U.S. Is to Help Army in Colombia
Fight Drugs but Skeptics Abound
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
The aid was granted after the military promised to improve its protection of human rights. Colombia is grappling with increasingly violent rebels who have formed alliances to drug traffickers across the country, especially in the south. While the United States stipulated that the aid, approved this summer, be used solely to fight drug trafficking, the commander of the Colombia an armed forces says the materiel all considered to be nonlethal could be used to fight insurgents anywhere in the area identified by United States officials, essentially the southern half of the country.
In an interview here, the commander, Gen. Jose Manuel Bonett, said the aid could be used against guerrillas in the zone whether or not they are involved in drugs. "It's the same organization, and everyone in it is responsible," he said. "You can't say this guerrilla front is good and this one is bad."
Approval for the aid came through special Presidential authority and is contingent on confirmation by the Colombian military that the units getting the materiel have not been accused of violating human rights.
Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, architect of the White House antidrug efforts, who visited here this week, said the aid did not represent a policy change. Colombia would normally be ineligible for military aid because President Clinton has ruled that it is not fighting drugs with vigor.
In September 1996 and again last summer, President Clinton invoked special authority to provide equipment and supplies for antidrug efforts in Colombia. He also waived a ban on military sales on the ground that it was important to the United States' national security. But that aid was also contingent on an agreement by the Colombian police and armed forces to observe human rights.
The police agreed to such conditions quickly. But the military only accepted the conditions in August.
The accord says the aid is to go only to areas "characterized by the highest concentration of counternarcotics activity." It also stipulates procedures by which the United States is supposed to monitor the military's use of the aid.
But the agreement raises the difficult question of arming a military well known for abusing human rights, especially when the matériel might be used to put down insurgent cy among the military's enemies rather than to fight drugs.
General McCaffrey said to reporters here, "Let there be no doubt: We are not taking part in counterguerrilla operations."
Yet critics of the deal abound, and include some in the Administration. "It is very difficult to put your finger on which guerrillas are doing what," one State Department official said.
The State Department, the National Security Council and the Drug Enforcement Administration all ad vised General McCaffrey against visiting Colombia and shaking hands with President Ernesto Samper. Mr. Samper was accused of accepting $6 million in campaign contributions from drug traffickers, but he was cleared by the Colombian Congress.
But speaking to American reporters here on Monday night, he said Washington needed to rebuild its relationship with Bogota before presidential elections in seven months.
There has also been strong antidrug pressure from Congress. The decision to send matériel as part of this fight "wasn't driven by foreign concerns, but by domestic ones," one senior official said. The military aid is part of a $150 million package to fight drugs, triple the amount Washington sent last year. About $100 mil lion is to go the police, who do not share the army's poor rights record.
Much of the debate centers on the politically charged term "narcoguerrillas." The word is part of the vocabulary of the Colombian military, but has been publicly disputed by the American Ambassador to Colombia, Myles R. Frechette. And Rodrigo Losada, a professor at Javeriana University in Bogota, says acceptance of the term "narcoguerrilla" opened the way for the army to use the supplies against guerrillas in the name of fighting drugs.
During his visit, General McCaffrey repeatedly used "narcoguerrillas" to refer to the leftist militias. "It seems to us that poor Colombia is bleeding not only because of drugs, but because it has 15,000 narcoguerrillas machine guns, automatic weapons, mortars, land mines and an enormous brutality," he added.
The general said right-wing militias, who law-enforcement say are responsible for two-thirds of the politically motivated killings in this country, are also involved in drug trafficking, but he singled out the leftists for scorn.
A Government report ordered by Mr. Frechette said that only some guerrilla groups protected coca fields and processing laboratories, and that they taxed growers and charged traffickers fees at remote airstrips, much as they extorted protection money from ranchers and coffee growers. The report also said rebels hinder antidrug efforts by attacking aircraft and organizing protests against the eradication of coca, the source of cocaine.
But it also said the role of the guerrillas in the drug trademore as parasites than as traffickers was not increasing. And some coca growing peasants have also said the guerrillas sometimes force them to limit the land used for coca, and to grow food for their families instead.
Even General McCaffrey said he suspected that guerrilla activity in the designated antidrug zone largely involved efforts by the rebels to extort money from traffickers.
The supplies to be sent to Colombia, from Pentagon and other government stocks, are to include UH lH Huey helicopters, C-26 surveillance planes, ammunition for assault rifles, utility vehicles, small boats and navigational equipment. And Congress is debating whether to give $50 million more to the police in the form of three Blackhawk helicopters.
United States military assistance to Colombia ended in 1994, after the General Accounting Office found that such aid had gone to units accused of violating human rights, and that it was being used to fight guerrillas instead of drug traffickers. The G.A.O. also said the conditions for the aid, which resemble those being applied now, had been ignored.
Ambassador Frechette said he was confident the Embassy could monitor the army's rights record, but there are difficulties: Colombian prosecutors are barred from disclosing the names of people under investigation to a foreign Government. Human rights workers say soldiers who commit atrocities are some times hooded. And most victims are afraid to come forward.
General Bonett, the Colombian commander, said he did not disagree with the conditions of the new aid. The zone where the aid is to be used corresponds to his prime target: the area where rebels are strongest.
And though the Colombian military has historically enjoyed a record of impunity before accusations of rights violations, General Bonett said he was committed to establishing a culture of respect for human rights in a military where, despite many accusations, no one has ever been sentenced for torture.
But General Bonett also said General McCaffrey's visit was a sign of growing concern in Washington about the instability roiling Colombia, quite aside from drug trafficking.
"The United States has enormous interests and investments here, and there have been a lot of Americans kidnapped by the guerrillas, and a lot of companies attacked by them," the commander said. "The U.S. has every right to defend itself, and the best way to defend itself is through the Colombian Government."