What's to stop, say, Hekmatyar, now sheltered in Iran, from bombing the pipelines in a few years in Afghanistan?
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The Center for International Policy offers a comprehensive source of information and analysis about peaceful efforts to end Colombia's conflict and the United States' increasing military involvement.
Michael Pugliese
Rebels at oil pipeline: 'It's easy to bomb' U.S. may train Colombian troops in new tactics against bombings Karl Penhaul, Chronicle Foreign Service Sunday, April 21, 2002 ©2002 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi? file=/chronicle/archive/2002/04/21/ MN214028.DTL
Saravena, Colombia -- As he sits outside a pool hall sipping tepid beer in the sweltering afternoon, there is little in the young man's quiet manner to suggest he is a foot soldier in an almost-invisible military operation that looms in the crosshairs of U.S. foreign policy.
But his dark eyes flash as he demonstrates how he sparks two electric cables together to trigger an explosion.
The bomber is one of a small band of rebel saboteurs for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest leftist guerrilla force. FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) routinely bomb Colombia's second largest oil pipeline as it pumps 110,000 barrels of crude a day from the nearby Cano Limon field operated by the U.S. multinational Occidental Petroleum Corp.
The pipeline stretches 500 miles across oil-rich northeast Colombia to the Caribbean coast. Rebels bombed it a record 170 times last year, up from 99 attacks in 2000, leaving it crippled for more than half the year.
Their mission is to stop what they call the "plunder" of Colombia's natural resources by foreign interests.
"It's great if the pipeline is pumping at full force. You hit the detonator,
the pipe blows and oil shoots 80 yards into the air," said the rebel, who introduced himself only as Daniel. "It's easy to bomb. It only takes about 10 kilos (22 pounds) of explosives."
But bombing may suddenly get tougher.
Amid a wider global crusade, President Bush is pressing Congress for an immediate $27 million emergency aid package to help fight terrorism in Colombia. About $6 million of that, along with another $98 million in the 2003 budget, would pay for U.S. Special Forces to train Colombian troops in new tactics to defend the pipeline in Arauca province.
The stated aim is to protect Colombia's oil reserves -- the country's No.1 export -- and ward off rebel attacks against the installations of Los Angeles- based Occidental, which splits production with the state oil company, Ecopetrol.
Critics in the U.S. Congress and human rights groups argue that such funding would mark a sharp shift away from the United States' traditional focus of bankrolling anti-narcotics operations and could serve as a trigger for wider U.S. involvement in Colombia's 37-year war between government forces and leftist guerrillas. That war kills 3,500 people a year.
But the added millions of dollars seem to offer little guarantee of success against a sabotage campaign that has been going on for 15 years. The rebels use small bomb teams, difficult to detect by army patrols on the ground or by spotter aircraft.
Daniel said the bombing raids were normally conducted by eight rebels dressed in civilian clothes, riding motorcycles and equipped with explosives made from fertilizer. Three of them stand watch for army patrols while the other five burrow down with picks to the pipeline, buried about six feet below the surface, or use an explosive charge to blow a crater.
"Once you reach the pipeline, you wrap the explosives in transparent tape, strap it to the pipeline and run an electric cord about 100 yards away. Then --
boom!"
The effects of the sabotage -- dark stains throughout the countryside and blackened palm trees -- were evident during a helicopter ride packed with troops from the army's 49th Counterguerrilla Battalion, the unit that protects the pipeline. Maj. Julio Burgos, commander of the 575-man unit, bitterly explained that he no longer counted the cost of a barrel of oil in dollars but in the blood of his men.
In the last five years, 62 members of the battalion have died and more than 100 have been wounded in clashes with rebels along the snaking path of the pipeline. Burgos says he does not have the equipment to do the job and believes U.S. aid is desperately needed. At present, the battalion has no helicopters, and its lone bomb- sniffing dog was returned to Bogota after falling ill.
Burgos says his most valuable resource is a 230-foot watchtower in a trench- ringed military compound in nearby La Esmeralda, which allows sentries to spot guerrillas about to launch weekly attacks on the base with home-made missiles built from gas tanks packed with dynamite.
He hopes U.S. aid will buy three Blackhawk helicopter gunships and pay to train his men to operate in small commando units, equipped with state- of-the- art weaponry and communications equipment.
"It's going to be difficult to stop attacks completely. For that you would need a soldier every 200 yards. But by using inventive strategies we can drastically limit the number of bombings."
>From the start of this year, Burgos has tried to put that philosophy into
practice.
He says he has managed to reduce bombings to just 12 between January and mid- April, compared to 55 in the same period last year, by analyzing the pattern of previous attacks and deploying several 100-man companies to simultaneously patrol the first 60 miles of the pipeline -- the section that bears the brunt of bombings.
But no matter what military strategy is employed, it will be much harder to eradicate the deep-seated resentment against the oil industry that lies at the heart of the attacks.
The second-biggest rebel group, the ELN, earned itself the tag of "petro- guerrillas" by becoming targeting the pipeline shortly after Occidental's Cano Limon field came online in 1985. At a clandestine site surrounded by about 100 fighters near the town of Saravena, Commander Pablo, a regional ELN leader, railed against the U.S. company.
"We are not against the oil industry itself because oil will be exploited under a socialist or a capitalist system," he said. "But we are opposed to the way multinationals plunder our natural resources."
Clad in the ELN's trademark red and black ski mask and an olive green uniform bearing an insignia with the slogan "Victory or Death," Pablo condemned U.S. plans to finance a new army battalion to protect energy infrastructure.
"This is another attempt by the gringos to subjugate the world to their own policies. But we will not surrender to U.S. imperialism. We have declared a war to the death on capitalism and the U.S. empire," he said.
Peasants and even leaders of Saravena's Chamber of Commerce regularly complain about corrupt local officials siphoning off oil royalties instead of investing in roads, schools and hospitals.
Burgos, the military commander, conceded the rebels' stance has broad grassroots support. He said town inhabitants and outlying villages aid guerrillas by hiding bomber units and helping transport and store explosives.
An hour's drive south of Saravena, a tour through Santo Domingo, a poor village of wooden huts housing 170 people, offers clear lessons on the risk of wider U.S. involvement in protecting infrastructure.
In 1998, the community was bombed by Colombian air force helicopter gunships in hot pursuit of a combined column of ELN and FARC fighters. A white marble monument, yards from where a U.S.-supplied cluster bomb exploded, bears testimony to the 18 civilians killed and 23 others wounded.
Investigations into the attack are still under way, but a military tribunal has gathered evidence from Colombian military pilots, which were shown to The Chronicle last year, that three U.S. pilots marked targets and called in the air strikes.
The airmen, civilian contractors, were not supposed to be coordinating counterinsurgency operations but simply providing aerial surveillance for Occidental facilities and the pipeline.
Amalio Neite, a 24-year-old dirt farmer who supports his wife and three children $5.50 a day, has still not received compensation for the shrapnel wounds he received. He lost his father, a cousin and his sister-in- law in the bombing.
"I would tell the United States no more," he said. "We don't want any more war we want to live peacefully. I would ask the United States, 'Why do you want to train more people to kill peasants?' "
©2002 San Francisco Chronicle Page A - 16
U.S. officials says no U.S. combat role, increase in personnel in Colombia
CAROLYN SKORNECK, Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, April 24, 2002 Breaking News Sections
(04-24) 16:02 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
A State Department official assured senators Wednesday that U.S. soldiers will not be fighting Colombian rebels even if Congress lets Colombia use anti-drug helicopters and other equipment to battle the insurgents.
"Not one of us here is talking about U.S. troops in a combat role," said Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs. "The Colombians need to take the brunt of this, but we need to be there to help them."
The Bush administration has no intention of exceeding the limits of 400 U.S. military trainers and 400 civilian contractors that were set to join in Colombian President Andres Pastrana's anti- drug Plan Colombia, Grossman told the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.
Also, the administration "will not stop our human rights vetting of Colombian military units receiving U.S. assistance,"
Separately, other U.S. officials told a House panel they have no evidence tying the Irish Republican Army to international drug trafficking or Colombian terrorists, even as a congressional report accused the IRA of training rebels in explosives technology.
Sen. Chris Dodd, the Senate subcommittee chairman, said the United States must fulfill its pledge to aid Colombia in its "hour of crisis -- a crisis that has profound implications for institutions of democracy in Colombia and throughout the hemisphere."
Still, Dodd, D-Conn., asked for a better explanation of what the administration hopes to accomplish by loosening restrictions on U.S. assistance.
"What we seek is flexibility that would enable Colombia to use U.S.-provided helicopters and the counter-drug brigade from Plan Colombia to fight terrorism some of the time as needed," Grossman said.
That unit, trained by U.S. officers, has shown "impressive results" in fighting drugs, said Army Maj. Gen. Gary Speer, acting commander in chief of the Southern Command. He noted that the brigade has not been accused of human rights abuses.
Colombia's three main rebel groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC; the National Liberation Army of Colombia, ELN; and the United Self-Defense Group of Colombia, AUC -- are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. All three are self-financed through drug trafficking, Speer said.
The AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group, aims to destroy the FARC and the ELN, both leftist guerrilla armies.
Dodd said the FARC recently had an estimated 17,000 members, while AUC had 11,000. But support for the AUC has increased as FARC- sponsored violence grew, he said.
"When people are frightened, they will grasp onto whatever offers some security," Dodd said.
Colombia's military now views the AUC as a greater threat than the FARC or the ELN, Speer said. "The people in Colombia look at the AUC as doing something."
Said Dodd: "I have an eerie feeling you're going to be back here at this table next year telling me it's not getting better, it's getting worse," with the AUC growing to 18,000 people.
A report Wednesday from the House International Relations Committee's Republican majority contends the IRA and the FARC have had well-established links since at least 1998.
Since up to 15 IRA members, among them senior weapons experts and technicians, have visited the rebel-held part of Colombia, the FARC has begun employing IRA- style car bombs and mortars with devastating effect, the committee report said.
But Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson and Mark F. Wong, the State Department's acting coordinator for counterterrorism, said there was no evidence tying the IRA to drug trafficking or Colombian terrorists.
They could not say if three IRA suspects arrested in Colombia last August while traveling on phony passports were acting on their own or at the direction of IRA superiors.
Gen. Fernando Tapias, chairman of the joint chiefs of Colombia's armed forces, said Wednesday he had "no formal knowledge linking these individuals to the high command of the IRA."