Washington’s New Rules of Engagement
by Garry M. Leech
Dissident Voice
December 9, 2002
In January 2003,
up to 100 U.S. army Special Forces will arrive in Colombia to provide counterinsurgency
training to Colombian troops. The U.S. soldiers are being dispatched as part of
a $94 million counterterrorism aid package intended to protect an oil pipeline
used by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. The September 11 terrorist attacks
against the United States have allowed the Bush administration to escalate the
U.S. military role in Colombia to previously unimaginable levels under the
guise of the war against terrorism. The posting of U.S. troops to a mostly
rebel-controlled region will dramatically increase the possibility of U.S.
soldiers being killed. Such an occurrence would then provide the Bush
administration with the justification it needs to directly involve U.S. combat
troops in the war against Colombia’s leftist guerrillas.
A handful of
U.S. Special Forces are already on the ground in the department of Arauca
preparing the local Colombian army base in the town of Saravena for the arrival
of up to 100 more U.S. troops. Saravena, which is located on the remote
Colombia-Venezuela border, has been the target of more rebel bombing and mortar
attacks—more than 60 so far this year—than any other Colombian town. The region
is a stronghold of Colombia’s largest rebel force, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the country’s second-largest guerrilla group,
the Army of National Liberation (ELN).
The Colombian
army’s 18th Brigade is responsible for conducting counterinsurgency operations
in Arauca and protecting the 478-mile-long Caño Limón oil pipeline. Local
paramilitary units belonging to the Peasant Self-Defense Groups of Córdoba and
Urabá (ACCU) have also moved into the region over the past couple of years,
during which time they have worked closely with the army to combat the
guerrillas.
It is into this
quagmire that the U.S. Special Forces will arrive in January as part of the
latest escalation of the global war against terrorism. They will be stationed
in an army base that was attacked as recently as September when guerrillas
fired ten mortars at the installation. This rebel attack followed on the heels
of two other mortar strikes against Saravena’s police station that were carried
out in broad daylight. Clearly, the U.S. troops will be situated on the front
lines of Colombia’s escalating conflict and it is only a matter of time, if the
rebels choose to target them, before there are U.S. casualties.
By the time oil
was discovered in Arauca and the Caño Limón pipeline was completed in 1985, the
ELN had established itself as the region’s dominant armed group. For the most
part, the rebels refrained from bombing the pipeline as long as local
municipalities and businesses paid their “war taxes.” But in the late 1990s,
the FARC entered the region to target the pipeline, which was bombed 170 times
in 2001. As a result, Occidental Petroleum lost more than $75 million in oil
revenues last year.
In September,
President Alvaro Uribe established two Rehabilitation and Consolidation Zones
in northern Colombia, one of which includes Arauca. Military rule has
superseded civilian rule in the region and the army is now authorized to
control the movement of people in and out of the zone and conduct searches
without warrants. There is so far no evidence that the new measures have
diminished guerrilla operations, they have, however, affected the lives of the
local population.
By detaining
increasing numbers of citizens and restricting the flow of legal goods that are
used in the processing of cocaine, including gasoline and cement, the military
has exacerbated the already difficult living conditions endured by the region’s
impoverished peasants. The military crackdown has already resulted in a 150
percent increase in the cost of gasoline, a fuel that is essential for
transporting goods in and out of this remote corner of Colombia. The
government’s policies have left one local resident wondering what is worse,
“The illness or the medicine to cure it.”
Uribe’s
authoritarian measures are a continuation of U.S.-devised counterinsurgency
tactics intended to “eliminate the fish by draining the sea.” The government is
not only using detentions and economic controls in an attempt to curb rebel
activities in the region, it is also colluding with right-wing paramilitary
death squads responsible for 70 percent of the 420 political killings in the
vicinity of Arauca City this year. Commander Freddy, the leader of an ACCU
paramilitary unit known as the Arauca Vanquishers Block, admitted that his
group has the same agenda as the army, “We are living in a state of war with
the guerrillas; we are not here to combat the state.”
According to
human rights groups, the army maintains a similar philosophy as it fights the
rebels, but not the paramilitaries, who, like the Colombian military, have a history
of defending the interests of multinational corporations operating in Colombia.
While the commander of the Colombian army’s 18th Brigade, General Carlos Lemus,
denies any collusion between his troops and local paramilitary units, it is
clear that his brigade’s interests are aligned with both those of the
right-wing death squads and Occidental Petroleum.
General Lemus
commands his troops from behind a desk in an office inundated with souvenirs
bearing the name of the oil company whose pipeline it is his mission to
protect. Furthermore, when this writer requested permission to accompany an
army patrol that was preparing to respond to a rebel attack against the
pipeline, the general said that such a request would have to be approved by
Occidental officials.
Clearly, the
U.S.-backed Colombian army is operating as though it were the private security
force of Occidental Petroleum, the principal benefactor of the most recent U.S.
taxpayer subsidization of a U.S. corporation’s risky foreign business investment.
As a result of the new $94 million counterterrorism aid package, U.S. taxpayers
are paying $3.70 in security costs for every barrel of Occidental oil that
flows through the Caño Limón pipeline. This figure contrasts sharply with the
50 cents per barrel that the oil company is currently contributing to its own
security costs.
With the ongoing
unrest in the Middle East, Colombia has become an important alternative source
of oil. Even though the United States currently receives only three percent of
its oil from Colombia, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson admitted,
“With problems in other countries, each percentage is important.” However,
Washington is ensuring the continued flow of Occidental's oil by using U.S.
taxpayer dollars to train a military that is closely-allied with right-wing
paramilitaries on the State Department's foreign terrorist list. But this seems
to be of little concern to the Bush administration, which is using its
selective war on terrorism to justify the implementation of this massive
corporate welfare program.
On the ground in
Arauca, U.S. troops will have to contend with more than just the military
strength of the guerrillas if they are to help the Colombian army protect the
oil interests of George W. Bush and his financial backers. According to
Saravena Mayor Jorge Sierra, the rebels also have substantial local support in
Arauca. The mayor’s sentiments were echoed by Saravena’s police commander,
Major Joaquin Enrique Aldana, who begrudgingly admitted, “The people here love
the guerrillas. They care for them. They lend them their houses so they can
shoot at us.”
It is clear that
the rebels possess the military strength and popular support to effectively
target the U.S. Special Forces that will be based in Arauca. The killing of
U.S. soldiers by guerrillas on the State Department’s foreign terrorist list
would provide the White House with the justification it needs to send combat
troops to Colombia in order to protect U.S. economic interests. In the cases of
both Colombia and Iraq, the war on terrorism has provided President Bush with
the opportunity to serve the interests of the energy companies that funded his
campaign, while at the same time ensuring the continued flow of cheap oil to
the United States.
Garry M. Leech is author of Killing Peace:
Colombia's Conflict and the Failure of U.S. Intervention (INOTA, 2002), and is on the Board of Directors of the
Information Network of the Americas (INOTA) in New York. This article first
appeared in Colombia Journal. Please visit their website and consider
supporting their vitally important work: http://www.colombiajournal.org