Posted on 02/06/2007 4:50:46 PM PST by El Conservador
MANTA, Ecuador - The U.S. military's lone outpost in South America is a modest affair — some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time.
But these surveillance planes play a vital role in keeping Andean cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States and are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.
That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy in a region where President Bush's administration now has few reliable allies.
"We've said clearly that in 2009 the agreement will not be renewed because we believe that sovereignty consists of not having foreign soldiers on our home soil," Correa said recently.
No matter that the planes intentionally avoid Ecuadorean airspace after takeoff, and that U.S. operations at Manta contribute some $7 million a year to the local economy.
Many Ecuadoreans believe the U.S. is trying to draw them more deeply into the Colombian conflict spilling over their borders: Leftist rebels frequently cross into Ecuador, and tens of thousands of Colombian refugees crowd lawless border towns plagued by drug traffickers and child prostitution.
Although U.S. officials deny that Manta's planes spy on leftist rebels in Colombia, they do intercept drug flights and eavesdrop on radio communications there.
"There is a widespread feeling that Washington is carrying out an extensive, mostly security, anti-drug program with Colombia, with little regard for the severe consequences — growing violence and refugees — on Ecuador," said Michael Shifter, deputy director of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.
The Bush administration's efforts to maintain the U.S. role as Latin America's No. 1 commercial and military partner have suffered badly with leftist presidents winning office from Venezuela to Bolivia and now Ecuador, where many resent Washington's tough bargaining for trade pacts that lock in preferential terms for U.S. industries and seem anything but "free."
Located on the coast some 160 miles southwest of the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, Manta is well situated for its mission. But the U.S. military, which got the Manta lease after it was forced to abandon Howard Air Base in Panama in 1999, would be wise to start looking elsewhere, according to Anna Gilmour, a Latin American analyst with Jane's Defense Information Group.
Colombia is not a good option — U.S. troops based there would be at great risk of attack from the same leftist rebels Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is fighting with U.S. training, logistics and intelligence support.
Nor are its neighbors: Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Alan Garcia of Peru and Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva of Brazil have shown no interest in basing U.S. military units on their soil.
The region's leftist governments already have turned away from U.S. defense contractors, going instead to Russia, France and Brazil for military hardware. Venezuela said last week it hopes to buy Russian anti-aircraft missiles to protect its oil industry.
The Bush administration upset many in the region when it emphasized bilateral trade pacts and denigrated the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, a package of trade benefits offered in exchange for cooperation against drugs. The act expired Dec. 31, though the administration extended it for six months.
Colombia and Peru have bilateral pacts, but they have not been ratified and the newly Democratic-controlled Congress has raised objections. Trade talks with Ecuador broke down last year, long before Correa became president, and show no signs of resuming.
Correa, a U.S.-trained economist, has said the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act "isn't charity" but rather "just compensation" for commitments to battling drug trafficking.
Chavez, for his part, has called the drug war "the excuse that imperialism obtained a few years ago to penetrate our countries, to oppress our peoples and to justify its military presence in Latin America."
The State Department has recommended eliminating all drug interdiction aid for Venezuela, which got $2.2 million in the current fiscal year, and slashing overall aid to Ecuador some 30 percent to $20 million.
With the exception of Colombia, drug interdiction funding cuts were proposed across the Andean region.
In mid-2006, the United States had just short of 2,000 active duty military personnel stationed in Latin American and Caribbean countries, more than half at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
In all, some 6,000 Department of Defense employees are assigned to the region, many of them in Texas and Florida, where their bosses are headquartered at the U.S. Southern Command.
That is a small sliver of the nearly 1.4 million U.S. troops deployed around the world, mostly in Europe and Asia.
But those 220 Americans in Manta have had an outsized impact against drugs.
In the 1990s, most drug smuggling from the region was by air. That later shifted to the high seas as the so-called air bridge was essentially shut down.
Thanks to the Manta-based U.S. interdiction efforts, more than 275 tons of illegal drugs — mostly cocaine — were seized or intercepted last year, said Air Force Lt. Col. Javier Delucca, the base's U.S. administrator.
Although Correa's money men (FARC) need some income...
Colombia ping.
"There is a widespread feeling [among Communists and narco-terrorists] that Washington is carrying out an extensive, mostly security, anti-drug program with Colombia, with little regard for the severe consequences — growing violence and refugees — on Ecuador," said Michael Shifter, deputy director of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.
There. Better.
This was a very interesting article; thank you for posting it.
What do you think will happen now?
Thanks to the peanut presidency of Jimmeee Carter. The worst U.S. President
in the 20th century ... possibly the worst ever.
Sounds like a huge waste of time and resources. Those assets should be moved and be hunting terrorists, and not people flying around with powder and dried out plants in their planes.
Ecuador "dollarized" its economy some years ago. This seems like a stupid move in light of that, especially since Ecuador may be about to default on its foreign debt.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=arq9i4uRsya0&refer=latin_america
I see the future of a front-line drug interdiction base very bleak.
Colombia is surrounded by countries either hostile to the US or, at the very least, not receptive of allowing US troops in their territories.
And as the article says, placing US troops in Colombia herself would be a dumb idea.
I think the US would have to make do with all-electronic, all-satellite surveillance, but with drug traffic from South America now quite low in the US national security totem pole, I think source interdiction will be benignly neglected.
This is a consequence of 9/11, remarked by US allies in the region: Latin America and the drug trade took a WAY back seat to the Middle East and Islamic extremist terrorism.
It's simply a liberal myth to say that the interests of the US (and civilization) are always best served by democracy. Sometimes a friendly dictatorship is the best bet.
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