The US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) plans to provide Colombia with new levels of intelligence to assist its operations against insurgent groups and to instruct their armed forces in applying that information to operations, the director of operations for USSOUTHCOM Brig Gen Galen Jackman has disclosed to Jane's Defence Weekly. As part of an expansion of its involvement in the region, the US government no longer limits its aid to counter-narcotics efforts in Colombia. It now permits the helicopters, intelligence and training provided to Bogota under that programme to be used to fight terrorism. [continues 570 words]
Stepping up the war on drugs, the US government is preparing to restart its 'Air Bridge Denial' (ABD) programme more than a year after an aircraft carrying civilian missionaries was accidentally shot down in April 2001. The new measures will include the transfer of sophisticated surveillance aircraft and technology to the Peruvian Air Force (FAP), which will now conduct all the actual operations that are expected to restart by year-end. The involvement of US personnel in the air-intercept programme was ended after the April 2001 accident. [continues 230 words]
There Are Growing Signs The US May Widen The Scope Of Its Military Aid To Bogota In A Stalemate Against Rebels In January 1999, when Colombia's newly-elected President Andres Pastrana launched peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), there was great initial optimism of a realistic chance of ending the conflict with the country's largest rebel force, which has been conducting an increasingly bloody insurgency since the mid-1960s. However, peace negotiations have moved slowly and have increasingly lost credibility. Despite three years of talks, critics say that virtually no tangible results have been achieved and that the FARC is not committed to negotiating an end to the conflict. [continues 1031 words]
Shortly following the events of 11 September, the media in the UK and US reported unconfirmed rumours that the Taliban had lifted their ban on opium poppy production as a show of support for Osama bin Laden. The conclusions drawn from this was that the West would soon be flooded with cheap Afghan heroin - including a new liquid heroin financed by Osama bin Laden, called the 'Tears of Allah'. Increased seizure rates on the Afghan-Iranian and Afghan-Tajik borders have been cited as evidence that large shipments of opium and heroin were being moved out of Afghanistan. [continues 255 words]
As Colombia widens the campaign against narco-guerrillas, its neighbours fear that success could mean instability for the region. Colombia's growing efforts to combat guerrilla insurgents and drug cartels, backed by increasing amounts of US financing and equipment, are renewing concerns among its South American neighbours that the struggle could translate into regional instability. South American nations for some time have said they believe Colombia's escalating insurgency and drugs war are problems that should be addressed internally. This view stems largely from a broad distrust of US military operations in the region as well as the belief that increased US involvement in the quagmire will force guerrillas and drug traffickers to expand their operations into neighbouring countries. [continues 1139 words]
LATE in August, President Bill Clinton made a one-day visit to Cartagena in Colombia to pledge political and financial support for that country's anti-drug effort. The agreed $1.3 billion in military aid is limited to the drug fight and not directed toward ending the Colombian government's decades-long battle with rebel groups. Clinton said: "This is not Vietnam, nor is it Yankee imperialism." He was reacting to critics at home and in and around Colombia who fear the consequences of a growing fight to stop the Colombian drug traffickers, who supply 90 per cent of the cocaine and most of the heroin that enters the United States. [continues 1369 words]
The USA's controversial $1.3 billion aid package to Colombia has been defended in Washington largely on the grounds that the new helicopters and other aid will be used only to fight the nation's drug war and not in counter-insurgency operations against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and other left-wing rebel groups. However, a growing number of Colombian and US officials maintain that the equipment package itself, the largest to date, falls significantly short of operational needs and will do little to improve Colombia's ability to successfully wage war against the drug cartels, increasingly protected by Colombia's well-armed guerrillas. [continues 578 words]
Sources in Colombia's Ministry of Defence told Jane's Defence Weekly that it will order 14 Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk utility helicopters to improve the mobility of its forces battling rebels and drug traffickers. The aircraft will be procured through a leasing arrangement to ease the payment burden. The sources said that the decision to purchase the Black Hawks has been under consideration for at least two years, but the purchase was put back due to budgetary constraints. The army and the air force will each receive seven Black Hawks. The first helicopter is expected to arrive about July, with deliveries completed in 2001. Earlier this year the armed forces received five Black Hawks ordered in 1999 to join the 25 already in service. [continues 155 words]
Washington DC - Military intelligence reports have raised alarms in the USA that the expanding reach of paramilitary groups and technological advances by illegal drug cartels in Colombia will result in instability spreading into neighbouring states. Senior US officials warn that they may be facing a regional problem of potentially immense proportions. The rising stakes in the Andean Ridge of South America - a region one US official described as the "backyard Balkans" - could adversely affect not only the democratically-elected governments but also the USA's "source zone strategy" of eradicating and interdicting illegal narcotics at their source, according to officials. [continues 601 words]
US forces will conduct counter-drug operations in the Caribbean from Hato Airfield on the Dutch Antilles island of Curacao and Reina Beatrix on Aruba following the closure of US bases in Panama. Last week Dutch and US government officials reached an agreement on stationing US forces on the islands. A formal agreement will be signed within the next couple of weeks in The Hague. Royal Netherlands Navy (RNN) sources expect the USA to station some 20 to 25 aircraft on both airfields in the next three years. Besides P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft they could also included E-2 Hawkeyes, Airborne Warning and Control (AWACS), and KC-135 tankers. These aircraft are employed through the Joint Interagency Task Force East (JIATF East) headquartered in Key West, Florida. [continues 177 words]
For more than 40 years, the Colombian government has been in conflict with left-wing guerrilla forces. While some of these groups have withered away or demobilised and joined the mainstream political process, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Colombia's largest rebel group, has become stronger and presents a serious threat to the government. The FARC's success has been attributed in part to the emergence of a new leader, Jorge Briceno, known as 'El Mono Jojoy', partly to the ineffectiveness of the previous administration under President Samper, but mainly to the FARC's links with Colombian drug cartels and the money it receives from protecting cartel operations. [continues 1361 words]
CARTAGENA, Colombia -- US military counter-narcotics operations in Latin America are expected to suffer, at least temporarily, when the USA pulls its forces out of Panama next year. US authorities have yet to identify new forward operating sites in the region from which to launch airborne monitoring and detection missions. Now that negotiations over a future US military presence in Panama have broken down, the US government has begun lobbying nations in Central and South America, including Ecuador, Honduras and Peru to establish a series of small outposts to replace its military bases in Panama. However, those locations will not be in place by 1 May 1999 when the runway at Howard Air Force Base in Panama, the primary staging area, is scheduled to shut down. The USA will then be forced to conduct its counter-narcotics flights from the continental USA and Puerto Rico, where US Army South, US Special Operations Command South, air force elements and about 15,000 reserves will be stationed. [continues 487 words]
