DEVELOPMENTS IN ECUADOR ARE ALARMING

Stocktonian Troubled During Fact-Finding Trip

While the world is focused on events halfway around the world in
Afghanistan, a brutal war is raging a scant two hours by plane from Miami
in the mountains and jungles of Colombia. Unfortunately, the war is not
going to take a vacation during the Afghan conflict. Instead, the war in
Colombia continues to grow and intensify, oblivious to events elsewhere. It
is spilling over Colombia's borders and threatening to envelop the entire
northern Andean region of South America. And Ecuador is becoming more and
more enmeshed in the conflict.

I returned last month from a two-week American Friends Service Committee
fact-finding trip to Ecuador and Colombia that looked at this war,
Ecuador's increasing involvement in it and U.S. policy toward the region.

What I found was disturbing. I found U.S.-sponsored programs riddled with
questionable practices, if not outright corruption. I found widespread
misrepresentations, if not outright lies and deceit. I found expensive,
pie-in-the-sky U.S.-sponsored programs that are not grounded in the
everyday realities of Colombia or Ecuador.

In Ecuador, I visited the coastal city of Manta, where the U.S. is building
a base to house 400 military personnel. They are supposed to limit their
activities to anti-drug efforts, but even policy makers in Washington have
conceded it's impossible to separate the drug war in Colombia from the
Colombian military's war against that country's guerrilla armies.

The reaction of the Ecuadorians to the presence of U.S. military personnel
in their land varied from alarm to approval, but even base supporters
questioned the supposed underlying mission of the base. They conceded that
ultimately, any war on drugs can only be won on the consumer end of the
problem -- inside the United States and Europe -- and that previous efforts
to stamp out drug production in Peru and elsewhere has simply resulted in a
shift to production locations.

Base supporters admitted they had no background on how the military
presence in similar small, neutral countries adjacent to conflicts in
Central America and Southeast Asia had pulled those countries into their
neighbors' wars with disastrous results. Faced with the possibility the
U.S. presence would invite cross-border attacks by Colombian guerrillas,
base supporters offered nothing more than hope that this wouldn't happen.
Such hope is doing little to control violence on the Colombia/Ecuador
border, which is claiming an average of one life per day.

My group met with Miguel Moran, a professor at the university in Manta,
coordinator of The Tohalli Movement, an organization opposed to the U.S.
base and author of a book on the base. Moran painted a vivid picture of a
military base built on lies, misrepresentations and deceit.

The U.S. base actually represents an expansion of an existing Ecuadorian
air base. According to supporters, no locals were displaced to make room
for the original base. But according to Moran and peasant leaders with whom
we met, as many as 2,000 poor families were uprooted. None of them was
compensated. The evidence we saw firsthand supported that assertion. The
area surrounding the base is currently inhabited, indicating a likelihood
of previous habitation in the base area. A security perimeter around the
base is also forcing local fisherman farther out to sea in small boats that
are ill-equipped for fishing in deeper waters. Locals told us several
fishermen have been lost as a result.

Plans to house U.S. military personnel in Ecuador created considerable
controversy, but the plan was foisted on weak and unpopular former
President Nahuat. Debate on the matter was stifled by the creation of a
presidential commission that rubber-stamped the deal. The Ecuadorian
Constitution clearly requires congressional approval before any foreign
troops are invited onto national soil, but the presidential commission
effectively blocked such action. The Ecuadorian Supreme Court, stacked with
partisan members of the Christian Democratic Party, gave its blessing to
the circumvention. This maneuver continues to enrage base opponents and
constitutionalists. Ecuador is not immune to military coups, and does not
need its constitution weakened by chicanery.

According to the base plan, no more than 17 U.S. personnel were to be
stationed at the base prior to its official opening in mid-October. But
several sources told us the American military had taken over Manta's Hotel
Oro Verde and occupied all of its 160 rooms. Several sources also said the
number of U.S. personnel seen on Manta's streets suggested numbers
considerably beyond the prescribed limit of 17. This bodes ill for
adherence to the current limit of 400 U.S. personnel.

Misrepresentation of such numbers is a serious problem that has plagued
past U.S. interventions in Central America, Southeast Asia and elsewhere.

Supporters of the base continually evoked the base's benefits to the local
economy. But according to Moran, 800 jobs were promised for the base's
construction; only 200 jobs materialized. Our observation supported the
lower figure. According to Moran, locals were told they would receive
U.S.-scale wages but instead were being paid the local minimum wage of $120
per month, a far cry from livable.

Both sides spoke in terms of the eventual creation of a comprehensive base
that would take in the expanded air base, nearby port and Ecuadorian navy
facilities. Plans are already under way to construct a road that would
directly link the three facilities.

There's only one problem: Thousands of people live inside the triangle
formed by the three facilities. Should the idea of a comprehensive base
materialize, then these people are going to have to go. If history repeats
itself, they will be forcibly removed without compensation.

Many Ecuadorians are convinced the United States intends to establish a
permanent colonial presence in Manta to take the place of what the United
States gave up in Panama. It is feared that Manta will be used to train
anti-democratic elements of Latin America's armies and will be a staging
ground for U.S. intervention in the region.

These are precisely the kinds of things that gave rise to deadly riots
during the U.S. occupation of the Panama Canal Zone and could incite
guerrilla activity in Ecuador.

Only time will tell whether these fears will become reality. But some
things are already clear. The United States is spending more than $650
million per year for a program that is unlikely to have any effect on U.S.
drug consumption.

The Bush administration and its supporters in Congress are being
disingenuous in asserting that the administration's Andean Initiative has
nothing to do with fighting Colombia's guerrillas. The United States is
getting more and more involved in Colombia's overall war. And, for the
largely impoverished people of Ecuador who have a long history and
tradition of peace and neutrality, U.S. foreign policy is pushing their
small country into a potentially devastating war from which there may be no
easy exit.