Green Berets Training Colombians
Saturday May 5 5:13 PM ET
Colombia Steps Up Anti-Drug Fight with U.S. Help
By Ibon Villelabeitia
LARANDIA, Colombia (Reuters) - U.S.-built helicopters thunder overhead. Camouflage-painted soldiers, clutching assault rifles, storm a cocaine laboratory deep in the Colombian jungle, firing back at leftist guerrillas as U.S. military advisers look on approvingly.
It is only a training exercise, but soon this Colombian anti-narcotics brigade will undertake its first real mission, joining a vast U.S.-funded drug offensive to destroy the world's No. 1 cocaine industry.
As part of a $1 billion aid and assistance package, the United States is training and equipping an elite 3,000-strong Colombian anti-drug force to curb an annual flow of 580 tons of cocaine out of the Andean nation.
Two anti-drug brigades have already gone into action in rebel-riddled southern Putumayo and Caqueta provinces, which grow roughly 60 percent of Colombia's 336,000 acres of coca -- the raw material from which cocaine is derived.
Backed by Vietnam-era Huey helicopters, the battalions have destroyed 85,900 acres of coca leaf in aerial fumigations between last December and May in the steamy province of Putumayo on the border with Ecuador.
That is roughly half the coca acreage originally targeted for destruction in the first two years of the Plan Colombia offensive.
With the third and last battalion set to graduate late this month and 16 U.S. Black-Hawk helicopters scheduled for delivery between July and December of this year, officials are hoping to double anti-drug efficiency.
``We hope to double the successes we have seen so far. And that is a conservative estimate,'' said a U.S. military official in Colombia.
Green Berets Train Colombians
On Friday, a group of foreign journalists was ferried in to the sprawling Larandia base in the jungle province of Caqueta, training site of the anti-narcotics brigades.
For the first time, reporters were allowed to talk to U.S. Green Beret trainers on the site and to witness action drills. Despite the complexity of the drug-fueled guerrilla war, U.S. officials said they are confident they can separate the fight against cocaine and Colombia's internal conflict.
The main task of the force is to stage airborne forays to destroy what U.S. and Colombian drug officials say is the key source of financing for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, Latin America's largest rebel group.
According to estimates by Colombian officials, the 17,000-member FARC reap up to $600 million a year from drug proceeds. U.S. officials believe the figure is much lower, but still more than $200 million. Outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups targeting rebels also profit from the drug trade.
The brigades are trained by 90 U.S. personnel, including 44 crack Green Beret fighters. Each 1,000-strong brigade receives an 18-week training course in Larandia, surrounded by dense jungle, grasslands and slow-moving rivers. The training includes reconnaissance missions, movement techniques, combat training and training on human rights issues.
The Colombian army has one of the worst human rights records in the hemisphere and rights groups have accused army officers of links to paramilitary groups thought to be involved in massacres of suspected leftist collaborators.
During a mock mission on Friday, members of the third brigade, deployed in Huey helicopters, attacked a cocaine laboratory hidden under a jungle canopy.
As soldiers stormed their target yelling: ``Anti-narcotics brigade! You are surrounded! Surrender!'' other soldiers portraying as FARC guerrillas fired blank rounds at them.
Mock guerrillas and soldiers fell to ground covered in fake blood. ``Injured'' fighters were placed on stretchers and carried to helicopters as an investigator interrogated lab workers.
``They did a really good job,'' one senior U.S. trainer said, ''These guys are top notch.''
U.S. and Colombian officials insist the anti-narcotics aid will be used strictly to fight drug trafficking and not to escalate a 37-year-old guerrilla conflict which has killed nearly 40,000 civilians in the last decade.
But Gen. Mario Montoya, commander of the Colombian military's Joint Southern Task Force, in charge of the anti-drug brigades, acknowledged to reporters the line between counter-narcotics operations and counter-insurgency is thin -- suggesting a U.S. foreign policy nightmare scenario.
As coca hectares are reduced, the emphasis of the brigades, officials said, will shift from fumigation to interdiction -- raising the chances of fighting with rebel groups.
``Not a single kilo of cocaine is moved in Putumayo and in Caqueta without the consent of the FARC or the paramilitaries,'' Montoya told reporters in Larandia, 235 miles south of Bogota.
``We make no distinction between FARC and paramilitaries. For us they are all drug-traffickers.''
Asked if he agreed with Montoya's assessment of the difficulty separating the anti-drug fight from the government's war against the rebels, a U.S. military official based in Colombia said: ``We are not at that point now. We are now fumigating industrial coca fields. When we move to interdiction, we will cross that bridge.''
Montoya, in charge of an area more than five times the size of El Salvador which is thick with FARC rebels, said about 30 rebels have been killed so far in 75 anti-drug operations.
U.S. INVOLVEMENT?
Critics of Washington's aid say the United States could find itself caught up in a Vietnam-style expeditionary war.
According to U.S. officials, 250 U.S. personnel are involved in the ``Push Into Southern Colombia,'' including 170 service men, intelligence officers and 180 civilians contracted by the U.S. Defense and State departments, in missions ranging from piloting fumigation planes to engineering to logistics.
Under U.S. law no more than 500 U.S. service men and 300 civilian contractors are allowed in Colombia at any one time. None of the U.S. personnel are allowed to enter combat zones.
The FARC, Latin America's oldest and most powerful guerrilla force, has warned it would attack U.S. ``mercenaries'' who took part in military operations in Colombia.
Montoya believes the drug offensive will force FARC rebels to lay down arms and sign a peace accord with the government.
``It will take a year or two before what we've done so far affects the finances and the war machine of the FARC, but we are going to win this war.''
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