US bringing "terror war" to Colombia for oil, coal

By Sean Marquis

Nov. 27-- While all eyes are focused on Afghanistan and the Middle East, where the US is currently bombarding the Taliban for its support of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaida terror network (suspected in the Sept 11 attacks on the US), media attention and speculation abounds as to where the US will strike next in its new, perpetual war.

Countries like Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia and many others are being bandied about as the "next phase". While these are all definite possibilities, given the broad scope of this war, other very real targets are being prepared by the US government for future excursions of its "war on terrorism"

Two South American nations in particular are currently being prepped for possible military actions: Colombia and Venezuela.

Both countries figure prominently in US energy policy through coal (Colombia) and oil (Venezuela more so than Colombia) reserves.

The US is already militarily involved in Colombia through its "drug war" via Plan Colombia, a $1.3-billion operation which focuses primarily on the fumigation and eradication of the coca plant (used to make cocaine).

The plan emerged in 1999 after Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the Clinton administration’s anti-narcotics coordinator - under pressure from Congressional Republicans - declared that Colombia was a foreign policy "emergency". McCaffrey noted its steady increases in drug cultivation, the widening influence of rebels and its general potential to destabilize the region, given Colombia's position between the Panama Canal and Venezuela, the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States.

This article focuses on Colombia, a separate article discusses Venezuela.

Colombian coal and Colombian oil
The George W. Bush administration's proposed energy policy calls for 1,300-1,900 new electrical generating stations over the next 20 years. Most will run on fossil fuels, which will boost demand for oil, natural gas and particularly coal, the most widely used fuel in US power plants.

While it does export oil and has large untapped reserves, Colombia is the world's fourth-largest coal exporter and is a major source of US coal, having shipped 30 million tons in 2000, worth $794 million.

The Cerrejon Norte mine, formerly state-owned, is now operated as a joint venture between the Colombian government and US-based Exxon Corp., a unit of ExxonMobil. In 2000, it produced 18.4 million tons of coal - half of Colombia's total output. Half of this went to Exxon, which sold 17 percent of it to two southeast US utilities. The Colombian army provides security for the mine and has a history of involvement in labor disputes. Other US energy corporations, like Occidental Petroleum, also depend on the Colombian army to provide security in their oil fields (rebel groups have been waging a sabotage campaign against oil pipelines).

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented that aid provided by Plan Colombia is used to support right-wing paramilitary groups. Trade union leaders have been among their primary targets.

Colombia's non-governmental National Labor School reports that 1,500 union officials have been killed in the past decade. Hector Fajardo, general secretary of Colombia's largest union federation, the Unified Confederation of Workers (CUT), says 3,800 trade unionists have been killed since 1986.

In Colombia and elsewhere, a low-wage workforce whose labor rights are attacked and leaders murdered gives US companies a low-cost advantage in moving production there. After developing Cerrejon Norte in the mid-1980s, Exxon began cutting its US coal production and reduced its US coal-mining workforce to 321 people, from 1,600. Its Colombian operation now accounts for over half the company's coal production worldwide. Other companies have followed suit.

Both Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) and the energy giant Enron, which owns the primary natural gas distributor of Colombia, Promigas, lobbied the US in favor of Plan Colombia.

Oxy is expropriating lands of the indigenous U'wa people in northeastern Colombia. This region was militarized from the beginning of Plan Colombia's implementation with the objective of guaranteeing Oxy's right to assert themselves over the rights of the U'wa.

In October 1999 in Houston, Texas, Colombian president Andrés Pastrana met with the executives of the principal oil and electricity companies in the United States, coordinated by then governor of Texas, George W Bush. Pastrana promised them major oil and gas exploration concessions.

Before Pastrana's concessions, companies had to pay royalties of 16% for oil contracts. Today they pay 5%. Before the changes companies had to accept 50% participation from the state oil company. Today it's 25%.

Since 1999, Colombia has rapidly increased the number of contracts for oil exploration and exploitation, particularly with US, Canadian, British and Spanish companies: BP-Amoco, Chevron-Texaco, Shell, Exxon, Canadian Oxy, Talismán, Alberta Energy, Nexen, Repsol, and CEPSA. Between January 2000 and July 2001 these companies signed 54 contracts. Huge portions of territory are being turned over to trans-national corporations.

The "drug war"
Colombia is currently in the midst of a 40 year-old civil war involving left-wing guerrillas; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN); right-wing paramilitaries United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC); and the Colombian army (which has strong ties to the AUC).

Both the guerrillas and the paramilitaries fund their operations through drug trafficking, which the US claims it is trying to stop under the auspices of Plan Colombia.

According to Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, "All sides in this conflict have been involved in the drug trade. The most famous, in this country…is the FARC, the guerrillas, and that's what a lot of our US assistance is targeting, coca cultivation in southern Colombia, areas which the FARC controls.

"However, the paramilitaries are even more deeply involved in the drug trade, by their own admission. Carlos Castana, one of the heads of the paramilitaries, has gone on national television and admitted that he gets 70 percent of his revenues from the drug trade. However, we're not really going after him."

It may be that the paramilitaries are not targeted by US efforts because they are carrying out 'official policy' by 'other means'.

Jina Amatangelo, fellow for Colombia at the Washington Office on Latin America, an Andean affairs think tank, said well-documented evidence shows persistent links between the Colombian Army and such right-wing paramilitary groups as the AUC. She added the Columbia Commission of Jurists estimates that 70 percent of killings (of civilians) are carried out "by paramilitary groups associated with the army."

Instead of confronting the problem, however, the government of President Andres Pastrana and the US administration have played down evidence of this cooperation, according to a 120-page report released by Human Rights Watch, titled "The 'Sixth Division': Military-Paramilitary Ties and US Policy in Colombia."

"The US has violated the spirit of its own laws and in some cases downplayed or ignored evidence of continuing ties between the Colombian military and paramilitary groups in order to fund Colombia's military and lobby more aid," says the report.

Due to intensifying repression both official and from insurgents, and ongoing killings of civilians and other human rights abuses, many in Colombia have grown weary of the "war on drugs".

Citing increases in drug trafficking, cultivation and production, Horacio Serpa, front-runner in next May's presidential elections said, "New and alternative formulas are needed along with a recognition that the ( anti-drug ) policies applied to date have been a failure."

At the end of August there were separate bills introduced by two Colombian Senators, Vivian Morales and Rafael Orduz, calling for (respectively) legalizing or removing penalties for cocaine and heroin production.

US officials have said they oppose any moves toward decriminalizing drug production in Colombia.

Although the US has committed an enormous amount of money to Plan Colombia, it has been wary of supplying US personnel.

"Right now we don't have enough public support to commit US forces down there in the drug war. So one of the ways that they've been able to get around this is the use of private military contractors. A lot of these are former military people," said Sanho Tree.

The largest of these employers is DynCorp, which has 335 civilians on the payroll. Fewer than a third are US citizens. An estimated 60 to 80 US citizens work for other contractors, including Bell Helicopter Textron, Sikorsky Aircraft, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.

DynCorp officials acknowledged that the US State Department had specifically directed them to hire the foreign pilots (most of them former Central and South American air force members) as part of a five-year, $200-million contract.

According to Tree, "Its only a matter of time before one of these pilots or a helicopter full of these people gets shot down and killed or captured. And then we've really got a problem because...there isn't public support to commit US forces and if they do get shot down or captured, then suddenly Congress has to decide, are we going to retaliate and escalate this war?"

From "drug war" to "terror war"
Perhaps the best way to get public support for troop commitment in Colombia would be to change US involvement from the "war on drugs" to the "war on terrorism".

A high-level, 50-person US security delegation arrived in Colombia on Sept. 5.

On Sept. 10 (one day before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon) came the statement: "We no longer view the FARC and ELN guerrillas as an internal threat to the security of Colombia, but as a threat to the security of the United States," said a senior Pentagon official. Another administration official said: "It's time to drop the fiction of anti-narcotics aid only."

The delegation was led by Marc Grossman, undersecretary of state for political affairs. Members included senior officials from the Justice Dept., the National Security Council, the Pentagon, and the White House drug czar's office, according to State Department spokesman Phil Reeker.

And although the left-wing ELN and FARC were already considered terrorist organizations by the US, Secretary of State Colin Powell designated the AUC, the main paramilitary group, a "foreign terrorist organization". Powell charged the AUC with carrying out "numerous acts of terrorism, including the massacre of hundreds of civilians, the forced displacement of entire villages, and the kidnapping of political figures".

The decision marks the first time Washington has listed a right-wing paramilitary group as a foreign terrorist organization. It is clear the US was switching from "drug war" to "terror war" in Colombia prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. It would have been laughable had the US not at least included the AUC on its list of terror groups in Colombia. Actively going after the AUC is another matter, after all they’re not the ones blowing up the oil pipelines.

On Oct. 15, at the headquarters of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Washington, DC, Francis Taylor, anti-terrorism coordinator of the State Department, gave a closed-door report about the development of the anti-terrorist campaign to a meeting of the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE, in its Spanish acronym).

In a statement after the meeting, Taylor said the FARC, ELN, and the AUC: "…will receive the same treatment as any other terrorist group, in terms of our interest in pursuing them and putting an end to their terrorist activities," which would include "where appropriate, as we have done in Afghanistan, the use of military force."

Journalist Tom Barry, in a July 10 article for Foreign Policy in Focus, asks, "Why does Colombia matter?"

For his answer he points to a Rand (a security consultant company) study called the Colombian Labyrinth, which was sponsored by the Air Force's Strategy and Doctrine Program.

He quotes the study as stating, "The situation in that South American country is a national security concern as much as a drug policy problem. Colombia is a strategically important country…It is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and it is contiguous to the Caribbean basin, Central America, Venezuela and its oilfields, and Panama and the Canal. Colombia also has some of the largest untapped petroleum reserves in the Western Hemisphere."

In an interview with the Associated Press (AP) on Oct. 23, Anne Patterson, US Ambassador to Colombia, brought the entire process full circle: from oil, to ant-drug war, to anti-terror war back to oil, the initial US interest in promoting Plan Colombia.

She told AP that the United States will provide Colombia with counter-terrorist aid -- in addition to military aid to fight drug trafficking -- as part of the new global war on terrorism. She also said that Washington plans to train and equip elite anti-kidnapping and bomb squads, assist civilian and military counter-terror investigators and help Colombia guard its oil pipelines from rebel bomb attacks.

Patterson’s comments added to Gen. McCaffey’s statements originally promoting Plan Colombia, tell the lie as to why the US has gotten involved in Colombia’s internal affairs: US energy policy.

US energy policy depends on Colombian oil and coal and Venezuelan oil. And it is of high economic and strategic importance for the US to have the Panama Canal operating without hindrance to US commerce and to keep the way clear for energy resources from the South to reach their destinations in the North.

The "war on drugs" was the excuse, not the reason, why the US became militarily involved in Colombia.

The "war on terrorism" is the excuse, not the reason, why the US will increase that involvement for many years to come.

Source: Agence France Presse, The Ottawa Citizen, United Press International, IPS, New York Times, Associated Press, Foreign Policy in Focus, Z Magazine


This article originally appeared in The Asheville Global Report. The AGR can be seen online at www.agrnews.org