U.S. ‘Cautiously’ Boosting Aid to Colombia

Despite the roles of Colombia’s military in human rights abuses and the corruption created by the nation’s role as one of the world’s leading producers of cocaine, the United States is stepping up its involvement with the Colombian armed forces because it fears that they are losing a war to Marxist rebels who derive much of their income from drug trafficking.

Washington is acting despite concerns about the army’s dismal human rights record as well as drug-related corruption that has long reached into the highest ranks of the officer corps.

The American aid package will provide training and partial funding for a 1,000-man army counter-narcotics brigade as well as a CIA-sponsored intelligence center and listening post deep in Colombia’s Amazon jungle, according to U.S. and Colombian officials.

The aid comes on top of training that has been provided to the Colombian military on a smaller scale by U.S. Special Forces for several years under a program of joint exercises by the U.S. military and its counterparts around the world.

The decision to “cautiously reengage” the Colombian military, in the words of one senior U.S. official, marks a significant shift in U.S. policy toward Colombia, a violence-racked Andean nation of 37 million that supplies about 80% of the cocaine and 60% of the heroin sold in the United States.

After working closely with the Colombian military in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, the United States largely cut off direct aid, citing human rights abuses. While the Special Forces training has continued, the bulk of U.S. money to fight drug trafficking has been steered to the country’s national police force.

Human rights organizations charge that the United States, in returning to a posture of greater cooperation with the Colombian military, is rewarding an army with one of the worst human rights records in Latin America while risking entanglement in the country’s long-running civil war.

But U.S. officials say they have little choice given the growing involvement in drug trafficking of Colombia’s largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In seeking to establish a Marxist state, FARC relies on drug revenues to finance its increasingly sophisticated arsenal of weapons and its intelligence-gathering and communications gear.

“We are committed to maintaining the line between counterinsurgency and counter-drugs, because we are not in the counterinsurgency business,” said one U.S. official. “But to the degree counter-drug efforts bring us into conflict with the guerrillas, so be it. . . . That is the price we pay for [giving this aid] and the price the guerrillas pay for being involved with drug trafficking.”

Adding urgency to the U.S. effort is a startling series of defeats suffered by the Colombian army. In one battle last summer, FARC rebels killed or captured 125 of the 152 members of an elite counterinsurgency unit and made off with hundreds of automatic rifles, night-vision gear and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition, according to U.S. and Colombian sources.

Of the trickle of aid that the United States has provided to the Colombian military in recent years, almost all has gone to the air force and navy, rather than the army, which has been linked to right-wing paramilitary death squads. The United States has channeled most of its counter-drug assistance to the national police, which, under the leadership of Gen. Jose Serrano, has improved its human rights record and is now considered one of the world’s premier counter-narcotics forces.

In fiscal 1998, the United States gave the police $289 million, up from $180 million the year before, making Colombia one of the largest recipients of U.S. aid. In contrast, the military received $40 million, of which $30 million was used to maintain two radar bases to monitor suspicious flights from Peru and Bolivia.

Under current rules governing U.S. aid to the Colombian military, only two small army units whose rosters have been screened for human rights abusers are permitted to use U.S.-supplied equipment, and they are restricted to an area known as “the box,” which includes the prime coca-producing areas of the southern half of the country.

Under the new plan, the new counter-narcotics brigade will be able to operate throughout the country. The brigade is expected to be ready for action by mid-1999.

To pay for the brigade, the Colombian military has asked the United States for $1.3 billion over five years. U.S. officials say they probably will not provide the full amount requested but are committed to training the unit and providing some equipment.