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Old 04-08-2004, 01:11   #31
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http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/413641.html

Ministry probes how IDF choppers got to Colombia

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

The Defense Ministry is investigating a complaint that a company called Globus Aviation Ltd. was involved in a transaction in which surplus IDF helicopters ended up in Colombia, violating an agreement with the ministry. The possibility that the helicopters have ended up in the hands of criminal elements in Colombia is under investigation.

The ministry's inquiry is being conducted in cooperation with U.S. investigators, and Colombia's Defense Ministry.

Major General (res.) Yossi Ben Hannan, who heads the Defense Ministry's Defense Export branch, has asked Colombian authorities to help with the investigation of Globus Aviation and its role in the helicopters affair.

Though the transaction's origins go back several months, suspicions about possible wrongdoing arose two weeks ago. Globus Aviation received permission from the Defense Ministry to purchase five DM-500 helicopters that were in IDF surplus. The helicopters were made in America, and they were delivered to the Israel Air Force as part of U.S. defense assistance to Israel.

The IAF removed them from active service, and the choppers were put under Defense Ministry authority, for sale as IDF surplus. Globus Aviation, owned by Gabi Meidar, signed a contract to purchase the choppers for $100,000 apiece.

Under the terms of the agreement with the Defense Ministry, Globus Aviation was to sell the helicopters via a Canadian intermediary to purchasers who would use them for fire-fighting in Spain's Catalonia region; alternatively, the helicopters were to end up with the federal police in Mexico.

At one stage, Globus Aviation received permission to turn the helicopters into civilian aircraft; once they were revamped for civilian purposes, Globus Aviation transferred the helicopters to Miami, and their shipping invoice states that they were destined for Vera Cruz, Mexico.

But the helicopters ended up in the possession of a Colombian company called Aviel. Not long ago, U.S. Federal Aviation Administration officials turned to Israel with an inquiry about the choppers, asking why they have ended up in Colombia.

Senior Israel Defense Ministry officials have expressed concern that the sale of U.S.-manufactured helicopters to Colombian purchasers, without American consent, could harm defense relations between Jerusalem and Washington. Such tensions could compound existing problems that surfaced in recent years from other misunderstandings and affairs involving the use or sale of military items.

A Defense Ministry spokesperson corroborated the facts in the case of the five helicopters, but she stressed that "all the documents presented to the Defense Ministry were appropriate and confirmed," which is why the case is now under investigation after the helicopters ended up in Colombia.

As part of the inquiry, Yossi Ben Hannan has already met with Meidar, who apparently is arguing that once the helicopters were converted to civilian use and certified as civilian craft by the Defense Ministry, their sale was no longer a military matter. Ra'anan Har-Zahav, Meidar's attorney, told Haaretz: "Gabi Meidar is not a party to a sale of the helicopters that involves the Defense Ministry. Signatures for the sale involved a Canadian company and the Defense Ministry ... Meidar has done all that he can to help the Defense Ministry clarify how the helicopters were moved to Colombia."
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Old 04-08-2004, 01:15   #32
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Probably the same way the Colombian military ended up with those crappy Galil rifles.

Nice sig line. LOL
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Old 04-22-2004, 08:00   #33
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Top Colombian gunman goes into hiding

Bogota, , Apr. 20 (UPI) -- One of Colombia's top paramilitary leaders has gone underground following an assassination attempt on him, local news sources reported Tuesday.

Yet unknown assailants opened fired on Carlos Castano last week. Though he escaped, several of his bodyguards were killed.

El Espectador reported Castano's wife said her husband had not been seen following the early Friday morning shootout.

In additional to his reputation as one of Colombia's leading cocaine smugglers, Castano is the founder and leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group fighting against the nation's left-wing rebels.

The group, however, was in the midst of talks with the Colombian government about putting down their arms and demobilizing its 13,000 soldiers.

There is speculation elements within the AUC wanted Castano dead, fearful he was set to cut a deal with the United States where he is wanted on drug smuggling charges.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-break...2313-4921r.htm
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Old 04-22-2004, 08:06   #34
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NDD, what have you been up to??

TR
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Old 04-22-2004, 08:18   #35
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LOL - its not me! They said on the news this morning that he called a friend to say goodbye, that he was going to the US to meet with the gov. The Embassy denies any knowledge.

That is the most dangerous man in LATAM IMO. He knows way too much on too many people.
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Old 04-22-2004, 08:32   #36
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Quote:
Originally posted by lrd
...following an assassination attempt on him
...his reputation as one of Colombia's leading cocaine smugglers

...Castano is fighting against the nation's left-wing rebels.
Quote:
Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc

That is the most dangerous man in LATAM IMO. He knows way too much on too many people.
HHHMMM, I am with TR on this one. Everything listed implicates NDD. I would call the Colombian Police/US Embassy accept for one VERY important fact...
"Yet unknown assailants opened fired on Carlos Castano last week. Though he escaped.."

Nope.. our angry lookin' Doc would never have missed. That is my story and I am sticking to it. LOL
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Old 04-22-2004, 08:42   #37
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I would certainly make sure I didn't miss with him. He has about 10,000 very tough friends.

They've been trying to get him for years. He's been killing FARC since he was about 14. Very, very tough man.
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Old 04-22-2004, 08:58   #38
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Quote:
Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
I would certainly make sure I didn't miss with him. He has about 10,000 very tough friends.

They've been trying to get him for years. He's been killing FARC since he was about 14. Very, very tough man.
IMHO, if they put as much effort into killing the FARC and locating their leadership as they have the AUC (must be because the AUC is a "right-wing" paramilitary), the conflict would be over much more quickly.

TR
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Old 04-22-2004, 09:05   #39
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Originally posted by The Reaper
IMHO, if they put as much effort into killing the FARC and locating their leadership as they have the AUC (must be because the AUC is a "right-wing" paramilitary), the conflict would be over much more quickly.

TR
Well, a lot of that is to keep the money flowing to the mil. There are Congressional compliance issues for continued aid that must be met.

They are doing a damn damn on the FARC as well.

Plus, the military hasn't forgotten the ass whippin' the FARC gave them last time they mounted an op after the leadership - Casa Verde in late 1990/early '91. Lost a Battalion basically.

Its starting to surface now that the FARC and AUC have been "cooperating" in certain high coca areas - imagine that!
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Somewhere a True Believer is training to kill you. He is training with minimal food or water, in austere conditions, training day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon and he made his web gear. He doesn't worry about what workout to do - his ruck weighs what it weighs, his runs end when the enemy stops chasing him. This True Believer is not concerned about 'how hard it is;' he knows either he wins or dies. He doesn't go home at 17:00, he is home.
He knows only The Cause.

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Old 04-22-2004, 09:38   #40
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Quote:
Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Well, a lot of that is to keep the money flowing to the mil. There are Congressional compliance issues for continued aid that must be met.

They are doing a damn damn on the FARC as well.

Plus, the military hasn't forgotten the ass whippin' the FARC gave them last time they mounted an op after the leadership - Casa Verde in late 1990/early '91. Lost a Battalion basically.

Its starting to surface now that the FARC and AUC have been "cooperating" in certain high coca areas - imagine that!
I am stunned.

Next thing you will be telling me is that the ELN and the FARC cooperate occasionally as well.

One thing those groups are not is socialist or communist. They are all pretty good market capitalists out to make a profit.

TR
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Old 05-01-2004, 07:37   #41
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End of an Era

I wonder what effect this will have on the AUC's protection of US folks in certain areas.


Colombia warlord Castano strangled to death-friend


BOGOTA, Colombia, April 30 (Reuters) - Colombian warlord Carlos Castano, whose disappearance has rocked peace talks between the government and far-right paramilitaries, has been strangled to death by former comrades, one of Castano's friends said on Friday.

The outlaw Castano, who was political chief of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, went missing after a shootout with gunmen commanded by rival AUC chiefs at his hidden ranch in northern Colombia on April 16.

"They caught Commander Carlos alive that very day and they killed him two days later, after they kept him for two days with his hands and legs bound, in his underwear," his friend told Reuters, saying he had spoken to witnesses.

Military intelligence and state prosecution service officials who have spoken to the friend and colleague of Castano said they believed his report but still had no definitive evidence.

President Alvaro Uribe was cautious.

"What can I say about a Reuters news report? One has to respect all of them. ... The government, faced with this, must be respectful. But I cannot comment," he told reporters.

Proof Castano was killed could be a fatal blow to year-old negotiations the government hoped would lead to the disarmament of 20,000 paramilitary gunmen waging an illegal war against Marxist rebels and trafficking in cocaine.

Government officials fear the loss of Castano would fracture the AUC and make talks impossible.

Castano aides said rival AUC members heavily involved in cocaine trafficking had attacked him because he was planning to give information about their activities to U.S. authorities.

But other senior commanders from the group said Castano's guards had mistakenly opened fire on their own comrades and he ran away in the confusion.

If he is dead, it was a violent end to a violent life for a man who personally admitted to dozens of killings and forged links between his militia and Colombia's armed forces in a bloody war of revenge against Marxist rebels.

COCAINE TRAFFICKERS SUSPECTED

The negotiations, central to Uribe's hopes of pacifying a country locked in a 40-year guerrilla war, had already run into trouble due to the paramilitaries' refusal to serve jail sentences or be extradited for their crimes.

Castano's friend, as well as intelligence and prosecution officials, blamed his killing on AUC political commander Salvatore Mancuso and another AUC chief, Diego Murillo, also known as "Don Berna."

U.S. officials say Murillo is one of Colombia's biggest cocaine traffickers, and also accuse Mancuso of smuggling.

On Thursday, Mancuso denied he was a drug trafficker on local television. He said he did not know where Castano was and wanted peace talks to continue.

Castano's friend said Don Berna sent the warlord's own brother, Vicente, and a paramilitary known as "18" to kill him. "That damned 18 strangled him with his own hands," he said.

Castano's aides said he was hoping to bargain reduced jail time in the United States -- which wanted him for cocaine smuggling -- in return for information.

U.S. officials deny they were in contact with the gruff-voiced Castano, who had become something of a media star in Colombia in recent years, making television appearances from hidden locations as he tried to make the AUC politically respectable.

Together with his late brother Fidel, Castano founded what later became the AUC after Marxist guerrillas kidnapped and killed their father, a poor farmer, in the early 1980s.

Often working in cooperation with renegade sectors of the army, they killed thousands of people they suspected of collaborating with the rebels, mainly peasants, and became notorious for their methods, which even included chainsaws.
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Old 05-01-2004, 12:10   #42
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Show me the body and the DNA, then I will believe that Castano is dead..... maybe! How many times has the immenient dealth of Marlunanda been reported-----suffice to say more than half a dozen. IMHO someone is giving papaya..LOL I am not taking.
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Old 05-11-2004, 08:53   #43
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http://money.cnn.com/2004/05/11/news...ex.htm?cnn=yes

Chiquita paid alleged terror groups

Banana producer says Colombian unit made protection payments to groups U.S. regards as terrorists.
May 11, 2004: 7:09 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government is investigating Chiquita Brands International Inc. for making "protection" payments to certain Colombian groups which the U.S. says are terrorist organizations, the company said Monday.

The announcement came on the same day the Cincinnati-based distributor of bananas and other fresh fruits reported first-quarter net income falling to $20 million, or 46 cents per share, from $25 million, or 62 cents, a year ago.

Chiquita Chief Executive Fernando Aguirre said in a conference call with analysts that the company is taking the investigation "very seriously, but believe it's manageable."

"I want to stress that this issue only involves our Colombia subsidiary," Aguirre said.

The Department of Justice recently indicated it will be evaluating the role and conduct of the company and some of its officers into a matter involving Chiquita's banana subsidiary in Colombia, Chiquita said.

In April 2003, the company's management and audit committee voluntarily disclosed to the Justice Department that its subsidiary had been forced to make "protection" payments, according to Chiquita.

The payments went to certain groups in Colombia that have been designated as foreign terrorist organizations under U.S. law, the company said.

Chiquita said the groups made threats against the company's workers and that it made the payments only to protect its employees.

Chiquita disclosed the matter to the Justice Department when the company learned that supporting such a federally labeled terrorist organization is a criminal act under a U.S. statute, the company said.

It is an open secret in Colombia that companies are occasionally forced to buy off illegal armed groups fighting in the country's four-decade-old war, but Chiquita's admission appeared unprecedented.

Chiquita ships bananas from plants in northern Colombia in areas with a heavy presence of the outlawed far-right United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, which is responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in recent Colombian history.

Known by its Spanish initials AUC, it has killed thousands of people, mainly peasants, for suspected links to Marxist rebels over the past few years. It also traffics cocaine, according to U.S. officials.

Human rights groups say the AUC worked closely with the army in a push against rebels in the Uraba banana growing region in the 1990s. The government says any soldiers caught cooperating with the AUC will be prosecuted.

The AUC, now negotiating peace with the government, has targeted unions, which it often accuses of being guerrilla fronts.

A Colombian union is currently trying to sue Coca Cola (KO: Research, Estimates) for the murder of a worker by paramilitaries at a bottling plant in 1996. The soft-drink company says it had nothing to do with the incident.

Banana prices this year fell sharply from the year-earlier period, when flooding in Costa Rica and Panama limited supply.

Net sales for the quarter rose to $793 million from $471 million a year earlier. Atlanta AG, a German fresh produce distributor acquired at the end of March 2003, accounted for $283 million of the increase, Chiquita said.

The remainder resulted from favorable European exchange rates and increased sales of other fresh produce, the company said.

The company said it is cooperating with the Justice Department investigation.

Shares of Chiquita (CQB: Research, Estimates) fell 21 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $17.10 on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange before the company's late-day announcement.
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Old 05-17-2004, 17:32   #44
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Interesting spin on things.

TR

Los Angeles Times
May 16, 2004
Pg. 1

Riding Shotgun On A Pipeline

Going beyond the war on drugs, the U.S. backs Colombian troops in a campaign against rebels that protects an oil company's operations.

By T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer

Last fall, the United States and Colombia launched an extraordinary military operation that sent thousands of troops into Arauca, a remote region of this South American country plagued by warring rebel factions and the cocaine trade.

By outward appearances, Operation Red Moon opened a new front in the two countries' long war on drugs.

This time, however, the fight also was over oil.

U.S.-trained Colombian troops, backed by U.S. intelligence and private contractors, unleashed the offensive to stop rebel attacks on a pipeline that Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. depends on to transport oil. They also had another goal, company officials said: secure an area deep in the heart of rebel territory so Occidental could explore a new field believed to hold 20 million barrels of oil.

The three-month campaign was carried out under a little-noticed shift in U.S. policy in Colombia after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The United States had previously confined its role in Colombia to battling drugs. But with the Bush administration urging a global war on terrorism, Congress lifted restrictions on counterinsurgency aid to allow the U.S. to help Colombia fight its leftist groups, who are listed by the State Department as terrorist organizations.

Arauca and its oil were the first big test of the new policy. The U.S.
regarded the hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties Colombia received from Oxy's oil operations as vital to shoring up its ally.

Colombia's stability, in turn, was seen as crucial to a region that had become one of the most important and reliable sources of U.S. oil imports.

Latin America - including Mexico - long ago surpassed the volatile Middle East as the No. 1 supplier of oil to its northern neighbor.

Colombia and two of its neighbors - Ecuador and Venezuela - were among the top 15 oil suppliers to the United States in 2002, according to the Energy Department. If Colombia collapsed under the weight of civil war and the drug trade, the trouble could easily spread to those two countries. Venezuela, the biggest supplier of the three, poses a particularly acute problem for Washington. The U.S. has been tangling regularly with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fiery leftist.

"If the Colombian state can't assert itself and take care of its territory, then regional security is undermined," said a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "A variety of U.S. goals in the region are compromised, and the overall security of the U.S. is undermined."

But human rights groups say the new U.S. policy in Colombia repeats a common error in Washington's dealings with Latin America: To protect its own interests, the U.S. is taking sides in an internal conflict and embracing a government with a spotty human rights record - echoes of its close alliance with former military regimes in El Salvador and Chile.

The groups acknowledged that the U.S.-backed crackdown in Arauca had resulted in fewer attacks on the pipeline, but at the expense of basic democratic freedoms.

Mass arrests of politicians and union leaders have become common. Refugees fleeing combat have streamed into local cities. And killings have soared as right-wing paramilitaries have targeted left-wing critics.

"Everyone here is terrified," said Martin Sandoval, a left-wing activist and former provincial assembly member. "There is no freedom of expression, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of anything."

Mixing Oil and War

At a military post here one day last fall, a U.S. Special Forces trainer barked an order to a Colombian soldier. The air exploded as Colombian trainees opened fire. Machine guns rattled. Bullets slammed into a target 100 yards away. The base throbbed with sound.

At the same time, in a nearby region thick with Colombia's leftist guerrillas, Oxy contractors drilled toward a lake of oil 8,700 feet beneath the surface.

The pipeline links the two scenes.

Oxy pumps nearly 100,000 barrels of oil per day through it, a black stream worth about $3 million a day on the world market.
Colombia says the money from the pipeline is crucial to helping defeat insurgents. Through its revenue-sharing arrangement with Oxy, Colombia gets about $500 million a year for its treasury, about 5% of the country's annual budget.

But the Colombian government isn't the only beneficiary. Rebels siphon off some of the oil money that is returned to local governments, and also extort millions of dollars in cash each year from local companies. They use the money to finance their war effort.

U.S. military and State Department officials say that protecting the
pipeline serves two purposes: It shores up Colombia's fighting capability, and it deprives rebels of cash.

The oil is not of major importance to the United States, they say, because Occidental's daily production - about 20% of Colombia's output - amounts to only a fraction of U.S. demand.

"This isn't about corporate welfare, it's not about protecting Oxy," the State Department official said. "It's a security argument, not a U.S. economic interests argument."

Although Oxy has benefited, it neither pushed for the pipeline protection nor helped in the planning, company officials said.

"The Colombian government was far and away the primary beneficiary," said Larry Meriage, the company's chief spokesman. "But there's no question that better conditions in Arauca would be better for us."

The perception among many in Colombia is that Washington stepped in to benefit a U.S. company, and that has raised cries of Yankee imperialism.

Critics of the program question why the State Department recommended funding to protect only Oxy's pipeline - not a pipeline carrying oil from British-owned BP or pipelines controlled by Colombia's state-run oil company, Ecopetrol. State Department officials respond that BP's pipeline is not attacked frequently, and that Ecopetrol's pipeline generates only a fraction of the revenue that the Oxy pipeline does.

"The cost doesn't matter, whether it's blood or money," said Oscar Garcia, a local union leader for Oxy workers. "The U.S. is not going to allow a shortage of oil."

The Rebels That Oil Built

Arauca's natural beauty is stunning. The Andes soar to the west, a saw blade of black and purple in the equatorial sunlight. The province unfolds to the east as a swampy grassland dotted with villages and towns.

A land of cattle, prairie and not much else, the province was long forgotten by the national government in Bogota, high in the Andes. There were no roads, no electricity and few bridges across the many rivers that laced the plains.

Then came the oil.

In 1983, Occidental discovered one of the world's biggest oil fields, Caño Limon, which held about 1.3 billion barrels of high-value medium crude.

Money generated by the oil field flows not only to Oxy and the Colombian government, but also back to Arauca. The province received $60 million to $80 million a year in royalties, suddenly making one of the country's poorest provinces into the wealthiest per capita.

Not much wound up in the hands of locals. But those riches became a treasure chest for the ELN rebel group, an organization whose Spanish initials stand for the National Liberation Army.

The ELN, a small army of about 3,000 fighters created in 1964, was inspired by Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba a few years earlier. But by the early 1980s, the Colombian army had almost wiped it out.

Then Occidental and the pipeline contractor began funneling money, jobs and food to the group to buy its cooperation, according to Colombian law enforcement and locals who participated in some of the deals. It is estimated, all told, that millions flowed to the ELN in the early years of operations.

The rebels used the money to gain new recruits and weaponry. In effect, Occidental rescued the group that later turned against it. Oxy today denies acceding to any extortion demands.

Arauca became a haven for the ELN. There were ELN mayors, ELN journalists - even ELN priests. The rebels extorted money from local merchants. They skimmed government contracts. And they bombed the pipeline, taking a cut from the crews that went in to repair it.

Average citizens of Arauca usually cooperated with the rebels, out of either sympathy or fear of being killed.

"They were like kings," said one man, who was summoned to a meeting with the guerrillas after receiving a government contract to print a newsletter.

"They would sit there and receive people one by one."

The ELN is not Colombia's only rebel group. In the late 1990s, the largest rebel army, also founded in 1964 and known as the FARC - the Spanish initials for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - also waded into the local mix. Funded by the exploding cocaine market, it expanded into Arauca, taking over the countryside while the ELN held on to the cities.

As the two groups clashed, the FARC stepped up attacks on the pipeline in 2001. Each time it bombed the pipeline, it shut down the ELN's main funding source and weakened the rival rebel group.

The ELN's attacks had rarely stopped production. Oxy continued pumping, storing the oil in tanks until the pipeline was repaired.

But the FARC's fierce onslaught, with a bombing on average about every two days, forced Oxy to halt production for 240 days in 2001.

TBC
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Old 05-17-2004, 17:33   #45
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Part II

By the end of that year, the ELN had had enough, said a source with close ties to a former Arauca governor and to the guerrillas.

The two rebel groups reached an accord. The pipeline attacks would continue, but not at levels high enough to hamper mutual extortion profits.

Oxy's statistics show that by January 2002, the number of attacks was dropping dramatically.

A New Direction

A few months later, Colombia and the U.S. began their effort to reassert control over Arauca.

The U.S. Embassy in Bogota, after consultations with the Colombian government, began sending memos to the State Department urging that the United States fund a pipeline protection brigade, State Department officials said. The State Department responded by pushing the proposal on the Hill.

The United States had never been directly involved in pipeline protection in Colombia. But the authority to do so came in summer 2002, when Congress passed a counter-terrorism measure that lifted the old restrictions on aid to anti-drug operations.

Oxy downplays its role in the push for pipeline protection.

Meriage, the company spokesman, said Occidental never explicitly asked for it, just provided information as requested by the U.S. Embassy. Oxy provided lawmakers with documents that highlighted threats to the company's operations and the consequences of disruptions for the United States and
Colombia, he said.

The company hired lobbyists to advocate on one issue, Meriage said: to beat back an unsuccessful attempt by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who has long been critical of the U.S. government's role in Colombia, to require the company to reimburse the government for the costs of training.

One senior Democratic Senate staffer who was involved in the debate over the pipeline rejected the idea that Oxy was not lobbying for pipeline protection. "Why else were they here?" the staffer asked. "The whole point was that they wanted protection from the daily attacks against the pipeline."

Over the next six months, Congress approved funding totaling $99 million for U.S. Special Forces to train Colombian troops to protect the pipeline. The money also paid for eight new Huey and two Black Hawk helicopters, as well as night vision goggles and other equipment.

In September 2002, newly elected Colombian President Alvaro Uribe issued an emergency decree suspending some constitutional guarantees in the three Arauca counties through which the pipeline passes. The military could detain for up to 24 hours anyone not carrying identification.

The decree was later overturned by the nation's Supreme Court, but it still was part of a massive effort to regain control of the region: The police force tripled from 400 to 1,200. A special prosecutor's task force was sent from Bogota to arrest those responsible for bombing the pipeline. The army saturated the area around the pipeline.

By November 2002, Special Forces soldiers from Ft. Bragg, N.C., had arrived to set up an outpost at the headquarters of the Colombian military's 18th Brigade in the provincial capital, also called Arauca, to train Colombian soldiers to better protect the pipeline.

The fort within a fort looks like a big garage, a spare cinder-block
building surrounded by sand bags and a 30-foot-high chain-link fence to stop incoming mortar shells. U.S. soldiers sit listlessly inside the sweltering base, lifting weights or reading paperbacks, unable to leave because of danger in the surrounding community.

There have been no attacks against the troops, but rebels have
handed out fliers offering a $33,000 reward for each captured U.S. soldier.

"Is it dangerous? Absolutely," the company commander said. "The threat is always out there."

In June 2003, the first U.S.-trained battalion, Counter-Guerrilla Battalion 30, completed training. Mobile Battalion 5 is now in the process.

Army Gen. James T. Hill, head of the Miami-based Southern Command, which oversees U.S. military activities in Latin America, in testimony to Congress in October praised the end of the restrictions on military aid other than for counter-narcotics activities. He said the ability to directly help the Colombian military was "the single most important factor for us to continue
building success in Colombia."

"While this is primarily Colombia's fight to win, we have the opportunity to tip the balance by augmenting their efforts decisively with our unwavering support," Hill said.

Even as he spoke, that support was on display in Arauca.

Operation Red Moon

In September, the Colombian army's Battalion 30 got the chance to put its U.S. training to use in Operation Red Moon.

Working with U.S. military advice and after consulting with Occidental, the Colombian army decided to take the offensive in Arauca. Rather than simply post soldiers along the 60 miles of pipeline running through the province, the military planned to keep the guerrillas on the move and unable to plant bombs.

The area chosen was around Panama de Arauca, a village about 20 miles south of the pipeline in the center of Arauca's fertile prairie. Officially, there were two reasons: It was a FARC stronghold. And it was a center of cocaine growing and production.

As the Colombian military pushed guerrillas southward away from the pipeline, State Department fumigation planes began spraying coca crops.

Although the planes regularly fly missions in coca-heavy regions in the south and north of Colombia, it was the first time they had hit Arauca. They wiped out 30,000 acres of coca. Poor farmers who were growing it streamed into area towns and cities.

"We are not against the destruction of the crops, but they support many families," said Pedro Quintero, director of a nonprofit organization that helps refugees.

Although Colombian army officials denied it, Occidental executives said there was a third reason that Panama de Arauca was chosen: Occidental suspected that there was as much as 20 million barrels of oil waiting beneath the surface in a new field they called Harvest.

Finding new oil fields has taken on major importance for Colombia, which relies on petroleum for as much as a third of its foreign exchange. With several fields nearing exhaustion, the country could become a net importer of oil within four years.

New wells also are important for Oxy. The Caño Limon field pumped its billionth barrel in March 2003. New fields would ensure that the operation remained profitable until 2008, when the company's license expires. It is still uncertain whether exploration of the Harvest field paid off. One of two test wells produced oil, and the company is trying to determine whether
it is economically viable.

Occidental officials in Colombia said they did not ask the Colombian army to attack rebels in the region. They said they told the army about their interest in drilling in the area, as is standard practice.

The army drew up plans to attack guerrilla camps in the area, wipe out cocaine crops and provide the security that Oxy needed to conduct its explorations, company officials said.

"Of course, we had conversations with the army, and this allowed us to be ready" to explore the area, said one Oxy executive who, like all company employees in Colombia, did not speak on the record for security reasons. "We can't go in without security."

Use of the U.S.-trained troops to help Oxy conduct drilling brought sharp condemnation from environmentalists and human rights groups.

The activists complained that the U.S. investment in providing security for Oxy's production amounted to a $3-a-barrel subsidy from the U.S. taxpayer.

With this development, they said, the U.S. was actually helping the company drill new wells.

"It's outrageous if there's a clear relation between a U.S.-funded military operation and a private U.S. company," said Adam Isacson, who tracks Colombia for the left-leaning Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. "We should not be paying for an oil company's security."
__________________
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - President Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

De Oppresso Liber 01/20/2025
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