. participation in Colombia's decades-old guerrilla 
war is likely to last only as long as the Americans are missing, U.S. 
officials say.

The Bush administration has made it clear that the country will have to 
shoulder more of the military and financial burden of fighting its 
guerrilla war. U.S. officials have used the words "exit strategy" and 
"endgame" during recent visits here to describe Washington's desire to do 
less in Colombia even as President Alvaro Uribe seeks more U.S. help.

"We're not looking to put more people in here," said Marc Grossman, U.S. 
undersecretary of state for political affairs, during a news conference 
Wednesday in Bogota. "This is a Colombian problem that the Colombians will 
have to solve."

"Colombianization" of War Effort

Uribe's government contends that Washington should view Colombia's 
guerrilla insurgency as part of the larger war on terrorism. So far, 
Uribe's appeal has not worked, largely because the primary U.S. goal in 
Colombia is to fight drug trafficking. Even though peace in Colombia 
remains elusive, the United States contends it is making progress toward 
eradicating coca cultivation. Colombia exports 90 percent of the cocaine 
reaching U.S. shores, and revenue from the illicit trade provides much of 
the financing for the 18,000-member FARC. Drug money also funds the United 
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary force that works alongside 
the military in many regions.

"You have a government here willing to go all the way, and in the next four 
years you could really make a difference in this war," Vice President 
Francisco Santos said in a recent interview. "This alliance must really 
show itself now because to date it has not been fighting to win, and that's 
not to say we aren't very thankful for the help that has come."

At the urging of the U.S. Congress, Uribe has taken politically painful 
steps that will make it easier for Washington to leave Colombia's war. 
Colombian officials describe the process as the "Colombianization" of the 
war effort, and recognize it could mean significantly less U.S. help here 
within the next three years.

Uribe has imposed new taxes intended to raise more than $1 billion this 
year for the war effort, a longtime Congressional demand. He has outlined 
plans to add 35,000 professional soldiers to the ranks, established a 
civilian intelligence network, and deployed the first contingent of 
"peasant" soldiers in the countryside.

In exchange, the U.S. Congress included $93 million in its 2003 aid package 
for a new program to train up to 800 Colombian soldiers to protect a vital 
oil pipeline. In 2001, guerrilla attacks on the 500-mile Cano Limon 
pipeline, operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum and the state 
oil company Ecopetrol, cost the Colombian government $500 million in lost 
revenue. The loss equaled U.S. aid to Colombia that year -- money 
Washington wants Colombia to spend on the war effort.

A $1.3 billion U.S. anti-narcotics package, known as Plan Colombia, doubled 
the U.S. commitment to this country when it was approved by Congress in 
2000, despite concerns about the military's poor human rights record. The 
Bush administration plans to send an additional $1 billion in military 
assistance over the next two years. So far, the United States has paid for 
more than 80 transport helicopters plus programs to train a new 
anti-narcotics brigade, provide instruction for pilots and prepare elite 
forces to hunt down guerrilla and paramilitary leaders. The military 
equipment and training have helped stop the guerrillas from operating in 
large columns, as they did with devastating effect in the mid-1990s. But 
the aid has failed to turn the war in the government's favor.

A far smaller percentage of the aid has funded community courts, built 
rural highways, expanded protection programs for journalists and human 
rights workers, and coaxed coca farmers to give up illegal crops. Many 
Colombians and some U.S. lawmakers say the military tilt of the aid package 
underestimates the social roots of a war that has lasted for generations.

Mindful of those concerns, Congress tied every dollar of Colombian military 
aid to a specific program or piece of equipment. "I think many of those 
debates [over U.S. military involvement in a Latin American civil war] have 
been won now," said Luis Alberto Moreno, the Colombian ambassador to 
Washington. "But this package still operates on the golden rule -- he who 
puts in the gold makes the rules."

The American who died in the plane crash was Thomas J. Janis, one of a 
number of civilian contractors who often experience ground fire as they fly 
reconnaissance missions or pilot herbicide-spraying planes over 
guerrilla-protected coca fields. The body of Janis, 56, a pilot and 
decorated former Army officer, was found near the Cessna's wreckage with a 
fatal gunshot to the head. Investigators said he was either shot in an 
escape attempt or in a futile effort to hold off the guerrillas.

Janis was one of the former military men working for Reston-based DynCorp 
and California Microwave Systems, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. He was 
under contract to the U.S. Southern Command, which in turn assigned him to 
work for the U.S. Embassy. The FARC says it considers such civilian 
operatives mercenaries and thus fair targets. It took responsibility for 
seizing the survivors, describing them as prisoners of war.

The dead Colombian was Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, a Colombian military 
intelligence operative. Colombian officials said rules required that a 
Colombian national accompany intelligence flights. He was found dead 
alongside Janis, with a bullet wound to the chest. Authorities said the men 
were killed after the crew managed to set the spy plane on fire to keep its 
equipment out of rebel hands.

Coca Cultivation Drops

The Cessna's mission was to photograph coca fields for subsequent herbicide 
spraying operations. A U.S.-trained anti-drug brigade based 15 miles 
southeast of here at Larandia carries out the aerial eradication program in 
this region.

The U.S. government says it has succeeded in eradicating some of the coca 
crop, although there are complaints that the herbicides are also killing 
food crops, thereby punishing peasant farmers. The CIA reported last week 
that coca cultivation dropped 15 percent last year, the first decline after 
a decade of skyrocketing growth. Several state governors in southern 
Colombia challenged the report, saying it did not include new cultivation 
sprouting up in other zones.

Uribe's government has been pursuing the U.S. crop eradication program with 
enthusiasm. In the three months following his Aug. 7 inauguration, 115,000 
acres of coca were sprayed in Putumayo province alone -- more than half the 
national total for the previous year. Critics note the program has pushed 
thousands of farmers out of the province, strangled the local economy, and 
encouraged new coca cultivation in the Amazon jungle.

By comparison, former President Andres Pastrana was occasionally reluctant 
to follow the spraying program as aggressively as U.S. officials demanded.

Gonzalo de Francisco, Pastrana's national security adviser, said the United 
States applied constant pressure to accelerate the pace of coca spraying, 
viewing it as cheaper than "alternative development" and crop substitution. 
Pastrana instead focused on reaching a peace agreement with the FARC 
guerrillas. "It was not so much a case of a clash of interest, but the fact 
that our interests did not fit into the same box," De Francisco said. "It 
was a balance, and I believe by the end much of it had been resolved."

Wiping Out Livelihoods

Luis Carlos Ledezma, 42, traveled to Putumayo in 2001 from the province of 
Valle del Cauca with his wife and four children to pick coca. But the 
spraying program wiped out the 40-acre coca plantation where he worked 
along with acres of intermingled food crops.

Today Ledezma stoops in the dirt, planting palm seedlings under a thatched 
roof to guard against errant spraying. Ledezma and his family tried to make 
ends meet on his wife's $18 weekly pay as a maid. He has gone weeks without 
a salary of his own.

"Send our regards to the United States," Ledezma said. "And see if they 
might send us all a visa."

The FARC has taken advantage of the resentment created by the spraying to 
attract new recruits. FARC leaders say the herbicide spraying violates 
Colombian sovereignty. But U.S. officials contend the spraying is hurting 
the guerrillas.

A reduction of 350 metric tons in cocaine exports this year -- a 35 percent 
decrease -- has deprived the rebels of millions in revenue, officials said. 
The plan this year calls for eradication of 440,000 acres of coca leaf, a 
figure that accounts for replanted acreage. That would leave about 80,000 
acres of coca scattered about the country.

But some Colombians say even that level of eradication will not change the 
dynamics of the guerrilla war.

"I'd prefer that the FARC had more money and fewer people supporting them," 
said Sen. Antonio Navarro Wolff, a former leader of the demobilized M-19 
guerrilla movement. "The FARC may need millions of people to win the war, 
but they only need thousands to keep it going. These policies give them 
that and more."

Uribe has failed to link Colombia's guerrilla battles with the Bush 
administration's global war on terrorism. Colombia's three armed groups are 
classified as terrorist organizations by the United States, although none 
are considered to have the "global reach" of al Qaeda and other groups 
higher on the administration's target list.

"If a deployment is being made because of Iraq, why isn't something similar 
being thought of to finally solve the problem of drugs and effectively 
control the Atlantic and Pacific oceans so the traffic of cocaine is 
stopped between California and Colombia?" Uribe said recently.

But U.S. officials have been signaling to Colombian officials to prepare 
for the day when the war will again be all theirs to fight.

"We've got requirements, Colombians have requirements, but our goal is to 
help Colombians defend themselves," a U.S. official said. "What will remain 
the basis . . . is having Colombians doing this job for Colombians."

Officials have been saying, mostly in private, that Washington will 
consider its Colombia policy successful once coca cultivation falls beneath 
100,000 acres -- something it intends to happen by the end of this year -- 
and the guerrillas are sent back to the distant southern jungles and plains 
that were once their only domain.

Colombian officials disagree with that definition of success.

"If someone thinks that by taking coca away you solve our problems, they're 
crazy," Santos said. "An exit strategy now is a disaster strategy. The only 
sure thing is that without U.S. help we will not win."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom