Riding Shotgun on a Pipeline

Last fall, the United States and Colombia launched an extraordinary military operation that sent thousands of troops into Arauca, a remote region of this South American country plagued by warring rebel factions and the cocaine trade.

By outward appearances, Operation Red Moon opened a new front in the two countries’ long war on drugs.

This time, however, the fight also was over oil.

U.S.-trained Colombian troops, backed by U.S. intelligence and private contractors, unleashed the offensive to stop rebel attacks on a pipeline that Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. depends on to transport oil. They also had another goal, company officials said: secure an area deep in the heart of rebel territory so Occidental could explore a new field believed to hold 20 million barrels of oil.

The three-month campaign was carried out under a little-noticed shift in U.S. policy in Colombia after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The United States had previously confined its role in Colombia to battling drugs. But with the Bush administration urging a global war on terrorism, Congress lifted restrictions on counterinsurgency aid to allow the U.S. to help Colombia fight its leftist groups, who are listed by the State Department as terrorist organizations.

Arauca and its oil were the first big test of the new policy. The U.S. regarded the hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties Colombia received from Oxy’s oil operations as vital to shoring up its ally.

Colombia’s stability, in turn, was seen as crucial to a region that had become one of the most important and reliable sources of U.S. oil imports. Latin America -- including Mexico -- long ago surpassed the volatile Middle East as the No. 1 supplier of oil to its northern neighbor.

Colombia and two of its neighbors -- Ecuador and Venezuela -- were among the top 15 oil suppliers to the United States in 2002, according to the Energy Department. If Colombia collapsed under the weight of civil war and the drug trade, the trouble could easily spread to those two countries. Venezuela, the biggest supplier of the three, poses a particularly acute problem for Washington. The U.S. has been tangling regularly with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fiery leftist.

“If the Colombian state can’t assert itself and take care of its territory, then regional security is undermined,” said a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “A variety of U.S. goals in the region are compromised, and the overall security of the U.S. is undermined.”

But human rights groups say the new U.S. policy in Colombia repeats a common error in Washington’s dealings with Latin America: To protect its own interests, the U.S. is taking sides in an internal conflict and embracing a government with a spotty human rights record -- echoes of its close alliance with former military regimes in El Salvador and Chile.

The groups acknowledged that the U.S.-backed crackdown in Arauca had resulted in fewer attacks on the pipeline, but at the expense of basic democratic freedoms.

Mass arrests of politicians and union leaders have become common. Refugees fleeing combat have streamed into local cities. And killings have soared as right-wing paramilitaries have targeted left-wing critics.

“Everyone here is terrified,” said Martin Sandoval, a left-wing activist and former provincial assembly member. “There is no freedom of expression, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of anything.”

Mixing Oil and War

At a military post here one day last fall, a U.S. Special Forces trainer barked an order to a Colombian soldier. The air exploded as Colombian trainees opened fire. Machine guns rattled. Bullets slammed into a target 100 yards away. The base throbbed with sound.

At the same time, in a nearby region thick with Colombia’s leftist guerrillas, Oxy contractors drilled toward a lake of oil 8,700 feet beneath the surface.

The pipeline links the two scenes.

Oxy pumps nearly 100,000 barrels of oil per day through it, a black stream worth about $3 million a day on the world market.

Colombia says the money from the pipeline is crucial to helping defeat insurgents. Through its revenue-sharing arrangement with Oxy, Colombia gets about $500 million a year for its treasury, about 5% of the country’s annual budget.

But the Colombian government isn’t the only beneficiary. Rebels siphon off some of the oil money that is returned to local governments, and also extort millions of dollars in cash each year from local companies. They use the money to finance their war effort.

U.S. military and State Department officials say that protecting the pipeline serves two purposes: It shores up Colombia’s fighting capability, and it deprives rebels of cash.

The oil is not of major importance to the United States, they say, because Occidental’s daily production -- about 20% of Colombia’s output -- amounts to only a fraction of U.S. demand.

“This isn’t about corporate welfare, it’s not about protecting Oxy,” the State Department official said. “It’s a security argument, not a U.S. economic interests argument.”

Although Oxy has benefited, it neither pushed for the pipeline protection nor helped in the planning, company officials said.

“The Colombian government was far and away the primary beneficiary,” said Larry Meriage, the company’s chief spokesman. “But there’s no question that better conditions in Arauca would be better for us.”

The perception among many in Colombia is that Washington stepped in to benefit a U.S. company, and that has raised cries of Yankee imperialism.

Critics of the program question why the State Department recommended funding to protect only Oxy’s pipeline -- not a pipeline carrying oil from British-owned BP or pipelines controlled by Colombia’s state-run oil company, Ecopetrol. State Department officials respond that BP’s pipeline is not attacked frequently, and that Ecopetrol’s pipeline generates only a fraction of the revenue that the Oxy pipeline does.

“The cost doesn’t matter, whether it’s blood or money,” said Oscar Garcia, a local union leader for Oxy workers. “The U.S. is not going to allow a shortage of oil.”

The Rebels That Oil Built

Arauca’s natural beauty is stunning. The Andes soar to the west, a saw blade of black and purple in the equatorial sunlight. The province unfolds to the east as a swampy grassland dotted with villages and towns.

A land of cattle, prairie and not much else, the province was long forgotten by the national government in Bogota, high in the Andes. There were no roads, no electricity and few bridges across the many rivers that laced the plains.

Then came the oil.

In 1983, Occidental discovered one of the world’s biggest oil fields, Cano Limon, which held about 1.3 billion barrels of high-value medium crude.

Money generated by the oil field flows not only to Oxy and the Colombian government, but also back to Arauca. The province received $60 million to $80 million a year in royalties, suddenly making one of the country’s poorest provinces into the wealthiest per capita.

Not much wound up in the hands of locals. But those riches became a treasure chest for the ELN rebel group, an organization whose Spanish initials stand for the National Liberation Army.

The ELN, a small army of about 3,000 fighters created in 1964, was inspired by Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba a few years earlier. But by the early 1980s, the Colombian army had almost wiped it out.

Then Occidental and the pipeline contractor began funneling money, jobs and food to the group to buy its cooperation, according to Colombian law enforcement and locals who participated in some of the deals. It is estimated, all told, that millions flowed to the ELN in the early years of operations.

The rebels used the money to gain new recruits and weaponry. In effect, Occidental rescued the group that later turned against it. Oxy today denies acceding to any extortion demands.

Arauca became a haven for the ELN. There were ELN mayors, ELN journalists -- even ELN priests. The rebels extorted money from local merchants. They skimmed government contracts. And they bombed the pipeline, taking a cut from the crews that went in to repair it.

Average citizens of Arauca usually cooperated with the rebels, out of either sympathy or fear of being killed.

“They were like kings,” said one man, who was summoned to a meeting with the guerrillas after receiving a government contract to print a newsletter. “They would sit there and receive people one by one.”

The ELN is not Colombia’s only rebel group. In the late 1990s, the largest rebel army, also founded in 1964 and known as the FARC -- the Spanish initials for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- also waded into the local mix. Funded by the exploding cocaine market, it expanded into Arauca, taking over the countryside while the ELN held on to the cities.

As the two groups clashed, the FARC stepped up attacks on the pipeline in 2001. Each time it bombed the pipeline, it shut down the ELN’s main funding source and weakened the rival rebel group.

The ELN’s attacks had rarely stopped production. Oxy continued pumping, storing the oil in tanks until the pipeline was repaired. But the FARC’s fierce onslaught, with a bombing on average about every two days, forced Oxy to halt production for 240 days in 2001.

By the end of that year, the ELN had had enough, said a source with close ties to a former Arauca governor and to the guerrillas. The two rebel groups reached an accord. The pipeline attacks would continue, but not at levels high enough to hamper mutual extortion profits.

Oxy’s statistics show that by January 2002, the number of attacks was dropping dramatically.

A New Direction

A few months later, Colombia and the U.S. began their effort to reassert control over Arauca.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, after consultations with the Colombian government, began sending memos to the State Department urging that the United States fund a pipeline protection brigade, State Department officials said. The State Department responded by pushing the proposal on the Hill.

The United States had never been directly involved in pipeline protection in Colombia. But the authority to do so came in summer 2002, when Congress passed a counter-terrorism measure that lifted the old restrictions on aid to anti-drug operations.

Oxy downplays its role in the push for pipeline protection. Meriage, the company spokesman, said Occidental never explicitly asked for it, just provided information as requested by the U.S. Embassy. Oxy provided lawmakers with documents that highlighted threats to the company’s operations and the consequences of disruptions for the United States and Colombia, he said.

The company hired lobbyists to advocate on one issue, Meriage said: to beat back an unsuccessful attempt by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who has long been critical of the U.S. government’s role in Colombia, to require the company to reimburse the government for the costs of training.

One senior Democratic Senate staffer who was involved in the debate over the pipeline rejected the idea that Oxy was not lobbying for pipeline protection. “Why else were they here?” the staffer asked. “The whole point was that they wanted protection from the daily attacks against the pipeline.”

Over the next six months, Congress approved funding totaling $99 million for U.S. Special Forces to train Colombian troops to protect the pipeline. The money also paid for eight new Huey and two Black Hawk helicopters, as well as night vision goggles and other equipment.

In September 2002, newly elected Colombian President Alvaro Uribe issued an emergency decree suspending some constitutional guarantees in the three Arauca counties through which the pipeline passes. The military could detain for up to 24 hours anyone not carrying identification.

The decree was later overturned by the nation’s Supreme Court, but it still was part of a massive effort to regain control of the region: The police force tripled from 400 to 1,200. A special prosecutor’s task force was sent from Bogota to arrest those responsible for bombing the pipeline. The army saturated the area around the pipeline.

By November 2002, Special Forces soldiers from Ft. Bragg, N.C., had arrived to set up an outpost at the headquarters of the Colombian military’s 18th Brigade in the provincial capital, also called Arauca, to train Colombian soldiers to better protect the pipeline.

The fort within a fort looks like a big garage, a spare cinder-block building surrounded by sand bags and a 30-foot-high chain-link fence to stop incoming mortar shells. U.S. soldiers sit listlessly inside the sweltering base, lifting weights or reading paperbacks, unable to leave because of danger in the surrounding community.

There have been no attacks against the troops, but rebels have handed out fliers offering a $33,000 reward for each captured U.S. soldier.

“Is it dangerous? Absolutely,” the company commander said. “The threat is always out there.”

In June 2003, the first U.S.-trained battalion, Counter-Guerrilla Battalion 30, completed training. Mobile Battalion 5 is now in the process.

Army Gen. James T. Hill, head of the Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military activities in Latin America, in testimony to Congress in October praised the end of the restrictions on military aid other than for counter-narcotics activities. He said the ability to directly help the Colombian military was “the single most important factor for us to continue building success in Colombia.”

“While this is primarily Colombia’s fight to win, we have the opportunity to tip the balance by augmenting their efforts decisively with our unwavering support,” Hill said.

Even as he spoke, that support was on display in Arauca.

Operation Red Moon

In September, the Colombian army’s Battalion 30 got the chance to put its U.S. training to use in Operation Red Moon.

Working with U.S. military advice and after consulting with Occidental, the Colombian army decided to take the offensive in Arauca. Rather than simply post soldiers along the 60 miles of pipeline running through the province, the military planned to keep the guerrillas on the move and unable to plant bombs.

The area chosen was around Panama de Arauca, a village about 20 miles south of the pipeline in the center of Arauca’s fertile prairie. Officially, there were two reasons: It was a FARC stronghold. And it was a center of cocaine growing and production.

As the Colombian military pushed guerrillas southward away from the pipeline, State Department fumigation planes began spraying coca crops. Although the planes regularly fly missions in coca-heavy regions in the south and north of Colombia, it was the first time they had hit Arauca. They wiped out 30,000 acres of coca. Poor farmers who were growing it streamed into area towns and cities.

“We are not against the destruction of the crops, but they support many families,” said Pedro Quintero, director of a nonprofit organization that helps refugees.

Although Colombian army officials denied it, Occidental executives said there was a third reason that Panama de Arauca was chosen: Occidental suspected that there was as much as 20 million barrels of oil waiting beneath the surface in a new field they called Harvest.

Finding new oil fields has taken on major importance for Colombia, which relies on petroleum for as much as a third of its foreign exchange. With several fields nearing exhaustion, the country could become a net importer of oil within four years.

New wells also are important for Oxy. The Cano Limon field pumped its billionth barrel in March 2003. New fields would ensure that the operation remained profitable until 2008, when the company’s license expires. It is still uncertain whether exploration of the Harvest field paid off. One of two test wells produced oil, and the company is trying to determine whether it is economically viable.

Occidental officials in Colombia said they did not ask the Colombian army to attack rebels in the region. They said they told the army about their interest in drilling in the area, as is standard practice.

The army drew up plans to attack guerrilla camps in the area, wipe out cocaine crops and provide the security that Oxy needed to conduct its explorations, company officials said.

“Of course, we had conversations with the army, and this allowed us to be ready” to explore the area, said one Oxy executive who, like all company employees in Colombia, did not speak on the record for security reasons. “We can’t go in without security.”

Use of the U.S.-trained troops to help Oxy conduct drilling brought sharp condemnation from environmentalists and human rights groups.

The activists complained that the U.S. investment in providing security for Oxy’s production amounted to a $3-a-barrel subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer. With this development, they said, the U.S. was actually helping the company drill new wells.

“It’s outrageous if there’s a clear relation between a U.S.-funded military operation and a private U.S. company,” said Adam Isacson, who tracks Colombia for the left-leaning Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. “We should not be paying for an oil company’s security.”

Mass Arrests

Complementing its attack against the FARC in the countryside, Colombia also hit the ELN in the cities with the help of U.S. intelligence.

According to Colombian sources, a U.S. intelligence officer set up a listening post inside the 18th Brigade’s headquarters.

The U.S. began sharing cellular phone and radio frequencies with the military and the special prosecutor’s office to pinpoint rebels and their collaborators.

“One of the reasons for success has been their intelligence,” said Gen. Carlos Lemus, head of the 18th Brigade and the man responsible for pipeline security. “This is also part of the American aid we are receiving.”

Besides helping the army fight rebel units, intelligence from wiretaps and radio interceptions became important in gathering evidence for the prosecutor to order a series of arrests.

The first were in October 2002, followed by more in November, and the next April and August. Another round, in October 2003, came just three days before municipal elections. More than 200 people were charged with being linked to the guerrillas. At least 40 were freed for lack of evidence. A few were convicted. Most remain in jail pending trial.

Local politicians and human rights activists said the detentions, including those of union leaders, human rights workers, journalists, elected officials and political candidates, were politically motivated.

One detainee was Jose Murillo, the leader of the area’s best-known human rights group. Another was a priest, Father Jose Helmer Munoz, the leading candidate for governor and a frequent critic of the government’s hard-line policies. A third man, Antonio Jose Ortega, won election as Saravena’s mayor despite being in jail.

Few in the province deny meeting with the guerrillas, but they insist that they did nothing wrong. With no state presence, the guerrillas were the law.

Despite the heavy military presence, right-wing paramilitaries, illegal private armies dedicated to wiping out the guerrillas, have moved into the area. Left-wing critics of the authorities have been killed. Arauca now has one of the highest homicide rates in Colombia, which has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.

“We have to coexist in the middle of four different groups, the ELN, the FARC, the paramilitaries and now the government,” said Arianis Barrera, whose husband was arrested while he was running for mayor. “It is totally traumatic.”

But Juan Hernando Poveda, the tough-talking prosecutor, said the arrests were justified. He showed The Times seized documents that included correspondence in which a former governor sent guerrilla leaders a detailed list of the oil royalty payments he had sent them. Another document had the former governor addressing a guerrilla leader by his first name: “Dear Pablo,” the communication began.

“The ELN has infiltrated everything -- politics, economics and social spheres,” Poveda said. “But we find them. Rats lie down with rats.”

Satisfaction

Whether the operation was a success remains unclear.

Pipeline attacks are down -- but they began declining before the U.S. effort started with the arrival of the Special Forces trainers. After a high of 170 attacks in 2001, the pipeline was hit 36 times in 2002 and 34 times in 2003. So far this year, there have been just five attacks -- one of the lowest numbers in the pipeline’s history.

Instead, rebels began blowing up the electrical towers that provide the power for Oxy’s pumps. But those attacks also have dropped off this year.

“We have taken important steps, steps never before taken,” Lemus said. “But there’s still a lot left to do.”

On a helicopter ride between Arauca and Saravena, a U.S. Special Forces crew flew over the main Occidental compound, only a few yards from Colombia’s border with Venezuela.

Huge clouds of steam rose from the plant, appearing as low, massive thunderheads looming over glinting rivers and green prairie.

The Special Forces company commander said he had no problem putting his life at risk to protect the oil pipeline.

“The Colombian government and its infrastructure is very important for the stability of the state, which ultimately is important to the stability of the U.S.,” he said, shouting over the thump of the blades overhead.

“Whatever the infrastructure -- oil or whatever -- if it supports the government here, it adds stability to a region that is important for the United States.”

Times special correspondent Ruth Morris in Colombia and researcher Mark Madden in Washington contributed to this report.