[Senate Hearing 106-511]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-511
COLOMBIA: COUNTER-INSURGENCY
VS. COUNTER-NARCOTICS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SENATE CAUCUS ON INTERNATIONAL
NARCOTICS CONTROL
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 21, 1999
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
64-317 WASHINGTON : 2001
SENATE CAUCUS ON INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Chairman
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Delaware, Co-Chair
JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama BOB GRAHAM, Florida
MIKE DEWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan
Wm. J. Olson, Staff Director
Marcia S. Lee, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
OPENING STATEMENT
Page
Sen. Charles E. Grassley......................................... 1
Sen. Mike DeWine................................................. 3
Sen. Jeff Sessions............................................... 6
PANEL I
Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary, Bureau for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Department of State............. 7
Prepared Statement........................................... 11
Brian E. Sheridan, Assistant Secretary, Special Operations and
Low-Intensity Conflict, Department of Defense.................. 18
Prepared Statement........................................... 20
General Charles E. Wilhelm, Commander in Chief, U.S. Southern
Command, Department of Defense................................. 30
Prepared Statement........................................... 31
PANEL II
Bernard Aronson, Chairman, ACON Investments...................... 74
Prepared Statement........................................... 79
Michael Shifter, Senior Fellow, Inter-American Dialogue.......... 85
Prepared Statement........................................... 88
SUBMITTED QUESTIONS
Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary, Bureau for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Department of State............. 105
General Charles E. Wilhelm, Commander in Chief, U.S. Southern
Command, Department of Defense................................. 161
Brian E. Sheridan, Assistant Secretary, Special Operations and
Low-Intensity Conflict, Department of Defense.................. 176
Bernard Aronson, Chairman, ACON Investments...................... 185
Michael Shifter, Senior Fellow, Inter-American Dialogue.......... 187
COUNTER-INSURGENCY VS. COUNTER-NARCOTICS
----------
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Caucus on International Narcotics Control,
Washington, DC.
The caucus met, pursuant to notice, at 9:03 a.m., in room
SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Charles E. Grassley,
chairman of the caucus, presiding.
Present: Senators Grassley, Sessions, DeWine, and Graham.
Chairman Grassley. I thank everybody for coming out at a
fairly early morning, the first morning after a long weekend
break of Congress. And it is not exactly an ideal time to have
an important hearing like we are having, but the schedule of
the Congress dictates, both for policy reasons as well as for
the time we are in the legislative session, to move forward
with this very important issue.
We also will have the privilege of having other Members,
one of whom is present, Senator DeWine, but others will be
coming who have urged me to have this hearing. And I appreciate
very much the breadth of interest we have in the situation in
Colombia from all members of the caucus, particularly as it
relates to the efforts we have in this country to combat drugs.
Today's hearing concerns one of the most important foreign
policy issues that we currently face. It is one that directly
affects U.S. interests and the lives of U.S. citizens daily. It
is not remote, it is not abstract, it is not obscure. Yet, we
seem to find ourselves in the midst of a muddle. U.S. policy
appears to be adrift and our focus is blurred.
We are today going to focus on the current situation in
Colombia and the nature of our efforts to stop drug production
and transiting. I must confess some disappointment about that
current situation and the nature of our efforts. On this, one
of the most critical items on our national agenda, what to do
about the drug threat, there does not appear to be a coherent
strategy or a consistent policy. And if there is, then there
has been a distinct failure to explain these to Congress or the
public, and this is particularly true when it comes to the
country of Colombia that we are looking at in this hearing
today.
There has been a lot of talk about Colombia recently, but
there does not seem to me to be much of a strategy. There might
be some actions taken, but actions do not state policy. I am
frankly disappointed in the administration's failure to engage
in a serious discussion with Congress or the public to explain
its policy. What we see is piecemeal engagement in a situation
that is not adequately understood. We seem to be bent on asking
what color to paint the helicopters before we ask what it is
that we are doing or whether we should be doing it at all, or
if we should, what is needed and what responsibilities the
government of Colombia has.
There are a host of basic questions elemental to a sound
strategy that are going begging. I do not question, though, the
sense of purpose or the dedication of the many men and women,
Americans and Colombians, who daily put their lives at risk to
stop illegal drugs. But their actions need to add up to more
than the sum of the parts if we are going to make a difference.
Actions need a center and a focus; they need direction and
coherence. And above all, these actions need to be linked in a
sensible way to our resources. All of these things need to be
linked to outcomes that purchase a difference. Finally, they
need to be explained clearly and straightforwardly to ensure
public support. I am concerned that we lack these vital
connective tissues.
Reporting from Bogota strongly suggests that our whole
policy is in disarray at a time when Colombia is in the midst
of a major crisis. There has been drug smuggling from the U.S.
embassy. Despite years of focus on eradication, drug
cultivation continues to increase. If preliminary analysis is
to be believed, it has almost doubled. Further, our estimates
of cocaine production are also seriously flawed, perhaps
underestimating the production by 100 percent. Colombia today
is producing more cocaine than at any time since we began our
efforts there.
The insurgents, while not in a position to seize power, are
growing in strength and profiting from drug smuggling. In some
cases, they are better armed and better trained than the
military. The military, conversely, suffers from a variety of
systemic and institutional problems, and these are problems of
long standing. It lacks equipment, training, resources, and
appropriate manpower. Paramilitary groups with possible links
to the military are waging their own war against the state. The
peace process appears to be stalled. Violence is escalating.
The judiciary system appears unable to cope, and Colombia is in
the midst of a major financial recession.
Yet, the U.S. administration seems to be incapable of
thinking about the situation with any clarity or articulating a
strategy with transparency. It seems unwilling to explain its
policy or even to explain the lack of one. It seems confused as
to what has actually happened. I would cite just one example.
It would appear that the present tendency in U.S. policy would
have us more deeply involved in Colombia's insurgency. Reports
show that the guerrillas are now engaged in a major way in
protecting and profiting from the drug trade.
If so, and we plan to expand efforts to go after that
trade, then stepped efforts to deal with increased drug
production involves us in confronting the guerrillas. This
raises a host of questions that have yet to be adequately
addressed by the administration. It certainly has not explained
its policy to Congress or the public, and we are left with the
appearance of a policy of drift and dissembling.
The drug czar, having opposed supplemental drug funding
last year, is now asking other Cabinet members to support a $1
billion proposal of his own, much of which is to go to
Colombia. I hope that before any such request comes before
Congress, if it should, that the proposal has more in it than
just a wish list. The President has written to Senator Lott and
Speaker Hastert about the need to work cooperatively to aid
Colombia. I agree with that, but we need to know more about
this. We need something to work with, and this does not mean
another long list of goodies without thought as to purpose and
results.
So the situation, as I see it, is past the point when the
sort of ad hoc, Chicken Little strategies that have
characterized recent foreign policy will do in this instance.
It is embarrassing that we have so little before the Congress
or the American public by way of serious policyor honest
discussion on what we are to do.
Yet, we have billion-dollar proposals being floated and
emergency aid requests submitted. I hope the hearing today can
help us get closer to both an understanding that meets the
circumstances. If our witnesses today cannot get us closer to
where we need to be, I am going to look at another hearing
where we can hear from witnesses who can tell us more.
I hope, however, that we will hear today more about what a
proper strategy should look like, and I will be offering
legislation later this week specifically requiring the
administration to deliver to Congress a detailed strategy on
Colombia. The administration should have one already on the
shelf, so the request, I hope, would not be burdensome. I hope
that we will hear much more about that policy today.
I am going to explain something about the charts, but
before I do, I think I will go to opening comments from my
colleagues, if they have any opening comments.
Senator DeWine, and then Senator Sessions.
Senator DeWine. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I just
want to congratulate you for holding this hearing. I thank our
witnesses for being here. We really look forward to your
testimony.
I think we all know that this country and this hemisphere
faces a very serious crisis in regard to what is going on in
Colombia. Last November, I again visited Colombia and I had the
opportunity, among other things, to meet with President
Pastrana, as well as the police and military leaders, to
discuss how our two countries could work together better to
eliminate drugs from our hemisphere.
The deteriorating situation in Colombia, Mr. Chairman,
represents a grave threat to not just the democracy of
Colombia, but regional stability as well, and I think that that
is something that we need to be very concerned about. What we
really have here, Mr. Chairman, maybe to state the obvious, but
sometimes you have to do that--what we have in Colombia is a
number of different wars, a war that is being wage by the
government against two separate guerrilla groups, a war against
ruthless paramilitary organizations, and also against the drug
lords who traffic deadly cocaine and heroin into the United
States.
For more than three decades, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, otherwise known as the FARC, and the National
Liberation Army, the ELN, have both waged the longest running
insurgencies in Latin America. It is estimated--and, of course,
no one really knows what these figures are, Mr. Chairman, but
it is estimated that the ELN has approximately 5,000
guerrillas, while the FARC is estimated to have a force of
approximately 15,000. They represent a serious threat to the
country of Colombia and the region. The Colombian military
frankly may not be up to the task now to counter these foes; at
least at the present time they are not. They lack a serious
communications, intelligence and mobility capability.
Mr. Chairman, the drug traffickers are really the lifeline
now for the ELN and the FARC, and this is something that we
have really not seen, to my knowledge, in world history before.
We have insurgency groups' long commitment, who at some point
then become enabled and funded to degrees that we a few years
ago would have a hard time imagining the amount of money that
flows to them. The drug traffickers are a source for weapons
and resources for these guerrilla groups. In exchange, they
provide protection for the trafficking organizations.
Colombia remains the world's leading producer of cocaine,
and a growing producer of some of the world's purest heroin.
Sadly, Mr. Chairman, America's drug habit is subsidizing anti-
democratic guerrillas in Colombia because the drug traffickers
use the rebels to protect their lucrative industry. To attack
drug trafficking head-on is a direct attack on the true source
of instability in Colombia and the region.
With the help of my colleagues, Senators Coverdell, Graham,
you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Sessions, and others, last year we
passed our bill, the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act.
This was a much-needed stop toward eliminating the drug problem
at its core, but it was only a first step. This Act authorizes
a $2.7 billion, 3-year investment to rebuild our drug-fighting
capability outside our borders.
This law, Mr. Chairman, is about reclaiming the Federal
Government's responsibility--and I might say it is our sole
responsibility as far as the different units of Government. I
believe in a balanced drug approach. I think we have to have
drug treatment. I think we have to have education and we have
to have domestic law enforcement. But this is the one area, the
fourth component, international interdiction, where only the
Federal Government can act. The States cannot act. The State of
Ohio cannot act, the State of Alabama cannot act. Only the
Federal Government can act, and I think last year we began the
process of reclaiming this responsibility that really is solely
ours.
Passage of that bill is proof that Congress is providing
the leadership in the fight against drugs. We passed this bill
because frankly the administration, sadly, since coming into
office has slashed funding levels for international counter-
narcotics efforts. Last year, however, through our bill we made
an $800 million investment in previously under-funded programs.
The facts are, Mr. Chairman, that if you look at the
percentage of our anti-drug budget, what we have seen during
the Clinton administration is a cut in the percentage of the
dollars that we are putting toward our anti-drug effort. The
actual raw dollars have stayed about the same, but if you look
at our international drug interdiction effort, what you find is
those dollars have remained fairly constant. But the percentage
of our total anti-drug budget has dropped year after year after
year, the percentage of our total anti-drug budget that goes
for international interdiction, which is what I am talking
about. Last year, we reversed that trend. I think it is very
important, Mr. Chairman, that we continue to work in this area
this year to continue what we started last year.
Mr. Chairman, in addition to fighting the ELN and the FARC,
Colombia also is waging a war against an umbrella organization
of about, it is estimated, 5,000 rogue paramilitary armed
combatants, whose self-appointed mission is to counter the grip
of leftist guerrillas and neutralize anyone suspected of
associating with the guerrillas; again, one more war that
Colombia has to fight. We have not focused much attention, at
least in public discussions, on the need to counter the
paramilitaries, but they too benefit from the drug trade and
account for a significant number of violent incidents in
Colombia.
Mr. Chairman, I believe that the United States must take a
proactive action in Colombia. The question that we will explore
today, however, is what is our role. And I think again, to
state the obvious, this is Colombia's battle; this is not the
United States'. This is a democratically-elected government in
Colombia, and we must work with them. And much as sometimes we
may think we know better how they should deal with their
internal problems, it is a democratically-elected government
and President Pastrana is working very hard to try to deal with
these problems.
We must work with them and we must be there to assist them,
and I think one of the messages that Congress has to send and
that the President has to send is just that. We believe in
democracy, we believe in governments making their own decisions
about how they deal with their own internal problems. There are
a number of serious problems that this country has, the country
of Colombia has. What happens in Colombia is vitally important
to the United States. When drugs are found in Cleveland or
Dayton, Ohio, the odds are very heavy they may very well come
from Colombia, or may originate in Colombia.
When we look at the regional stability of the region, all
we have to do is look at the map and see where Colombia is. And
we have already seen some of these battles spilling out and the
consequences being felt by other countries in the region. And
the other countries in the region are very, very sensitive to
what is going on in Colombia. So what happens in Colombia is in
our own backyard.
It is time, frankly, that this country began to pay
collectively, all of us--Congress, the President, and the
American people, began to pay a lot more attention to what is
going on in Colombia because in many respects what goes on in
Colombia has a lot more influence on what happens in the United
States, whether it be Iowa or Ohio or Alabama, than something
that happens 2,000, 3,000 miles away.
So I applaud you for holding this hearing. I look forward
to hearing from our witnesses on an issue that frankly is not
going to go away. It is going to become more and more
important, and I think the American people are going to
understand in the weeks and months ahead the importance of what
is happening in Colombia to the United States, to regional
stability, and to our goal of frankly seeing democracy flourish
in this hemisphere.
That is really what is at stake, two things. One is drugs
coming into the United States, from a very selfish point of
view and from a parochial point of view. But what also is at
stake is the legitimacy and the survival of the government of
Colombia.
Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Senator DeWine.
Senator Sessions.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just
briefly like to associate myself with both of your remarks and
to say that I have been mentioning for some time now Colombia
specifically as an area that this Nation has not given
effective attention to. It is in our neighborhood. It is
critical to the Western Hemisphere. It is a great nation, a
longtime democracy of fine people who are suffering the agony
of major drug distribution networks, cartels. And now we are
looking at a strong and aggressive guerrilla effort.
We have spent well over $20 billion on the effort in the
Balkans that is not in our backyard. And I have wondered how it
is that we now are sitting by and we have the Chinese
communists having ports at both ends of the Panama Canal that
clearly can subject that canal to sabotage and military attack,
whenever they would choose. And now we are seeing Colombia in
agony dealing with a Marxist guerrilla group and the amount of
drugs coming out of Colombia and being produced there
increasing. The numbers in the New York Times showed that we
had 165 metric tons of production in 1993, and it is expected
to hit 250 tons this year. That is a big increase.
So I do not know what is happening, but I believe that this
Government has been asleep at the switch. I believe we have not
been alert to this problem. I am not at all sure how we ought
to go about it, but I do believe it is a priority for us as a
Nation, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for highlighting it.
Chairman Grassley. I am going to call attention to the two
charts--well, one chart and one map. The first chart will show
a tremendous increase in the number of hectares that are in
cultivation, the number of acres that have been sprayed, and
the amount of coca that has actually been killed as a result of
that activity. It shows a trend in coca cultivation and cocaine
production in the Andean region for 1996 through 1998.
I would also like to have my colleagues today especially
focus on the map of Colombia that we have set up, and we will
be talking a lot about geographic areas around the country and
hopefully this map will be of a lot of help. This map is
provided by the General Accounting Office. The brown areas show
where coca cultivation is concentrated. And then we are going
to overlay that now with a red shaded area showing opium
cultivation and how that has grown. And then with the final
overlay, the blue shaded area denotes the regions controlled by
insurgent groups. There are also smaller versions of this map,
including a new one showing where the demilitarized zone is
located, in each Member's packet.
Before I introduce the panel, I also would like to implore,
when we make a request to have our testimony two days ahead of
time, that that does mean two days. I know that obtaining
clearance for some of this hearing from OMB is a very necessary
process and we do not argue with that, but it makes it very
difficult for us to be able to prepare for a hearing when we do
not have the testimony on time as we have requested it in our
letter.
The first panel consists of Rand Beers, the Assistant
Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement
Affairs with the Department of State. Then we will have Brian
Sheridan, Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low-
Intensity Conflict from the Department of Defense, and then
lastly, General Charles Wilhelm, Commander in Chief of U.S.
SOUTHCOM in the Department of Defense.
I thank you all for being here, and we will start with you,
Mr. Beers, and we will have all of you testify and then we will
ask questions afterwards. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF RAND BEERS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU FOR
INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT
OF STATE
Mr. Beers. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members
of the caucus. I want to thank you for this opportunity to be
here today to talk about the situation in Colombia and our
ongoing policy review. As is almost always the case, you have
organized the hearing with an absolutely appropriate time frame
in terms of where policy deliberations are and where we are in
terms of our discussions with the government of Colombia.
What the United States does or does not do in Colombia over
the next few years, and perhaps over the next several months,
will have a great impact on the future of that country, and I
daresay the United States as well. Colombia's national
sovereignty is increasingly threatened not from any democratic
elements in the military or the political sphere, but from
narcotrafficking interests and the well-armed and ruthless
guerrillas and paramilitaries to whom they are inextricably
linked.
Although the central government in Bogota is not directly
at risk, these threats are eroding the authority of the central
government and depriving it of the ability to govern in
outlying areas. And it is in these very areas where narcotics
traffickers, paramilitary and guerrilla groups flourish that
the narcotics industry is finding refuge, as you have so ably
indicated on the map which you presented at the beginning of
the hearing.
The links between narcotics trafficking and the guerrillas
and paramilitary movements are well-documented. Reporting
indicates that the guerrilla groups protect illicit fields and
labs, transport drugs and precursor chemicals within Colombia,
run labs, encourage and intimidate peasants to grow coca,
accept drugs as payment from narcotics traffickers and resell
those drugs for profit, and trade drugs for weapons, including
the possible shipment of drugs outside of Colombia to Brazil
and Venezuela for such trades. Paramilitary groups also have
clear ties to important narcotics traffickers, and obtain much
of their funding from those traffickers.
The strength of Colombia's armed insurgent groups has
limited the effectiveness of joint U.S.-Colombia counter-
narcotics efforts. While aggressive eradication has largely
controlled the coca crop in the Guaviare region and is
beginning to make inroads in the Caqueta region, any gains that
have been made have been more than offset by the explosive
growth in the coca crop in Putumayo, the southernmost area that
you have on your map, an area in southern Colombia which until
recently has been off limits from spray operations because the
Colombian National Police have been unable to secure a base
there due to heavy guerrilla presence.
We are also unable to carry out any meaningful alternative
development programs in most of the coca-growing region,
especially in southern Colombia, because the Colombian
government lacks the ability to conduct the monitoring and
enforcement necessary for the success of such programs. In
order for our counter-narcotics programs ultimately to be
successful, we cannot allow certain areas of the country, like
Putumayo, to be off limits for counter-narcotics operations.
Fortunately, there are reasons for optimism. The Colombian
National Police has continued its superb record of counter-
narcotics activity, and now the CNP's commitment to counter-
narcotics has also been adopted by the Colombian armed forces.
In conjunction with this change in focus, the current military
leadership is guarding the country's armed forces through a
cultural transformation which, if sustained, bodes well for the
future of Colombia.
Defense Minister Ramirez and Armed Forces Commander Tapias
have taken dramatic steps to deal with the legacy of human
rights abuses and impugnity that have clouded our bilateral
relations in the past. Concurrent with this effort to clean up
the military is a renewed effort to counter-narcotics. The new
leadership realizes that one of the best ways to attack the
guerrillas is to attack their financing in the form of
narcotics profits, whether through cultivation, processing, or
transportation.
The Colombian Army is forming a brand new counter-narcotics
brigade specifically designed to work in conjunction with the
Colombian National Police on the counter-narcotics mission,
initially in the sanctuary areas in southern Colombia. The
Colombian Air Force has undertaken an aggressive program to
regain control of their air space and deny its use to
traffickers by extending north coast operations to southern
Colombia. The Colombian Navy is working closely with U.S.
forces on maritime interdiction and has participated in many
significant seizures, despite limits on equipment and operating
funds. The Navy and Marine Corps are now ready for interdiction
operations on the Colombian river systems, including in
southern Colombia. Overall, cooperation with the Colombian
military on counter-narcotics operations has never been better.
INL is working directly with the Colombian military in two
important areas. First, we are coordinating with SOUTHCOM and
the Department of Defense to provide training and equipment for
the Colombian Army's new counter-narcotics battalion that I
mentioned previously. The mission of this unit is to conduct
counter-narcotics operations initially in southern Colombia and
to provide force protection for the Colombian National Police.
In addition to training and equipment which DoD is
providing, we are providing mobility to that unit in the form
of 18 UH-1N helicopters. We are also working to improve the
Colombian security forces' ability to collect, analyze and
disseminate intelligence on counter-narcotics activities and on
insurgent activity which could threaten counter-narcotics
forces.
One of the top priorities of the Pastrana government is
implementing a peace process to bring an end to violent
conflict that has drained that nation for four decades. One of
the key limitations confronting the Pastrana administration
during the negotiations, however, is that the guerrillas
currently feel little pressure to negotiate. Their
intransigence is fueled by the perception that the Colombian
armed forces do not pose a threat. This is another reason that
we are looking carefully at what we may do to aid the military
in its counter-narcotics mission.
Over the past several weeks, the government of Colombia has
developed a comprehensive strategy, the Plan Colombia, to
address the economic security and drug-related problems facing
that country. Colombia has invited the U.S. Government to
contribute to the development of this plan and we have worked
closely with them for over a month now.
Clearly, it has resource implications. We understandthat
the majority of the resources will come from Colombia itself or from
international financial institutions. Colombia estimates that over the
next 3 years, they need to spend $7.5 billion to deal with the
combination of counter-narcotics issues, the economic problems facing
the country, and social development issues related to drug trafficking
and corruption.
Of that, they plan to spend or taken on additional debt
burden of $4.75 billion, and they are looking to the
international community to contribute the remainder of that
money and they will be here in town tomorrow to talk to Members
of Congress after talking with the President in New York today.
We are currently involved within the administration in
discussions regarding about how we can use existing authorities
and funds to support the counter-narcotics operations in
Colombia, and we are also ready now to work with the Colombians
to assess the additional resource implications of their
strategy and the optimum ways in which the United States can
further assist.
But let me say with respect to the issue of a coherent
strategy, Mr. Chairman and members of the caucus, we have been
working with the government of Colombia now for over a month.
As Senator DeWine said, this is a Colombian problem, this is a
Colombian strategy that we have received from them, and we are
now in the posture of working with them to define what our role
might be in association with them.
It is a strategy that engages all elements of the Colombian
government. It is a broad-reaching strategy that includes the
relationship of the peace process to the economy, to social
development, to the counter-narcotics efforts. The bulk of the
resources that they are looking to devote to this effort will
go to the counter-narcotics effort. That is $4.8 billion over 3
years.
It is a strategy designed to go after drug trafficking,
particularly in southern Colombia, in order to take the
resources away from drug traffickers and to take the resources
away from the insurgents who profit from that drug trafficking.
If they can move into that area in southern Colombia, the
Caqueta-Putumayo area that is in the southernmost area of the
country that you have defined on your map, they will have taken
on what is currently a sanctuary and what is currently the
largest growing area in Colombia for cocaine. They will not
neglect the other areas in the country, but that will be the
initial area that they will want to be going into.
I think they have given us an outline of a very coherent
and directed strategy that we should be able to work with them
in order to deal with. And I hope in the days and weeks ahead
that we will be in a better position to come up to respond to
your request, Mr. Chairman, that the administration and the
Congress engage in a discussion of Colombia, as the President
indicated in his response to Senator Lott and to Speaker
Hastert.
The problems of narcotics in Colombia are daunting and
complex. While it is convenient to think of it in criminal
terms, it is undeniably linked at a fundamental level to the
equally complex issues of insurgency and paramilitaries, and
any action that we take directed at drug trafficking will also
have implications for both of those groups. Because of this, it
is all the more important to maintain our focus on the counter-
narcotics question at hand.
In Colombia, we have a partner who shares our concerns, and
a leadership that regularly demonstrates a political will to
execute the needed reforms and operations. Our challenge as a
neighbor and a partner is to identify the ways in which the
U.S. Government can assist the Colombian government and to
assure that we are able to deliver that assistance in a timely
manner. I look forward to working with you and other Members of
Congress in the challenge that we face ahead.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Grassley. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Beers follows:]
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Chairman Grassley. Now, we go to Secretary Sheridan.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN E. SHERIDAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, SPECIAL
OPERATIONS AND LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Mr. Sheridan. Senator Grassley, let me start by echoing
Rand's comments that your timing was exquisite on this hearing.
This is exactly the right moment to have this dialogue. Let me
also thank Senator Sessions, Senator DeWine and Senator Graham
for coming also this morning.
Senator DeWine, your leadership last year on the
supplemental was very much appreciated by all of us who work in
the counter-drug effort. And Senator Graham's longtime interest
in the hemisphere and his leadership is well-recognized.
I have submitted a written statement for the record, so my
oral comments will be very brief. Speaking from a Department of
Defense perspective, we are focusing principally on the cocaine
threat that emanates from Colombia. As you well know,
approximately 80 percent of the cocaine that enters the United
States at some point transits Colombia, as well as a growing
percentage of the heroin that enters the U.S. And the
cultivation of both coca and poppy continue to flourish in
Colombia. That is the threat that we are focused on.
We have been working with the Colombians in counter-
narcotics since 1989, when directed to do so by theCongress.
Our policy is very simple, it is not confused. It is to eliminate the
production of illegal drugs in Colombia, in partnership with the
Colombian government. We are not in the counter-insurgency business.
As Rand explained, the situation on the ground in Colombia
is increasingly complicated, but our policy is very
straightforward. We are working with the Colombian government
on counter-narcotics programs. We are not in the counter-
insurgency business. Our work with them for the last 10 years
has focused on detection and monitoring support and to help
them interdict illegal flows of cocaine, training, and
intelligence support.
Over the last year or two, we have been involved in a
number of initiatives to enhance their air programs, upgrading
their aircraft. On the ground, we are focusing on the training
of the counter-drug battalion, and on the rivers we are working
with them on a revitalized riverine program, both to stop the
flow of coca products, but more importantly to interdict the
flow of precursor chemicals.
The military has made great strides over the last couple of
years in two very important areas, both in its commitment and
improvement on human rights grounds, which I think is very
commendable, and I think under-noticed, if I might say, in the
United States, and under General Tapias and Minister Ramirez a
real commitment to reforming the Colombian military to make it
more effective as it performs the tasks that the president
directs it to perform.
Let me close by echoing Rand's comments that this is a
Colombian problem. Senator DeWine, you also mentioned this.
They have come up with what we think is a very good, integrated
strategy. Our policy is very straightforward to support the
democratically-elected government of Colombia, and that is our
task and that is what we are doing.
I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Sheridan.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sheridan follows:]
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Chairman Grassley. Now, General Wilhelm. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF GENERAL CHARLES E. WILHELM, COMMANDER IN CHIEF,
UNITED STATES SOUTHERN COMMAND, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
General Wilhelm. Chairman Grassley, distinguished members
of the caucus, I am pleased to appear before you this morning
to discuss our activities in Colombia. This is a crucial issue
and it is one that we at Southern Command believe is of great
importance not only to Colombia and to the United States, but
to the entire hemisphere.
When I arrived at Southern Command 2 years ago, I described
Colombia as the most threatened nation in our hemisphere.
Today, I stand behind that assessment. In fact, over the past 2
years the situation in Colombia as it pertains to internal
security and stability, if anything, the threats have
intensified. Despite that, as I testify before you today, I am
cautiously optimistic about Colombia's future. I am optimistic
for three reasons.
The first is leadership. I have been in and out of Colombia
for a variety of military purposes for over a decade. The
current leadership in Colombia from the top down, from the
president through the military leadership, is the best, the
most ethical, and the most focused that I have ever worked
with. Dealing with people like General Tapias, General Serrano,
General Mora Rangel, the commander of the Army, General
Velasco, the commander of the Air Force, Admiral Garcia, the
commander of the Navy, I am dealing with top-flight
professionals. These are men with a deep and abiding sense of
ethics. They care about their troops and they know what they
are doing, and they have a vision for the future. So I am
encouraged by the leadership that I see.
The second thing that encourages me and causes me to have
some cautious optimism are recently battlefield successes
enjoyed by the armed forces. There can be no mistake about it.
We watch this very closely. My number was ten; there were ten
stinging tactical defeats in succession that were suffered by
Colombia's armed security forces. But then we saw the July
country-wide offensive initiated by the FARC, and there I saw
some not so subtle changes in the complexion of the
battlefield.
I visited Colombia. I talked in great length with all of
the military leaders. They presented me with convincing and
compelling evidence that in a significant number of
engagements, the military had prevailed. They prevailed for
good reasons. They corrected some of the mistakes that they
have made in the past. Their intelligence and intelligence-
sharing was much improved. I saw levels of cooperation and
coordination between the National Police and the armed forces
that I had not seen before. And, finally, I saw unparalleled
improvement in air/ground coordination, andthat made a major
difference during July.
I share the widely held view that the ultimate solution to
Colombia's internal turmoil lies at the negotiating table and
not on the battlefield. However, for negotiations to succeed, I
am convinced that the government must strengthen its
negotiating position and I believe that increased leverage at
the negotiating table can only be gained on Colombia's
battlefields.
The military component of Colombia's emerging national
strategy that both Rand and Brian have mentioned targets narco-
trafficking as its point of main effort on the military side. I
agree with this approach. The best and most efficient way to
eliminate the insurgents and para-militaries who are wreaking
havoc on 50 percent of the countryside is to eliminate their
support base. Deprived of the revenues and other support they
derive from their alliance with narco-traffickers, I believe
the insurgents will be weakened to the point where they will be
compelled to participate in meaningful negotiations that will
hopefully lead to peace and reconciliation. Denied an adversary
and with reassertion of government control over currently
disputed areas, I am equally convinced that the illegal para-
military groups will literally die on the vine.
Colombia is headed in the right direction, in my judgment,
but to reach their destination, they will need our continued
help. We must continue to assist Colombia in its efforts to
reform and revitalize its armed forces.
At the same time, we must assure that our own forces are
postured to do the job. Accurate and timely intelligence are
essential for success against the narco-traffickers and are a
key ingredient in our own force protection programs.
As we have drawn from Panama, as we must under the
provisions of the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, Southern Command
has been required to completely rebuild its theater
architecture from the ground up. We have come a long way in the
past year. U.S. Army South and Special Operations Command South
have completed their migration from Panama to Puerto Rico. We
will soon stand up a new Navy component headquarters at
Roosevelt Roads. We have merged the two joint interagency task
forces that conducted execution, planning, and supervision of
our counter-drug operations in both the transit and source
zones into a single integrated organization at Key West.
But this morning, from a counter-drug perspective, and I
think looking widely at our needs in Colombia, the single most
critical part of the architecture is not in place. Probably the
most priceless facility that we had on Panama was Howard Air
Force Base. That runway closed on the first of May of this
year. Previously, during any average year, we had somewhere in
the neighborhood of 21 aircraft on the runways and taxiways at
Howard Air Force Base, and every year, they flew about 2,000
detection, monitoring, tracking, and intelligence missions in
support of our important work in the Andean Ridge.
To compensate for the loss of Howard Air Force Base, we
identified a series of forward operating locations, host nation
airfields that we would simply negotiate access agreements to
and from there conduct the operations that we previously
conducted from Howard. Short-term agreements have been reached
with the Netherlands and we are operating out of Curacao and
Aruba in the Netherlands Antilles and we are closing on a final
long-term agreement with Ecuador for the air field at Manta.
The Manta air field is one that I would really like to
focus on because it is truly the linchpin in the fall
apparatus. Manta gives us the site that we need to provide
effective coverage of the crucial Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador
borders, all of Peru, and Bolivia, in simple terms, the deep
source where the drugs are grown and produced. It is the
linchpin of the apparatus.
We need $42.8 million in the next fiscal year and a total
of $122.5 million in fiscal year 2000 and 2001 to bring these
three FOLs on line, to give them the capacity, the operating,
and the safety features that they need to sustain operations at
roughly the same tempo that we conducted them previously from
Howard Air Force Base.
That request is going to committee, I believe, within the
next couple of weeks. Anything that the members of the caucus
could do to support this funding would be greatly appreciate
and, I think, would aid enormously--enormously--our shared
counter-drug efforts with Colombia and the other nations in the
source zone.
Mr. Chairman, in your letter of August 12, you highlighted
our policy goals in Colombia and the counter-insurgency versus
counter-narcotics issue. From a military perspective, I believe
our policy in Colombia has been clear and consistent. We have
focused exclusively on counter-narcotics assistance. The rules
are clearly understood by our troops. We are there to train,
equip, and provide technical assistance. We have strictly
avoided involvement in field tactical or advisory roles. The
direction of the new Colombian strategy, I am glad to say, is
consistent with this policy.
Our efforts in Colombia are vitally important. We are
profoundly grateful to this caucus for its interest and for
your support of our initiatives and I hope that we can count on
it in the important weeks and months ahead.
Mr. Chairman and members of the caucus, I look forward to
your questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of General Wilhelm follows:]
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Chairman Grassley. I will start with Mr. Beers, but I have
questions of other people, as well. What you have described
today, I think my point is to make a point and ask you if what
you have described today is supposed to make a difference. Now,
as I outlined in the previous chart that was there, we have had
a very ambitious eradication program in Colombia against coca,
but the result has been the doubling of the coca crop and
increases in the productivity so that Colombia will be
producing more today than last year or at any time in recent
history.
What I think I have heard you say in your statement, it
appears that our policy for Colombia is to be more of the same
and lots more of it, sort of a more of it squared, than what we
have had in the past. Then compare that with the history of
increased production we have. Do you describe that as success,
and can you tell us why we should have confidence that the plan
you have suggested today is going to make a difference?
Mr. Beers. Thank you, sir. Let me go into some more detail
in response to your question. Firstly, with respect to the
issue of aerial eradication, the numbers which you have
indicated in terms of the overall increase in cultivation of
coca in Colombia are our best estimates of that. What they do
not reflect is the detailed breakdown of the areas of
concentration of our counter-narcotics effort in eradication.
There are, or at least there used to be, three major
growing areas of coca in Colombia, the large blob on the right
known as Guaviare and the somewhat smaller blob in the south
central which actually is the merger of both Caqueta and
Putumayo growing areas. The principal area that the United
States has supported Colombia in eradicating has been in the
Guaviare area, and for the last two years, the overall levels
of cultivation in that area have declined.
With respect to the Caqueta area, we have begun a serious
effort really only last year, and the increase in the Caqueta
area, which is that section there, as opposed to this section
here, in that particular area, there was a less dramatic
increase than there had been before.
With respect to that southern finger, the Putumayo, that is
the area where the increase has been most expansive. That is
the area where we expect the increase to be even more dramatic
next year because that is the area that there has been no
counter-narcotics effort in, and that is the area that we are
looking to work with the government of Colombia in order to
take on, additional effort in Caqueta, more initial effort in
Putumayo.
That is the eradication portion only, and that would be an
expansion of the existing effort. But I think that there are
two very important additional elements in the strategy that I
was describing which are new, which are not extensions of
previous activities.
Firstly, the counter-narcotics battalion, which we have all
three described to you, is a new initiative on the part of the
Colombian military to become more involved in these activities.
All of that eradication effort that has occurred heretofore has
occurred with minimal or no involvement by the Colombian
military on the ground in order to secure the ground during and
after an eradication effort in order to sustain that
eradication effort. This is a new proposal on the part of the
Colombian government for which they are organizing forces in
order to take on this strategy.
Secondly, the Colombian air force, which has had some
success up on the north coast with air interdiction, is looking
now to move that effort to the south. Why is that different?
Because the effort in the north was devoted at going after
airplanes that had already acquired finished cocaine and were
flying north to deliver that cocaine to drop-off points for
further trans-shipment to the United States or Europe.
In the south, what we are looking at is going after the air
traffic of the narco-trafficking industry at a point in the
process where we are talking about the first and second levels
of processing, that is, to prevent the leaf from being sold, to
prevent the base and paste from being sold and moved to final
processing. If you think about the effort that was undertaken
in Peru over the last four or five years and the dramatic drop
in the price of coca leaf for farmers which caused the 50
percent decease in cocaine production in Peru, that is the
effort that we are looking to try to do similar work in
Colombia. This would represent a new departure on the part of
the Colombian government and we are working with them in order
to affect that.
We do not believe that any single effort, any single
strand, or any single tool in the counter-narcotics effort is,
by itself, enough. This is a joint strategy within Colombia. It
is a combined strategy with the United States. It is an effort
to use as many possible tools as possible in order to go after
the trafficking industry, and we think with the broader-gauged
and more comprehensive commitment on the part of the Colombian
government and our working together with them, that, yes, this
does stand an important, significant chance of making the
serious inroad in the trafficking industry in Colombia that you
and we and the American people all want. Thank you very much,
sir.
Chairman Grassley. Do I hear you say, then, assuming that
we kind of agree that we have had this dramatic increase in
cultivation and production, you are saying that the successes
that have been made in south central, and then my saying more
of the same, that that will have a parallel accomplishment in
other growing areas?
Mr. Beers. I believe, sir, that increasing some of the
things that we are already doing, together with the new
programs, is what will make the significant difference here.
What we have is a comprehensive program. What we had before was
a program that did not have the breadth and vision that this
program has, and that is why we are enormously appreciative of
the Colombian government's ability to pull together this
strategy and present it to us and why we want very much to work
with them.
Chairman Grassley. Senator Graham.
Senator Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You indicated, Mr.
Beers, that two of the principal elements of the Colombian plan
are the use of the military in drug eradication and shifting
air assets further south so that they would interdict the
process before crystallization and not after crystallization,
is that correct?
Mr. Beers. That is correct, sir.
Senator Graham. There is some evidence that one of the
contributors to the increased production in Colombia has been
the fact that there has been introduced a new strain of coca
plant which is more resistant and which also has a higher
overall yield of coca hydrochloride. Is that your information,
as well?
Mr. Beers. Yes, sir. We do not have the final figures on
the extent of that shift, but it is correct. We have seen
evidence and have been reporting it for the last several years,
that the higher-yielding variety of coca called e coca coca,
which is grown in Peru and Bolivia, appears now to have entered
into the Colombian cocaine equation, whereas before, they had a
much lower-yielding, roughly three-to-one ratio of coca, which
was called ipidu. So, yes, we are looking at not only the
increase in the overall hectorage of coca that is being grown,
but we are also looking at the likely increase in the yield
characteristics as we measure and translate that cultivation
into actual processed cocaine that will probably be available
in this coming year, that is, the 1999 estimate, which will be
available at the beginning of 2000.
Senator Graham. Since this new strain is a relatively new
introduction into Colombia, as you say, and we have already
seen almost a doubling of coca production in Colombia, what do
we anticipate that this new development in the agronomy of coca
production will mean in terms of volume?
Mr. Beers. Sir, in terms of the tactics of dealing with the
drug trafficking issue, this coca is still susceptible to
aerial eradication in the same way that the ipidu version was.
But in addition to that, we are also looking, as I mentioned,
about the introduction of ground forces to try to maintain the
control on the ground once the eradication has been undertaken
and to allow the government then to extend in the form of their
control the option of some kind of alternative economic
activity to the farmers who are currently drawn into that area
by the gold rush mentality created by the high profits that
come from the coca industry.
So we hope, in combination, to present them with a clear
deterrent for why they will not be able to take that coca to
market and with some alternative economic activity so that they
can consider other forms of economic work other than growing
coca.
Senator Graham. In addition to the focus on eradication and
air interdiction, what does the Colombian plan call for in
terms of attacking the crystalline labs where the coca paste is
converted into cocaine?
Mr. Beers. The Colombia national police will, with now the
support of the military, continue their effort to go after
those labs. We have several efforts to see if we cannot
identify those labs more effectively by national technical
means in addition to the normal human intelligence, which has
often been the way that we have discovered where those
laboratories are. But we believe that the additional presence
of Colombian military along with the police on the ground in
the region will help considerably in terms of going after those
labs.
If you were to look at the statistics that came out of the
effort of Colombian Task Force South, which was located at Tres
Esquinas and the operations that were conducted out of that
region for the last year, you would see a dramatic increase in
the number of labs that were taken down, and that is a direct
result of the increased presence of Colombian military and
police on the ground in that region. It becomes a lot more
difficult when the sanctuary is no longer a sanctuary to
operate with impugnity and lawlessness in the way that the
traffickers had been able to do before.
In addition to that, as I mentioned and others have
mentioned, the Colombian navy and marine corps have stood up an
important riverine force that will operate on the rivers in
this area, but more broadly, throughout Colombia. One of the
major activities that they will be looking at, in addition to
the air interdiction effort, will be to prevent the transit of
drugs and precursor chemicals over the riverine system in
southern Colombia. In addition to that, the Colombian national
police and the army will also be looking to dampen the flow of
precursor chemicals into this region.
There is one particular chemical, potassium permanganate,
which is part of a major interdiction effort on the part of the
Colombian government, to prevent its flow into the region,
because it is the one essential of all of the precursors that
cannot be substituted for.
But in addition to that, the Colombian national police and
military have been doing an important job in controlling that
flow so that we have discovered, they have discovered, that the
traffickers are now, in an effort to find acceptable chemicals,
beginning to use cement as a substitute for one of the
precursor chemicals in the region, so that General Serrano told
us recently that the amount of cement that appears to have been
going into the region is actually greater than the amount of
cement being used in the city of Bogota. So they have begun a
major effort to now control the flow of the common building
material of cement because they are using that as one of the
precursors. That is part of a broader effort at precursor
control in the region.
Senator Graham. With the increase in production of coca in
Colombia, has there been a commensurate increase in the number
of crystalline labs?
Mr. Beers. Sir, I do not have that figure for you, but I
will try to get it for you from the intelligence community.
Senator Graham. You indicated that we seem to have
increased the number of labs that we have been able to
eliminate. Do you have any sense of what percentage those
eliminations were of the total of operating labs?
Mr. Beers. No, sir, I do not, but I will get that for you,
also.
Senator Graham. I might say, just in conclusion, it has
seemed to me, and I defer to the judgment of people who know a
lot more about this business than I do, that the most
vulnerable point in the production of cocaine is at the
crystalline labs. That is where you have the smallest number of
sites which are critical to converting the relatively raw
product into a commercially salable product, and that that
would be a site that ought to get substantial attention in
terms of our effort to break down the chain of operations
necessary to produce this product that does so much evil to the
people of the world.
Mr. Beers. Yes, sir, I would agree with you, would that we
had perfect knowledge of where all those labs were located,
because you are absolutely right. That would be the funnel
point that would allow us the greatest success if we were able
to identify where they were located in their entirety. Thank
you, sir.
Chairman Grassley. Senator DeWine?
Senator DeWine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Beers,
just to kind of complete the picture, can you take Senator
Grassley's map and tell me where the DMZ zone is?
Mr. Beers. Yes, sir. It is located in this area, which
touches on the northern part of the Caqueta growing area and
the eastern tip of the Guaviare growing area. It is an area
about of that size there. It is not centered in any of the
major growing areas, but it is on the periphery of each of
those growing areas.
Senator DeWine. And just for the record, the area that you
just described and just showed us on the map, what percentage
of what Senator Grassley has labeled insurgent controlled area,
what percentage of that blue area would that have been, that
you described as the DMZ? Is that a fifth of it a fourth of it
or what is it?
Mr. Beers. No, sir. It is much smaller than that.
Senator DeWine. Much smaller than that?
Mr. Beers. Yes, sir.
Senator DeWine. What would you say it is?
Mr. Beers. We are talking about an area, based on the
Senator's blue circumscribed area, that is probably less than
ten percent of that area.
Senator DeWine. Thank you. General Wilhelm, I appreciate
your comments about Manta and the need for Manta and I want to
maybe zero in a little more on the need, as you perceive it,
for Manta and how that directly impacts our overall anti-drug
strategy in the region and how it impacts specifically on what
we intend to do in Colombia, if you could just go through that
in maybe a little bit more detail than you did. You touched on
it, and I understand that, but just in sort of layman's terms,
what difference does that make as far as what we can do to help
Colombia, which is the topic of this hearing?
General Wilhelm. Yes, Senator DeWine. First, I think the
most helpful way to discuss the forward operating locations is
to view them for what they are, which is a network. It is an
interdependent network. No one FOL by itself will adequately
answer our needs to conduct detection, monitoring, and tracking
and aerial reconnaissance missions in support of our counter-
drug efforts.
I will start, sir, with Curacao and Aruba and then talk a
minute about Central America and then close on Manta, which is
the most important FOL location, in my judgment, given the drug
threat that we face now.
First, Curacao and Aruba. Located where they are, adjacent
to Venezuela, those two locations provide us excellent coverage
of what I call the southern transit zone, the southern
Caribbean region, and the northern source zone, Venezuela and
northern Colombia.
Then we have identified a need for an FOL in Central
America. I will cover this very briefly. I think our needs
could be met from any of a variety of locations. My preferred
site is the Liberia air field in Costa Rica, but there is a
bilateral counter-drug and maritime agreement that needs to be
concluded before we can logically open this next negotiating
segment with Costa Rica.
But whatever FOL we end up selecting and negotiating in
Central America, it will provide coverage of Central America, a
large portion of the important eastern Pacific transit routes,
which we have not been covering adequately in recent years, and
it will also provide us overlapping coverage of a small portion
of the northern source zone, again, looking at the Colombia-
Venezuela portion, which brings us to Manta.
Manta provides us immediate access to the very important
Peru-Colombia-Ecuador border region where the cocaine
hydrochloride, the base is moved to laboratories for
refinement. It is a major movement vector for precursor
chemicals. From Manta and only from Manta can we get what I
call coverage of the deep source zone, which is the rest of the
world. I think we would be ill advised to pursue a Colombia-
only strategy.
We need to pay careful attention to the successes that we
have had in Peru and Bolivia and we need to sustain those
successes. I know that the caucus knows the numbers. Last year,
Peru reduced its production by 26 percent, Bolivia by 17
percent in terms of leaf, and in terms of base, about 25
percent in both countries. So we need to sustain our progress
there. From Manta and only from Manta can we reach down and
cover the deep southern portion of the source zone.
If you look at all of that in the aggregate, sir, at the
end of the day, from this network of FOLs, we will have far
better and more efficient coverage of the entire area of
interest from a counter-narcotics standpoint than we ever had
from Howard Air Force Base and at a considerable savings. The
annual cost of operating Howard Air Force Base in its last full
year of operations was $75.8 million. It will take us $122.5
million to develop the FOLs, as I mentioned earlier, to expand
their capacities, to improve their operating and safety
conditions to the point that we can conduct operations in the
frequency and intensity that we need to, $122.5 million over
two years, a one-time cost. Thereafter, our annual operating
costs, we estimate between about $14 and $18 million a year.
So when the structure is in place, over a ten-year span,
and I suspect we are looking at about a ten-year struggle here,
the FOLs would support our efforts at about 40 percent of the
straight-line costs that we would have incurred operating
Howard Air Force Base as a permanent facility.
So, sir, as a network of operating locations, a brief look
at some of the fiscal implications of what we are talking
about, and, of course, we do escape the sovereignty issues
because these remain host nation facilities and bases to which
we simply have access authorization.
Senator DeWine. General, how long would it take to get
Manta up?
General Wilhelm. Sir, we believe that we can do most of the
heavy hauling--to put it in very simple terms, we need to dump
about $30 million worth of concrete into that runway to make it
capable of taking our big airplanes. Big airplanes to us are
AWACs and tankers. Those are the long-reach, long-look
airplanes that we need to do the job in the deep-source zone.
Senator DeWine. It would take how long?
General Wilhelm. Sir, we can let those contracts and get
most of that done during fiscal year 2000.
Senator DeWine. What assurance do we have we get to stay
there?
General Wilhelm. I talked with Ambassador Rich Brown about
48 hours ago, sir. We have one final point on taxes to resolve
with the Ecuadorians and it looks as though we will either have
a ten-year agreement or a five-year agreement with a five-year
provision for automatic extension.
Senator DeWine. Thank you. Secretary Beers, is there any
reason for any optimism in regard to the peace process?
Mr. Beers. Sir, I----
Senator DeWine. Is there any good news?
Mr. Beers. I think that one of the important ways to look
at this is that this is not a short-term process and that time
horizons that are shorter than three or five years are
unrealistic with respect to the resolution. I am not aware of a
negotiation with an insurgent that took less time than that. I
think there were enormous expectations that were created when
President Pastrana was elected. I think we are in for the long,
slow haul.
So when you ask, am I optimistic, if you give me the
privilege of saying, with a longer time horizon, yes, and I
think that this strategy that the Colombian government has
presented represents a way to push the parties closer together
to resolving it, but it is not going to happen quickly.
Senator DeWine. My time is up. Thank you very much. Thank
you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Grassley. Senator Sessions.
Senator Sessions. Thank you very much. This is a very
troubling thing for me. I got involved as a young Federal
prosecutor prosecuting cocaine cases in the DEA and others in
the 1970s, and 12 years as United States Attorney on the Gulf
Coast and had some appreciation for what was happening. I read
The Underground Empire and all those books and all that stuff.
The things that you are saying today, Mr. Beers, Mr. Sheridan,
were said in this body 15 or 20 years ago. We are making
progress. We are going to do this. We have got a little
progress in Peru, 26 percent, 17 percent in Bolivia, reduction.
But there is an increase in Colombia that more than compensates
for that and that has been the pattern consistently.
Now, I am not sure how to deal with it, but I think we have
got to be honest about what is happening, and we are not going
to stop the drug problem in the United States by reducing or
stopping production in Colombia. That is not going to do it. It
is a component of it, if we can make progress, but it is not
going to deal with our problem. We have a demand that it will
be produced somewhere.
Mr. Sheridan, how much cocaine is consumed in the United
States in metric tons per year?
Mr. Sheridan. I would have to defer to General McCaffrey on
that. My sense is it is probably 300 or 400 tons a year.
Senator Sessions. Is that including what is seized or
actually consumed.
Mr. Sheridan. No. You said consumed in the United States.
Senator Sessions. Do you mean actually coming in, or
including that that is seized----
Mr. Sheridan. I can only give you rough orders of
magnitude. The best I can recall, the number is about 400 tons
or so, I think, enter the United States, give or take some, and
maybe 100 tons are then seized somewhere in the United States,
and maybe 300 tons are consumed, somewhere along those lines.
Senator Sessions. So it looks like Colombia will supply the
biggest part of that next year, with 250 metric tons.
Mr. Sheridan. Correct.
Mr. Beers. There is more than enough.
Senator Sessions. It is a very, very frustrating process
for me. And you have Colombia producing what percentage of our
heroin now?
Mr. Sheridan. I do not know, but it is a growing
percentage.
Senator Sessions. Is it not 60 or so percent, I believe, in
one of the----
Mr. Sheridan. Well, 60 or 70 percent is of the heroin that
is actually seized, although I think people would be careful to
say it does not necessarily reflect what is being consumed. In
other words, our law enforcement may have a bias towards being
more effective in seizing Colombian heroin than perhaps some
out of Southeast Asia or other places. But, clearly, increasing
amounts of Colombian heroin are being found in the United
States.
Senator Sessions. Mr. Sheridan, you said that the DEA is
not in the counter-insurgency business, and I believe, General
Wilhelm, you said our military support had been ``exclusively
on counter-narcotics assistance.''
General Wilhelm. That is correct. Yes, sir.
Senator Sessions. It seems to me, if we are going to lobby
Colombia to do something about producing cocaine, they need to
be able to do it, and it seems to me they have got to take
control of their country. I mean, Abraham Lincoln understood
that. You cannot have a big chunk of your country under Marxist
revolutionary control and be able to expect the country to be
able to do anything successfully, particularly when they are
involved in the narcotics business. That troubles me.
Is this the policy of the United States, Mr. Beers, and the
State Department, that we are not going to assist Colombia in
defeating the guerilla forces that are threatening its ability
to do what we ask in their own democracy?
Mr. Beers. Sir, what we are about and what our focus is is
on counter-narcotics, but that----
Senator Sessions. My question to you is----
Mr. Beers. Please, may I finish, sir?
Senator Sessions. My time is going to run out.
Mr. Beers. But that area is also insurgent. Where the
insurgents and the traffickers are together, our assistance
supports efforts to go after insurgents as well as traffickers
because there is no difference between insurgents operating in
those areas. So we will assist in that area.
The strategy, then, is to deprive the insurgents of their
resources. There are insurgents there. There are resources
there. This is an effort to go after the traffickers and the
insurgents where there is cultivation----
Senator Sessions. Do you agree with the General that
Colombia is not going to have any leverage at the negotiating
table until they start winning militarily some on the
battlefield?
Mr. Beers. That is the general view of this government,
sir.
Senator Sessions. And does this government have any plans
to assist a longtime ally of the United States, Colombia, in
this effort, to defeat the military insurgents that are in
Colombia?
Mr. Beers. As I have said, our authorization and our
strategy is counter-narcotics. It will also effectively reduce
the capabilities of the insurgents. It is their life blood.
Senator Sessions. I just think that is a real badproblem.
I think that my best judgment is that the first thing we need to do is
help Colombia win this civil war to reassert governmental control over
their country and then they can begin to make progress, and it seems to
me it is sort of ironic that the area that the insurgents control is
the very area where the major cultivation is, is that not true, Mr.
Sheridan?
Mr. Sheridan. Yes, and as Secretary Beers said, our
interests, our policy is very clear of supporting the Colombian
military, allowing it to operate in the narcotics areas,
particularly in the Putumayo and the Caqueta. In the course of
them doing counter-narcotics work, they will end up denying the
FARC the revenue that the FARC need to engage in their
insurgency.
Senator Sessions. I understand the DEA's position. As a
matter of fact, I think DEA is correct. DEA is not a political-
military organization. It is an anti-drug organization. You
have to maintain that as your priority. But I am surprised and
concerned that the policy of our military and our State
Department and our President is not to provide direct
assistance, where possible, to help Colombia defeat the Marxist
guerrillas that are threatening their----
Mr. Beers. Sir, this is their highest priority.
Mr. Sheridan. Senator, also, I am speaking for the
Department of Defense.
Senator Sessions. Excuse me.
Mr. Sheridan. I am speaking for Secretary Cohen today and I
can tell you, I have gotten very clear guidance from him. I
know where he is.
Senator Sessions. Enforcement policy, not DEA. I am sorry.
Mr. Sheridan. Right. He is strongly in favor of supporting
the Colombian military as it works in the counter-narcotics
area. We are not interested in a straight counter-insurgency
support program in Colombia, nor do we have any authorization
or appropriation of any funds from this Congress for that
purpose.
Senator Sessions. But is that the right policy? Who wants
to answer that? Is that the right policy?
Mr. Beers. Sir, that is the Colombians' policy.
General Wilhelm. This is, as much as anything else, an
operational question. Senator Sessions, that is a good question
and I think there is a reasonable answer to it. I have never
seen an insurgency quite like the one that we are observing in
Colombia right now. It is the only self-sustaining insurgency I
have ever seen. There is no Cuba in back of it. There is no
Soviet Union in back of it. It is this delicate marriage of
criminals, narcotraffickers, with insurgents. So it is kind of
a one-of-a-kind phenomenon.
I have always felt that one of the best ways to defeat an
enemy is not to take him on frontally, because you are going to
take a heck of a lot of casualties to do that. A much better
way is to cut his supply lines. The FARC's supply line are the
revenues that they get from the narcotraffickers, so if we can
help them defeat the narcotraffickers, dry up their cash flow,
which is exactly the commodity they use for recruitment, for
arms purchases, for the adaptive tactics and techniques they
have undertaken with the propane canisters, the full range of
activities they are involved in, I think the insurgency will
die on the vine. To me, this is a good military strategy. Cut
off their logistics lifeline and let the force die on the vine.
Senator Sessions. General Wilhelm, all I would say to you
is, we have been trying to dry up the money going into Colombia
from cocaine for over 20 years. That has been a goal not
achieved under any administration, and I am not sure you can
achieve that. I am not sure that we are going to be able to do
anything until they are defeated on the battlefield. But I
guess you have been there, you know, but those are just my
instincts about where we are. I do hope that we will not be so
persnickety about not providing aid that will help them
actually win militarily, and that would help fight narcotics, I
believe.
Mr. Chairman, I am sorry. My time is over.
Chairman Grassley. General Wilhelm, one of our main
concerns has to be for effective intelligence. General, could
you characterize your current situation as far as intelligence
collection is concerned and the resources necessary for that
and how your resources meet the needs?
General Wilhelm. Senator Grassley, I am in trouble. In
December of last year, I categorized our intelligence
surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in Southern
Command at the lowest measured readiness level, C-4. That is
where we are today. Just to make our plight perhaps a little
bit more measurable, we requested slightly in excess of 900
aerial sorties to paint the intelligence picture that we needed
of these narcotics producing regions. Our fill was less than
400 sorties, or at about a 44 percent fill rate.
I need help. I need it badly. I have no tactical assets
that are dedicated to my theater. The ARL, the airborne
reconnaissance low, an aircraft, of course, which we tragically
lost here about a month ago with a crew of five U.S. and two
Colombians on board, was designed and built for United States
Southern Command. I do not have a single one of them today, but
three of them are in Korea.
I am in urgent need of help on the intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance side. I think we are on the
cusp of elevating Colombia to Tier 1 Bravo for intelligence
collection, which will certainly increase our leverage to get
assets. But at this moment, that is probably the largest single
problem that I face, sir, always backwiring into the theater
architecture. That is why it is so important that the few
assets that I have be at the right locations, where they can
give me the densest possible coverage of the most important
areas. Hence, I keep bringing up the FOL structure and the
importance of Manta.
Chairman Grassley. Secretary Sheridan, you have outlined a
number of different projects that you currently have ongoing in
Colombia and several of these were funded through Section 1033
of the DoD appropriation bill. Are there any legislative
recommendations that you would make to Congress that would
allow your current projects in Colombia to be conducted more
effectively?
Mr. Sheridan. For the moment, Senator, I think we are fine.
Clearly, the 1033 authority which allows us to buy and transfer
equipment, something that in the past the Congress had not been
willing to provide for us, has been a help. It has a cap in any
one particular year of $20 million. We are bumping up against
that cap. I think for the moment, we are okay, but as we come
around perhaps with next year's authorization bill, at that
point, we may come and ask for that cap to be raised from $20
million to some higher number. But for the moment, I think we
have theauthority from Congress to do the things that we are
being asked to do.
Chairman Grassley. Would you suggest how raising the cap,
if you asked for that to be done, would affect your current
policy options?
Mr. Sheridan. It would not. It would allow us, though, to
provide more equipment to those riverine forces, which is what
the authority was intended to do.
Chairman Grassley. Then my last question would be to
Secretary Beers. I do not know whether it is a point or a
question, but I would ask you to respond either way. You have
suggested an ongoing policy review. I do not have any argument
with that.
But I guess I would have argument with that if it does not
go beyond policy review, because it seems to me that we have to
do better than just policy review. If this is a review, can we
expect to see a policy come out of it? Will we be seeing that
before we see a wish list of things that we would do if we
appropriate money? It is already going on in the
administration, talk about requesting a supplemental for
Colombia, so would we see something more than just a project
list or a grab bag of goods and services that it would be used
for? I said in my opening comment, it seems to me very
important that we have a policy before we go ahead and make
these decisions to spend more money.
Mr. Beers. Yes, sir. We have been engaging in this review
and the discussions with the Colombian government for the
express purpose of having a policy before we came to resource
decisions. There were some indications of discussions of
numbers, in part derivative of the Colombian visit up here in
July with a list of equipment that they were interested in and
some indications with respect to the Republican Drug Caucus in
the House and with respect to General McCaffrey's documents
that were circulated.
But I can tell you, having participated in the
deliberations within the administration, that the focus has
been since mid-July on the development of a clear,
comprehensive strategy for presentation and discussion with the
Congress of the United States and that that was the intent of
the President's response to the Speaker and the Majority Leader
and that is the intent of the administration, to present you
all with a policy proposal, folding in the Colombian strategy,
which has got to be the centerpiece of that. We are not doing
this by ourselves. We are not doing this alone. Then, if that
yields issues or implications that have resources, then we will
look at that in association with the Congress, as is
appropriate.
Chairman Grassley. Thank you. I will call on Senator
Graham. I, and maybe other members, I, for sure, will have some
questions that I want to submit for answer in writing, but I do
not want to prolong this meeting longer than necessary. Senator
Graham?
Senator Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will heed
your advice and may also submit some questions in writing.
Let me pursue three issues. One, General Wilhelm, relative
to intelligence and surveillance capabilities, in April, I
talked to another one of your Central Command brethren who
expressed similar concern about intelligence surveillance, but
he thought that it was episodic, that it was a function of the
war in the Balkans and that there had been a diversion of
resources for that purpose. Is your situation an episode or is
this a systemic problem of adequate intelligence surveillance?
General Wilhelm. Senator Graham, it is a little bit of
both, but I think at Southern Command, it leans a little bit
more toward the systemic side. We have seen a steady draw-down
of the resources that are available to this theater and it is
not only the airborne platforms that everybody competes for. We
had an intelligence brigade, the 470th, the military
intelligence brigade that was active in our theater that has
been stood down. A lot of our ground signals intelligence sites
have been closed. So it is not just airborne platforms.
Also, the counter-drug mission, as I know this caucus is
well aware, the global military forces policy is broken down
into four increments and counter-drug is number four of four.
So three other things get filled before ours, and so we suffer
the kinds of losses that General Zeni talked to you about when
Bosnia and Kosovo heat up and they draw off these low-density,
high-demand assets that all the CINCs need. So ours is partly a
function of world events and partly systemic.
Senator Graham. In the budget request that General
McCaffrey has presented us, does he adequately address the
issue of intelligence resources for this anti-drug campaign?
General Wilhelm. Senator Graham, I have got to be honest
with you. I will have to go back and take another look at the
resource outlines that General McCaffrey provided. If I could
take that for the record, I would like to review that again. I
know roughly where the money is, but I will need to take a look
at that, if you do not mind, sir.
Senator Graham. Fine. Mr. Beers, in the Colombian plan
that has just been presented, what does it do in terms of
internal reform of the Colombian institutions, the military and
the police, which will carry the bulk of the responsibility? As
an example, there has been concern that there is a policy in
Colombia that if you are a high school graduate, you cannot be
used in combat, and that has substantially reduced the number
of potential combatants within the Colombian military. Does the
plan that has recently been submitted deal with that or other
institutional reforms?
Mr. Beers. Let me let Mr. Sheridan answer the military
portion but take the opportunity to also expand a little bit on
the judicial side. The plan discusses both. On the judicial
side, there is a major reform effort that is partially underway
that would be accelerated as a result of this plan which would
go after dealing with some general problems with the Colombian
judicial system as they transition from the Napoleonic code to
something more like the English system with oral testimony.
In addition to that, there is a major anti-corruption
effort that they are planning on undertaking and a general
policy to deal with human rights abuses across the board, as
well as efforts to go after assets of traffickers and put them
back into the public treasury, as well as efforts to disrupt
and dismantle the trafficking organizations. This is a major
component of their plan and I appreciate you giving me the
opportunity to stress that important element.
Brian.
Mr. Sheridan. On the military reform side, as I said in my
opening comments, former Minister Ureda and then current
Minister Ramirez and General Tapias have shown us awillingness
and a recognition of the need to reform the Colombian armed forces,
which for us is very refreshing and, we think, needed. They have
already taken some steps. In our recent discussions with them on the
development of their strategy, they have committed themselves to taking
more. I would anticipate over the next few months we will work with
them in helping them develop further ideas for their restructuring and
reform.
As I also said earlier, the Colombian military has made
dramatic progress on human rights. In fact, very recently, we
just had several senior military officials cashiered on human
rights grounds. So General Tapias gets it. The leadership gets
it. Reported human rights violations which are attributed to
the military by NGOs have plummeted over the last few years.
They just passed a military judicial reform bill in their
congress this past summer. So we are seeing real progress in
those areas and we are seeing progress in their willingness to
restructure thier military to make them more effective.
I think General Wilhelm can comment on the bachalarias,
which is what you referred to.
General Wilhelm. Yes, Senator, and I think this may get
somewhat to some of the points that Senator Sessions was
referring to as Colombia reaches out and strives to regain
control of its own territory.
Colombia has got a big army, about 122,000. They have got a
big national police force, about 104,000. I go along with
Senator DeWine's assessment of the overall strength of the
insurgents, about 20,000. So they have the ten-to-one ratio
that we commonly refer to that you need to defeat an insurgent
force, but you need the right army to do that.
Your point on the bachalarias, Senator Graham, is spot on.
As best I can determine, though, the number is a little bit
imprecise. Somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000 members of that
122,000-man army, by virtue of their education level, were, by
law, exempted from combat operations. That is the wrong kind of
army.
As Brian mentioned, during his tenure, Minister of Defense
Rodrigo Ureda, before he stood down, developed a personal goal
of really taking a tight comb to the structure of the armed
forces and his goal was to move 15,000 troops per year out of
these non-productive capacities, this distorted tooth-to-tail
ratio, and put them out in the interior where they were needed
to wrest control of the countryside from the insurgents. He
viewed that as a three-year proposition, which, if carried
through, obviously, to completion, would put 45,000 more troops
with their fingers on triggers instead of their feet on
overpasses.
So this is very, very much a part of the reform and
restructuring efforts that are underway in Colombia right now,
and Minister Ureda's vision has been adopted by Minister
Ramirez, the new Minister of Defense.
Senator Graham. My time is up, but I will submit a written
question which will basically ask what does the United States
military, after its long association with the Colombian
military, consider to be the most urgent reforms for the
Colombian military to reach the level of efficiency to be able
to carry out the mission that it has committed to? Second, to
what degree does the plan that was submitted this week meet
those diagnosed needs? And third, is there any U.S. role in
seeing that those prescriptions are effectively applied?
Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Senator Graham.
Senator DeWine.
Senator DeWine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, you
make, I think, a very compelling and very good point, a very
interesting point, when you talk about SOUTHCOM's intelligence
assets, that they have been depleted to support ongoing
missions in other parts of the world. It seems to me, and this
is a comment and you can comment on it if you would like, or if
you want to pass, that is fine, it seems to me that this is the
world we live in today and that we face a lack of depth in
regard to these assets.
Maybe as we look at where we go into the next century, we
need to be beefing these assets up, because it seems to me they
are always going to be needed somewhere in the world. There is
going to be some crisis or someplace where they are needed, and
if we are serious about having any of these assets available or
significant assets available or enough assets available for
anti-drug efforts, that we probably need to add to the depth of
these and we need to look at this from a long-term point of
view. Do you want to comment on that or not?
General Wilhelm. Senator, I think if--well, I will be bold
enough to speak, because I talk with them all the time, with a
number of my fellow CINCs. I think they all feel the pinch of
these assets that we call low-density, high-demand, and we
would like to see the pool of resources deepened.
The examples are many. One of the examples that comes to
mind that is not part and parcel of my normal theater business
is the aged EA-6B, our sole remaining electronic combat
aircraft, which really needs to precede every tactical strike
force, and that is a hard-pressed asset.
We look at Rivet Joint. I have Senior Scout, the aircraft
that really paint the battlefield picture for us. These are
assets that I think we all have a compelling need for and they
do not necessarily always correlate precisely to what we need
to fight a major regional contingency. It is the rest of the
world that we have to address, developing regions, places where
we are performing some of these less traditional missions.
So, yes, sir, I think we are probably all in agreement on
that, and I believe that there are some fairly purposeful steps
underway to try to deepen the asset pool so that we can better
meet the CINCs' requirements for these assets.
Senator DeWine. Let me address a question to any of the
members of the panel who would like to respond to it. Some of
you have already touched upon this, but I want to talk a little
bit about the regional threat that this ongoing crisis in
Colombia poses. The FARC constantly infiltrates the Darien
Province, for example, in Panama. It just goes on and on nad
on. They may be responsible for recent kidnappings inside
Ecuador. Another example, the head of the Colombian
paramilitaries has threatened Panama and Venezuela.
How would you describe for the American people the
significance of what is going on in Colombia, besides the drug
problem and its impact on the United States and besides its
impact on Colombia? What is its impact on the region,
potentially?
Mr. Beers. I will take a start, but I think that all my
colleagues are probably going to want to contribute to that
question. Sir, I think you have painted an accurate picture of
the concerns that we all share, which is that, without making
too big an issue about how this might expand,you have painted
three adjacent countries who currently are experiencing some
dislocations or problems that stem directly from the uncertainty and
instability that is occurring in certain areas in Colombia. That is
part of the reason the government wants to do something about it, and
from our own national security perspective, with respect to drug
trafficking and democratic stability in the region, why we would like
to do something about it.
It is an issue that requires focus and discipline in terms
of how we think about the problem and how we approach it and
the kinds of resources and strategies that we put against it.
We do not have any magic solutions, but it is pretty clear to
all of us that we are going to have to deal with these problems
in the adjacent areas just as much as we are going to have to
deal with the problems that directly affect us in Colombia.
Mr. Sheridan. I would just say, Senator, that trying to
characterize the regional impact in some ways is similar to
trying to characterize the internal situation, where the
difficulty for people working the problem is in trying to
strike the right balance and understanding what is going on,
because it is very complicated.
On the one hand, I think there is a recognition--the FARC
have been around since 1966. There has been a recent spate of
press coverage. I think some people pick up the newspaper and
they say, my God, what is going on in Colombia today? It is
going to fall apart tomorrow. That is one extreme. But the
other extreme, I think equally dangerous, is for the long-time
Colombia watchers who say, do not worry about it. This has been
going on for so long.
We are kind of trying to understand and look at the
situation and understand what is the degree of the slope here.
From my perspective, when you talk to the intelligence people
and look at the longer-term trends, what you see is that the
FARC today is bigger than it has ever been. It operates in more
provinces than it has ever operated in before. It conducts more
complicated military operations than it has ever conducted
before. But then there is the day-in/day-out tactical victories
and tactical defeats.
So from my perspective, Bogota is not threatened tomorrow,
but on the other hand, there is clearly something going on with
the growing capabilities of the FARC. When you look at it
regionally, the FARC have been using the Darien Province as an
R&R location for years and years. I remember when I first came
to this job about 6\1/2\ years ago, in one day, the FARC wiped
out a whole Ecuadorian riverine unit. So they have been using
northern Ecuador and have been familiar with that for quite a
while.
So, again, it is trying to understand what is new here and
what has been going on for quite a while, but I would say, as
the situation in Colombia goes, so will go the regional threat,
and clearly, I think, the neighboring countries, it is
appropriate for them to focus on their border areas. Virtually
all of them are very inaccessible jungle areas, extremely hard
for those governments to get at, and in many cases, there is
not a whole lot going on out there except for jungles and
guerrillas.
Senator DeWine. General.
General Wilhelm. Sir, as you would appreciate, I spend a
lot of time with the militaries from the five nations that do
border Colombia and it has been very interesting over the last
24 months. When I go to Caracas, Venezuela, right now, the
topic of greatest interest is Colombia. Ditto, Brazil. I was in
Brasilia about two weeks ago.
I refer to it as a spreading stain. I think the sensitivity
of the surrounding countries to the situation in Colombia has
changed. It has intensified. Just sort of anecdotally, looking
very, very quickly at what is happening in the region on any
given day, Venezuela will have about 10,000 troops along the
Putumayo River, which establishes its border with Colombia. It
is very interesting. I have visited most of the outposts. About
80 percent of the people living on the Venezuelan side of the
river are Colombians, so it is a displaced population.
Peru and Ecuador for a considerable period of time were
really denied much of an opportunity to do much about the
situation on their border because they were fixated on each
other. With the signing of the peace accords in Brasilia in
October of last year, both countries are now concentrating
their military forces near the border to limit incursions
there.
Brazil is very important. For a long time, I think Brazil
was essentially in kind of a denial mode. That is certainly not
what I see at all in Brasilia now. A laboratory was destroyed
on the Brazilian side of the border, which I believe had an
annual output capacity of about ten metric tons. That is big
drug business. Brazil is investing $1.4 billion in the Amazon
surveillance system so that they can get a series of both
airborne, ground, fixed, and mobile radars and sensors to
better control and surveil the Amazonis Province, which is very
important to them.
Brian did a good job of describing the situation in the
Darien Province of southern Panama. Panama, of course, with no
military after Just Cause, really is left with public forces
which are not configured to deal with the kind of threats that
the violations of sovereignty posed by the FARC present to
them.
So it affects each and every one of the surrounding nations
to some extent in varying and differing ways, but the concern
level, I will tell you, sir, is up significantly.
Senator DeWine. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Grassley. Senator Sessions.
Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did notice in
the recent New York Times article that despite their early
hopes for Pastrana, however, U.S. officials generally described
his efforts to negotiate with the guerrillas as a failure that
has left the insurgents stronger and more defined. Without
going into too much detail, I think you have agreed that the
insurgents are stronger and this negotiation may not have been
helpful.
General Wilhelm, is it not true, when you are asking an
infantry company to get out and put their life on the line to
confront a military force, that they need to know that the
leadership is committed to victory and that it can undermine
the effectiveness of any unit if the leadership at the top is
not perceived as committed?
General Wilhelm. Senator Sessions, you could not be more
correct. We have events in the last 30 years in our own
history, I think, that bear that out completely. You have just
expressed a sentiment that, quite frankly, was alive and well
in Colombia fairly recently.
I can remember very, very well talking to an old friend
shortly after I took command of Southern Command, a general--
name is not important--in the Colombian armed forces, and he
said, do you know what our problem is? And I said, what is
that? He said, the army is at war and the country is not.
I think a lot of that is changing, sir, and I think a lot
of it is changing because of the activities of the FARC. It is
hard to ignore the kidnapping of an entire church congregation
in Cali. It is hard to ignore the hijacking of an Avianca
airliner. It is hard to ignore the kidnapping of three U.S.
nationals and then transporting them across a river and
shooting them in the back of the head.
I think the reality of this struggle is settling in on the
Colombian population at large and I detect a spirit in the
armed forces that this is a shared enterprise. They believe
that the president is with them. I think they believe that the
national leadership is with them.
So I have seen some changes over the last 24 months, sir,
and maybe they will not produce results tomorrow, but looking
to the longer term, I think they probably will. I think we will
see a mobilization of national will, but I think the
mobilization of national will will also be tied to an increase
in national confidence. That is why I drew some optimism from
the performance of the military during the July offensive and I
hope they can sustain that kind of performance.
Senator Sessions. I recall one time that Henry Kissinger
said that nothing clears the mind so well as the absence of
alternatives, and I just do not see how Colombia has an
alternative. They have got to get themselves together and they
have got to put forth a military force that is effective and do
something about the drugs in the process. While I would tend to
agree that it would be very damaging to the narco-rebels if we
could reduce their money, historically, I am not sure that is
going to be happening. I think it is going to be almost
together, the military and anti-narcotics, to defeat them.
It would seem to me difficult, as you have described this
group more as outlaws, extortionists, not your traditional
groups, it would be even harder to negotiate with a group like
that, to justify negotiating with a group like that. If you
were dealing with a group of ethnic people who wanted more
autonomy for their region, that is one thing. But if we are
dealing with nothing more than people with a Marxist history
and a narcotics agenda, it seems to me even more difficult.
So I would encourage the people of Colombia to come
together effectively and do that. Can we help without becoming
involved, General Wilhelm? Can we help, effectively, their
military to strengthen itself?
General Wilhelm. Senator Sessions, I think we can, and
honestly, sir, I think we are. Right today in Tolomida,
Colombia, there are 621 troops in training right now. This is
the last increment of this counter-drug battalion that we
started building last April. We trained 317 troops in the first
increment, 621 now. So this is a battalion that is a third
again the size of the traditional Colombian army battalion.
It has got organic indirect fire capabilities, organic
reconnaissance, it has got an organic medical capability, it
has got civil affairs capability, psychological operations
capability. In simple terms, it is a full-up round. It has been
designed from the ground floor to work effectively with the
Colombian national police and we are helping with this unit,
sir, because it is focused on the counter-drug mission.
The Colombian army is not sitting on its hands. They have
other organizations, counter-insurgency or counter-guerilla
battalions, which they have trained on their own hook.
My thought, and I think I am correct, is that once the
Colombian military leadership has the opportunity to observe
this first CD battalion in operation--and sir, they have
already told me, next year, we want to expand this to a CD
brigade--I think we are going to have helped them create the
prototype around which they will redesign the rest of their
armed forces. Again, the dedicated counter-insurgency force,
internal problem to Colombia, is theirs to contend with. We are
providing the training, equipment, and monetary support to
build the CD battalion. But I think a lot of what we are doing
is going to find transferrence to the rest of the force.
Senator Sessions. Mr. Beers, I have only been in this body
a little over two-and-a-half years, so I do not pretend to
understand the ways of all our government, particularly the
State Department, but is there some line here we are talking
about? If we assist the military beyond just counter-narcotics,
is that some sort of line we have crossed that makes us
nervous?
Mr. Beers. Sir, with respect to the authorities of the
bureau that I am in charge of, we have authorities that are
counter-narcotics and that is what I do and I do not do
counter-insurgency. But the Department as a whole has come to
this conclusion. That is an internal issue for the government
of Colombia. We will help them on the counter-narcotics side,
including where it extends to the FARC who are acting as
narcotraffickers. But, yes, sir, as a policy perspective, we
are not of the view that we should involve ourselves directly
in the insurgency. So it is a policy decision.
Senator Sessions. I certainly do not want to have American
troops in Colombia now fighting a war, but I think, to me,
counter-narcotics and counter-guerilla is one in the same and
if we can provide, sell, supply the kind of hardware or
training that they need that could help them win this war, we
would all be better off. It is troubling, and I think there is
uniform agreement--you can tell it from the nations around
Colombia--we are worried right now. Things may not be falling
apart in a total disaster. It is not a time to panic, but it is
time to be concerned. Ultimately, I believe this matter will be
decided on the battlefield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Grassley. I hope we can look back at this period
of time and Congressional and administrative deliberation of
this issue as it relates to Colombia and the President
Pastrana's coming to this country as a point in time when some
policy changes and efforts on our part have pointed to a
dramatic change in the situation in Colombia and the export of
cocaine and other illegal drugs to our country.
Before I dismiss you, I would like to make a point, Mr.
Beers and Mr. Sheridan. As you are aware, and I did give a
speech on this on the floor of the Senate a few weeks ago, I
have repeatedly asked the administration for a detailed
planabout the helicopters that are in Mexico. The whole helicopter
issue in Mexico has been a great embarrassment and the lack of a plan
seems to deepen that embarrassment. I am going to ask one last time,
and not ask you to comment now but just to get a plan up here on how
these helicopters are to be used, and I hope that we could have that
within a couple of weeks.
In regard to this hearing, this has been a very worthwhile
discussion with you three leaders in this area. We thank you
very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here
with us and to follow up with us on the questions that this
panel will submit in writing. As I have indicated, I hope that
the things that have been expressed here by all of you, both
what is hoped for in the future as well as what you see
developing now, makes a significant difference and a follow-
through will help with that. Thank you all very much.
Mr. Beers. Thank you.
Mr. Sheridan. Thank you.
General Wilhelm. Thank you.
Chairman Grassley. Our next panel and last panel consists
of Bernard Aronson and Michael Shifter.
Mr. Aronson is Chairman of ACON Investments and New Bridge
Andean Partners here in Washington. He was Assistant Secretary
of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1989 to 1993 and was
the principal coordinator of U.S. foreign policy and the
principal foreign policy advisor to the President and Secretary
of State on relations with Latin America and the Caribbean
Basin.
Michael Shifter is currently a senior fellow for the Inter-
American Dialogue here in Washington. There, he develops and
implements strategies in the area of democratic development and
human rights. He served previously as Director of Latin
American and Caribbean Programs at the National Endowment for
Democracy and the Ford Foundation's Governance and Human Rights
Program in South America.
I thank you both for being present for this meeting and
discussion and for your contribution in advance. I will start
with you, Mr. Aronson.
STATEMENT OF BERNARD ARONSON, CHAIRMAN, ACON INVESTMENTS, AND
FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Aronson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. In the
interest of time, I will submit my statement for the record and
try to summarize it.
First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and Senator
Graham and other members of the caucus for inviting us, but
more importantly, for holding this hearing. We usually get in
trouble in Latin America because we fail to pay attention to
problems there until they become crises and then we seek to do
something about it, and usually the policy choices we face are
narrow and difficult. So I think this hearing is very timely
and I think, to some extent, we have done that with regard to
Colombia as a country, both the administration and Congress,
but it is not too late, so it is important that we pay
attention.
I guess the only other point I would make, and this is sort
of an old mantra with me, is that I would make an appeal to you
and your colleagues to try to maintain what this hearing has
shown, which is a bipartisan approach to this policy, because
when an issue in Latin America becomes polarized along partisan
lines, we just undermine the effectiveness of the United
States. We should have learned that lesson in Central America.
When we came together in 1989 around a bipartisan policy, we
were able to end the war in El Salvador, to democratize
Nicaragua, set the stage for a peace process in Guatemala.
Your focus in the narcotics threat, but I think, as has
been evident in this discussion, you cannot separate the issue
of counter-narcotics from the issue of the war and the larger
crisis in Colombia, and that crisis involves many, many issues.
It involves corruption. It involves vast areas of the Colombian
state in which the government has no presence. It involves
civil insurgencies whose roots go far beyond the drug trade and
have deep social and political background that we need to
understand.
I guess one point I would make to the Congress and to this
caucus is if we are going to help Colombians resolve these
problems, we are going to have to stay the course and remain
engaged for many years, over many administrations, and over
many Congresses.
Some of this testimony sounds very familiar to me. I was up
here on this side ten years ago saying some of the same things.
Senator Graham was involved in the first Andean strategy and
one of the things that troubles me is that we tend to charge up
the hill and then back down again when we do not solve our
problems quickly. If you look at the funding for counter-
narcotics in the Andean region, we ramped it up in 1990, 1991,
1992, and then it ramped back down again. Now we are going to
ramp it back up.
But these problems are not going to be solved in a budget
or Congressional cycle and we are going to have to develop a
long-term strategy that hopefully has a bipartisan underpinning
and then stay the course and show some patience, which we are
not always so good as Americans in doing.
With regard to the specific issues that you are discussing,
let me make a few recommendations, and I will try to be brief.
First of all, all those who said that we must help the
Colombian state strengthen its authority and capacity to defend
the rule of law are correct, but the first underpinning of that
is to help Colombia economically. Historically, this is the
best managed economy in Latin America. This is the only economy
in Latin America or South America that did not have to
renegotiate its debt during the debt crisis. This country had
50 years of straight real growth, a very productive
entrepreneurial class and hard working people.
But today, it is in the deepest recession of its modern
history. There is huge unemployment. Capital is fleeing. They
have had to devalue their currency twice. Most of that is not
of the making of this government. They inherited a mess from
the Samper government, which deliberately spent money to buy
political support. They suffered the spilloverof the Asian
crisis, the Russian default, the Brazilian crisis. Coffee prices are at
an historic low.
The economic team that President Pastrana has in place is a
very good team. They have done a lot of the right things as far
as reform, but they need some support. So I would urge the
caucus and the Congress to join with the administration in
signaling to the IMF and the World Bank and the IDB that this
is a country that needs support now. They are assembling a
support package with the IMF as we speak. I think they have
earned it, but I think it would be very helpful if Congress
sent those institutions a message that now is the time to help
Colombia economically.
A second signal that I think would be very helpful to
Colombia, particularly to the business class, which is taking
its sons and daughters out and its capital out and is leaving
the country, would be to join with the administration in a
bipartisan manner and signal that the Congress is prepared to
renew the Andean trade preference initiative. As you remember--
I think both of you were here at the time if my memory serves
me--we passed that legislation in 1991 specifically to help
these countries fight the drug trade and to give them economic
alternatives as they made war on the coca production and heroin
production. It has been very important to Colombia. It is going
to expire in the year 2001 and it would send a very good signal
of confidence to the Colombian people and nation if we could
get our act together early enough to start renewing that and it
would be very nice if President Pastrana could deliver that
news.
Secondly, I hope we do not become polarized in a debate
over whether we should support negotiations or help Colombians
fight the war better and give their army support. We need to do
both. I think the United States should make it clear that we
unequivocally support a negotiated solution to this war if it
is possible. That is what the vast majority of Colombians want
and I believe at the end of the day that will be how this war
will end, not necessarily immediately, and we should make it
clear that the door to negotiations is open as far as the
United States is concerned.
If the guerrillas have legitimate political, social,
economic, and other issues, which they do, then they should be
put on the table. But if they do not negotiate seriously, if
they use violence, extortion, terror, kidnapping to make war in
Colombian society, then the United States and the democratic
community will help Colombia defend itself.
Therefore, I think we need what we have been talking about
today, which is a long-term program to help the Colombian armed
forces modernize itself. And again, I would strongly urge that
we take a long view. This is not going to happen in a budget
cycle. It is going to have to be over many years and many
Congresses and many budget cycles, and the worst thing we could
do to Colombia is to ramp up a program and raise expectations
and then lose interest or lose will and change our mind and
then go back and cut the legs out from under them. We have done
that in the past. I hope we do not repeat that mistake.
I think that we must make it clear that that commitment to
help Colombia modernize its armed forces is conditioned on
strict human rights standards. They must continue, as President
Pastrana has done with great courage, to root out officers who
are abusers of human rights or tolerate that from the armed
forces and have to do something about the paramilitaries.
The paramilitaries are part of the problem in Colombia, not
part of the solution. Three-quarters of the human rights abuses
are attributed to them. They murder priests. They murder
journalists. They murder human rights workers. And they carry
out a scorched earth policy in guerilla territory to just kill
anybody who is suspected of being a sympathizer.
Now, in the short run, that does drive the guerrillas out
of the territory. It has also produced more than a million
internal refugees in this country, and where they go is
straight into the arms of the FARC and the ELN and the
paramilitaries are a very good recruiting tool for the
guerrillas. So I think we need to strictly condition our long-
term support for the armed forces on human rights standards,
and particularly doing something about the paramilitaries.
Fourth, it is good that the United States Government is
paying attention to this country in a serious way, but we
cannot be the sole source of support. We need to rally and
mobilize an international coalition of democratic nations,
multilateral institutions, and nongovernmental organizations to
support Colombia. That should include the democratic nations of
Latin America, Canada, Europe, Japan. It should include the
United Nations and the OAS. It should include the multilateral
development banks. It should include nongovernmental
organizations. They need to support Colombia in the peace
process, to talk to all the parties, just as we did vis-a-vis
El Salvador. They also need to be mobilized to help this
country defend itself should negotiations fail.
We cannot do this alone, nor should we. Britain has deep
economic interests in this country through British Petroleum.
All of the European countries have cocaine and heroin imports
that originate in Colombia. We need to do more to bring other
nations into this effort and Colombia needs more support from
other nations, as well.
Fifth, and this is probably not a popular thing to say, but
I learned something from the process in El Salvador. I think we
should continue to keep channels open and talk to the
guerrillas. They are everything that was said about them in
this hearing. They are not boy scouts. The guerrillas started
out in this process 40 years ago at a time of political
struggle in this country. It had nothing to do with drugs. They
have taken advantage of the drug trade, there is no question
about that. They are complicit in the drug trade, there is no
question about that.
But we and others have to bring these guerrillas out of the
world in which they are living, which is 50 years old, into the
modern world and begin to find ways to pressure, entice,
cajole, and talk to them and get them into the bargaining
process. We did that with the FMLN at a time when it was very
risky. It was not popular. It made a difference in El Salvador.
It was not popular to talk to the PLO when we started to do so,
but today, they are part of the peace process. It was not
popular to talk to the IRA, but they are part of the peace
process.
We need to do that particularly as we gear up this effort,
because the FARC believes the United States is going to war
with it and half of Colombia and half of Latin America think we
are going to intervene. I think it isimportant that they
understand why we are doing what we are doing. We are doing what we are
doing because they do not negotiate seriously and because they are
complicit in the drug trade. But they also ought to understand, as we
demonstrate in El Salvador, that if their agenda is real political,
social, economic reform, that the United States can be an ally, because
we are at risk in this country and we have lots of targets there and
this guerilla group is very capable of making life very, very difficult
for Americans.
A corollary to that is that I would urge that as we gear
up, that we limit the on-the-ground involvement of American
forces to the minimum necessary to aid and train and provide
intelligence to the armed forces, as we did in El Salvador. I
do not think we should be a big target here and I think we
should make it clear that this is a Colombian effort and the
United States is there to provide support.
A final point is I think we need to be clear about the
relationship between the guerrillas and the narcotraffickers
and not be confused about this. There is no question that the
guerrillas sustain themselves through narcotrafficking activity
and also extortion from the pipelines, the ELN does, and that
in some cases, they are directly involved in the trade. But the
cartels and the mafias that run the drug trade in Colombia are
not the ELN and the FARC.
In many ways, the traffickers benefit from the war. The war
undermines the strength of the government. It diverts the army
and the police. It saps the legitimacy of Colombian
institutions. The war is the sea in which the traffickers swim
and the best blow we could strike against the narcotraffickers
is to bring the war to an end.
Now, it may be the case, and it probably is the case, that
until the guerrillas understand that the option on the
battlefield is not open to them, they may not negotiate
seriously. I understand that in these kind of conflicts, the
correlation of forces on the battlefield has a lot to do with
progress at the negotiating table. But it ought to be our
national goal to help end this war ultimately through
negotiations, and our modernization of the armed forces should
be a tool to pursue that. We should not kid ourselves. The FARC
and the ELN could disappear tomorrow. We would still have home-
grown Colombian cartels and mafias running cocaine and heroin
into this country.
The last point is really the point that I began with, is we
need to stay the course and take the long view. This problem is
not going to be solved in a few months or even a few years,
probably, and we have to be willing to sustain our support to
Colombia in the right way, not take over thier responsibility,
but to do what we can and to mobilize others.
I am not a pessimist about this country. This country has
enormous strengths and resources and its people have shown
great courage in taking on the traffickers and the guerrillas
and the paramilitaries, but they are in deep trouble today and
it is spreading into the region. It is now a regional crisis
and we need to pay serious attention as a country to it because
we have deep interests in it. I would just note, among our
interests beyond narcotrafficking, Venezuela, which is a
neighbor, where the war is already spilling over, where you
also have a lot of political instability, is the number one oil
supplier to the United States today. So we have lots of deep
interest in this country. We trade more with Colombia in one
week than we do with every country in the former Yugoslavia in
an entire year.
So I think that we need to work with the administration,
hopefully in a bipartisan way, to develop a long-term strategy
that deals with all of the aspects of this crisis. Thank you,
Senator.
Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Aronson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Aronson follows:]
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Chairman Grassley. Now, Mr. Shifter.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SHIFTER, SENIOR FELLOW, INTER-AMERICAN
DIALOGUE
Mr. Shifter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me also
commend you and the caucus for holding this hearing on
Colombia. I think it is extremely important to have a public
discussion and debate on this critical policy question.
I am going to submit my testimony for the record and just
make some brief comments, if I might.
Let me start with the question of what I think the purpose
we want to achieve in Colombia is. The objective, to me, seems
clear, or should be clear. We should do whatever we can to
strengthen the Colombian government's authority, capacity, and
effectiveness. It is clear that all of the problems that
Colombia is dealing with today can be attributed to the
weakness of the government and the state, whether we are
talking about human rights abuses, drug trafficking,
paramilitary operations, or political violence, can be traced
back to a weak authority and a weak state.
The responsibility to strengthen the authority of the state
and the government, Colombians have primary responsibility, but
we can be helpful. We can support their efforts to reach a
political solution to the deep internal conflict that has been
going on for many years. We couldalso do another thing. The
Colombian government will need a consensus within its own country to
back and support any plan or strategy. We can help and encourage
different political forces and sectors--we have a lot of contacts in
Colombia--to get behind the Colombian government in a solid support for
its plan.
Pursuing this call, supporting the government makes
Colombia a better partner with us in dealing with the problems
that we share, narcotics being one of several. But Colombia
will only be a good partner, only be effective in working with
us if the government can reestablish and regain authority and
greater effectiveness. We cannot be indifferent to Colombia and
we cannot disengage from Colombia.
The second point has to do with U.S. policy, and here, Mr.
Aronson, I agree entirely that a bipartisan policy is
absolutely essential. Too often in the past, we have dealt with
different individuals in the Colombian government, whether it
be in the armed forces or the police. They may be very
dedicated, very committed, but that does not help strengthen
our primary objective, which is enhancing government authority.
We need to deal more with the elected, legitimate head of state
of Colombia, President Pastrana. That will be the best thing to
do to enhance that objective.
The third point is that it is critical to have a wide-
ranging, comprehensive approach towards Colombia. The peace
process, the drug question, severe economic crisis, and the
profound social problems that Colombia faces are connected to
one another and need to be addressed together, not separately.
That is also the best way we can strengthen the authority and
the effectiveness of the Colombian government.
All of these problems are interrelated and Colombia already
has a process underway to try to bring an end to its guerilla
conflict and to reconcile the forces in conflict. Their
strategy, their plan involves a wide-ranging approach and that
is the only way that we can be helpful in strengthening the
capacity to move forward and make progress.
Clearly, over the last year, there have been tremendous
problems, set-backs, frustrations, and disappointments. The
last year has not gone as well as many of us had hoped and
President Pastrana himself acknowledges that. But there are
three points, I think, to bear in mind in this connection.
First, despite the tremendous discouragement on the part of
Colombians, most Colombians continue to favor the objective of
trying to reach a negotiated settlement and some sort of
solution, political solution, to the internal conflict.
The second point is that the United States is perhaps
uniquely positioned because of its capacity, because of its
resources, to be helpful in the Colombian situation.
The third point is that the other options do not look very
good. Many sustain that it would be very, very difficult, if
not impossible, to defeat the FARC militarily, that it would
cost a tremendous amount that we would not be prepared to
commit in terms of resources and time, financial resources and
American lives. So to pursue a strategy that focuses on
defeating through military means, through the use of force, the
FARC, in my judgment, would be misguided and could only make
matters worse, including fueling a civil war and a dirty war in
Colombia, which already exists but could very well get worse.
It seems to me we want to avoid that narrow, single-minded
approach. Even though it is understandable that the perception
is that guerrillas and narcotraffickers are one in the same, I
agree with Mr. Aronson it is important to keep that
distinction. But if we confuse that, then we can go down the
path that I think could aggravate an already very critical and
serious situation.
The final point, again underscoring what Mr. Aronson said,
is that the United States should play a role, a diplomatic
role, on the regional and international stage with respect to
Colombia. There are wider regional concerns. There are concerns
of instability in neighboring countries. There is great concern
in countries in Latin America about Colombia and about the
spreading violence and instability. There is also good will to
help and be supportive and the United States, I think, can play
an important role in trying to make a collective, constructive
response from the heads of government in neighboring countries.
There is clearly going to be some instrument as this
process moves forward that is viable and that tries to sustain
and support internationally externally this process in
Colombia, whether that is the U.N. or whether that is a group
of friends or the Organization of American States. Clearly,
some mechanism, some instrument will emerge, and I think the
United States should be supportive of that instrument in trying
to advance Colombia's objective.
In short, this instrument would serve the purpose of
supporting, strengthening the Colombian government's authority
and capacity. That goal is in the interest of all Colombians,
it is in the interest of Colombia's neighbors, and it is the
interest of the international community, as well, and I think
it best serves our interests and our goals and I think we
should give it the support we can. Thank you.
Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Shifter.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Shifter follows:]
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Chairman Grassley. I will start with Mr. Aronson. Ten years
ago, you were Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American
Affairs. Could you havepredicted the path that Colombia has
taken, and if so, what could have been done to prevent it?
Mr. Aronson. That is a good question, Mr. Chairman. I did
not predict the path that Colombia was going to take,
unfortunately. I think that, in retrospect, we focused too much
on counter-narcotics to the exclusion of other issues in that
country and the fundamental weakness of its democratic
institutions and the huge gap between the state and large parts
of the country where campecinos and rural people live.
Where the FARC operates and has operated for decades is
really a place where there is no government. They are the
government. They enforce the law, as they see it. They enforce
justice, as they see it--it is pretty brutal. They collect
taxes. There is no government.
I think that the Colombian elite and maybe the United
States, to some extent, just thought that, somehow, this
problem could be ignored and you could have a democratic
society with its pocket of violence.
But having said that, conditions also changed, Mr.
Chairman. I think the previous Colombian government, which was
led by Ernesto Samper, who himself was complicit intaking
narcotrafficking money, did enormous damage to this country. I think
they enormously weakened the Colombian state--morally, politically,
economically, and every other way--and we also, unfortunately, and I do
not disagree with the decision, but by decertifying Colombia on
legitimate grounds, we also isolated it at a time. Then you had an
international financial crisis on top of that. So Pastrana inherited a
huge crisis.
Secondly, part of the problem in Colombia is the success in
Peru and Bolivia. It used to be that you did not grow coca leaf
in Colombia. They were the value-added chain of the production
and they did the processing and turned it into HCl. But because
the coca leaf is not being grown in Peru and Bolivia because of
the success of counter-narcotics efforts there, it is moving
into Colombia and the guerrillas have taken advantage of that
and profit from that and have become much stronger.
I think that we should have probably focused more on the
political and economic and social issues of the country, and
that is really part of my message today, which is those are
part of this problem and part of this war that have to be
addressed. I am not trying to be naive that these guerrillas
are just boy scout reformers. They are not. But there are deep
political roots to this issue that have to be faced if this
country is going to end the war.
Chairman Grassley. General McCaffrey has suggested $500
million to Colombia. Is this too little too late or too much
too soon? Were there warning signs that were ignored?
Mr. Aronson. I think, as a country, and as I tried to say,
I think we are awfully late in facing the crisis in Colombia.
If you looked just a few years ago, you saw the guerrillas just
rolling over the armed forces. I mean, there were some horrible
defeats, including their rapid reaction battalions were just
getting massacred and their inability to have any kind of
counter-response or intelligence was clear.
But I do not want to go through an exercise of pointing
fingers. I think it is a good thing that we are now facing up
to the problem. I do not think the issue, Mr. Chairman, is so
much whether $500 million is enough or too much but whether we
develop a long-term strategy and a long-term commitment,
because we have a very bad habit of getting very focused on a
problem like drugs in Colombia and throwing a lot of money at
it for a year or two and then we get impatient or diverted or
the politics change and we go somewhere else.
These problems have been growing for 40 years in this
country. They are now spilling over into our country in a
serious way and into Latin America in a serious way and I think
we need to join with the administration in a long-term program
to help this country in all its aspects, including its armed
forces, and that needs to be a multi-year commitment.
I have not looked at the numbers to say whether $500
million. I think another key issue is how the money is spent. I
think, like a lot of Latin American armies, the Colombian army
was organized and trained in a very traditional way as a
standing army to face a threat across its borders, which it has
not faced and will not face. It has to be totally retrained and
reorganized into small units and rapid reaction and close air
support and a lot of things that it does not know how to do
right now.
This issue Senator Graham mentioned about high school
graduates being exempted from combat could not send a worse
signal about who fights this war. You have peasants fighting
peasants and poor people fighting poor people, and the
Colombian nation as a whole has to take responsibility. The
sons and daughters of the elite do not serve in the armed
forces and they need to.
So I think there is a thorough strategic, kind of overall
has to be made and it has to be multi-year. I have not looked
at the numbers enough to give you an informed answer about the
$500 million. I assume that that is a multi-year request, but
the main message I would leave, Senator, is that this has to be
a long-term commitment.
Chairman Grassley. Mr. Shifter, is negotiations with the
insurgent groups a serious possibility or do you think that
this might be a stall tactic by the insurgent groups to gain
more support and particularly more funding?
Mr. Shifter. I think that, clearly, the record over the
last year has not been--those who thought that the FARC was
interested in negotiating have not been very encouraged by
their behavior and conduct over the last year. I think what is
essential to do is to begin to change their calculations so
that they do go to negotiate seriously. I think, ultimately,
they will, but they have been in a position of great strength,
the government has been in a weak position, and we have to
reverse that.
I think to reverse that requires attention on all fronts,
including the military front, but just making the government
stronger in every respect. That, I think, will change their
calculations. They are pragmatic. They have interests. They
want to defend their interests. They want to see a change in
the country. And I think, ultimately, once that dynamic is
changed, I think there is evidence that they will go to the
bargaining table and settle politically.
Chairman Grassley. Is military force going to be necessary
against the insurgents from an outside force?
Mr. Shifter. You mean outside----
Chairman Grassley. Yes.
Mr. Shifter. No. I think this is a Colombian
responsibility. I think outside support can be helpful, but I
think this is not--an outside force is not necessary and I
would not--I think it could really have very negative
implications.
Chairman Grassley. In the past, the Colombian government
had been successful in negotiating with the M-19s and other
smaller insurgent groups. How has that dynamic changed now that
the insurgents are involved with drug trafficking?
Mr. Shifter. Well, that has been the major change over the
last decade or so of the military and the financial strength of
the insurgents. So that clearly makes it that much more
difficult, I think, to reach a settlement than with the M-19,
when the M-19 was a small group, did not have the kind of
resources or military might. So it was easier to incorporate
them into the political system. This is going to be much more
difficult. It is going to take a longer period of time because
they are a more formidable force in many respects.
That is why it is essential, I think, for the State and for
the government to regain the authority and capacity and their
own resources and their own effectiveness, and that will, I
think, change the balance. I think it will createthe conditions
for a productive negotiation.
Chairman Grassley. Thank you.
Senator DeWine.
Senator DeWine. I want to thank both of you for your
testimony. I think it has been very, very helpful.
Mr. Aronson, you talked about the weakness of the
institutions in Colombia. You have also talked about the
problems with the economy. Can you, based on your experience,
compare and contrast what we are seeing in Colombia versus what
you saw in El Salvador and Nicaragua? At first blush, it would
seem that, while there are some similarities, the economy is
certainly fundamentally different. Nicaragua is still the
second-poorest country in the hemisphere. El Salvador is not
certainly a rich country. Per capita income is not that high.
The social injustices, maybe we are just more aware of them
historically in Nicaragua and El Salvador, going back many,
many years.
Compare the situation in Colombia today versus El Salvador
and Nicaragua. Compare and contrast. What is similar, what is
dissimilar, what are the lessons that we should take from our
experience and your experience in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Mr. Aronson. I think it is a good question, Senator. Let me
just try to go through the differences and similarities and
maybe some lessons learned.
As far as the differences, as you point out, Colombia is a
large, modern country for Latin America when Nicaragua and El
Salvador are not and were not at the time of these
insurgencies. In terms of geography, Colombia is almost as
large as France, Germany, and Italy combined. The space that
President Pastrana agreed to allow the FARC to operate in is
twice as large as El Salvador and the country itself is 20
times larger. There are 40 million Colombians. There are about
5.5 million Salvadorans, 3.5 million Nicaraguans.
Secondly, Colombia has been a democracy for a long time and
neither Salvador nor Nicaragua were democracies when these
insurgencies grew up. So I think there was more legitimacy in
the early origins of these guerilla movements, even though they
became Marxist-Leninists and threatened democracy itself.
Third, as General Wilhelm and others pointed out, the
Sandanistas and the FMLN both relied significantly on outside
support, ideologically, politically, militarily, economically.
The FMLN got its weapons from the Vietnamese, from the North
Koreans, and others, through the Soviets--so did the
Sandanistas--and from Latin Americans, as well.
The FARC and the ELN, and it is one of the reasons they are
so tough to deal with, basically have a home-grown industry,
huge financial resources. They can buy very sophisticated
weaponry. They are not dependent on any outside government, any
outside movement, and they are very isolated. They had original
origins as pro-Soviet, pro-Cuban groups, but they are very
autonomous.
Third, they operate, particularly the FARC, in a part of
Colombia that has sort of been isolated from the central
government and the state it is a relatively--Colombia is really
a country of strong regions and the central government has sort
of grown in strength, but the FARC operates in a region where
the government just does not exist and they are a kind of a
state within a state. They have been there for a long time, and
for better or for worse, they are the law and order and
governmental structure.
But I think that there are some important similarities,
particularly with regard to El Salvador, that I would like to
stress. When we started out in El Salvador, this was part of
the East/West struggle. The guerrillas were our enemy. They
were the enemy of democracy. We threw a lot of resources and
training and efforts into defeating them militarily and they
were very hard-core Marxist-Leninists. They were not looking
for reform or democratic space. They wanted to take power.
But because we were able to create a stalemate militarily,
because we pressed very hard for changes within the government
and the army that were needed in terms of reforms nad human
rights, because the world changed and the Soviet Union
collapsed, there came a time when the guerrillas also changed
in fundamental ways. They became willing to embrace an agenda
of reform that was within a democratic system and give up their
original goal of taking power through arms.
I think we need to try to create the forces and mechanisms
to make that happen in Colombia. That is my one quarrel and
concern with the notion that we can just defeat the FARC. It
sounds good and we will all charge up the battlefield, but we
will be back here in ten years and the FARC will not be
defeated, even if we do everything that General Wilhelm wants.
They have been there for a long time. I am not saying that we
need to help the Colombians take them on and make them
understand they are not going to win militarily. I believe that
strongly. But the goal ought to be to force them to the
negotiating table.
One of the things I think we learned from El Salvador is we
need a huge international effort to do that. It helped that the
FMLN were talking to the Mexicans and talking to other Latins
who were pushing them and prodding them. It helped that we
talked to them, and I understand it was difficult. I got
President Bush to agree to let us talk to the FMLN and the next
day, they shot down a U.S. helicopter and executed two American
servicemen in cold blood. Jim Baker turned to me and said, your
friends have a great sense of timing.
It is not popular to do those things, but those early
contacts made a difference and we built relations with the
groups that were most susceptible to negotiations. I think it
was a mistake when the State Department went and talked to the
FARC that some members of the other body accused them of being
soft on narco-guerrillas. It sounds good, but you need to start
building ties to these people and bring them out of the cold,
and so does the rest of the world.
The U.N. needs to be in there, and I know President
Pastrana talked to the Secretary General about that, the OAS,
other Latin American countries, while we do all the other
things we are talking about--help the country economically,
modernize their armed forces, and slowly bring these guerrillas
out of the isolation in which they live.
Not all of their demands are illegitimate, and it also is
important to understand one piece of history. Between 1982 and
1986, there was a peace process involving the FARC, involving
the Bettencourt government, and the FARC formed a political
party called the Patriotic Union and 1,000 of its members who
came out of the war when there was a cease fire were massacred
and shot to death by the paramilitaries and other forces. So
they have a long memory, and so when wesay, let us talk peace,
they remember the last time they tried to talk peace. It was not a very
good ending.
We are going to have to provide security guarantees and do
something about the human rights situation as we take them on
in the battlefield, and that is going to take time. I think
Mike is right. The time will come when they will negotiate
seriously and we need to be there saying the door is open to
peaceful negotiations.
Senator DeWine. Just a quick follow-up question. I
appreciate your answer. You talk about the weak institutions in
Colombia. What institutions are you talking about? Are you
talking about geographically in the region where the guerrillas
operate?
Mr. Aronson. Right.
Senator DeWine. What else? Are we talking about the
judicial system? Are we talking about what?
Mr. Aronson. Well, I am talking first about the armed
forces, which do not know how to do counter-insurgency and
which high school students do not go into combat and all the
things. They do not have all kinds of abilities they need,
small operations, close air support, mobility, intelligence.
The judicial system, absolutely. Three percent of the
people in this country who are indicted are convicted. There is
a lot of corruption. That system needs to be changed.
There is no economic infrastructure in a lot of these
guerilla territories, so when we are trying to say, do
something besides plant coca leaves and poppies, well, there
need to be roads and bridges and transport so farmers can take
other kinds of crops out. There needs to be a governmental
infrastructure in these countries that will take the place of
the guerrillas or change sort of the nature of institutions on
the ground.
There needs to be protection for journalists in this
country, who are being murdered now just because they support
negotiations. There need to be protections for human rights
workers. Probably, I think, more work needs to be done in
cleaning up the corruption in the congress of this country. The
traffickers still have a lot of influence, and supporting the
Colombians who are clean and honest.
So there is a kind of a long-term systemic process. But the
institutions I would emphasize are the judiciary and the armed
forces and the police.
Senator DeWine. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Grassley. I have no further questions as chairman
of the caucus and from my staff. You both have cooperated with
us not only during this hour or so that you have been here but
also in the planning. We thank you very much.
The caucus is adjourned.
Mr. Aronson. Thank you.
Mr. Shifter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Whereupon, at 11:41 a.m., the caucus was adjourned.]
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