COLOMBIA: Plan Patriot

President Álvaro Uribe is involved in the most ambitious military offensive launched by a Colombian government in 40 years of civil war, a drive aimed at combatting the guerrilla bastion in the country’s southern frontier.

Some 15,000 troops are being mobilized to the border zone in a large-scale military operation called Plan Patriot — that will last until 2006 — to destroy the strategic rearguard of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

According to an April 25 report in El Tiempo newspaper in Bogota, the soldiers belong to mobile forces and special squadrons with capacity to resist weeks and even months in rugged areas. Its mission is to surround the controlled territory by the FARC and focus on "high-value targets."

In the phases prior to Plan Patriot, the Colombian military carried out operation "Liberty 1" between June and December of last year in the central department of Cundinamarca, in which five guerrilla leaders were killed. In a follow-up action, troops on Dec. 31 launched the softening-up operation called "New Year" in Caqueta, in southern Colombia, in preparation for the entry of the Southern Task Force, which will be charged with Plan Patriot.

The United States has approved US$110 million in military aid for this year — as part of the funds for Plan Colombia — that will be used for "training, arms, night visors and communications equipment for the elite mobile brigades of the army and for brigades of the special forces," the newspaper said. In addition, two AC-47 gunships and four C-130 troop transport planes have been purchased.

The plan includes the installation of a training center in the Amazon jungle itself to make possible evacuation and medical treatment in the field of battle and guarantee a constant troop presence.

For 2005, the US Departments of State and Defense have asked Congress to approve another $110 million in military aid and a similar amount for 2006.

In a trip to the United States in late March, President Uribe and his colleague George W. Bush discussed the details for a Plan Colombia II, which would last until 2009. Plan Colombia, that began in 2000 and is due to expire in September 2005, is a package of $7.5 billion of aid to combat drugs and the guerrillas. Up until now, the United States has sent $2.8 billion in military aid to Colombia.

The newspaper report caused concern in Ecuador. René Yandún, prefect of Carchi province on the Colombia border, said that Plan Patriot "is an anvil and a hammer. While Colombia is being hammered, what will happen to Ecuadorans? What is going to happen to Peru and Brazil? Support the pressure that Colombian armed forces exercise towards the south."

On the Colombian side of the frontier between Colombia and Ecuador, there is a strong presence of armed groups and drug traffickers. The Ecuadoran government got involved in the Colombian conflict with the capture of a guerrilla leader in January, helped by Colombian and US intelligence services, as well as a military buildup on the border.

"Ecuador is a victim of the Colombian conflict due to the number of displaced refugees," said Gustavo Larrea, executive director of the Latin American Association for Human Rights (ALDHU).

According to the Regional Foundation of Advice on Human Rights, there are 200,000 Colombians displaced by the war living illegally in Ecuador.

Colombia’s ambassador in Ecuador María Paulina Espinosa acknowledged that the Plan Patriot will be executed on the border with Ecuador, although she stressed "it is a plan by Colombians for Colombians … Plan Patriot is recovering national territory in guerrilla hands."

The Colombian military attaché in Ecuador, Col. Jairo Rodríguez, did not rule out there could be consequences for that country. "It is possible that [the guerrillas] will move to another country. It is then that each state will have to exercise sovereignty," he said. "If terrorists and drug traffickers enter, this is a task that corresponds to each country."

The area in which Plan Patriot will operate is also an important zone of production of coca, the raw material for cocaine.

Colombian and US officials have asserted that the 21 percent reduction in areas under coca cultivation last year is due to the program of large-scale aerial spraying, but environmentalists and farmers denounced that the spraying of chemicals has caused serious problems of health, pollution and destruction of legal crops.

In Ecuador, authorities and residents of border areas have complained about the environmental impact of the spraying.

Juan de Dios Parra, secretary general of ALDHU, said "the Plan Patriot is in practice the war phase of Plan Colombia, which was conceived to combat drug trafficking. In reality, it signifies a military offensive towards the border area that will bring enormous consequences and impacts on Ecuador, primarily of a humanitarian nature."

Ecuadoran analyst Susana Klinkicht, said the Plan Patriot "falls within the ideology of the Patriot Act, with which Washington appropriated the tools and liberties necessary to combat terrorism in its own way."

"International humanitarian organizations have made their own preliminary evaluations of Plan Colombia and have come to the conclusion that most of the money with which the United States should have supported Colombia remained at home, divided up among arms manufacturers, helicopters and chemicals. Plan Patriot will not be any different."