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New Role for U.S. in Colombia: Protecting a Vital Oil Pipeline
By JUAN FORERO
ARAVENA, Colombia, Sept. 27 — Casting a wary eye for rebel snipers, Lt. Felipe Zúñiga and his counterinsurgency troops slog through the wet fields and patches of jungle here. Their mission has nothing to do with drugs — until now, the defining issue in Colombia for American policy makers — but instead with protecting a pipeline that carries crude to an oil-hungry America.
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The 500-mile pipeline, which snakes through eastern Colombia, transporting 100,000 barrels of oil a day for Occidental Petroleum of Los Angeles, is emerging as a new front in the terror war. One of Colombia's most valuable assets, the pipeline has long been vulnerable to bombings by Colombia's guerrilla groups, which along with the country's paramilitary outfits are included on the Bush administration's list of terrorist organizations.
Sometime in the next month, in a significant shift in American policy, United States Special Forces will arrive in Colombia to begin laying the groundwork for the training of Lieutenant Zúñiga and his 35-man squad in the finer arts of counterinsurgency. Over the next two years, 10 American helicopters will bolster the Colombian counterinsurgency efforts, and some 4,000 more troops will receive American training, which will begin in earnest in January, Bush administration and American military officials said in interviews in recent days.
The policy shift dovetails with the Bush administration's new, global emphasis on expanding and diversifying the sources of America's oil imports, with an eye to reducing dependence on Middle Eastern oil. That new approach, outlined in the administration's energy report issued last year, is gaining ever more importance with the threat to Persian Gulf oil supplies from the looming war with Iraq.
The $94 million counterinsurgency program is also an important element in the offensive by Colombia's new government against two rebel groups and a paramilitary force that dominate much of the country.
Pipeline bombings by the guerrillas cost the government nearly $500 million last year — a blow in a country where oil accounts for 25 percent of revenues. The two main rebel groups, which view Occidental as a symbol of American imperialism, have bombed the pipeline 948 times since the 1980's, while extorting oil royalty payments from local government officials.
The Colombian military has increased security recently, deploying five of the six battalions in the 6,000-man 18th Brigade to pipeline protection, up from just two battalions last year. As a result, the number of bombings has fallen to 30 this year, from 170 the year before, Colombian military officials say. But the goal is to eliminate the bombings altogether, they say, and to accomplish that they need help.
"We have been fighting here, but there are still so many things the Americans can teach us," said Lieutenant Zúñiga as he led a reporter on patrol along the pipeline. "I think it is going to make us much better."
The final product, officials say, will be an offensive-minded unit of Colombian counterinsurgency analysts who will interpret intelligence data gathered from high-tech equipment and informers and then deploy rapid-response forces stationed at strategic points along the pipeline to thwart rebel attacks.
"The idea is to prepare troops for the war we are living," said Gen. Carlos Lemus, commander of the 18th Brigade, which will receive much of the training here in Arauca Province. "We will be able to do so much more, with better intelligence and helicopters. The idea is to find out when something is going to happen and react."
The training could not take place in a more dangerous area. Though the army base here — with its neatly pruned hedges, modern barracks and billboard featuring the fighting words of Gen. George S. Patton — gives an air of familiarity American soldiers might find comforting, Saravena itself sits in a war zone.
"What they can expect is lead," boasted a local commander for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest and most belligerent rebel group. "What else? That and cadavers."
Indeed, the rebels have flexed their muscles all year in Saravena, launching dozens of homemade rockets that have destroyed the airport terminal, the city hall, the town council chambers and the prosecutor's office. Policemen on patrol are frequently fired upon, and military officials say that despite the new deployment of Colombian troops the pipeline is still exposed to attack.
"With these bandits," said Lt. Col. Emilio Torres, a local army commander, "if you leave the pipeline alone even 24 hours, they can blow the tube."
Alert to the dangers, American military officials said the trainers, Special Forces soldiers from Fort Bragg, N.C., will be limited to 20 to 60 and will be housed in specially fortified barracks.
Colombia's new president, Álvaro Uribe, also declared Arauca one of two security zones where military commanders can conduct searches without warrants, impose curfews and usurp some powers from local government — measures the United Nations says will erode civil rights.
Bush administration officials have said the reliable production of oil is imperative if Colombia is to have the resources to combat the guerrillas and paramilitaries. But oil is also critical to the national security planning of the United States, which by 2020 will count on imported oil for 62 percent of its oil needs, up from half today.
Much of that new oil will come from the Americas, which already supply the United States with nearly 50 percent of its imported oil. Along with Venezuela and Ecuador, the Andes now provides the United States with more than two million barrels a day, about 20 percent of its imports.
Colombia will never be the sole solution to America's voracious appetite for oil. But the country is known for high-quality oil that is cheap to produce and easy to refine, and is thought to have significant potential reserves that could be rapidly exploited if the guerrillas and paramilitaries could be brought under control.
"We're becoming increasingly dependent on imported oil, therefore the strategic goal of diversification has become more and more important," said Michael Klare, author of "Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict." "The Clinton administration and now the Bush administration have explicitly stated that that one of the regions they have wanted to rely on in the future is the Western Hemisphere."
In order to protect a vital oil pipeline from guerrilla groups, U.S. Special Forces will begin training Colombian soldiers, above, in counterinsurgency.