The Price of War - America's Risks in Colombia
The Clinton administration insists its $1.3 billion military aid package will be used only to eradicate the cocaine trade in Colombia, not to battle Marxist rebels. But to reach the coca fields of southern Colombia, new U.S.-trained troops must first battle the guerrillas. Because American aid will bring the war to the guerilla strongholds, they are likely to strike back - against American targets.
In releasing the first of $1.3 billion in aid beginning in October, the Clinton administration is making a claim it cannot possibly ensure. The White House says it intends the aid to battle the cocaine trade only, not the guerrillas - specifically the largest group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). But the FARC earns its income, $500 million annually, from drugs.
The eradication of southern Colombia's coca fields requires battling the guerrillas who guard them. Though Washington has provided aid in the past, guerrilla leadership sees the new package as an act of war meant to destroy them. As a result, the FARC in particular will retaliate against U.S. military presence in Colombia and a more extensive set of targets: American business interests and executives.
The American presence in Colombia is more extensive than the Clinton administration lets on. When President Clinton visited Colombia recently he pledged not to get into a shooting war with the FARC, saying Aug. 29, "We have no military objective. We do not believe your conflict has a military solution," according to El Tiempo.
But a new command and control center in Bogota exemplifies the extent to which the Colombian military is depending on Washington. The Defense Ministry has established a sophisticated and expensive new center linking the Colombian military directly to the U.S. national security establishment.
Though funded by the Colombians at a cost of $545,000, the center relies on state-of-the-art U.S. technology. The center links the Colombian army's U.S.-trained and financed anti-narcotics battalions by satellite, computer and microwave technology directly to the Pentagon, the U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State Department.
The new center will coordinate the efforts of the three U.S.-trained battalions of the Colombian Army in their effort to eradicate FARC-controlled coca plantations in the south. That's about 3,000 troops, backed by 60 transport and assault helicopters. Officially, Colombian personnel will operate the new center, while U.S. military personnel will only provide training, logistical and intelligence support.
The U.S. military group, however, will likely play a more prominent role. The Pentagon wants to assign U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Keith Huber, SOUTHCOM's operations director, to the U.S. embassy in Bogota to command U.S. military personnel in Colombia. The Pentagon's desire to send a general officer indicates the importance of the post. Huber would not report to the U.S. ambassador, but rather directly to SOUTHCOM and the Pentagon.
The U.S. military appears keenly aware that its personnel are high-profile targets for guerrilla attacks. Congress set a cap of 800 U.S. personnel in Colombia, including 500 uniformed military personnel and 300 civilians working for the Department of Defense (DOD).
There is historical precedent for U.S. troops being targeted for terrorist attacks in Latin America. Attacks took place in El Salvador in the 1980s, for example, at the height of U.S. involvement there. A SOUTHCOM official said about Colombia that the number of uniformed military personnel will be held to "between 150 and 250 at any given time. We want to have a minimal U.S. footprint in Colombia to assure good force protection."
However, the actual American military presence in Colombia, including DOD civilians, will actually be larger than the personnel caps Congress has approved.
Thousands of U.S. soldiers rotate through SOUTHCOM's theater of operations, and up to 5,000 DOD civilians support operations, including anti-narcotic surveillance, interdiction and training activities.
Many rotate through Colombia. U.S. military pilots fly frequent intelligence gathering missions over Colombia, and civilian American pilots working as contractors for U.S government agencies have provided direct airlift support to Colombian army units, despite official U.S. denials.
The American presence in Colombia is open-ended. In its final months, the Clinton administration has acknowledged the United States will be involved in Colombia for years. The State Department says prospects for advancing the peace talks are poor. White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey has warned Colombia's drug problem will get much worse during the next year or two, and that three to five years will pass before the three anti-narcotics battalions are fully equipped with their transport and combat helicopters. U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson has cautioned that the coca eradication timetables in the aid package are too optimistic and that the coca industry cannot be eradicated before 2005.
The FARC leadership understands this and will move to exploit the situation. One of the plan's great vulnerabilities is the presence of U.S. military personnel. U.S. soldiers and civilians in Colombia will be highly prized by the FARC as political and military targets for kidnapping and assassination. The guerrilla leadership believes that if the price of American involvement is dead U.S. soldiers, Congress and voters will not support the effort.
The guerrillas will likely extend attacks beyond U.S. military personnel to other American targets. In the past two weeks, the National Liberation Army (ELN), a smaller guerrilla group, has blown up a tanker truck owned by Occidental Petroleum.
Earlier, the FARC reportedly kidnapped four Colombian employees of Drummond Co., a U.S. mining company based in Birmingham, Alabama. Three have been released in an apparent attempt to intimidate and extort the company. Guerrillas have also struck the company's railway.
FARC leaders have defiantly stated they are looking forward to the coming
battles in southern Colombia, and that their units have many "surprises"
prepared for the anti-narcotic battalions shortly coming their way.