Plan For Colombia: Day 2a

COLOMBIA EFFORT RAISES FEARS OF ANOTHER VIETNAM

WASHINGTON - With critics of growing U.S. military involvement in Colombia
warning that another Vietnam may be just around the corner, U.S. Army
Special Forces are preparing Colombian military units to launch a sweeping
offensive, aimed at eradicating coca and poppy fields and destroying the
jungle laboratories that turn the crops into cocaine and heroin.

The plan calls for three battalions of Colombian commandos - using
U.S.-supplied helicopters, weapons and intelligence - to crush that
nation's drug trade over a five-year period. Critics, citing the gradual
U.S. escalation of the Vietnam War, warn that these steps could lead to
deep American involvement in a bloody civil war in Colombia.

U.S. Army advisers have trained two of the battalions, and a third will be
ready for deployment in April. The arrival this month of combat helicopters
- - first of a fleet of 33 H-1N Hueys and then 16 advanced Blackhawk
helicopters beginning in July - will presage the kickoff of the offensive,
U.S. officials say.

Congressional skittishness over U.S. troops being drawn into a battle with
heavily armed narco-guerillas is one reason that Defense Secretary William
Cohen has ordered the U.S. forces training Colombian troops in the Amazon
jungle to stay clear from combat. The Americans are there only to train,
not to participate in what is known as Plan Colombia.

Those concerns are typified by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., who argues the
United States could get sucked into a Vietnam-style entanglement.

"It would be a tragic mistake for us to get involved in this civil war," he
said.

Still, U.S. and Colombian officials are heralding Plan Colombia as a key
step toward eliminating the source of much of the drugs that enter the
United States and the economic means by which a guerrilla insurgency there
has been funded.

The overall goal of Plan Columbia is to hold coca production steady by the
end of 2001 and to cut it in half over five years.

The effort is part of a $7.5 billion international aid program conceived in
1999 by both governments. In addition to using Colombian army troops to
close down drug laboratories, the project includes funding to wean
impoverished farmers and peasants from planting the profitable drug crops.

Of the total aid package, Colombia hopes that $3.5 billion will come from
countries with a strong interest in shutting down the drug trade there. But
so far only the United States has kicked in a major sum: $1.3 billion
authorized by Congress last summer, aimed mainly at buying military
equipment and training Colombians.

Plan Colombia, with its direct U.S. training, represents a major escalation
in the U.S.-Colombia military relationship. For more than 40 years, the
United States and Colombia have had some military-to-military contacts,
with a steady increase beginning in the late 1980s in an effort to curtail
drug cartels. The Pentagon, which has had ground-based radars in Colombia
since the early 1990s, has been sharing intelligence with Colombian
counterparts for several years. And the United States already has funded
Colombian interdiction efforts in an unsuccessful attempt to curtail the
drug supply.

While the U.S. military and law enforcement have worked alongside other
South American countries - notably Peru and Bolivia - to curtail their drug
fields and illicit drug supplies, Colombia is in an entirely different league.

Colombia is the world's leading cultivator of coca and the source of most
of the cocaine and much of the heroin entering the United States. The U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration says net coca cultivation in Colombia has
more than doubled, from 120,000 acres in 1995 to 294,000 acres in 1999.

Colombia, about the size of Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas combined, has
the distinction of producing about 70 percent of the world's cocaine base.

But eliminating the drug supply in Colombia is compounded by the desperate
predicament in South America's second-largest country. Colombia is in
virtual chaos: It is wracked by the worst recession there in decades, with
the central government in Bogota facing armed insurrection from all
directions and with rebels taking an increasing role in the production and
distribution of drugs.

U.S. officials fear that left unchecked, Colombia will sink into
"narco-state" status - a condition in which the nation's rebels, powered by
drug revenues, will overwhelm the democratically elected government and its
institutions.

Colombia has been wracked by civil war for more than 36 years, and most all
warring parties, including the military, have been accused of human-rights
abuses.

As much as 40 percent of Colombia is controlled by 20,000 left-wing
insurgents known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
the largest rebel army in the Americas.

As an indication of the FARC's growing drug sophistication, U.S. law
enforcement agents have observed FARC representatives well beyond
Colombia's borders, making shipping and distribution arrangements. Mexican
authorities recently arrested a person they believe is a representative of
the FARC, whom they accuse of trying to negotiate cocaine distribution
deals with Mexican cartels.

In addition to the FARC, there is the National Liberation Army, or ELN.
This pro-Cuban force has more than 3,000 members.

From the other end of the political spectrum is the United Self-Defense
Forces of Colombia, or AUC, an alliance of some 8,000 right-wing Colombian
paramilitary troops. The AUC is challenging leftist rebels for control of
drug-producing regions.

The U.S. troops will be operating amid all this fighting, a fact that has
sparked comparisons with U.S. involvement in Vietnam, when American troops
initially had an advisory role training the South Vietnamese military
against a communist insurgency. That instructional mission gradually
evolved into full combat, with the ultimate loss of 58,000 Americans.

The comparison has put the Clinton administration and U.S. military
planners on the defensive - so much so that U.S. officials call the
Americans in Colombia "trainers," not "advisers."

Retired Marine Corps Gen. Charles Wilhelm, former commander of U.S. forces
in the Southern Command, which includes Colombia, said senior Army
officials are keenly aware of the Vietnam comparisons.

"The lieutenants and captains, like me, who struggled and suffered through
Vietnam, have become today's generals," Wilhelm said. "I know that we will
speak with one voice in opposing any measures that would lead to a repeat
or a risk of repeat of the Vietnam experience."

"When I visit Colombia, I do not feel a quagmire sucking at my boots. I
willingly place a 36-year professional military reputation on the line when
I tell you categorically Colombia is not another Vietnam," Wilhelm told
lawmakers.

Congress has imposed a cap of 500 troops and 300 civilians as the maximum
number of U.S. advisers in Colombia. The cap can be increased by the president.

Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., chairman of the House International Relations
Committee, who supports the eradication efforts, said Colombia doesn't
expect U.S. troops to fight.

"Let us be perfectly clear and let's not be fooled by that old, 'it's
another Vietnam' canard some are trying to sell," he said.

Despite those assurances, the plan has vocal critics.

Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., a veteran who lost three limbs in Vietnam,
questions the U.S. approach.

"As I see us committing more helicopters and more resources, I wonder if
that won't help us win more battles, particularly in terms of, say,
reducing coca production, but I wonder if that gets at the root of the
problem," he said, referring to the destitute underclass in Colombia.

"In treating rebels as narco-guerrillas, the policy ignores their
36-year-old political agenda, which focuses on the needs of Colombia's
forgotten rural citizens."

Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based
Inter-American Dialog think tank, warns that Plan Colombia, with its
emphasis on military strikes, could destabilize the region further.

Critics of Plan Colombia also point to a report by the General Accounting
Office, the investigative branch of Congress, blasting the Colombian
government's role.

In an October study, the GAO found that "the Colombian government has not
demonstrated it has the detailed plans, management structure and funding
necessary" to meet Plan Columbia's goals, and that international financial
support other than from the United States "has yet to materialize."

European countries have been reluctant to pony up cash for Plan Colombia.
The European Union stepped forward with $280 million in aid, far below the
$1 billion Colombia had sought. Spain and Norway have committed about $120
million.

President Clinton, defending U.S. military aid, said of Colombians,
"They're in the fight of their lives. ... I don't think the average
American can imagine what it would be like to live in a country where a
third of the country, on any given day, may be in the hands of someone that
is an enemy, an adversary of the nation state."

President-elect Bush agrees with the Clinton administration's assessment.
During the campaign, Bush expressed support for Plan Colombia. And he said
he would make Latin America a priority in U.S. foreign policy.

"I will look south, not just as an afterthought but as a fundamental
commitment of my presidency," Bush said.

While Bush has voiced support for Plan Colombia, incoming Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld indicated there might be an emerging division in the new
administration about the extent of U.S. involvement.

"I am one who believes that the drug problem is probably overwhelmingly a
demand problem," Rumsfeld said at his Senate confirmation hearing last
Thursday. "If the demand persists, it's going to find ways to get what it
wants, and if it isn't from Colombia, it will be from somebody else."

Rumsfeld added that he had not studied the Colombia problem in depth yet.

"It's going to take a lot of careful thought and a combination ... of the
kinds of things that are being done, as well as diplomacy, to see if we
can't have that situation begin to get better rather than worse," he said.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Rumsfeld that the U.S. military escalation
is occurring in Colombia without much public debate.

"There's a lot of things going on in Colombia, Mr. Secretary, and I hate to
hearken back to other conflicts, but I hope you'll get very well aware of
this situation," McCain said.

Continued: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n145/a04.html