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Trained by US, Colombia unit gains - Reports successes against guerrillas - By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 5/5/2003
[Full Text] MIAMI -- Opening a new front in the war on terrorism, Colombian soldiers trained by the US military have killed or captured at least six guerrilla leaders as part of a ''decapitation strategy'' to defeat the country's rebel groups and strike a blow against the drug trade, American military and intelligence officials told the Globe.
A new commando unit began tracking rebel commanders in the jungles of Colombia about three weeks ago and carried out some of the attacks in recent weeks. It is the first unit in the Colombian Army to receive US special-forces training under a new program approved by President Bush expanding US military assistance from fighting drug cartels to battling insurgent groups that the administration considers ''narco-terrorists.''
The unit, organized to resemble a US Army Ranger battalion of 600 to 800 soldiers, is designed to hunt down and capture or kill top commanders of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its Spanish initials as the FARC; the rightist National Liberation Army, or ELN; and the paramilitary United Self Defense Forces, or AUC. Those groups have tightened their grips on drug and arms trades in the region and have growing links with other terrorist groups around the world, the American officials said.
''The terrorist groups in Latin America, specifically in Colombia, have a direct regional reach [and] I think there are some indirect linkages to other networks out there,'' Brigadier General Galen B. Jackman, director of operations for the US Southern Command, said last week.
''Drug money is used for a variety of purposes. Some of that finds its way back to other terrorist organizations.''
In February, the United States gained a new impetus for its fight against the rebels. Three Americans identified by US authorities as civilian contractors were captured by the FARC after their plane crashed in southern Colombia. Two members of the crew -- one American and one Colombian -- were believed to have been killed by the guerrillas.
''We know specifically who is responsible,'' Jackman said. ''If I was the FARC, I would seriously reconsider what I have done and what my actions are.''
The upsurge in military action comes amid other signs that the United States is prepared to increase its presence in Colombia.
On Thursday, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the United States is considering transferring some military equipment from Iraq to Colombia. Tomorrow, a group of House members is to introduce legislation to begin US military surveillance flights tracking Colombian arms traffickers.
Meanwhile, the US-trained Colombian battalion, taking a page from the US antiterrorism playbook, is targeting more rebel leaders. The strategy is ''to capture or kill those high-value targets'' such as senior FARC, ELN, and AUC commanders, leaving the groups in disarray, Jackman said.
He indicated the Colombians already have put the new US training and assistance to use.
''Just within the past week, they killed the Third FARC Front commander in Medellin,'' Jackman said. ''They killed the deputy commander of the [FARC's] Teofilo Forero Mobile Column and they captured the operations officer of the 37th Front.''
US-trained Colombian units also recently captured three ELN leaders near the Venezuelan border, he said, while earlier this year one of three counternarcotics battalions trained by US special forces killed the 15th FARC Front commander.
The Colombians ''haven't had the forces trained and organized to do that in the past to the extent they do now,'' Jackman said. ''The strategy is to go after the leaders of the illegal armed groups, and the commando battalion is part of that.''
The decapitation tactic marks a significant policy shift for Washington and Bogota. The US has cooperated for years in fighting drug cartels but left the country's 40-year civil war solely to the Colombians. With the rebels getting more deeply involved in protecting the cartels, using the proceeds from drug sales to buy arms and bribe government leaders, they have caught the attention of leaders of Washington's war on terror. Bush administration officials say they fear the drug trade could become a source of money for global terror networks.
US military forces started taking an active role in the war last year. Previously, US forces were limited by law to engaging only in counterdrug operations. Last year, Bush signed a measure giving the military new authority to provide direct assistance to Colombian security forces in battling rebel groups.
The Bush administration increasingly sees Colombia's insurgents as part of its war on terrorist groups that are fueled by the proceeds from illegal narcotics and black-market trafficking in arms and explosives.
Bush's initiative, supported by hundreds of millions of dollars in new military aid for Colombia, has given new legitimacy to counterinsurgency operations, which were discredited during the Vietnam War and again in the 1980s when Washington provided support to military proxies in Central America.
''Until we had . . . expanded authorities, we were only able to provide counterdrug information to the Colombians,'' Jackman said. ''Now we can provide information about the activities of those illegal armed groups. What we couldn't provide [before] was if we saw FARC units that were massing somewhere or conducting some operations.''
The administration has found a willing partner in Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian president who took office last year and promptly shelved the previous administration's peace strategy and escalated the war against the rebels. Uribe initiated a onetime ''war tax'' that has generated an estimated $1 billion for a new military campaign.
Jackman insisted that while US forces provide intelligence information on rebel activities and help plan the missions, American soldiers do not participate. ''This is Colombia's war to win,'' he said. ''In no way . . . have they ever indicated to us that they would like the United States to come in and win this war.''
But the Bush administration clearly believes the United States has a wider interest in Colombia as part of the war on terror. In congressional testimony overshadowed by the buildup to the Iraq war, General James T. Hill, commander in chief of Southern Command, said in March that ''there were more terrorist attacks last year in Colombia alone than in all other nations in the world combined. This is a battle that must be fought together.''
Jackman and other US government officials believe the strategy to take out top guerrilla leaders to force a capitulation is having a significant impact on the rebel groups.
US intelligence officials said they believe the FARC in particular -- a force of as many as 18,000 fighters that the United States says is bankrolled by $600 million a year from drug profits -- has shown signs of desperation in some of its more recent attacks on Colombian government targets and civilians. Recent attacks attributed to the FARC have occurred in urban areas -- a new tactic for the group, which historically has operated in the jungles -- and are seen as an effort to distract Colombian military units operating in the countryside.
''They wouldn't be doing this if they weren't hurting,'' said a US official, who asked not to be identified.
Indeed, on April 28, the 46th FARC Front commander, Rafael Rojas, a 20-year FARC veteran, became the highest-ranking leader of the group to surrender to Colombian authorities. Flanked by Uribe, Rojas called for a negotiated end to the civil war.
But the US policy of aiding the Colombian hit squads concerns some specialists. They say it is a poor alternative for the structural and economic changes necessary to stem the drug trade. Instead, they said, the United States should provide economic alternatives to coca cultivation and weaken the rebels' support in the countryside by expanding the central government's ability to provide services in jungle areas.
''I am very worried about it,'' said Phillip McLean, former deputy assistant secretary of state for South America under President Bill Clinton and now deputy director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ''You set a goal that may be hard to meet and maybe doesn't address the larger problem. You oversimplify and don't do the harder things.''
McLean questioned the wisdom of a strategy that treats the Colombian rebels as rational actors who, if squeezed hard enough, will negotiate peace. ''They more closely resemble gangs,'' he said.
''There are also moral questions about taking people out,'' McLean added.
US Representative William Delahunt, Democrat of Quincy and a member of the House International Relations Committee, who met with Uribe during an official visit to Washington last week, also has reservations.
''There is no military solution,'' Delahunt said. ''The social and economic needs need to be addressed.''
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 5/5/2003. © Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.