U.S. TO AID COLOMBIAN MILITARY

Drug-Dealing Rebels Take Toll on Army

Washington's fears that the corruption-ridden Colombian military may be
losing a war to Marxist rebels who receive much of their income from drug
traffickers has caused the United States to step up its involvement with
the Colombian armed forces, despite their history of human rights abuses.

The U.S. 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 the violence-wracked Andean nation of 37 million that supplies
roughly 80 percent of the cocaine and 60 percent of the heroin sold in the
United States. Drug-related corruption has long reached into the highest
ranks of the Colombian officer corps.

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.
Rosso 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 American-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, which was formulated by U.S. Defense Secretary William
Cohen and his Colombian counterpart, Rodrigo Lloreda, during a meeting in
Cartagena, Colombia, earlier this month, 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 are unlikely to
provide the full amount requested but are committed to training the unit
and providing some equipment.

The evolving relationship between the U.S. and Colombian armed forces has
alarmed human rights spokesmen. "This is a very dangerous signal that the
United States is willing to engage a military without measures being taken
to improve human rights performance," said Winifred Tate of the Washington
Office on Latin America. "It is very troubling."

Tate and others cited a recent incident in which air force helicopters
rocketed a remote village in Arauca province while pursuing guerrillas,
killing at least 17 civilians, including four children. The government has
promised to investigate and the U.S. State Department is following the
situation.

Congressional critics, meanwhile, express concern that the Pentagon is
driving the new policy without the adequate engagement of Congress, the
State Department or the White House.

A White House official acknowledged the criticism, saying, "Colombia poses
a greater immediate threat to us than Bosnia did, yet it receives almost no
attention. So policy is set by default."

One thing U.S. officials agree on is that the rebels are increasingly
important in protecting the drug trade. According to U.S. and Colombian
intelligence officials, the FARC earns about $500 million per year by
protecting the cocaine and heroin trade.

While the government and military have a long history of corruption by drug
traffickers in exchange for political favors and impunity, the FARC derives
a significant portion of its income by protecting cocaine laboratories and
clandestine airstrips used by drug traffickers and from collecting taxes on
coca and opium crops, the raw material for cocaine and heroin.

Colombia's two main rebel groups are the oldest of their kind in Latin
America, having battled the Bogota government for four decades. In the last
few years, the organizations have grown in strength and numbers, with about
20,000 fighters between them, and now wield significant influence in
roughly half the country. The smaller of the two groups, the National
Liberation Army, does not play as significant a role as the FARC in drug
trafficking.

On the other side of the conflict, the paramilitary organizations, which
often are protected by the military, also finance their activities through
drug-related activities, U.S. and Colombian officials said.

The Clinton administration's willingness to engage the military is driven
in part by improved relations with President Andres Pastrana, who took
office in August. His predecessor, Ernesto Samper, was suspected of ties to
the Cali drug cartel and treated as a pariah.

While the situation on the ground has been deteriorating in recent months,
the United States and Colombia have tried to come up with a strategy to
help the Colombian army with its training and intelligence gathering.

"It is a mystery to us how you can fight a war for 40 years yet do just
about everything wrong on the battlefield," said one U.S. official with
experience in Colombia. "There is no national strategy, the intelligence is
terrible, morale is low and leadership almost nonexistent."

Administration officials acknowledge that their ability to influence the
conflict's outcome is limited because there is no political backing for
sending U.S. advisers to help the military conduct operations against the
guerrillas.

"Currently there is a consensus in the United States to support a
counter-drug strategy in Colombia," said a senior U.S. official. "But that
consensus risks being broken if we push policy in the counterinsurgency
direction, although we may go in that direction in the future."

Some argue the distinction between drug traffickers and the insurgents has
become so murky that it should be abandoned altogether.

David Passage, who recently retired as the State Department's director of
Andean Affairs and who served in both El Salvador and Vietnam, argues that
the Colombian military needs U.S. aid to regain control of the countryside
- -- a goal he said could be achieved with a few dozen military advisers "and
a small investment."

"We are handcuffing ourselves," Passage said. "If the United States
believes what it says it believes [about the FARC], instead of walking away
because the [army] is unclean we should roll up our sleeves and try to make
a difference."

Andy Messing, a retired Special Forces major who advises several
conservative members of Congress on Colombia, goes further, arguing that a
much broader U.S. engagement with the Colombian military is the only way to
stave off a rebel victory.

Messing, who heads the National Defense Council Foundation and in 1996
began warning Congress and the Pentagon of the FARC's rapidly growing
strength, said that unless Washington commits military advisers to the
conflict, as it did in El Salvador, the FARC could topple the government
within a year.

As the government's losses mounted in recent fighting, Pastrana initiated
peace talks with the FARC. Last month, he sought to build confidence among
guerrilla leaders by pulling most police and soldiers out of the
Switzerland-size area of southeastern Colombia where the rebels are most
active.

At the same time, he moved to restructure the military, naming Gen.
Fernando Tapias, one of the few senior leaders to condemn paramilitary
organizations, as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

At their Dec. 2 meeting in Cartagena, Cohen and Lloreda announced a
bilateral military task force to promote "the modernization of the
Colombian military to restructure it [and] . . . to focus on its mobility,
its sustainability, its intelligence capabilities, its command and control."

Lloreda said the two armies "will develop a project . . . to create a
special army unit which will support the police in Colombia in
counter-narcotics operations." The Colombian defense minister was in
Washington recently to seek money and equipment -- including Blackhawk
helicopters -- for the new counter-drug brigade.

"They came with a shopping list of about $1.3 billion over five years, and
we had to tell them to return to planet Earth," said a Pentagon official.
"But we can train the unit, we are glad to and we told them that clearly."

U.S. officials said they emphasized to the Colombians that the aid could
only be given to the unit after U.S. and Colombian officials had screened
it for officers with a history of corruption and human rights abuse. The
officials said the two sides also would train and equip a joint police-army
intelligence center at the counter-narcotics base of Tres Esquinas in
Colombia's remote Caqueta region. Although the base is considered so
vulnerable to attack that U.S. officials are not permitted to spend spend
the night, the CIA will supply the center with equipment to monitor rebel
communications and movements, according to knowledgeable sources.

Checked-by: Richard Lake