STATE DEPARTMENT CALLS FOR MORE MILITARY ASSISTANCE IN SOUTH AMERICA

A State Department plan for preventing the regional spillover effects
of counternarcotic activities in Colombia will include military
assistance to other countries in South America, officials said last
week.

The State Department is calling for increased military assistance to
countries that border Colombia in the Andean region to prevent a
crisis of drug production and trafficking from spreading, Inside the
Army has learned. The recommendation is part of a follow-up proposal
to an emergency $1.3 billion aid package for Colombia that was
approved last year, officials said during department briefings and a
policy forum last week.

Part of the plan includes a military component for countries that
neighbor Colombia in an effort to help them prevent drug traffickers
and insurgents from coming over their borders, said James Mack, deputy
assistant secretary of the State Department's Bureau for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Countries that border Colombia include Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Bolivia,
Venezuela and Panama. Mack, who spoke during a March 13 forum
sponsored by the Cato Institute, said Ecuador is at the top of the
list to receive equipment from the U.S. government.

The follow-on effort is called the Andean Initiative and is part of
the State Department's fiscal year 2002 budget, said Joseph Bowab,
acting director of the office of resources, plans and policies, during
a State Department briefing on March 12.

He said the exact funding level for the initiative has not been
determined but will be a "fairly large chunk" of the total budget for
international narcotics control and law enforcement, which will be
about $950 million in FY-02.

Officials said they could not discuss details of the plan or funding
levels until after April 3, which is the date when President Bush is
to deliver his budget request to Congress.

Colombia is embroiled in a bitter war that involves drug traffickers,
leftist insurgents and right-wing paramilitary units. In 1999, the
Colombian government crafted a six-year, $7.5 billion effort called
Plan Colombia to fight the drug trade in its country, reform
government institutions, end human rights abuses and revive an ailing
economy.

The U.S. contribution to Plan Colombia is $1.3 billion, about $750
million of which is in the form of military aid to equip and train
three Colombian army counterdrug battalions. About 300 U.S. military
personnel have been assigned to Colombia as trainers and advisers
only; they are prohibited from participating directly in
counterinsurgency operations.

Mack said most of the assistance that will go to neighboring countries
under the Andean Initiative will be in the form of "soft" aid, or aid
that is targeted toward judicial and institutional reform and
humanitarian programs. But the initiative will include a military
component, he said.

A spokesman for U.S. Southern Command, which has oversight of
operations in South America, was unable to answer questions from ITA
by press time (March 16) on what kind of military aid will be provided
to other countries and how the command will meet the increased
requirements. He said discussions between the command and State
Department are ongoing.

Debate continues over how the United States should address the crisis
in Colombia and deal with spillover into other countries, which is
commonly referred to as the "balloon effect."

William Brownfield, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary
for western hemispheric affairs, said the U.S. government has realized
from the beginning that a regional strategy would be needed in the
Andean region.

He said the initial effort focused on Colombia because that is where
the core of the problem exists and because it offered a "starting
point in terms of educating and convincing the American people" of the
need for a second phase, which will be larger and more regional.

"So my short and simple answer would be, we have had this sense [for a
broader regional plan] all along. We don't believe we have been
misleading, dissembling, or even understating, as we have talked
publicly about it," Brownfield said during another State Department
briefing on March 12. "We are, however, moving to stage two in what
should be a two or three-stage process that should last a number of
years[.]"

Mack said the balloon effect is an "absolutely valid" concern. He also
said he believes it would be "inappropriate" to end military aid to
Colombia.

Efforts to strangle the drug industry in Colombia primarily consist of
using military and police troops to combat production and trafficking
in the southern region of the country known as Putumayo, which borders
Ecuador and Peru.

Mack said he does not believe U.S. military assistance to those
operations will end.

"If we were to do that, that would mean that the government could not
project its presence or mass in the southern parts of Colombia where,
at present time, the Colombian [police] forces are unable to operate
successfully," he said.

"A lot of the assistance that we're providing to the Colombians is
going to the purchase of helicopters which will enable them to move
around fairly easily in that part of the country," he added. "That is
an essential component of the eradication approach and the
interdiction approach. And without the mobility that the helicopters
provide and the trained counternarcotics troops that are part of the
package, I think that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to
begin to reduce substantially the amount of narcotics coming out of
that part of Colombia."

Russell Crandall, assistant professor of political science at Davidson
College in North Carolina, said he believes U.S. policy toward
Colombia will continue under President Bush in the same way it was
executed by the Clinton administration.

Speaking at the Cato Institute forum, Crandall said it does not appear
the Bush administration will make a dramatic policy shift and most
likely will not publicly raise the larger questions of what the United
States is doing in South America.

He also believes that the crisis in Colombia will spread to
neighboring countries.

"It's also clear that with the potential for a balloon effect and the
destabilization from Putumayo into other areas, it's not [just] going
to move into other areas of Colombia but also other countries," he
said. "And that makes a domestic issue a regional issue overnight.
And, as was initially proposed during the last months of the Clinton
administration, I think it's clear that the Bush administration will
continue with the idea that step two . . . is support some of
Colombia's neighbors such as Ecuador and Peru in the spillover effects
there."