By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, February 6, 2002; Page A15
The Bush administration's fiscal 2003 budget request for $98 million in new Pentagon training and equipment for the Colombian military marks the first step in a wider initiative to move U.S. involvement in the war-racked South American nation beyond counternarcotics assistance, administration officials said yesterday.
The money, over and above a request for $731 million in Andean regional assistance to continue anti-drug aid programs, would be drawn from foreign military financing funds, most often used to provide U.S. military aid to allies in the Middle East. Since Sept. 11, additional money from the account has been authorized for anti-terrorism activities in Uzbekistan, Turkey and the Philippines.
In Colombia, most of the money would be used to train troops and provide at least 12 new transport helicopters for a 2,000- to 4,000-member "Critical Infrastructure Brigade" in the Colombian army. The brigade's initial role would be to protect a pipeline that transports oil belonging to Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. from fields in northeastern Colombia to the Caribbean coast. Bombing by leftist guerrilla groups shut down the 480-mile pipeline for most of last year.
Eventually, a senior Defense Department official said, the brigade would extend its protection to other infrastructure, including power transmission sites that are regularly targeted by guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials FARC, and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN).
The official said the program would begin a "qualitative change" from a policy based on beefing up Colombia's ability to counter the guerrilla-protected production and trafficking of cocaine and heroin in the southern part of the country, to one that will help the Colombian government develop "effective sovereignty" over all of its territory.
The request drew instant congressional criticism. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), whose foreign operations subcommittee appropriates counterdrug and foreign military financing funds and has placed tight limits on all aid to Colombia, said, "This is no longer about stopping drugs -- it's about fighting the guerrillas." Citing ongoing human rights abuses by the Colombian military, Leahy said the proposal "draws us further into a military quagmire, and the Congress should be very reluctant to go down that road."
On the other side of the issue, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) said he was "encouraged" by the proposal. He asked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, testifying yesterday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "How else can we increase help to the Colombian government in their war against the narco-terrorists?" Powell said it is important to protect the Colombian economy, but "our principal focus" remains on the larger Andean regional counternarcotics effort.
Although final figures are still being compiled, preliminary indications are that the cultivation of coca, the raw material of cocaine, has not decreased despite a massive U.S.-funded aerial fumigation program. Alternative development programs designed to wean peasant growers from illicit crops have progressed more slowly than anticipated. Troops trained and equipped by the United States have made little headway in attempts to reclaim guerrilla-occupied coca-growing zones in the south.
Other proposals -- including the stepped-up provision of U.S. intelligence in the anti-guerrilla war -- are being debated by the State Department, which is reluctant to risk bipartisan support for the anti-drug policy, and the Pentagon, where civilian policymakers believe the new anti-terrorism climate will support an expanded effort. Colombia's guerrilla and paramilitary groups are on the administration's list of international terrorist organizations.
Attempts to gain congressional approval for the program are likely to be undermined by a report released yesterday by three human rights groups -- Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Washington Office on Latin America. The report accuses the Colombian military of maintaining close operational ties with paramilitary forces responsible for widespread civilian massacres.
Current congressional restrictions on counternarcotics funding require that Powell suspend all U.S. aid at the end of the month unless he can certify that Colombia has made progress in severing those ties and in promoting the civilian investigation, suspension and prosecution of military officers credibly accused of human rights abuses. The report concludes that "Colombia's government has not, to date, satisfied these conditions," and that the military's human rights record, if anything, has gotten worse.