The Battle for Saravena
by
Garry M. Leech
Dissident Voice
March 6, 2003
The
culmination of two significant events during the past 18 months has dramatically
transformed U.S. policy in Colombia. First, the September 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks against the United States have allowed the Bush administration to
escalate its military involvement in Colombia as part of the evolving global
war on terror. And second, the election of Colombia’s hard-line presidential
candidate Alvaro Uribe last May has provided the White House with an ally
willing to intensify the war against Colombia’s two principal leftist guerrilla
groups––the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National
Liberation Army (ELN)––that are on the U.S. State Department’s list of Foreign
Terrorist Organizations (FTOs). These developments have led to the deployment
of 70 U.S. army Special Forces troops to one of the most hotly contested parts
of Colombia to help the Colombian army combat the guerrillas and protect U.S.
economic interests in the region.
In September 2002, one month
after his inauguration, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe announced the creation
of two Rehabilitation and Consolidation Zones. These zones signified a military
escalation by Bogotá in important economic regions of the country. One of the
zones was established in the eastern plains of Arauca and encompassed the
section of the 478-mile long Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline most frequently
bombed by the guerrillas. Under the presidential decree that established the
rehabilitation zone, the military was authorized to conduct searches and make
arrests without warrants, restrict the movement of civilians, and prevent
foreign journalists from entering the zones. Uribe's decree also endowed
military commanders with authority that superseded the rule of local elected
officials.
The establishment of the
rehabilitation zones followed on the heels of the Bush administration's
proposed $98 million counterterrorism aid package intended to protect the oil
pipeline jointly-owned and operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum
and Ecopetrol, Colombia’s state-owned oil company. The aid package calls for
U.S. Army Special Forces troops to provide counterinsurgency training to
Colombian soldiers responsible for protecting the pipeline from rebel attacks.
The new aid signifies a
military escalation by Washington as the Bush administration has merged the
drug war with its new global war on terrorism. Prior to September 11, 2001,
Congress had restricted U.S. military involvement in Colombia to providing
training and equipment for counternarcotics operations, primarily in the
principal coca growing regions of southern Colombia. But following the
terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., President Bush
succeeded in having the restrictions lifted, allowing the U.S.-trained troops
and U.S.-supplied Blackhawk and Huey helicopters to now be used by the Colombian
army in counterinsurgency operations.
Six million dollars of the
new aid has already been allocated for the deployment of troops from the U.S.
Army's 7th Special Forces Group to begin counterinsurgency training in Arauca.
The remaining $88 million will constitute part of the 2003 budget and will
provide for additional training and helicopters.
In January 2003, 70 U.S.
soldiers––30 are based in the departmental capital, Arauca City, and 40 in the
town of Saravena––arrived in a region that has long been under the influence of
the ELN and the FARC. Both rebel groups profited from the discovery of oil in
the early 1980s by extorting contractors working for the oil industry and local
municipalities that receive a percentage of the country’s oil revenues. While
the ELN has been indoctrinating residents in the region with its Marxist
rhetoric since the mid-1960s and the FARC since the mid-1980s, the right-wing
paramilitary organization, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), only
arrived in Arauca a couple of years ago. The arrival of the paramilitaries and
the Uribe administration’s military escalation in Arauca has been met with
increased rebel attacks.
It is the civilian
population, as is usually the case in Colombia, that has been the principal victim
of this militarization of the region. And with the arrival of the U.S. troops
in Arauca, Washington is further intensifying this militarization by once again
providing a stick with little or no carrot. While Bush administration officials
have emphasized that U.S. troops will not be involved in combat, it appears
that the U.S. military role in Colombia is ripe to follow in the footsteps of
Washington’s shifting objectives in its war on terror in the Philippines.
Following 9-11, the Bush administration dispatched U.S. forces to the
Philippines to provide training to that country’s military, but last week the
White House escalated its role dramatically with the deployment of 1,700 combat
troops to the Southeast Asian country to conduct counterinsurgency operations
against Muslim guerrillas. Bush's decision last week to send 150 troops to join
the search for three U.S. intelligence agents currently being held by the FARC
in the jungles of southern Colombia illustrate how quickly U.S. military
intervention in Colombia is capable of escalating.
The U.S. Army Special Forces
troops stationed on the outskirts of war-torn Saravena––through which the
pipeline runs––will be situated in a town that has long been a rebel
stronghold. Substantial popular support in Saravena’s poor barrios allowed the
rebels to make the town center the most attacked target in Colombia in
2002––earning this town of 30,000 people the moniker, Little Sarajevo. On 80
different days last year, the guerrillas attacked the city's police station with
bombs, mortars and gunfire. As a result, virtually every building surrounding
the police station is a bombed out ruin. The city hall, municipal building and
countless local stores and business, as well as the airport, have all been
destroyed over the past 15 months. Those buildings in the vicinity of the town
plaza that have so far escaped damage have been abandoned for fear of attack.
Last September, rebels fired 10 mortars at the army base that now houses the
U.S. Army Special Forces troops.
The army utilized the
emergency security measures implemented in the rehabilitation zone to help
secure the region before the arrival of the U.S. troops. But on November 26,
Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that many of these security measures were
unconstitutional. As a result, the army and police can no longer search and
detain people without warrants––which had resulted in the rounding up and
detention of more than 80 people in the local sports stadium––nor restrict
access of foreign journalists to the region.
The court also declared that
the census conducted by the army was unconstitutional, although the ruling came
too late for the citizens of Saravena as the photographing and fingerprinting
of every citizen had already been completed. Major William Bautista Castillo of
the Colombian army’s 18th Brigade unit based in Saravena lamented the loss of
the security measures, “All the things we could develop in the time that they
were in existence helped us a lot. The census, searches without warrants to
capture a suspect, all those rules have now been eliminated. But they were very
useful while we could use them.”
The security measures have
had little effect on the military effectiveness of the rebels. In January, the
FARC introduced a new tactic when it carried out four car bombings in Arauca,
killing at least 12 people and injuring 30. The principal targets of what, at
first glance, appeared to be suicide attacks were military checkpoints and army
patrols. However, it soon became apparent that the bombings were not suicide
attacks at all. Mauricio Avandaño Camargo, the driver who survived a January 11
bombing, told authorities that the FARC took two of his brothers hostage and
ordered him to drive the car to a specific location and then get out and walk
away. Avandaño claims that the rebels detonated the explosives by remote
control while he was still inside the car at a military checkpoint. The FARC's
new tactics exhibit a brutality that blatantly violates aspects of
international law calling for the protection of unarmed civilians. They also
clearly signify a willingness by the rebels to dramatically escalate the levels
of violence in the very region where the U.S. troops are based.
It is into this quagmire
that the U.S. Army Special Forces troops have landed in order to train
Colombian troops to better protect the Caño Limón oil pipeline. In 2001, the
rebels, who are demanding that the government nationalize the oil industry,
attacked the pipeline a record 170 times, costing Occidental $100 million and
the Colombian government $500 million in lost oil revenues. According to an
Occidental spokesperson, “The amount of oil that was not produced in 2001
because of pipeline attacks was equal in value to Colombia's coffee exports for
that year.”
With the ongoing conflict in
the Middle East, a war with Iraq looming on the horizon, and ongoing unrest in
Venezuela, Colombia has become an important alternative source of oil. Even
though the United States currently only receives three percent of its oil from
Colombia, U.S. ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson admitted, “With problems
in other countries, each percentage is important.”
Although output is on the
decline, the 100,000 barrels of oil a day currently produced by the Caño Limón
field is still of great importance to Occidental. It is estimated that some 120
million barrels of oil still remain in the reservoir that straddles the
Colombia-Venezuela border and every time pumping on the Colombian side is shut
down by a rebel attack, production on the Venezuela side increases.
Consequently, because there is no agreement between Occidental and Venezuela’s
national oil company, PDVSA, regarding the extraction of oil from the Caño
Limón field, PDVSA benefits from increased production every time Occidental is
forced to stop pumping. It is also in Occidental’s best interests to secure a
steady flow of oil at this time because the company’s Caño Limón contract
expires in 2008, after which all assets and the remaining reserves become the
exclusive property of the Colombian government.
The U.S. soldiers are
training troops from the Colombian Army’s 18th Brigade, whose mission includes
defending the border with Venezuela, conducting counterinsurgency operations
and protecting the oil pipeline. The insignia of the 18th brigade consists of
an oil well, and its commander, General Carlos Lemus, directs his troops from
an office inundated with souvenirs bearing the name of the company whose oil it
is his mission to protect. Occidental contributes both money and logistical support,
including helicopter transportation, to the Colombian military to aid with
protection of the pipeline. The influence of the oil company on the 18th
brigade was further evidenced when this writer requested permission to
accompany an army patrol responding to a rebel attack on the pipeline. General
Lemus said that such a request would have to be approved by Occidental
officials.
The U.S. soldiers are
training Colombian army units to conduct reconnaissance missions and to wage
unconventional warfare. The courses, which are ten weeks long, mark a
significant change in U.S. military policy in Colombia. Previously, U.S. aid
provided training and equipment to target coca crops, poppy fields and drug
processing labs, but the new counterterrorism aid aims to provide the Colombian
army with the capability to wage offensive counterinsurgency operations. As a
result, instead of waiting to respond to guerrilla attacks against the oil
pipeline, the Colombian army will be able to launch offensives against the rebels
in the hopes of preventing future pipeline attacks.
When asked how the Colombian
army could defeat the FARC and ELN, one U.S. Army Special Forces soldier
stationed in Saravena emphasized the importance of psychological warfare
operations, “This war is not going to be won with bullets. It's going to be won
by winning the people over to the side of the Colombian army. You are not going
to defeat the guerrillas by humping through the jungle like in Vietnam.”
The U.S. soldiers are
billeted in their own compound in the center of the base that has been
reinforced with concertina wire, sandbag walls, and heavily fortified bunkers.
While they freely roam throughout the base in order to conduct training
exercises and to amuse themselves playing basketball during their off-duty
time, they are not permitted to leave the base. Some of these elite troops,
many of who are veterans of the Contra War, the Panama invasion, the Gulf War
and the Afghanistan campaign, find such restrictions frustrating and would like
nothing more than to be able to go after the rebels directly. One of the U.S.
soldiers admitted, “I don't like these half-ass wars. If we are going to get
involved we should just throw it down.”
While the mayor of Saravena,
Jose Trinidad Sierra, welcomes the increased military presence in his battered
town, he has criticized the national government’s failure to address the
region’s social and economic ills. According to Trinidad Sierra, “The
inhabitants of Saravena have been asking the government for social investment.
We believe that the public order problem is not going to be solved with the
presence of the public forces. It must be complemented with social investment.
We have asked for the national government to help us to generate employment.
And also we require investment in education and health.”
Not only have Bogotá and
Washington failed to provide effective social and economic assistance to
Arauca, but also the Uribe administration recently announced that the
department would no longer receive its 9.5 percent share of the nation’s oil
revenues. Additionally, local municipalities that contain the Caño Limón oil
field will no longer receive their 2.5 percent of oil proceeds. According to
Uribe, too much of the oil revenue is ending up in the hands of the rebels
through extortion and sympathetic local politicians. Consequently, the
president has declared that all future spending of the oil royalties belonging
to the Arauca department and local municipalities will be handled by his
administration.
In January, the ELN
responded to the arrival of U.S. troops by kidnapping two foreign journalists:
U.S. photographer Scott Dalton and British writer Ruth Morris, who were both
working on assignment for the Los Angeles Times. Until this incident, foreign reporters
covering Colombia's civil conflict had enjoyed immunity from rebel kidnappings.
But initial statements by the ELN linked the detention of the journalists to
the presence of U.S. troops in Arauca when the rebel group declared that the
two reporters would not be released until the “political and military situation
merited,” which appeared to be a call for the withdrawal of the U.S. soldiers.
In the face of international condemnation, the ELN revised its position and
freed the journalists 11 days later.
Shortly afterward, the ELN
announced an armed blockade of Arauca’s highways from February 10-15 to protest
the presence of U.S. troops in the region. As a result, all movement of people
and goods between Arauca's principal towns was paralyzed. One of the two
airlines that fly to Saravena cancelled its flights for fear that the rebels
would shoot at planes during the blockade. The rebel tactics clearly signified
a direct response to the Bush administration's war on terrorism in Colombia.
While many question the
social commitment of the FARC and ELN, there is no doubting their military
strength. The guerrillas have already proven that they can attack Saravena at
will, therefore, the presence of U.S. troops in such a hotly-contested region
dramatically increases the possibility of U.S. soldiers becoming directly
involved in combat. If an attack by an armed group on the State Department’s
terrorist list were to result in the deaths of U.S. troops in Saravena, it
could easily open the door to a full-scale U.S. military intervention in
Colombia’s civil conflict under the guise of the global war on terror. Such an
intervention would only further militarize a conflict to which there is no
military solution. Furthermore, the price of such a miltary escalation would
inevitably be paid by innocent Colombians caught in the crossfire.
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