[Senate Hearing 106-511] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 106-511 COLOMBIA: COUNTER-INSURGENCY VS. COUNTER-NARCOTICS ======================================================================= HEARING before the SENATE CAUCUS ON INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ SEPTEMBER 21, 1999 __________ U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 64-317 WASHINGTON : 2001 SENATE CAUCUS ON INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS CONTROL ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Chairman JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Delaware, Co-Chair JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama BOB GRAHAM, Florida MIKE DEWINE, Ohio DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan Wm. J. Olson, Staff Director Marcia S. Lee, Minority Staff Director C O N T E N T S ---------- OPENING STATEMENT Page Sen. Charles E. Grassley......................................... 1 Sen. Mike DeWine................................................. 3 Sen. Jeff Sessions............................................... 6 PANEL I Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Department of State............. 7 Prepared Statement........................................... 11 Brian E. Sheridan, Assistant Secretary, Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, Department of Defense.................. 18 Prepared Statement........................................... 20 General Charles E. Wilhelm, Commander in Chief, U.S. Southern Command, Department of Defense................................. 30 Prepared Statement........................................... 31 PANEL II Bernard Aronson, Chairman, ACON Investments...................... 74 Prepared Statement........................................... 79 Michael Shifter, Senior Fellow, Inter-American Dialogue.......... 85 Prepared Statement........................................... 88 SUBMITTED QUESTIONS Rand Beers, Assistant Secretary, Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Department of State............. 105 General Charles E. Wilhelm, Commander in Chief, U.S. Southern Command, Department of Defense................................. 161 Brian E. Sheridan, Assistant Secretary, Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, Department of Defense.................. 176 Bernard Aronson, Chairman, ACON Investments...................... 185 Michael Shifter, Senior Fellow, Inter-American Dialogue.......... 187 COUNTER-INSURGENCY VS. COUNTER-NARCOTICS ---------- TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1999 U.S. Senate, Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Washington, DC. The caucus met, pursuant to notice, at 9:03 a.m., in room SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Charles E. Grassley, chairman of the caucus, presiding. Present: Senators Grassley, Sessions, DeWine, and Graham. Chairman Grassley. I thank everybody for coming out at a fairly early morning, the first morning after a long weekend break of Congress. And it is not exactly an ideal time to have an important hearing like we are having, but the schedule of the Congress dictates, both for policy reasons as well as for the time we are in the legislative session, to move forward with this very important issue. We also will have the privilege of having other Members, one of whom is present, Senator DeWine, but others will be coming who have urged me to have this hearing. And I appreciate very much the breadth of interest we have in the situation in Colombia from all members of the caucus, particularly as it relates to the efforts we have in this country to combat drugs. Today's hearing concerns one of the most important foreign policy issues that we currently face. It is one that directly affects U.S. interests and the lives of U.S. citizens daily. It is not remote, it is not abstract, it is not obscure. Yet, we seem to find ourselves in the midst of a muddle. U.S. policy appears to be adrift and our focus is blurred. We are today going to focus on the current situation in Colombia and the nature of our efforts to stop drug production and transiting. I must confess some disappointment about that current situation and the nature of our efforts. On this, one of the most critical items on our national agenda, what to do about the drug threat, there does not appear to be a coherent strategy or a consistent policy. And if there is, then there has been a distinct failure to explain these to Congress or the public, and this is particularly true when it comes to the country of Colombia that we are looking at in this hearing today. There has been a lot of talk about Colombia recently, but there does not seem to me to be much of a strategy. There might be some actions taken, but actions do not state policy. I am frankly disappointed in the administration's failure to engage in a serious discussion with Congress or the public to explain its policy. What we see is piecemeal engagement in a situation that is not adequately understood. We seem to be bent on asking what color to paint the helicopters before we ask what it is that we are doing or whether we should be doing it at all, or if we should, what is needed and what responsibilities the government of Colombia has. There are a host of basic questions elemental to a sound strategy that are going begging. I do not question, though, the sense of purpose or the dedication of the many men and women, Americans and Colombians, who daily put their lives at risk to stop illegal drugs. But their actions need to add up to more than the sum of the parts if we are going to make a difference. Actions need a center and a focus; they need direction and coherence. And above all, these actions need to be linked in a sensible way to our resources. All of these things need to be linked to outcomes that purchase a difference. Finally, they need to be explained clearly and straightforwardly to ensure public support. I am concerned that we lack these vital connective tissues. Reporting from Bogota strongly suggests that our whole policy is in disarray at a time when Colombia is in the midst of a major crisis. There has been drug smuggling from the U.S. embassy. Despite years of focus on eradication, drug cultivation continues to increase. If preliminary analysis is to be believed, it has almost doubled. Further, our estimates of cocaine production are also seriously flawed, perhaps underestimating the production by 100 percent. Colombia today is producing more cocaine than at any time since we began our efforts there. The insurgents, while not in a position to seize power, are growing in strength and profiting from drug smuggling. In some cases, they are better armed and better trained than the military. The military, conversely, suffers from a variety of systemic and institutional problems, and these are problems of long standing. It lacks equipment, training, resources, and appropriate manpower. Paramilitary groups with possible links to the military are waging their own war against the state. The peace process appears to be stalled. Violence is escalating. The judiciary system appears unable to cope, and Colombia is in the midst of a major financial recession. Yet, the U.S. administration seems to be incapable of thinking about the situation with any clarity or articulating a strategy with transparency. It seems unwilling to explain its policy or even to explain the lack of one. It seems confused as to what has actually happened. I would cite just one example. It would appear that the present tendency in U.S. policy would have us more deeply involved in Colombia's insurgency. Reports show that the guerrillas are now engaged in a major way in protecting and profiting from the drug trade. If so, and we plan to expand efforts to go after that trade, then stepped efforts to deal with increased drug production involves us in confronting the guerrillas. This raises a host of questions that have yet to be adequately addressed by the administration. It certainly has not explained its policy to Congress or the public, and we are left with the appearance of a policy of drift and dissembling. The drug czar, having opposed supplemental drug funding last year, is now asking other Cabinet members to support a $1 billion proposal of his own, much of which is to go to Colombia. I hope that before any such request comes before Congress, if it should, that the proposal has more in it than just a wish list. The President has written to Senator Lott and Speaker Hastert about the need to work cooperatively to aid Colombia. I agree with that, but we need to know more about this. We need something to work with, and this does not mean another long list of goodies without thought as to purpose and results. So the situation, as I see it, is past the point when the sort of ad hoc, Chicken Little strategies that have characterized recent foreign policy will do in this instance. It is embarrassing that we have so little before the Congress or the American public by way of serious policyor honest discussion on what we are to do. Yet, we have billion-dollar proposals being floated and emergency aid requests submitted. I hope the hearing today can help us get closer to both an understanding that meets the circumstances. If our witnesses today cannot get us closer to where we need to be, I am going to look at another hearing where we can hear from witnesses who can tell us more. I hope, however, that we will hear today more about what a proper strategy should look like, and I will be offering legislation later this week specifically requiring the administration to deliver to Congress a detailed strategy on Colombia. The administration should have one already on the shelf, so the request, I hope, would not be burdensome. I hope that we will hear much more about that policy today. I am going to explain something about the charts, but before I do, I think I will go to opening comments from my colleagues, if they have any opening comments. Senator DeWine, and then Senator Sessions. Senator DeWine. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. I just want to congratulate you for holding this hearing. I thank our witnesses for being here. We really look forward to your testimony. I think we all know that this country and this hemisphere faces a very serious crisis in regard to what is going on in Colombia. Last November, I again visited Colombia and I had the opportunity, among other things, to meet with President Pastrana, as well as the police and military leaders, to discuss how our two countries could work together better to eliminate drugs from our hemisphere. The deteriorating situation in Colombia, Mr. Chairman, represents a grave threat to not just the democracy of Colombia, but regional stability as well, and I think that that is something that we need to be very concerned about. What we really have here, Mr. Chairman, maybe to state the obvious, but sometimes you have to do that--what we have in Colombia is a number of different wars, a war that is being wage by the government against two separate guerrilla groups, a war against ruthless paramilitary organizations, and also against the drug lords who traffic deadly cocaine and heroin into the United States. For more than three decades, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, otherwise known as the FARC, and the National Liberation Army, the ELN, have both waged the longest running insurgencies in Latin America. It is estimated--and, of course, no one really knows what these figures are, Mr. Chairman, but it is estimated that the ELN has approximately 5,000 guerrillas, while the FARC is estimated to have a force of approximately 15,000. They represent a serious threat to the country of Colombia and the region. The Colombian military frankly may not be up to the task now to counter these foes; at least at the present time they are not. They lack a serious communications, intelligence and mobility capability. Mr. Chairman, the drug traffickers are really the lifeline now for the ELN and the FARC, and this is something that we have really not seen, to my knowledge, in world history before. We have insurgency groups' long commitment, who at some point then become enabled and funded to degrees that we a few years ago would have a hard time imagining the amount of money that flows to them. The drug traffickers are a source for weapons and resources for these guerrilla groups. In exchange, they provide protection for the trafficking organizations. Colombia remains the world's leading producer of cocaine, and a growing producer of some of the world's purest heroin. Sadly, Mr. Chairman, America's drug habit is subsidizing anti- democratic guerrillas in Colombia because the drug traffickers use the rebels to protect their lucrative industry. To attack drug trafficking head-on is a direct attack on the true source of instability in Colombia and the region. With the help of my colleagues, Senators Coverdell, Graham, you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Sessions, and others, last year we passed our bill, the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act. This was a much-needed stop toward eliminating the drug problem at its core, but it was only a first step. This Act authorizes a $2.7 billion, 3-year investment to rebuild our drug-fighting capability outside our borders. This law, Mr. Chairman, is about reclaiming the Federal Government's responsibility--and I might say it is our sole responsibility as far as the different units of Government. I believe in a balanced drug approach. I think we have to have drug treatment. I think we have to have education and we have to have domestic law enforcement. But this is the one area, the fourth component, international interdiction, where only the Federal Government can act. The States cannot act. The State of Ohio cannot act, the State of Alabama cannot act. Only the Federal Government can act, and I think last year we began the process of reclaiming this responsibility that really is solely ours. Passage of that bill is proof that Congress is providing the leadership in the fight against drugs. We passed this bill because frankly the administration, sadly, since coming into office has slashed funding levels for international counter- narcotics efforts. Last year, however, through our bill we made an $800 million investment in previously under-funded programs. The facts are, Mr. Chairman, that if you look at the percentage of our anti-drug budget, what we have seen during the Clinton administration is a cut in the percentage of the dollars that we are putting toward our anti-drug effort. The actual raw dollars have stayed about the same, but if you look at our international drug interdiction effort, what you find is those dollars have remained fairly constant. But the percentage of our total anti-drug budget has dropped year after year after year, the percentage of our total anti-drug budget that goes for international interdiction, which is what I am talking about. Last year, we reversed that trend. I think it is very important, Mr. Chairman, that we continue to work in this area this year to continue what we started last year. Mr. Chairman, in addition to fighting the ELN and the FARC, Colombia also is waging a war against an umbrella organization of about, it is estimated, 5,000 rogue paramilitary armed combatants, whose self-appointed mission is to counter the grip of leftist guerrillas and neutralize anyone suspected of associating with the guerrillas; again, one more war that Colombia has to fight. We have not focused much attention, at least in public discussions, on the need to counter the paramilitaries, but they too benefit from the drug trade and account for a significant number of violent incidents in Colombia. Mr. Chairman, I believe that the United States must take a proactive action in Colombia. The question that we will explore today, however, is what is our role. And I think again, to state the obvious, this is Colombia's battle; this is not the United States'. This is a democratically-elected government in Colombia, and we must work with them. And much as sometimes we may think we know better how they should deal with their internal problems, it is a democratically-elected government and President Pastrana is working very hard to try to deal with these problems. We must work with them and we must be there to assist them, and I think one of the messages that Congress has to send and that the President has to send is just that. We believe in democracy, we believe in governments making their own decisions about how they deal with their own internal problems. There are a number of serious problems that this country has, the country of Colombia has. What happens in Colombia is vitally important to the United States. When drugs are found in Cleveland or Dayton, Ohio, the odds are very heavy they may very well come from Colombia, or may originate in Colombia. When we look at the regional stability of the region, all we have to do is look at the map and see where Colombia is. And we have already seen some of these battles spilling out and the consequences being felt by other countries in the region. And the other countries in the region are very, very sensitive to what is going on in Colombia. So what happens in Colombia is in our own backyard. It is time, frankly, that this country began to pay collectively, all of us--Congress, the President, and the American people, began to pay a lot more attention to what is going on in Colombia because in many respects what goes on in Colombia has a lot more influence on what happens in the United States, whether it be Iowa or Ohio or Alabama, than something that happens 2,000, 3,000 miles away. So I applaud you for holding this hearing. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses on an issue that frankly is not going to go away. It is going to become more and more important, and I think the American people are going to understand in the weeks and months ahead the importance of what is happening in Colombia to the United States, to regional stability, and to our goal of frankly seeing democracy flourish in this hemisphere. That is really what is at stake, two things. One is drugs coming into the United States, from a very selfish point of view and from a parochial point of view. But what also is at stake is the legitimacy and the survival of the government of Colombia. Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Senator DeWine. Senator Sessions. Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would just briefly like to associate myself with both of your remarks and to say that I have been mentioning for some time now Colombia specifically as an area that this Nation has not given effective attention to. It is in our neighborhood. It is critical to the Western Hemisphere. It is a great nation, a longtime democracy of fine people who are suffering the agony of major drug distribution networks, cartels. And now we are looking at a strong and aggressive guerrilla effort. We have spent well over $20 billion on the effort in the Balkans that is not in our backyard. And I have wondered how it is that we now are sitting by and we have the Chinese communists having ports at both ends of the Panama Canal that clearly can subject that canal to sabotage and military attack, whenever they would choose. And now we are seeing Colombia in agony dealing with a Marxist guerrilla group and the amount of drugs coming out of Colombia and being produced there increasing. The numbers in the New York Times showed that we had 165 metric tons of production in 1993, and it is expected to hit 250 tons this year. That is a big increase. So I do not know what is happening, but I believe that this Government has been asleep at the switch. I believe we have not been alert to this problem. I am not at all sure how we ought to go about it, but I do believe it is a priority for us as a Nation, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for highlighting it. Chairman Grassley. I am going to call attention to the two charts--well, one chart and one map. The first chart will show a tremendous increase in the number of hectares that are in cultivation, the number of acres that have been sprayed, and the amount of coca that has actually been killed as a result of that activity. It shows a trend in coca cultivation and cocaine production in the Andean region for 1996 through 1998. I would also like to have my colleagues today especially focus on the map of Colombia that we have set up, and we will be talking a lot about geographic areas around the country and hopefully this map will be of a lot of help. This map is provided by the General Accounting Office. The brown areas show where coca cultivation is concentrated. And then we are going to overlay that now with a red shaded area showing opium cultivation and how that has grown. And then with the final overlay, the blue shaded area denotes the regions controlled by insurgent groups. There are also smaller versions of this map, including a new one showing where the demilitarized zone is located, in each Member's packet. Before I introduce the panel, I also would like to implore, when we make a request to have our testimony two days ahead of time, that that does mean two days. I know that obtaining clearance for some of this hearing from OMB is a very necessary process and we do not argue with that, but it makes it very difficult for us to be able to prepare for a hearing when we do not have the testimony on time as we have requested it in our letter. The first panel consists of Rand Beers, the Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs with the Department of State. Then we will have Brian Sheridan, Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low- Intensity Conflict from the Department of Defense, and then lastly, General Charles Wilhelm, Commander in Chief of U.S. SOUTHCOM in the Department of Defense. I thank you all for being here, and we will start with you, Mr. Beers, and we will have all of you testify and then we will ask questions afterwards. Thank you. STATEMENT OF RAND BEERS, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU FOR INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE Mr. Beers. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the caucus. I want to thank you for this opportunity to be here today to talk about the situation in Colombia and our ongoing policy review. As is almost always the case, you have organized the hearing with an absolutely appropriate time frame in terms of where policy deliberations are and where we are in terms of our discussions with the government of Colombia. What the United States does or does not do in Colombia over the next few years, and perhaps over the next several months, will have a great impact on the future of that country, and I daresay the United States as well. Colombia's national sovereignty is increasingly threatened not from any democratic elements in the military or the political sphere, but from narcotrafficking interests and the well-armed and ruthless guerrillas and paramilitaries to whom they are inextricably linked. Although the central government in Bogota is not directly at risk, these threats are eroding the authority of the central government and depriving it of the ability to govern in outlying areas. And it is in these very areas where narcotics traffickers, paramilitary and guerrilla groups flourish that the narcotics industry is finding refuge, as you have so ably indicated on the map which you presented at the beginning of the hearing. The links between narcotics trafficking and the guerrillas and paramilitary movements are well-documented. Reporting indicates that the guerrilla groups protect illicit fields and labs, transport drugs and precursor chemicals within Colombia, run labs, encourage and intimidate peasants to grow coca, accept drugs as payment from narcotics traffickers and resell those drugs for profit, and trade drugs for weapons, including the possible shipment of drugs outside of Colombia to Brazil and Venezuela for such trades. Paramilitary groups also have clear ties to important narcotics traffickers, and obtain much of their funding from those traffickers. The strength of Colombia's armed insurgent groups has limited the effectiveness of joint U.S.-Colombia counter- narcotics efforts. While aggressive eradication has largely controlled the coca crop in the Guaviare region and is beginning to make inroads in the Caqueta region, any gains that have been made have been more than offset by the explosive growth in the coca crop in Putumayo, the southernmost area that you have on your map, an area in southern Colombia which until recently has been off limits from spray operations because the Colombian National Police have been unable to secure a base there due to heavy guerrilla presence. We are also unable to carry out any meaningful alternative development programs in most of the coca-growing region, especially in southern Colombia, because the Colombian government lacks the ability to conduct the monitoring and enforcement necessary for the success of such programs. In order for our counter-narcotics programs ultimately to be successful, we cannot allow certain areas of the country, like Putumayo, to be off limits for counter-narcotics operations. Fortunately, there are reasons for optimism. The Colombian National Police has continued its superb record of counter- narcotics activity, and now the CNP's commitment to counter- narcotics has also been adopted by the Colombian armed forces. In conjunction with this change in focus, the current military leadership is guarding the country's armed forces through a cultural transformation which, if sustained, bodes well for the future of Colombia. Defense Minister Ramirez and Armed Forces Commander Tapias have taken dramatic steps to deal with the legacy of human rights abuses and impugnity that have clouded our bilateral relations in the past. Concurrent with this effort to clean up the military is a renewed effort to counter-narcotics. The new leadership realizes that one of the best ways to attack the guerrillas is to attack their financing in the form of narcotics profits, whether through cultivation, processing, or transportation. The Colombian Army is forming a brand new counter-narcotics brigade specifically designed to work in conjunction with the Colombian National Police on the counter-narcotics mission, initially in the sanctuary areas in southern Colombia. The Colombian Air Force has undertaken an aggressive program to regain control of their air space and deny its use to traffickers by extending north coast operations to southern Colombia. The Colombian Navy is working closely with U.S. forces on maritime interdiction and has participated in many significant seizures, despite limits on equipment and operating funds. The Navy and Marine Corps are now ready for interdiction operations on the Colombian river systems, including in southern Colombia. Overall, cooperation with the Colombian military on counter-narcotics operations has never been better. INL is working directly with the Colombian military in two important areas. First, we are coordinating with SOUTHCOM and the Department of Defense to provide training and equipment for the Colombian Army's new counter-narcotics battalion that I mentioned previously. The mission of this unit is to conduct counter-narcotics operations initially in southern Colombia and to provide force protection for the Colombian National Police. In addition to training and equipment which DoD is providing, we are providing mobility to that unit in the form of 18 UH-1N helicopters. We are also working to improve the Colombian security forces' ability to collect, analyze and disseminate intelligence on counter-narcotics activities and on insurgent activity which could threaten counter-narcotics forces. One of the top priorities of the Pastrana government is implementing a peace process to bring an end to violent conflict that has drained that nation for four decades. One of the key limitations confronting the Pastrana administration during the negotiations, however, is that the guerrillas currently feel little pressure to negotiate. Their intransigence is fueled by the perception that the Colombian armed forces do not pose a threat. This is another reason that we are looking carefully at what we may do to aid the military in its counter-narcotics mission. Over the past several weeks, the government of Colombia has developed a comprehensive strategy, the Plan Colombia, to address the economic security and drug-related problems facing that country. Colombia has invited the U.S. Government to contribute to the development of this plan and we have worked closely with them for over a month now. Clearly, it has resource implications. We understandthat the majority of the resources will come from Colombia itself or from international financial institutions. Colombia estimates that over the next 3 years, they need to spend $7.5 billion to deal with the combination of counter-narcotics issues, the economic problems facing the country, and social development issues related to drug trafficking and corruption. Of that, they plan to spend or taken on additional debt burden of $4.75 billion, and they are looking to the international community to contribute the remainder of that money and they will be here in town tomorrow to talk to Members of Congress after talking with the President in New York today. We are currently involved within the administration in discussions regarding about how we can use existing authorities and funds to support the counter-narcotics operations in Colombia, and we are also ready now to work with the Colombians to assess the additional resource implications of their strategy and the optimum ways in which the United States can further assist. But let me say with respect to the issue of a coherent strategy, Mr. Chairman and members of the caucus, we have been working with the government of Colombia now for over a month. As Senator DeWine said, this is a Colombian problem, this is a Colombian strategy that we have received from them, and we are now in the posture of working with them to define what our role might be in association with them. It is a strategy that engages all elements of the Colombian government. It is a broad-reaching strategy that includes the relationship of the peace process to the economy, to social development, to the counter-narcotics efforts. The bulk of the resources that they are looking to devote to this effort will go to the counter-narcotics effort. That is $4.8 billion over 3 years. It is a strategy designed to go after drug trafficking, particularly in southern Colombia, in order to take the resources away from drug traffickers and to take the resources away from the insurgents who profit from that drug trafficking. If they can move into that area in southern Colombia, the Caqueta-Putumayo area that is in the southernmost area of the country that you have defined on your map, they will have taken on what is currently a sanctuary and what is currently the largest growing area in Colombia for cocaine. They will not neglect the other areas in the country, but that will be the initial area that they will want to be going into. I think they have given us an outline of a very coherent and directed strategy that we should be able to work with them in order to deal with. And I hope in the days and weeks ahead that we will be in a better position to come up to respond to your request, Mr. Chairman, that the administration and the Congress engage in a discussion of Colombia, as the President indicated in his response to Senator Lott and to Speaker Hastert. The problems of narcotics in Colombia are daunting and complex. While it is convenient to think of it in criminal terms, it is undeniably linked at a fundamental level to the equally complex issues of insurgency and paramilitaries, and any action that we take directed at drug trafficking will also have implications for both of those groups. Because of this, it is all the more important to maintain our focus on the counter- narcotics question at hand. In Colombia, we have a partner who shares our concerns, and a leadership that regularly demonstrates a political will to execute the needed reforms and operations. Our challenge as a neighbor and a partner is to identify the ways in which the U.S. Government can assist the Colombian government and to assure that we are able to deliver that assistance in a timely manner. I look forward to working with you and other Members of Congress in the challenge that we face ahead. Thank you very much. Chairman Grassley. Thank you very much. [The prepared statement of Mr. Beers follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.007 Chairman Grassley. Now, we go to Secretary Sheridan. STATEMENT OF BRIAN E. SHERIDAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, SPECIAL OPERATIONS AND LOW-INTENSITY CONFLICT, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE Mr. Sheridan. Senator Grassley, let me start by echoing Rand's comments that your timing was exquisite on this hearing. This is exactly the right moment to have this dialogue. Let me also thank Senator Sessions, Senator DeWine and Senator Graham for coming also this morning. Senator DeWine, your leadership last year on the supplemental was very much appreciated by all of us who work in the counter-drug effort. And Senator Graham's longtime interest in the hemisphere and his leadership is well-recognized. I have submitted a written statement for the record, so my oral comments will be very brief. Speaking from a Department of Defense perspective, we are focusing principally on the cocaine threat that emanates from Colombia. As you well know, approximately 80 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States at some point transits Colombia, as well as a growing percentage of the heroin that enters the U.S. And the cultivation of both coca and poppy continue to flourish in Colombia. That is the threat that we are focused on. We have been working with the Colombians in counter- narcotics since 1989, when directed to do so by theCongress. Our policy is very simple, it is not confused. It is to eliminate the production of illegal drugs in Colombia, in partnership with the Colombian government. We are not in the counter-insurgency business. As Rand explained, the situation on the ground in Colombia is increasingly complicated, but our policy is very straightforward. We are working with the Colombian government on counter-narcotics programs. We are not in the counter- insurgency business. Our work with them for the last 10 years has focused on detection and monitoring support and to help them interdict illegal flows of cocaine, training, and intelligence support. Over the last year or two, we have been involved in a number of initiatives to enhance their air programs, upgrading their aircraft. On the ground, we are focusing on the training of the counter-drug battalion, and on the rivers we are working with them on a revitalized riverine program, both to stop the flow of coca products, but more importantly to interdict the flow of precursor chemicals. The military has made great strides over the last couple of years in two very important areas, both in its commitment and improvement on human rights grounds, which I think is very commendable, and I think under-noticed, if I might say, in the United States, and under General Tapias and Minister Ramirez a real commitment to reforming the Colombian military to make it more effective as it performs the tasks that the president directs it to perform. Let me close by echoing Rand's comments that this is a Colombian problem. Senator DeWine, you also mentioned this. They have come up with what we think is a very good, integrated strategy. Our policy is very straightforward to support the democratically-elected government of Colombia, and that is our task and that is what we are doing. I look forward to your questions. Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Sheridan. [The prepared statement of Mr. Sheridan follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.017 Chairman Grassley. Now, General Wilhelm. Thank you. STATEMENT OF GENERAL CHARLES E. WILHELM, COMMANDER IN CHIEF, UNITED STATES SOUTHERN COMMAND, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE General Wilhelm. Chairman Grassley, distinguished members of the caucus, I am pleased to appear before you this morning to discuss our activities in Colombia. This is a crucial issue and it is one that we at Southern Command believe is of great importance not only to Colombia and to the United States, but to the entire hemisphere. When I arrived at Southern Command 2 years ago, I described Colombia as the most threatened nation in our hemisphere. Today, I stand behind that assessment. In fact, over the past 2 years the situation in Colombia as it pertains to internal security and stability, if anything, the threats have intensified. Despite that, as I testify before you today, I am cautiously optimistic about Colombia's future. I am optimistic for three reasons. The first is leadership. I have been in and out of Colombia for a variety of military purposes for over a decade. The current leadership in Colombia from the top down, from the president through the military leadership, is the best, the most ethical, and the most focused that I have ever worked with. Dealing with people like General Tapias, General Serrano, General Mora Rangel, the commander of the Army, General Velasco, the commander of the Air Force, Admiral Garcia, the commander of the Navy, I am dealing with top-flight professionals. These are men with a deep and abiding sense of ethics. They care about their troops and they know what they are doing, and they have a vision for the future. So I am encouraged by the leadership that I see. The second thing that encourages me and causes me to have some cautious optimism are recently battlefield successes enjoyed by the armed forces. There can be no mistake about it. We watch this very closely. My number was ten; there were ten stinging tactical defeats in succession that were suffered by Colombia's armed security forces. But then we saw the July country-wide offensive initiated by the FARC, and there I saw some not so subtle changes in the complexion of the battlefield. I visited Colombia. I talked in great length with all of the military leaders. They presented me with convincing and compelling evidence that in a significant number of engagements, the military had prevailed. They prevailed for good reasons. They corrected some of the mistakes that they have made in the past. Their intelligence and intelligence- sharing was much improved. I saw levels of cooperation and coordination between the National Police and the armed forces that I had not seen before. And, finally, I saw unparalleled improvement in air/ground coordination, andthat made a major difference during July. I share the widely held view that the ultimate solution to Colombia's internal turmoil lies at the negotiating table and not on the battlefield. However, for negotiations to succeed, I am convinced that the government must strengthen its negotiating position and I believe that increased leverage at the negotiating table can only be gained on Colombia's battlefields. The military component of Colombia's emerging national strategy that both Rand and Brian have mentioned targets narco- trafficking as its point of main effort on the military side. I agree with this approach. The best and most efficient way to eliminate the insurgents and para-militaries who are wreaking havoc on 50 percent of the countryside is to eliminate their support base. Deprived of the revenues and other support they derive from their alliance with narco-traffickers, I believe the insurgents will be weakened to the point where they will be compelled to participate in meaningful negotiations that will hopefully lead to peace and reconciliation. Denied an adversary and with reassertion of government control over currently disputed areas, I am equally convinced that the illegal para- military groups will literally die on the vine. Colombia is headed in the right direction, in my judgment, but to reach their destination, they will need our continued help. We must continue to assist Colombia in its efforts to reform and revitalize its armed forces. At the same time, we must assure that our own forces are postured to do the job. Accurate and timely intelligence are essential for success against the narco-traffickers and are a key ingredient in our own force protection programs. As we have drawn from Panama, as we must under the provisions of the 1977 Panama Canal treaties, Southern Command has been required to completely rebuild its theater architecture from the ground up. We have come a long way in the past year. U.S. Army South and Special Operations Command South have completed their migration from Panama to Puerto Rico. We will soon stand up a new Navy component headquarters at Roosevelt Roads. We have merged the two joint interagency task forces that conducted execution, planning, and supervision of our counter-drug operations in both the transit and source zones into a single integrated organization at Key West. But this morning, from a counter-drug perspective, and I think looking widely at our needs in Colombia, the single most critical part of the architecture is not in place. Probably the most priceless facility that we had on Panama was Howard Air Force Base. That runway closed on the first of May of this year. Previously, during any average year, we had somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 aircraft on the runways and taxiways at Howard Air Force Base, and every year, they flew about 2,000 detection, monitoring, tracking, and intelligence missions in support of our important work in the Andean Ridge. To compensate for the loss of Howard Air Force Base, we identified a series of forward operating locations, host nation airfields that we would simply negotiate access agreements to and from there conduct the operations that we previously conducted from Howard. Short-term agreements have been reached with the Netherlands and we are operating out of Curacao and Aruba in the Netherlands Antilles and we are closing on a final long-term agreement with Ecuador for the air field at Manta. The Manta air field is one that I would really like to focus on because it is truly the linchpin in the fall apparatus. Manta gives us the site that we need to provide effective coverage of the crucial Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador borders, all of Peru, and Bolivia, in simple terms, the deep source where the drugs are grown and produced. It is the linchpin of the apparatus. We need $42.8 million in the next fiscal year and a total of $122.5 million in fiscal year 2000 and 2001 to bring these three FOLs on line, to give them the capacity, the operating, and the safety features that they need to sustain operations at roughly the same tempo that we conducted them previously from Howard Air Force Base. That request is going to committee, I believe, within the next couple of weeks. Anything that the members of the caucus could do to support this funding would be greatly appreciate and, I think, would aid enormously--enormously--our shared counter-drug efforts with Colombia and the other nations in the source zone. Mr. Chairman, in your letter of August 12, you highlighted our policy goals in Colombia and the counter-insurgency versus counter-narcotics issue. From a military perspective, I believe our policy in Colombia has been clear and consistent. We have focused exclusively on counter-narcotics assistance. The rules are clearly understood by our troops. We are there to train, equip, and provide technical assistance. We have strictly avoided involvement in field tactical or advisory roles. The direction of the new Colombian strategy, I am glad to say, is consistent with this policy. Our efforts in Colombia are vitally important. We are profoundly grateful to this caucus for its interest and for your support of our initiatives and I hope that we can count on it in the important weeks and months ahead. Mr. Chairman and members of the caucus, I look forward to your questions. Thank you. [The prepared statement of General Wilhelm follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.025 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.026 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.027 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.028 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.029 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.030 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.031 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.032 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.033 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.034 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.035 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.036 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.037 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.038 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.039 Chairman Grassley. I will start with Mr. Beers, but I have questions of other people, as well. What you have described today, I think my point is to make a point and ask you if what you have described today is supposed to make a difference. Now, as I outlined in the previous chart that was there, we have had a very ambitious eradication program in Colombia against coca, but the result has been the doubling of the coca crop and increases in the productivity so that Colombia will be producing more today than last year or at any time in recent history. What I think I have heard you say in your statement, it appears that our policy for Colombia is to be more of the same and lots more of it, sort of a more of it squared, than what we have had in the past. Then compare that with the history of increased production we have. Do you describe that as success, and can you tell us why we should have confidence that the plan you have suggested today is going to make a difference? Mr. Beers. Thank you, sir. Let me go into some more detail in response to your question. Firstly, with respect to the issue of aerial eradication, the numbers which you have indicated in terms of the overall increase in cultivation of coca in Colombia are our best estimates of that. What they do not reflect is the detailed breakdown of the areas of concentration of our counter-narcotics effort in eradication. There are, or at least there used to be, three major growing areas of coca in Colombia, the large blob on the right known as Guaviare and the somewhat smaller blob in the south central which actually is the merger of both Caqueta and Putumayo growing areas. The principal area that the United States has supported Colombia in eradicating has been in the Guaviare area, and for the last two years, the overall levels of cultivation in that area have declined. With respect to the Caqueta area, we have begun a serious effort really only last year, and the increase in the Caqueta area, which is that section there, as opposed to this section here, in that particular area, there was a less dramatic increase than there had been before. With respect to that southern finger, the Putumayo, that is the area where the increase has been most expansive. That is the area where we expect the increase to be even more dramatic next year because that is the area that there has been no counter-narcotics effort in, and that is the area that we are looking to work with the government of Colombia in order to take on, additional effort in Caqueta, more initial effort in Putumayo. That is the eradication portion only, and that would be an expansion of the existing effort. But I think that there are two very important additional elements in the strategy that I was describing which are new, which are not extensions of previous activities. Firstly, the counter-narcotics battalion, which we have all three described to you, is a new initiative on the part of the Colombian military to become more involved in these activities. All of that eradication effort that has occurred heretofore has occurred with minimal or no involvement by the Colombian military on the ground in order to secure the ground during and after an eradication effort in order to sustain that eradication effort. This is a new proposal on the part of the Colombian government for which they are organizing forces in order to take on this strategy. Secondly, the Colombian air force, which has had some success up on the north coast with air interdiction, is looking now to move that effort to the south. Why is that different? Because the effort in the north was devoted at going after airplanes that had already acquired finished cocaine and were flying north to deliver that cocaine to drop-off points for further trans-shipment to the United States or Europe. In the south, what we are looking at is going after the air traffic of the narco-trafficking industry at a point in the process where we are talking about the first and second levels of processing, that is, to prevent the leaf from being sold, to prevent the base and paste from being sold and moved to final processing. If you think about the effort that was undertaken in Peru over the last four or five years and the dramatic drop in the price of coca leaf for farmers which caused the 50 percent decease in cocaine production in Peru, that is the effort that we are looking to try to do similar work in Colombia. This would represent a new departure on the part of the Colombian government and we are working with them in order to affect that. We do not believe that any single effort, any single strand, or any single tool in the counter-narcotics effort is, by itself, enough. This is a joint strategy within Colombia. It is a combined strategy with the United States. It is an effort to use as many possible tools as possible in order to go after the trafficking industry, and we think with the broader-gauged and more comprehensive commitment on the part of the Colombian government and our working together with them, that, yes, this does stand an important, significant chance of making the serious inroad in the trafficking industry in Colombia that you and we and the American people all want. Thank you very much, sir. Chairman Grassley. Do I hear you say, then, assuming that we kind of agree that we have had this dramatic increase in cultivation and production, you are saying that the successes that have been made in south central, and then my saying more of the same, that that will have a parallel accomplishment in other growing areas? Mr. Beers. I believe, sir, that increasing some of the things that we are already doing, together with the new programs, is what will make the significant difference here. What we have is a comprehensive program. What we had before was a program that did not have the breadth and vision that this program has, and that is why we are enormously appreciative of the Colombian government's ability to pull together this strategy and present it to us and why we want very much to work with them. Chairman Grassley. Senator Graham. Senator Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You indicated, Mr. Beers, that two of the principal elements of the Colombian plan are the use of the military in drug eradication and shifting air assets further south so that they would interdict the process before crystallization and not after crystallization, is that correct? Mr. Beers. That is correct, sir. Senator Graham. There is some evidence that one of the contributors to the increased production in Colombia has been the fact that there has been introduced a new strain of coca plant which is more resistant and which also has a higher overall yield of coca hydrochloride. Is that your information, as well? Mr. Beers. Yes, sir. We do not have the final figures on the extent of that shift, but it is correct. We have seen evidence and have been reporting it for the last several years, that the higher-yielding variety of coca called e coca coca, which is grown in Peru and Bolivia, appears now to have entered into the Colombian cocaine equation, whereas before, they had a much lower-yielding, roughly three-to-one ratio of coca, which was called ipidu. So, yes, we are looking at not only the increase in the overall hectorage of coca that is being grown, but we are also looking at the likely increase in the yield characteristics as we measure and translate that cultivation into actual processed cocaine that will probably be available in this coming year, that is, the 1999 estimate, which will be available at the beginning of 2000. Senator Graham. Since this new strain is a relatively new introduction into Colombia, as you say, and we have already seen almost a doubling of coca production in Colombia, what do we anticipate that this new development in the agronomy of coca production will mean in terms of volume? Mr. Beers. Sir, in terms of the tactics of dealing with the drug trafficking issue, this coca is still susceptible to aerial eradication in the same way that the ipidu version was. But in addition to that, we are also looking, as I mentioned, about the introduction of ground forces to try to maintain the control on the ground once the eradication has been undertaken and to allow the government then to extend in the form of their control the option of some kind of alternative economic activity to the farmers who are currently drawn into that area by the gold rush mentality created by the high profits that come from the coca industry. So we hope, in combination, to present them with a clear deterrent for why they will not be able to take that coca to market and with some alternative economic activity so that they can consider other forms of economic work other than growing coca. Senator Graham. In addition to the focus on eradication and air interdiction, what does the Colombian plan call for in terms of attacking the crystalline labs where the coca paste is converted into cocaine? Mr. Beers. The Colombia national police will, with now the support of the military, continue their effort to go after those labs. We have several efforts to see if we cannot identify those labs more effectively by national technical means in addition to the normal human intelligence, which has often been the way that we have discovered where those laboratories are. But we believe that the additional presence of Colombian military along with the police on the ground in the region will help considerably in terms of going after those labs. If you were to look at the statistics that came out of the effort of Colombian Task Force South, which was located at Tres Esquinas and the operations that were conducted out of that region for the last year, you would see a dramatic increase in the number of labs that were taken down, and that is a direct result of the increased presence of Colombian military and police on the ground in that region. It becomes a lot more difficult when the sanctuary is no longer a sanctuary to operate with impugnity and lawlessness in the way that the traffickers had been able to do before. In addition to that, as I mentioned and others have mentioned, the Colombian navy and marine corps have stood up an important riverine force that will operate on the rivers in this area, but more broadly, throughout Colombia. One of the major activities that they will be looking at, in addition to the air interdiction effort, will be to prevent the transit of drugs and precursor chemicals over the riverine system in southern Colombia. In addition to that, the Colombian national police and the army will also be looking to dampen the flow of precursor chemicals into this region. There is one particular chemical, potassium permanganate, which is part of a major interdiction effort on the part of the Colombian government, to prevent its flow into the region, because it is the one essential of all of the precursors that cannot be substituted for. But in addition to that, the Colombian national police and military have been doing an important job in controlling that flow so that we have discovered, they have discovered, that the traffickers are now, in an effort to find acceptable chemicals, beginning to use cement as a substitute for one of the precursor chemicals in the region, so that General Serrano told us recently that the amount of cement that appears to have been going into the region is actually greater than the amount of cement being used in the city of Bogota. So they have begun a major effort to now control the flow of the common building material of cement because they are using that as one of the precursors. That is part of a broader effort at precursor control in the region. Senator Graham. With the increase in production of coca in Colombia, has there been a commensurate increase in the number of crystalline labs? Mr. Beers. Sir, I do not have that figure for you, but I will try to get it for you from the intelligence community. Senator Graham. You indicated that we seem to have increased the number of labs that we have been able to eliminate. Do you have any sense of what percentage those eliminations were of the total of operating labs? Mr. Beers. No, sir, I do not, but I will get that for you, also. Senator Graham. I might say, just in conclusion, it has seemed to me, and I defer to the judgment of people who know a lot more about this business than I do, that the most vulnerable point in the production of cocaine is at the crystalline labs. That is where you have the smallest number of sites which are critical to converting the relatively raw product into a commercially salable product, and that that would be a site that ought to get substantial attention in terms of our effort to break down the chain of operations necessary to produce this product that does so much evil to the people of the world. Mr. Beers. Yes, sir, I would agree with you, would that we had perfect knowledge of where all those labs were located, because you are absolutely right. That would be the funnel point that would allow us the greatest success if we were able to identify where they were located in their entirety. Thank you, sir. Chairman Grassley. Senator DeWine? Senator DeWine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Secretary Beers, just to kind of complete the picture, can you take Senator Grassley's map and tell me where the DMZ zone is? Mr. Beers. Yes, sir. It is located in this area, which touches on the northern part of the Caqueta growing area and the eastern tip of the Guaviare growing area. It is an area about of that size there. It is not centered in any of the major growing areas, but it is on the periphery of each of those growing areas. Senator DeWine. And just for the record, the area that you just described and just showed us on the map, what percentage of what Senator Grassley has labeled insurgent controlled area, what percentage of that blue area would that have been, that you described as the DMZ? Is that a fifth of it a fourth of it or what is it? Mr. Beers. No, sir. It is much smaller than that. Senator DeWine. Much smaller than that? Mr. Beers. Yes, sir. Senator DeWine. What would you say it is? Mr. Beers. We are talking about an area, based on the Senator's blue circumscribed area, that is probably less than ten percent of that area. Senator DeWine. Thank you. General Wilhelm, I appreciate your comments about Manta and the need for Manta and I want to maybe zero in a little more on the need, as you perceive it, for Manta and how that directly impacts our overall anti-drug strategy in the region and how it impacts specifically on what we intend to do in Colombia, if you could just go through that in maybe a little bit more detail than you did. You touched on it, and I understand that, but just in sort of layman's terms, what difference does that make as far as what we can do to help Colombia, which is the topic of this hearing? General Wilhelm. Yes, Senator DeWine. First, I think the most helpful way to discuss the forward operating locations is to view them for what they are, which is a network. It is an interdependent network. No one FOL by itself will adequately answer our needs to conduct detection, monitoring, and tracking and aerial reconnaissance missions in support of our counter- drug efforts. I will start, sir, with Curacao and Aruba and then talk a minute about Central America and then close on Manta, which is the most important FOL location, in my judgment, given the drug threat that we face now. First, Curacao and Aruba. Located where they are, adjacent to Venezuela, those two locations provide us excellent coverage of what I call the southern transit zone, the southern Caribbean region, and the northern source zone, Venezuela and northern Colombia. Then we have identified a need for an FOL in Central America. I will cover this very briefly. I think our needs could be met from any of a variety of locations. My preferred site is the Liberia air field in Costa Rica, but there is a bilateral counter-drug and maritime agreement that needs to be concluded before we can logically open this next negotiating segment with Costa Rica. But whatever FOL we end up selecting and negotiating in Central America, it will provide coverage of Central America, a large portion of the important eastern Pacific transit routes, which we have not been covering adequately in recent years, and it will also provide us overlapping coverage of a small portion of the northern source zone, again, looking at the Colombia- Venezuela portion, which brings us to Manta. Manta provides us immediate access to the very important Peru-Colombia-Ecuador border region where the cocaine hydrochloride, the base is moved to laboratories for refinement. It is a major movement vector for precursor chemicals. From Manta and only from Manta can we get what I call coverage of the deep source zone, which is the rest of the world. I think we would be ill advised to pursue a Colombia- only strategy. We need to pay careful attention to the successes that we have had in Peru and Bolivia and we need to sustain those successes. I know that the caucus knows the numbers. Last year, Peru reduced its production by 26 percent, Bolivia by 17 percent in terms of leaf, and in terms of base, about 25 percent in both countries. So we need to sustain our progress there. From Manta and only from Manta can we reach down and cover the deep southern portion of the source zone. If you look at all of that in the aggregate, sir, at the end of the day, from this network of FOLs, we will have far better and more efficient coverage of the entire area of interest from a counter-narcotics standpoint than we ever had from Howard Air Force Base and at a considerable savings. The annual cost of operating Howard Air Force Base in its last full year of operations was $75.8 million. It will take us $122.5 million to develop the FOLs, as I mentioned earlier, to expand their capacities, to improve their operating and safety conditions to the point that we can conduct operations in the frequency and intensity that we need to, $122.5 million over two years, a one-time cost. Thereafter, our annual operating costs, we estimate between about $14 and $18 million a year. So when the structure is in place, over a ten-year span, and I suspect we are looking at about a ten-year struggle here, the FOLs would support our efforts at about 40 percent of the straight-line costs that we would have incurred operating Howard Air Force Base as a permanent facility. So, sir, as a network of operating locations, a brief look at some of the fiscal implications of what we are talking about, and, of course, we do escape the sovereignty issues because these remain host nation facilities and bases to which we simply have access authorization. Senator DeWine. General, how long would it take to get Manta up? General Wilhelm. Sir, we believe that we can do most of the heavy hauling--to put it in very simple terms, we need to dump about $30 million worth of concrete into that runway to make it capable of taking our big airplanes. Big airplanes to us are AWACs and tankers. Those are the long-reach, long-look airplanes that we need to do the job in the deep-source zone. Senator DeWine. It would take how long? General Wilhelm. Sir, we can let those contracts and get most of that done during fiscal year 2000. Senator DeWine. What assurance do we have we get to stay there? General Wilhelm. I talked with Ambassador Rich Brown about 48 hours ago, sir. We have one final point on taxes to resolve with the Ecuadorians and it looks as though we will either have a ten-year agreement or a five-year agreement with a five-year provision for automatic extension. Senator DeWine. Thank you. Secretary Beers, is there any reason for any optimism in regard to the peace process? Mr. Beers. Sir, I---- Senator DeWine. Is there any good news? Mr. Beers. I think that one of the important ways to look at this is that this is not a short-term process and that time horizons that are shorter than three or five years are unrealistic with respect to the resolution. I am not aware of a negotiation with an insurgent that took less time than that. I think there were enormous expectations that were created when President Pastrana was elected. I think we are in for the long, slow haul. So when you ask, am I optimistic, if you give me the privilege of saying, with a longer time horizon, yes, and I think that this strategy that the Colombian government has presented represents a way to push the parties closer together to resolving it, but it is not going to happen quickly. Senator DeWine. My time is up. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Grassley. Senator Sessions. Senator Sessions. Thank you very much. This is a very troubling thing for me. I got involved as a young Federal prosecutor prosecuting cocaine cases in the DEA and others in the 1970s, and 12 years as United States Attorney on the Gulf Coast and had some appreciation for what was happening. I read The Underground Empire and all those books and all that stuff. The things that you are saying today, Mr. Beers, Mr. Sheridan, were said in this body 15 or 20 years ago. We are making progress. We are going to do this. We have got a little progress in Peru, 26 percent, 17 percent in Bolivia, reduction. But there is an increase in Colombia that more than compensates for that and that has been the pattern consistently. Now, I am not sure how to deal with it, but I think we have got to be honest about what is happening, and we are not going to stop the drug problem in the United States by reducing or stopping production in Colombia. That is not going to do it. It is a component of it, if we can make progress, but it is not going to deal with our problem. We have a demand that it will be produced somewhere. Mr. Sheridan, how much cocaine is consumed in the United States in metric tons per year? Mr. Sheridan. I would have to defer to General McCaffrey on that. My sense is it is probably 300 or 400 tons a year. Senator Sessions. Is that including what is seized or actually consumed. Mr. Sheridan. No. You said consumed in the United States. Senator Sessions. Do you mean actually coming in, or including that that is seized---- Mr. Sheridan. I can only give you rough orders of magnitude. The best I can recall, the number is about 400 tons or so, I think, enter the United States, give or take some, and maybe 100 tons are then seized somewhere in the United States, and maybe 300 tons are consumed, somewhere along those lines. Senator Sessions. So it looks like Colombia will supply the biggest part of that next year, with 250 metric tons. Mr. Sheridan. Correct. Mr. Beers. There is more than enough. Senator Sessions. It is a very, very frustrating process for me. And you have Colombia producing what percentage of our heroin now? Mr. Sheridan. I do not know, but it is a growing percentage. Senator Sessions. Is it not 60 or so percent, I believe, in one of the---- Mr. Sheridan. Well, 60 or 70 percent is of the heroin that is actually seized, although I think people would be careful to say it does not necessarily reflect what is being consumed. In other words, our law enforcement may have a bias towards being more effective in seizing Colombian heroin than perhaps some out of Southeast Asia or other places. But, clearly, increasing amounts of Colombian heroin are being found in the United States. Senator Sessions. Mr. Sheridan, you said that the DEA is not in the counter-insurgency business, and I believe, General Wilhelm, you said our military support had been ``exclusively on counter-narcotics assistance.'' General Wilhelm. That is correct. Yes, sir. Senator Sessions. It seems to me, if we are going to lobby Colombia to do something about producing cocaine, they need to be able to do it, and it seems to me they have got to take control of their country. I mean, Abraham Lincoln understood that. You cannot have a big chunk of your country under Marxist revolutionary control and be able to expect the country to be able to do anything successfully, particularly when they are involved in the narcotics business. That troubles me. Is this the policy of the United States, Mr. Beers, and the State Department, that we are not going to assist Colombia in defeating the guerilla forces that are threatening its ability to do what we ask in their own democracy? Mr. Beers. Sir, what we are about and what our focus is is on counter-narcotics, but that---- Senator Sessions. My question to you is---- Mr. Beers. Please, may I finish, sir? Senator Sessions. My time is going to run out. Mr. Beers. But that area is also insurgent. Where the insurgents and the traffickers are together, our assistance supports efforts to go after insurgents as well as traffickers because there is no difference between insurgents operating in those areas. So we will assist in that area. The strategy, then, is to deprive the insurgents of their resources. There are insurgents there. There are resources there. This is an effort to go after the traffickers and the insurgents where there is cultivation---- Senator Sessions. Do you agree with the General that Colombia is not going to have any leverage at the negotiating table until they start winning militarily some on the battlefield? Mr. Beers. That is the general view of this government, sir. Senator Sessions. And does this government have any plans to assist a longtime ally of the United States, Colombia, in this effort, to defeat the military insurgents that are in Colombia? Mr. Beers. As I have said, our authorization and our strategy is counter-narcotics. It will also effectively reduce the capabilities of the insurgents. It is their life blood. Senator Sessions. I just think that is a real badproblem. I think that my best judgment is that the first thing we need to do is help Colombia win this civil war to reassert governmental control over their country and then they can begin to make progress, and it seems to me it is sort of ironic that the area that the insurgents control is the very area where the major cultivation is, is that not true, Mr. Sheridan? Mr. Sheridan. Yes, and as Secretary Beers said, our interests, our policy is very clear of supporting the Colombian military, allowing it to operate in the narcotics areas, particularly in the Putumayo and the Caqueta. In the course of them doing counter-narcotics work, they will end up denying the FARC the revenue that the FARC need to engage in their insurgency. Senator Sessions. I understand the DEA's position. As a matter of fact, I think DEA is correct. DEA is not a political- military organization. It is an anti-drug organization. You have to maintain that as your priority. But I am surprised and concerned that the policy of our military and our State Department and our President is not to provide direct assistance, where possible, to help Colombia defeat the Marxist guerrillas that are threatening their---- Mr. Beers. Sir, this is their highest priority. Mr. Sheridan. Senator, also, I am speaking for the Department of Defense. Senator Sessions. Excuse me. Mr. Sheridan. I am speaking for Secretary Cohen today and I can tell you, I have gotten very clear guidance from him. I know where he is. Senator Sessions. Enforcement policy, not DEA. I am sorry. Mr. Sheridan. Right. He is strongly in favor of supporting the Colombian military as it works in the counter-narcotics area. We are not interested in a straight counter-insurgency support program in Colombia, nor do we have any authorization or appropriation of any funds from this Congress for that purpose. Senator Sessions. But is that the right policy? Who wants to answer that? Is that the right policy? Mr. Beers. Sir, that is the Colombians' policy. General Wilhelm. This is, as much as anything else, an operational question. Senator Sessions, that is a good question and I think there is a reasonable answer to it. I have never seen an insurgency quite like the one that we are observing in Colombia right now. It is the only self-sustaining insurgency I have ever seen. There is no Cuba in back of it. There is no Soviet Union in back of it. It is this delicate marriage of criminals, narcotraffickers, with insurgents. So it is kind of a one-of-a-kind phenomenon. I have always felt that one of the best ways to defeat an enemy is not to take him on frontally, because you are going to take a heck of a lot of casualties to do that. A much better way is to cut his supply lines. The FARC's supply line are the revenues that they get from the narcotraffickers, so if we can help them defeat the narcotraffickers, dry up their cash flow, which is exactly the commodity they use for recruitment, for arms purchases, for the adaptive tactics and techniques they have undertaken with the propane canisters, the full range of activities they are involved in, I think the insurgency will die on the vine. To me, this is a good military strategy. Cut off their logistics lifeline and let the force die on the vine. Senator Sessions. General Wilhelm, all I would say to you is, we have been trying to dry up the money going into Colombia from cocaine for over 20 years. That has been a goal not achieved under any administration, and I am not sure you can achieve that. I am not sure that we are going to be able to do anything until they are defeated on the battlefield. But I guess you have been there, you know, but those are just my instincts about where we are. I do hope that we will not be so persnickety about not providing aid that will help them actually win militarily, and that would help fight narcotics, I believe. Mr. Chairman, I am sorry. My time is over. Chairman Grassley. General Wilhelm, one of our main concerns has to be for effective intelligence. General, could you characterize your current situation as far as intelligence collection is concerned and the resources necessary for that and how your resources meet the needs? General Wilhelm. Senator Grassley, I am in trouble. In December of last year, I categorized our intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in Southern Command at the lowest measured readiness level, C-4. That is where we are today. Just to make our plight perhaps a little bit more measurable, we requested slightly in excess of 900 aerial sorties to paint the intelligence picture that we needed of these narcotics producing regions. Our fill was less than 400 sorties, or at about a 44 percent fill rate. I need help. I need it badly. I have no tactical assets that are dedicated to my theater. The ARL, the airborne reconnaissance low, an aircraft, of course, which we tragically lost here about a month ago with a crew of five U.S. and two Colombians on board, was designed and built for United States Southern Command. I do not have a single one of them today, but three of them are in Korea. I am in urgent need of help on the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance side. I think we are on the cusp of elevating Colombia to Tier 1 Bravo for intelligence collection, which will certainly increase our leverage to get assets. But at this moment, that is probably the largest single problem that I face, sir, always backwiring into the theater architecture. That is why it is so important that the few assets that I have be at the right locations, where they can give me the densest possible coverage of the most important areas. Hence, I keep bringing up the FOL structure and the importance of Manta. Chairman Grassley. Secretary Sheridan, you have outlined a number of different projects that you currently have ongoing in Colombia and several of these were funded through Section 1033 of the DoD appropriation bill. Are there any legislative recommendations that you would make to Congress that would allow your current projects in Colombia to be conducted more effectively? Mr. Sheridan. For the moment, Senator, I think we are fine. Clearly, the 1033 authority which allows us to buy and transfer equipment, something that in the past the Congress had not been willing to provide for us, has been a help. It has a cap in any one particular year of $20 million. We are bumping up against that cap. I think for the moment, we are okay, but as we come around perhaps with next year's authorization bill, at that point, we may come and ask for that cap to be raised from $20 million to some higher number. But for the moment, I think we have theauthority from Congress to do the things that we are being asked to do. Chairman Grassley. Would you suggest how raising the cap, if you asked for that to be done, would affect your current policy options? Mr. Sheridan. It would not. It would allow us, though, to provide more equipment to those riverine forces, which is what the authority was intended to do. Chairman Grassley. Then my last question would be to Secretary Beers. I do not know whether it is a point or a question, but I would ask you to respond either way. You have suggested an ongoing policy review. I do not have any argument with that. But I guess I would have argument with that if it does not go beyond policy review, because it seems to me that we have to do better than just policy review. If this is a review, can we expect to see a policy come out of it? Will we be seeing that before we see a wish list of things that we would do if we appropriate money? It is already going on in the administration, talk about requesting a supplemental for Colombia, so would we see something more than just a project list or a grab bag of goods and services that it would be used for? I said in my opening comment, it seems to me very important that we have a policy before we go ahead and make these decisions to spend more money. Mr. Beers. Yes, sir. We have been engaging in this review and the discussions with the Colombian government for the express purpose of having a policy before we came to resource decisions. There were some indications of discussions of numbers, in part derivative of the Colombian visit up here in July with a list of equipment that they were interested in and some indications with respect to the Republican Drug Caucus in the House and with respect to General McCaffrey's documents that were circulated. But I can tell you, having participated in the deliberations within the administration, that the focus has been since mid-July on the development of a clear, comprehensive strategy for presentation and discussion with the Congress of the United States and that that was the intent of the President's response to the Speaker and the Majority Leader and that is the intent of the administration, to present you all with a policy proposal, folding in the Colombian strategy, which has got to be the centerpiece of that. We are not doing this by ourselves. We are not doing this alone. Then, if that yields issues or implications that have resources, then we will look at that in association with the Congress, as is appropriate. Chairman Grassley. Thank you. I will call on Senator Graham. I, and maybe other members, I, for sure, will have some questions that I want to submit for answer in writing, but I do not want to prolong this meeting longer than necessary. Senator Graham? Senator Graham. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will heed your advice and may also submit some questions in writing. Let me pursue three issues. One, General Wilhelm, relative to intelligence and surveillance capabilities, in April, I talked to another one of your Central Command brethren who expressed similar concern about intelligence surveillance, but he thought that it was episodic, that it was a function of the war in the Balkans and that there had been a diversion of resources for that purpose. Is your situation an episode or is this a systemic problem of adequate intelligence surveillance? General Wilhelm. Senator Graham, it is a little bit of both, but I think at Southern Command, it leans a little bit more toward the systemic side. We have seen a steady draw-down of the resources that are available to this theater and it is not only the airborne platforms that everybody competes for. We had an intelligence brigade, the 470th, the military intelligence brigade that was active in our theater that has been stood down. A lot of our ground signals intelligence sites have been closed. So it is not just airborne platforms. Also, the counter-drug mission, as I know this caucus is well aware, the global military forces policy is broken down into four increments and counter-drug is number four of four. So three other things get filled before ours, and so we suffer the kinds of losses that General Zeni talked to you about when Bosnia and Kosovo heat up and they draw off these low-density, high-demand assets that all the CINCs need. So ours is partly a function of world events and partly systemic. Senator Graham. In the budget request that General McCaffrey has presented us, does he adequately address the issue of intelligence resources for this anti-drug campaign? General Wilhelm. Senator Graham, I have got to be honest with you. I will have to go back and take another look at the resource outlines that General McCaffrey provided. If I could take that for the record, I would like to review that again. I know roughly where the money is, but I will need to take a look at that, if you do not mind, sir. Senator Graham. Fine. Mr. Beers, in the Colombian plan that has just been presented, what does it do in terms of internal reform of the Colombian institutions, the military and the police, which will carry the bulk of the responsibility? As an example, there has been concern that there is a policy in Colombia that if you are a high school graduate, you cannot be used in combat, and that has substantially reduced the number of potential combatants within the Colombian military. Does the plan that has recently been submitted deal with that or other institutional reforms? Mr. Beers. Let me let Mr. Sheridan answer the military portion but take the opportunity to also expand a little bit on the judicial side. The plan discusses both. On the judicial side, there is a major reform effort that is partially underway that would be accelerated as a result of this plan which would go after dealing with some general problems with the Colombian judicial system as they transition from the Napoleonic code to something more like the English system with oral testimony. In addition to that, there is a major anti-corruption effort that they are planning on undertaking and a general policy to deal with human rights abuses across the board, as well as efforts to go after assets of traffickers and put them back into the public treasury, as well as efforts to disrupt and dismantle the trafficking organizations. This is a major component of their plan and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to stress that important element. Brian. Mr. Sheridan. On the military reform side, as I said in my opening comments, former Minister Ureda and then current Minister Ramirez and General Tapias have shown us awillingness and a recognition of the need to reform the Colombian armed forces, which for us is very refreshing and, we think, needed. They have already taken some steps. In our recent discussions with them on the development of their strategy, they have committed themselves to taking more. I would anticipate over the next few months we will work with them in helping them develop further ideas for their restructuring and reform. As I also said earlier, the Colombian military has made dramatic progress on human rights. In fact, very recently, we just had several senior military officials cashiered on human rights grounds. So General Tapias gets it. The leadership gets it. Reported human rights violations which are attributed to the military by NGOs have plummeted over the last few years. They just passed a military judicial reform bill in their congress this past summer. So we are seeing real progress in those areas and we are seeing progress in their willingness to restructure thier military to make them more effective. I think General Wilhelm can comment on the bachalarias, which is what you referred to. General Wilhelm. Yes, Senator, and I think this may get somewhat to some of the points that Senator Sessions was referring to as Colombia reaches out and strives to regain control of its own territory. Colombia has got a big army, about 122,000. They have got a big national police force, about 104,000. I go along with Senator DeWine's assessment of the overall strength of the insurgents, about 20,000. So they have the ten-to-one ratio that we commonly refer to that you need to defeat an insurgent force, but you need the right army to do that. Your point on the bachalarias, Senator Graham, is spot on. As best I can determine, though, the number is a little bit imprecise. Somewhere between 30,000 and 35,000 members of that 122,000-man army, by virtue of their education level, were, by law, exempted from combat operations. That is the wrong kind of army. As Brian mentioned, during his tenure, Minister of Defense Rodrigo Ureda, before he stood down, developed a personal goal of really taking a tight comb to the structure of the armed forces and his goal was to move 15,000 troops per year out of these non-productive capacities, this distorted tooth-to-tail ratio, and put them out in the interior where they were needed to wrest control of the countryside from the insurgents. He viewed that as a three-year proposition, which, if carried through, obviously, to completion, would put 45,000 more troops with their fingers on triggers instead of their feet on overpasses. So this is very, very much a part of the reform and restructuring efforts that are underway in Colombia right now, and Minister Ureda's vision has been adopted by Minister Ramirez, the new Minister of Defense. Senator Graham. My time is up, but I will submit a written question which will basically ask what does the United States military, after its long association with the Colombian military, consider to be the most urgent reforms for the Colombian military to reach the level of efficiency to be able to carry out the mission that it has committed to? Second, to what degree does the plan that was submitted this week meet those diagnosed needs? And third, is there any U.S. role in seeing that those prescriptions are effectively applied? Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Senator Graham. Senator DeWine. Senator DeWine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General, you make, I think, a very compelling and very good point, a very interesting point, when you talk about SOUTHCOM's intelligence assets, that they have been depleted to support ongoing missions in other parts of the world. It seems to me, and this is a comment and you can comment on it if you would like, or if you want to pass, that is fine, it seems to me that this is the world we live in today and that we face a lack of depth in regard to these assets. Maybe as we look at where we go into the next century, we need to be beefing these assets up, because it seems to me they are always going to be needed somewhere in the world. There is going to be some crisis or someplace where they are needed, and if we are serious about having any of these assets available or significant assets available or enough assets available for anti-drug efforts, that we probably need to add to the depth of these and we need to look at this from a long-term point of view. Do you want to comment on that or not? General Wilhelm. Senator, I think if--well, I will be bold enough to speak, because I talk with them all the time, with a number of my fellow CINCs. I think they all feel the pinch of these assets that we call low-density, high-demand, and we would like to see the pool of resources deepened. The examples are many. One of the examples that comes to mind that is not part and parcel of my normal theater business is the aged EA-6B, our sole remaining electronic combat aircraft, which really needs to precede every tactical strike force, and that is a hard-pressed asset. We look at Rivet Joint. I have Senior Scout, the aircraft that really paint the battlefield picture for us. These are assets that I think we all have a compelling need for and they do not necessarily always correlate precisely to what we need to fight a major regional contingency. It is the rest of the world that we have to address, developing regions, places where we are performing some of these less traditional missions. So, yes, sir, I think we are probably all in agreement on that, and I believe that there are some fairly purposeful steps underway to try to deepen the asset pool so that we can better meet the CINCs' requirements for these assets. Senator DeWine. Let me address a question to any of the members of the panel who would like to respond to it. Some of you have already touched upon this, but I want to talk a little bit about the regional threat that this ongoing crisis in Colombia poses. The FARC constantly infiltrates the Darien Province, for example, in Panama. It just goes on and on nad on. They may be responsible for recent kidnappings inside Ecuador. Another example, the head of the Colombian paramilitaries has threatened Panama and Venezuela. How would you describe for the American people the significance of what is going on in Colombia, besides the drug problem and its impact on the United States and besides its impact on Colombia? What is its impact on the region, potentially? Mr. Beers. I will take a start, but I think that all my colleagues are probably going to want to contribute to that question. Sir, I think you have painted an accurate picture of the concerns that we all share, which is that, without making too big an issue about how this might expand,you have painted three adjacent countries who currently are experiencing some dislocations or problems that stem directly from the uncertainty and instability that is occurring in certain areas in Colombia. That is part of the reason the government wants to do something about it, and from our own national security perspective, with respect to drug trafficking and democratic stability in the region, why we would like to do something about it. It is an issue that requires focus and discipline in terms of how we think about the problem and how we approach it and the kinds of resources and strategies that we put against it. We do not have any magic solutions, but it is pretty clear to all of us that we are going to have to deal with these problems in the adjacent areas just as much as we are going to have to deal with the problems that directly affect us in Colombia. Mr. Sheridan. I would just say, Senator, that trying to characterize the regional impact in some ways is similar to trying to characterize the internal situation, where the difficulty for people working the problem is in trying to strike the right balance and understanding what is going on, because it is very complicated. On the one hand, I think there is a recognition--the FARC have been around since 1966. There has been a recent spate of press coverage. I think some people pick up the newspaper and they say, my God, what is going on in Colombia today? It is going to fall apart tomorrow. That is one extreme. But the other extreme, I think equally dangerous, is for the long-time Colombia watchers who say, do not worry about it. This has been going on for so long. We are kind of trying to understand and look at the situation and understand what is the degree of the slope here. From my perspective, when you talk to the intelligence people and look at the longer-term trends, what you see is that the FARC today is bigger than it has ever been. It operates in more provinces than it has ever operated in before. It conducts more complicated military operations than it has ever conducted before. But then there is the day-in/day-out tactical victories and tactical defeats. So from my perspective, Bogota is not threatened tomorrow, but on the other hand, there is clearly something going on with the growing capabilities of the FARC. When you look at it regionally, the FARC have been using the Darien Province as an R&R location for years and years. I remember when I first came to this job about 6\1/2\ years ago, in one day, the FARC wiped out a whole Ecuadorian riverine unit. So they have been using northern Ecuador and have been familiar with that for quite a while. So, again, it is trying to understand what is new here and what has been going on for quite a while, but I would say, as the situation in Colombia goes, so will go the regional threat, and clearly, I think, the neighboring countries, it is appropriate for them to focus on their border areas. Virtually all of them are very inaccessible jungle areas, extremely hard for those governments to get at, and in many cases, there is not a whole lot going on out there except for jungles and guerrillas. Senator DeWine. General. General Wilhelm. Sir, as you would appreciate, I spend a lot of time with the militaries from the five nations that do border Colombia and it has been very interesting over the last 24 months. When I go to Caracas, Venezuela, right now, the topic of greatest interest is Colombia. Ditto, Brazil. I was in Brasilia about two weeks ago. I refer to it as a spreading stain. I think the sensitivity of the surrounding countries to the situation in Colombia has changed. It has intensified. Just sort of anecdotally, looking very, very quickly at what is happening in the region on any given day, Venezuela will have about 10,000 troops along the Putumayo River, which establishes its border with Colombia. It is very interesting. I have visited most of the outposts. About 80 percent of the people living on the Venezuelan side of the river are Colombians, so it is a displaced population. Peru and Ecuador for a considerable period of time were really denied much of an opportunity to do much about the situation on their border because they were fixated on each other. With the signing of the peace accords in Brasilia in October of last year, both countries are now concentrating their military forces near the border to limit incursions there. Brazil is very important. For a long time, I think Brazil was essentially in kind of a denial mode. That is certainly not what I see at all in Brasilia now. A laboratory was destroyed on the Brazilian side of the border, which I believe had an annual output capacity of about ten metric tons. That is big drug business. Brazil is investing $1.4 billion in the Amazon surveillance system so that they can get a series of both airborne, ground, fixed, and mobile radars and sensors to better control and surveil the Amazonis Province, which is very important to them. Brian did a good job of describing the situation in the Darien Province of southern Panama. Panama, of course, with no military after Just Cause, really is left with public forces which are not configured to deal with the kind of threats that the violations of sovereignty posed by the FARC present to them. So it affects each and every one of the surrounding nations to some extent in varying and differing ways, but the concern level, I will tell you, sir, is up significantly. Senator DeWine. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Grassley. Senator Sessions. Senator Sessions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did notice in the recent New York Times article that despite their early hopes for Pastrana, however, U.S. officials generally described his efforts to negotiate with the guerrillas as a failure that has left the insurgents stronger and more defined. Without going into too much detail, I think you have agreed that the insurgents are stronger and this negotiation may not have been helpful. General Wilhelm, is it not true, when you are asking an infantry company to get out and put their life on the line to confront a military force, that they need to know that the leadership is committed to victory and that it can undermine the effectiveness of any unit if the leadership at the top is not perceived as committed? General Wilhelm. Senator Sessions, you could not be more correct. We have events in the last 30 years in our own history, I think, that bear that out completely. You have just expressed a sentiment that, quite frankly, was alive and well in Colombia fairly recently. I can remember very, very well talking to an old friend shortly after I took command of Southern Command, a general-- name is not important--in the Colombian armed forces, and he said, do you know what our problem is? And I said, what is that? He said, the army is at war and the country is not. I think a lot of that is changing, sir, and I think a lot of it is changing because of the activities of the FARC. It is hard to ignore the kidnapping of an entire church congregation in Cali. It is hard to ignore the hijacking of an Avianca airliner. It is hard to ignore the kidnapping of three U.S. nationals and then transporting them across a river and shooting them in the back of the head. I think the reality of this struggle is settling in on the Colombian population at large and I detect a spirit in the armed forces that this is a shared enterprise. They believe that the president is with them. I think they believe that the national leadership is with them. So I have seen some changes over the last 24 months, sir, and maybe they will not produce results tomorrow, but looking to the longer term, I think they probably will. I think we will see a mobilization of national will, but I think the mobilization of national will will also be tied to an increase in national confidence. That is why I drew some optimism from the performance of the military during the July offensive and I hope they can sustain that kind of performance. Senator Sessions. I recall one time that Henry Kissinger said that nothing clears the mind so well as the absence of alternatives, and I just do not see how Colombia has an alternative. They have got to get themselves together and they have got to put forth a military force that is effective and do something about the drugs in the process. While I would tend to agree that it would be very damaging to the narco-rebels if we could reduce their money, historically, I am not sure that is going to be happening. I think it is going to be almost together, the military and anti-narcotics, to defeat them. It would seem to me difficult, as you have described this group more as outlaws, extortionists, not your traditional groups, it would be even harder to negotiate with a group like that, to justify negotiating with a group like that. If you were dealing with a group of ethnic people who wanted more autonomy for their region, that is one thing. But if we are dealing with nothing more than people with a Marxist history and a narcotics agenda, it seems to me even more difficult. So I would encourage the people of Colombia to come together effectively and do that. Can we help without becoming involved, General Wilhelm? Can we help, effectively, their military to strengthen itself? General Wilhelm. Senator Sessions, I think we can, and honestly, sir, I think we are. Right today in Tolomida, Colombia, there are 621 troops in training right now. This is the last increment of this counter-drug battalion that we started building last April. We trained 317 troops in the first increment, 621 now. So this is a battalion that is a third again the size of the traditional Colombian army battalion. It has got organic indirect fire capabilities, organic reconnaissance, it has got an organic medical capability, it has got civil affairs capability, psychological operations capability. In simple terms, it is a full-up round. It has been designed from the ground floor to work effectively with the Colombian national police and we are helping with this unit, sir, because it is focused on the counter-drug mission. The Colombian army is not sitting on its hands. They have other organizations, counter-insurgency or counter-guerilla battalions, which they have trained on their own hook. My thought, and I think I am correct, is that once the Colombian military leadership has the opportunity to observe this first CD battalion in operation--and sir, they have already told me, next year, we want to expand this to a CD brigade--I think we are going to have helped them create the prototype around which they will redesign the rest of their armed forces. Again, the dedicated counter-insurgency force, internal problem to Colombia, is theirs to contend with. We are providing the training, equipment, and monetary support to build the CD battalion. But I think a lot of what we are doing is going to find transferrence to the rest of the force. Senator Sessions. Mr. Beers, I have only been in this body a little over two-and-a-half years, so I do not pretend to understand the ways of all our government, particularly the State Department, but is there some line here we are talking about? If we assist the military beyond just counter-narcotics, is that some sort of line we have crossed that makes us nervous? Mr. Beers. Sir, with respect to the authorities of the bureau that I am in charge of, we have authorities that are counter-narcotics and that is what I do and I do not do counter-insurgency. But the Department as a whole has come to this conclusion. That is an internal issue for the government of Colombia. We will help them on the counter-narcotics side, including where it extends to the FARC who are acting as narcotraffickers. But, yes, sir, as a policy perspective, we are not of the view that we should involve ourselves directly in the insurgency. So it is a policy decision. Senator Sessions. I certainly do not want to have American troops in Colombia now fighting a war, but I think, to me, counter-narcotics and counter-guerilla is one in the same and if we can provide, sell, supply the kind of hardware or training that they need that could help them win this war, we would all be better off. It is troubling, and I think there is uniform agreement--you can tell it from the nations around Colombia--we are worried right now. Things may not be falling apart in a total disaster. It is not a time to panic, but it is time to be concerned. Ultimately, I believe this matter will be decided on the battlefield. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Grassley. I hope we can look back at this period of time and Congressional and administrative deliberation of this issue as it relates to Colombia and the President Pastrana's coming to this country as a point in time when some policy changes and efforts on our part have pointed to a dramatic change in the situation in Colombia and the export of cocaine and other illegal drugs to our country. Before I dismiss you, I would like to make a point, Mr. Beers and Mr. Sheridan. As you are aware, and I did give a speech on this on the floor of the Senate a few weeks ago, I have repeatedly asked the administration for a detailed planabout the helicopters that are in Mexico. The whole helicopter issue in Mexico has been a great embarrassment and the lack of a plan seems to deepen that embarrassment. I am going to ask one last time, and not ask you to comment now but just to get a plan up here on how these helicopters are to be used, and I hope that we could have that within a couple of weeks. In regard to this hearing, this has been a very worthwhile discussion with you three leaders in this area. We thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here with us and to follow up with us on the questions that this panel will submit in writing. As I have indicated, I hope that the things that have been expressed here by all of you, both what is hoped for in the future as well as what you see developing now, makes a significant difference and a follow- through will help with that. Thank you all very much. Mr. Beers. Thank you. Mr. Sheridan. Thank you. General Wilhelm. Thank you. Chairman Grassley. Our next panel and last panel consists of Bernard Aronson and Michael Shifter. Mr. Aronson is Chairman of ACON Investments and New Bridge Andean Partners here in Washington. He was Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1989 to 1993 and was the principal coordinator of U.S. foreign policy and the principal foreign policy advisor to the President and Secretary of State on relations with Latin America and the Caribbean Basin. Michael Shifter is currently a senior fellow for the Inter- American Dialogue here in Washington. There, he develops and implements strategies in the area of democratic development and human rights. He served previously as Director of Latin American and Caribbean Programs at the National Endowment for Democracy and the Ford Foundation's Governance and Human Rights Program in South America. I thank you both for being present for this meeting and discussion and for your contribution in advance. I will start with you, Mr. Aronson. STATEMENT OF BERNARD ARONSON, CHAIRMAN, ACON INVESTMENTS, AND FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTER-AMERICAN AFFAIRS Mr. Aronson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. In the interest of time, I will submit my statement for the record and try to summarize it. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and Senator Graham and other members of the caucus for inviting us, but more importantly, for holding this hearing. We usually get in trouble in Latin America because we fail to pay attention to problems there until they become crises and then we seek to do something about it, and usually the policy choices we face are narrow and difficult. So I think this hearing is very timely and I think, to some extent, we have done that with regard to Colombia as a country, both the administration and Congress, but it is not too late, so it is important that we pay attention. I guess the only other point I would make, and this is sort of an old mantra with me, is that I would make an appeal to you and your colleagues to try to maintain what this hearing has shown, which is a bipartisan approach to this policy, because when an issue in Latin America becomes polarized along partisan lines, we just undermine the effectiveness of the United States. We should have learned that lesson in Central America. When we came together in 1989 around a bipartisan policy, we were able to end the war in El Salvador, to democratize Nicaragua, set the stage for a peace process in Guatemala. Your focus in the narcotics threat, but I think, as has been evident in this discussion, you cannot separate the issue of counter-narcotics from the issue of the war and the larger crisis in Colombia, and that crisis involves many, many issues. It involves corruption. It involves vast areas of the Colombian state in which the government has no presence. It involves civil insurgencies whose roots go far beyond the drug trade and have deep social and political background that we need to understand. I guess one point I would make to the Congress and to this caucus is if we are going to help Colombians resolve these problems, we are going to have to stay the course and remain engaged for many years, over many administrations, and over many Congresses. Some of this testimony sounds very familiar to me. I was up here on this side ten years ago saying some of the same things. Senator Graham was involved in the first Andean strategy and one of the things that troubles me is that we tend to charge up the hill and then back down again when we do not solve our problems quickly. If you look at the funding for counter- narcotics in the Andean region, we ramped it up in 1990, 1991, 1992, and then it ramped back down again. Now we are going to ramp it back up. But these problems are not going to be solved in a budget or Congressional cycle and we are going to have to develop a long-term strategy that hopefully has a bipartisan underpinning and then stay the course and show some patience, which we are not always so good as Americans in doing. With regard to the specific issues that you are discussing, let me make a few recommendations, and I will try to be brief. First of all, all those who said that we must help the Colombian state strengthen its authority and capacity to defend the rule of law are correct, but the first underpinning of that is to help Colombia economically. Historically, this is the best managed economy in Latin America. This is the only economy in Latin America or South America that did not have to renegotiate its debt during the debt crisis. This country had 50 years of straight real growth, a very productive entrepreneurial class and hard working people. But today, it is in the deepest recession of its modern history. There is huge unemployment. Capital is fleeing. They have had to devalue their currency twice. Most of that is not of the making of this government. They inherited a mess from the Samper government, which deliberately spent money to buy political support. They suffered the spilloverof the Asian crisis, the Russian default, the Brazilian crisis. Coffee prices are at an historic low. The economic team that President Pastrana has in place is a very good team. They have done a lot of the right things as far as reform, but they need some support. So I would urge the caucus and the Congress to join with the administration in signaling to the IMF and the World Bank and the IDB that this is a country that needs support now. They are assembling a support package with the IMF as we speak. I think they have earned it, but I think it would be very helpful if Congress sent those institutions a message that now is the time to help Colombia economically. A second signal that I think would be very helpful to Colombia, particularly to the business class, which is taking its sons and daughters out and its capital out and is leaving the country, would be to join with the administration in a bipartisan manner and signal that the Congress is prepared to renew the Andean trade preference initiative. As you remember-- I think both of you were here at the time if my memory serves me--we passed that legislation in 1991 specifically to help these countries fight the drug trade and to give them economic alternatives as they made war on the coca production and heroin production. It has been very important to Colombia. It is going to expire in the year 2001 and it would send a very good signal of confidence to the Colombian people and nation if we could get our act together early enough to start renewing that and it would be very nice if President Pastrana could deliver that news. Secondly, I hope we do not become polarized in a debate over whether we should support negotiations or help Colombians fight the war better and give their army support. We need to do both. I think the United States should make it clear that we unequivocally support a negotiated solution to this war if it is possible. That is what the vast majority of Colombians want and I believe at the end of the day that will be how this war will end, not necessarily immediately, and we should make it clear that the door to negotiations is open as far as the United States is concerned. If the guerrillas have legitimate political, social, economic, and other issues, which they do, then they should be put on the table. But if they do not negotiate seriously, if they use violence, extortion, terror, kidnapping to make war in Colombian society, then the United States and the democratic community will help Colombia defend itself. Therefore, I think we need what we have been talking about today, which is a long-term program to help the Colombian armed forces modernize itself. And again, I would strongly urge that we take a long view. This is not going to happen in a budget cycle. It is going to have to be over many years and many Congresses and many budget cycles, and the worst thing we could do to Colombia is to ramp up a program and raise expectations and then lose interest or lose will and change our mind and then go back and cut the legs out from under them. We have done that in the past. I hope we do not repeat that mistake. I think that we must make it clear that that commitment to help Colombia modernize its armed forces is conditioned on strict human rights standards. They must continue, as President Pastrana has done with great courage, to root out officers who are abusers of human rights or tolerate that from the armed forces and have to do something about the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries are part of the problem in Colombia, not part of the solution. Three-quarters of the human rights abuses are attributed to them. They murder priests. They murder journalists. They murder human rights workers. And they carry out a scorched earth policy in guerilla territory to just kill anybody who is suspected of being a sympathizer. Now, in the short run, that does drive the guerrillas out of the territory. It has also produced more than a million internal refugees in this country, and where they go is straight into the arms of the FARC and the ELN and the paramilitaries are a very good recruiting tool for the guerrillas. So I think we need to strictly condition our long- term support for the armed forces on human rights standards, and particularly doing something about the paramilitaries. Fourth, it is good that the United States Government is paying attention to this country in a serious way, but we cannot be the sole source of support. We need to rally and mobilize an international coalition of democratic nations, multilateral institutions, and nongovernmental organizations to support Colombia. That should include the democratic nations of Latin America, Canada, Europe, Japan. It should include the United Nations and the OAS. It should include the multilateral development banks. It should include nongovernmental organizations. They need to support Colombia in the peace process, to talk to all the parties, just as we did vis-a-vis El Salvador. They also need to be mobilized to help this country defend itself should negotiations fail. We cannot do this alone, nor should we. Britain has deep economic interests in this country through British Petroleum. All of the European countries have cocaine and heroin imports that originate in Colombia. We need to do more to bring other nations into this effort and Colombia needs more support from other nations, as well. Fifth, and this is probably not a popular thing to say, but I learned something from the process in El Salvador. I think we should continue to keep channels open and talk to the guerrillas. They are everything that was said about them in this hearing. They are not boy scouts. The guerrillas started out in this process 40 years ago at a time of political struggle in this country. It had nothing to do with drugs. They have taken advantage of the drug trade, there is no question about that. They are complicit in the drug trade, there is no question about that. But we and others have to bring these guerrillas out of the world in which they are living, which is 50 years old, into the modern world and begin to find ways to pressure, entice, cajole, and talk to them and get them into the bargaining process. We did that with the FMLN at a time when it was very risky. It was not popular. It made a difference in El Salvador. It was not popular to talk to the PLO when we started to do so, but today, they are part of the peace process. It was not popular to talk to the IRA, but they are part of the peace process. We need to do that particularly as we gear up this effort, because the FARC believes the United States is going to war with it and half of Colombia and half of Latin America think we are going to intervene. I think it isimportant that they understand why we are doing what we are doing. We are doing what we are doing because they do not negotiate seriously and because they are complicit in the drug trade. But they also ought to understand, as we demonstrate in El Salvador, that if their agenda is real political, social, economic reform, that the United States can be an ally, because we are at risk in this country and we have lots of targets there and this guerilla group is very capable of making life very, very difficult for Americans. A corollary to that is that I would urge that as we gear up, that we limit the on-the-ground involvement of American forces to the minimum necessary to aid and train and provide intelligence to the armed forces, as we did in El Salvador. I do not think we should be a big target here and I think we should make it clear that this is a Colombian effort and the United States is there to provide support. A final point is I think we need to be clear about the relationship between the guerrillas and the narcotraffickers and not be confused about this. There is no question that the guerrillas sustain themselves through narcotrafficking activity and also extortion from the pipelines, the ELN does, and that in some cases, they are directly involved in the trade. But the cartels and the mafias that run the drug trade in Colombia are not the ELN and the FARC. In many ways, the traffickers benefit from the war. The war undermines the strength of the government. It diverts the army and the police. It saps the legitimacy of Colombian institutions. The war is the sea in which the traffickers swim and the best blow we could strike against the narcotraffickers is to bring the war to an end. Now, it may be the case, and it probably is the case, that until the guerrillas understand that the option on the battlefield is not open to them, they may not negotiate seriously. I understand that in these kind of conflicts, the correlation of forces on the battlefield has a lot to do with progress at the negotiating table. But it ought to be our national goal to help end this war ultimately through negotiations, and our modernization of the armed forces should be a tool to pursue that. We should not kid ourselves. The FARC and the ELN could disappear tomorrow. We would still have home- grown Colombian cartels and mafias running cocaine and heroin into this country. The last point is really the point that I began with, is we need to stay the course and take the long view. This problem is not going to be solved in a few months or even a few years, probably, and we have to be willing to sustain our support to Colombia in the right way, not take over thier responsibility, but to do what we can and to mobilize others. I am not a pessimist about this country. This country has enormous strengths and resources and its people have shown great courage in taking on the traffickers and the guerrillas and the paramilitaries, but they are in deep trouble today and it is spreading into the region. It is now a regional crisis and we need to pay serious attention as a country to it because we have deep interests in it. I would just note, among our interests beyond narcotrafficking, Venezuela, which is a neighbor, where the war is already spilling over, where you also have a lot of political instability, is the number one oil supplier to the United States today. So we have lots of deep interest in this country. We trade more with Colombia in one week than we do with every country in the former Yugoslavia in an entire year. So I think that we need to work with the administration, hopefully in a bipartisan way, to develop a long-term strategy that deals with all of the aspects of this crisis. Thank you, Senator. Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Aronson. [The prepared statement of Mr. Aronson follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.040 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.041 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.042 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.043 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.044 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.045 Chairman Grassley. Now, Mr. Shifter. STATEMENT OF MICHAEL SHIFTER, SENIOR FELLOW, INTER-AMERICAN DIALOGUE Mr. Shifter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me also commend you and the caucus for holding this hearing on Colombia. I think it is extremely important to have a public discussion and debate on this critical policy question. I am going to submit my testimony for the record and just make some brief comments, if I might. Let me start with the question of what I think the purpose we want to achieve in Colombia is. The objective, to me, seems clear, or should be clear. We should do whatever we can to strengthen the Colombian government's authority, capacity, and effectiveness. It is clear that all of the problems that Colombia is dealing with today can be attributed to the weakness of the government and the state, whether we are talking about human rights abuses, drug trafficking, paramilitary operations, or political violence, can be traced back to a weak authority and a weak state. The responsibility to strengthen the authority of the state and the government, Colombians have primary responsibility, but we can be helpful. We can support their efforts to reach a political solution to the deep internal conflict that has been going on for many years. We couldalso do another thing. The Colombian government will need a consensus within its own country to back and support any plan or strategy. We can help and encourage different political forces and sectors--we have a lot of contacts in Colombia--to get behind the Colombian government in a solid support for its plan. Pursuing this call, supporting the government makes Colombia a better partner with us in dealing with the problems that we share, narcotics being one of several. But Colombia will only be a good partner, only be effective in working with us if the government can reestablish and regain authority and greater effectiveness. We cannot be indifferent to Colombia and we cannot disengage from Colombia. The second point has to do with U.S. policy, and here, Mr. Aronson, I agree entirely that a bipartisan policy is absolutely essential. Too often in the past, we have dealt with different individuals in the Colombian government, whether it be in the armed forces or the police. They may be very dedicated, very committed, but that does not help strengthen our primary objective, which is enhancing government authority. We need to deal more with the elected, legitimate head of state of Colombia, President Pastrana. That will be the best thing to do to enhance that objective. The third point is that it is critical to have a wide- ranging, comprehensive approach towards Colombia. The peace process, the drug question, severe economic crisis, and the profound social problems that Colombia faces are connected to one another and need to be addressed together, not separately. That is also the best way we can strengthen the authority and the effectiveness of the Colombian government. All of these problems are interrelated and Colombia already has a process underway to try to bring an end to its guerilla conflict and to reconcile the forces in conflict. Their strategy, their plan involves a wide-ranging approach and that is the only way that we can be helpful in strengthening the capacity to move forward and make progress. Clearly, over the last year, there have been tremendous problems, set-backs, frustrations, and disappointments. The last year has not gone as well as many of us had hoped and President Pastrana himself acknowledges that. But there are three points, I think, to bear in mind in this connection. First, despite the tremendous discouragement on the part of Colombians, most Colombians continue to favor the objective of trying to reach a negotiated settlement and some sort of solution, political solution, to the internal conflict. The second point is that the United States is perhaps uniquely positioned because of its capacity, because of its resources, to be helpful in the Colombian situation. The third point is that the other options do not look very good. Many sustain that it would be very, very difficult, if not impossible, to defeat the FARC militarily, that it would cost a tremendous amount that we would not be prepared to commit in terms of resources and time, financial resources and American lives. So to pursue a strategy that focuses on defeating through military means, through the use of force, the FARC, in my judgment, would be misguided and could only make matters worse, including fueling a civil war and a dirty war in Colombia, which already exists but could very well get worse. It seems to me we want to avoid that narrow, single-minded approach. Even though it is understandable that the perception is that guerrillas and narcotraffickers are one in the same, I agree with Mr. Aronson it is important to keep that distinction. But if we confuse that, then we can go down the path that I think could aggravate an already very critical and serious situation. The final point, again underscoring what Mr. Aronson said, is that the United States should play a role, a diplomatic role, on the regional and international stage with respect to Colombia. There are wider regional concerns. There are concerns of instability in neighboring countries. There is great concern in countries in Latin America about Colombia and about the spreading violence and instability. There is also good will to help and be supportive and the United States, I think, can play an important role in trying to make a collective, constructive response from the heads of government in neighboring countries. There is clearly going to be some instrument as this process moves forward that is viable and that tries to sustain and support internationally externally this process in Colombia, whether that is the U.N. or whether that is a group of friends or the Organization of American States. Clearly, some mechanism, some instrument will emerge, and I think the United States should be supportive of that instrument in trying to advance Colombia's objective. In short, this instrument would serve the purpose of supporting, strengthening the Colombian government's authority and capacity. That goal is in the interest of all Colombians, it is in the interest of Colombia's neighbors, and it is the interest of the international community, as well, and I think it best serves our interests and our goals and I think we should give it the support we can. Thank you. Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Shifter. [The prepared statement of Mr. Shifter follows:] [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.046 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.047 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.048 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.049 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.050 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.051 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.052 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.053 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.054 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.055 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0923.056 Chairman Grassley. I will start with Mr. Aronson. Ten years ago, you were Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs. Could you havepredicted the path that Colombia has taken, and if so, what could have been done to prevent it? Mr. Aronson. That is a good question, Mr. Chairman. I did not predict the path that Colombia was going to take, unfortunately. I think that, in retrospect, we focused too much on counter-narcotics to the exclusion of other issues in that country and the fundamental weakness of its democratic institutions and the huge gap between the state and large parts of the country where campecinos and rural people live. Where the FARC operates and has operated for decades is really a place where there is no government. They are the government. They enforce the law, as they see it. They enforce justice, as they see it--it is pretty brutal. They collect taxes. There is no government. I think that the Colombian elite and maybe the United States, to some extent, just thought that, somehow, this problem could be ignored and you could have a democratic society with its pocket of violence. But having said that, conditions also changed, Mr. Chairman. I think the previous Colombian government, which was led by Ernesto Samper, who himself was complicit intaking narcotrafficking money, did enormous damage to this country. I think they enormously weakened the Colombian state--morally, politically, economically, and every other way--and we also, unfortunately, and I do not disagree with the decision, but by decertifying Colombia on legitimate grounds, we also isolated it at a time. Then you had an international financial crisis on top of that. So Pastrana inherited a huge crisis. Secondly, part of the problem in Colombia is the success in Peru and Bolivia. It used to be that you did not grow coca leaf in Colombia. They were the value-added chain of the production and they did the processing and turned it into HCl. But because the coca leaf is not being grown in Peru and Bolivia because of the success of counter-narcotics efforts there, it is moving into Colombia and the guerrillas have taken advantage of that and profit from that and have become much stronger. I think that we should have probably focused more on the political and economic and social issues of the country, and that is really part of my message today, which is those are part of this problem and part of this war that have to be addressed. I am not trying to be naive that these guerrillas are just boy scout reformers. They are not. But there are deep political roots to this issue that have to be faced if this country is going to end the war. Chairman Grassley. General McCaffrey has suggested $500 million to Colombia. Is this too little too late or too much too soon? Were there warning signs that were ignored? Mr. Aronson. I think, as a country, and as I tried to say, I think we are awfully late in facing the crisis in Colombia. If you looked just a few years ago, you saw the guerrillas just rolling over the armed forces. I mean, there were some horrible defeats, including their rapid reaction battalions were just getting massacred and their inability to have any kind of counter-response or intelligence was clear. But I do not want to go through an exercise of pointing fingers. I think it is a good thing that we are now facing up to the problem. I do not think the issue, Mr. Chairman, is so much whether $500 million is enough or too much but whether we develop a long-term strategy and a long-term commitment, because we have a very bad habit of getting very focused on a problem like drugs in Colombia and throwing a lot of money at it for a year or two and then we get impatient or diverted or the politics change and we go somewhere else. These problems have been growing for 40 years in this country. They are now spilling over into our country in a serious way and into Latin America in a serious way and I think we need to join with the administration in a long-term program to help this country in all its aspects, including its armed forces, and that needs to be a multi-year commitment. I have not looked at the numbers to say whether $500 million. I think another key issue is how the money is spent. I think, like a lot of Latin American armies, the Colombian army was organized and trained in a very traditional way as a standing army to face a threat across its borders, which it has not faced and will not face. It has to be totally retrained and reorganized into small units and rapid reaction and close air support and a lot of things that it does not know how to do right now. This issue Senator Graham mentioned about high school graduates being exempted from combat could not send a worse signal about who fights this war. You have peasants fighting peasants and poor people fighting poor people, and the Colombian nation as a whole has to take responsibility. The sons and daughters of the elite do not serve in the armed forces and they need to. So I think there is a thorough strategic, kind of overall has to be made and it has to be multi-year. I have not looked at the numbers enough to give you an informed answer about the $500 million. I assume that that is a multi-year request, but the main message I would leave, Senator, is that this has to be a long-term commitment. Chairman Grassley. Mr. Shifter, is negotiations with the insurgent groups a serious possibility or do you think that this might be a stall tactic by the insurgent groups to gain more support and particularly more funding? Mr. Shifter. I think that, clearly, the record over the last year has not been--those who thought that the FARC was interested in negotiating have not been very encouraged by their behavior and conduct over the last year. I think what is essential to do is to begin to change their calculations so that they do go to negotiate seriously. I think, ultimately, they will, but they have been in a position of great strength, the government has been in a weak position, and we have to reverse that. I think to reverse that requires attention on all fronts, including the military front, but just making the government stronger in every respect. That, I think, will change their calculations. They are pragmatic. They have interests. They want to defend their interests. They want to see a change in the country. And I think, ultimately, once that dynamic is changed, I think there is evidence that they will go to the bargaining table and settle politically. Chairman Grassley. Is military force going to be necessary against the insurgents from an outside force? Mr. Shifter. You mean outside---- Chairman Grassley. Yes. Mr. Shifter. No. I think this is a Colombian responsibility. I think outside support can be helpful, but I think this is not--an outside force is not necessary and I would not--I think it could really have very negative implications. Chairman Grassley. In the past, the Colombian government had been successful in negotiating with the M-19s and other smaller insurgent groups. How has that dynamic changed now that the insurgents are involved with drug trafficking? Mr. Shifter. Well, that has been the major change over the last decade or so of the military and the financial strength of the insurgents. So that clearly makes it that much more difficult, I think, to reach a settlement than with the M-19, when the M-19 was a small group, did not have the kind of resources or military might. So it was easier to incorporate them into the political system. This is going to be much more difficult. It is going to take a longer period of time because they are a more formidable force in many respects. That is why it is essential, I think, for the State and for the government to regain the authority and capacity and their own resources and their own effectiveness, and that will, I think, change the balance. I think it will createthe conditions for a productive negotiation. Chairman Grassley. Thank you. Senator DeWine. Senator DeWine. I want to thank both of you for your testimony. I think it has been very, very helpful. Mr. Aronson, you talked about the weakness of the institutions in Colombia. You have also talked about the problems with the economy. Can you, based on your experience, compare and contrast what we are seeing in Colombia versus what you saw in El Salvador and Nicaragua? At first blush, it would seem that, while there are some similarities, the economy is certainly fundamentally different. Nicaragua is still the second-poorest country in the hemisphere. El Salvador is not certainly a rich country. Per capita income is not that high. The social injustices, maybe we are just more aware of them historically in Nicaragua and El Salvador, going back many, many years. Compare the situation in Colombia today versus El Salvador and Nicaragua. Compare and contrast. What is similar, what is dissimilar, what are the lessons that we should take from our experience and your experience in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Mr. Aronson. I think it is a good question, Senator. Let me just try to go through the differences and similarities and maybe some lessons learned. As far as the differences, as you point out, Colombia is a large, modern country for Latin America when Nicaragua and El Salvador are not and were not at the time of these insurgencies. In terms of geography, Colombia is almost as large as France, Germany, and Italy combined. The space that President Pastrana agreed to allow the FARC to operate in is twice as large as El Salvador and the country itself is 20 times larger. There are 40 million Colombians. There are about 5.5 million Salvadorans, 3.5 million Nicaraguans. Secondly, Colombia has been a democracy for a long time and neither Salvador nor Nicaragua were democracies when these insurgencies grew up. So I think there was more legitimacy in the early origins of these guerilla movements, even though they became Marxist-Leninists and threatened democracy itself. Third, as General Wilhelm and others pointed out, the Sandanistas and the FMLN both relied significantly on outside support, ideologically, politically, militarily, economically. The FMLN got its weapons from the Vietnamese, from the North Koreans, and others, through the Soviets--so did the Sandanistas--and from Latin Americans, as well. The FARC and the ELN, and it is one of the reasons they are so tough to deal with, basically have a home-grown industry, huge financial resources. They can buy very sophisticated weaponry. They are not dependent on any outside government, any outside movement, and they are very isolated. They had original origins as pro-Soviet, pro-Cuban groups, but they are very autonomous. Third, they operate, particularly the FARC, in a part of Colombia that has sort of been isolated from the central government and the state it is a relatively--Colombia is really a country of strong regions and the central government has sort of grown in strength, but the FARC operates in a region where the government just does not exist and they are a kind of a state within a state. They have been there for a long time, and for better or for worse, they are the law and order and governmental structure. But I think that there are some important similarities, particularly with regard to El Salvador, that I would like to stress. When we started out in El Salvador, this was part of the East/West struggle. The guerrillas were our enemy. They were the enemy of democracy. We threw a lot of resources and training and efforts into defeating them militarily and they were very hard-core Marxist-Leninists. They were not looking for reform or democratic space. They wanted to take power. But because we were able to create a stalemate militarily, because we pressed very hard for changes within the government and the army that were needed in terms of reforms nad human rights, because the world changed and the Soviet Union collapsed, there came a time when the guerrillas also changed in fundamental ways. They became willing to embrace an agenda of reform that was within a democratic system and give up their original goal of taking power through arms. I think we need to try to create the forces and mechanisms to make that happen in Colombia. That is my one quarrel and concern with the notion that we can just defeat the FARC. It sounds good and we will all charge up the battlefield, but we will be back here in ten years and the FARC will not be defeated, even if we do everything that General Wilhelm wants. They have been there for a long time. I am not saying that we need to help the Colombians take them on and make them understand they are not going to win militarily. I believe that strongly. But the goal ought to be to force them to the negotiating table. One of the things I think we learned from El Salvador is we need a huge international effort to do that. It helped that the FMLN were talking to the Mexicans and talking to other Latins who were pushing them and prodding them. It helped that we talked to them, and I understand it was difficult. I got President Bush to agree to let us talk to the FMLN and the next day, they shot down a U.S. helicopter and executed two American servicemen in cold blood. Jim Baker turned to me and said, your friends have a great sense of timing. It is not popular to do those things, but those early contacts made a difference and we built relations with the groups that were most susceptible to negotiations. I think it was a mistake when the State Department went and talked to the FARC that some members of the other body accused them of being soft on narco-guerrillas. It sounds good, but you need to start building ties to these people and bring them out of the cold, and so does the rest of the world. The U.N. needs to be in there, and I know President Pastrana talked to the Secretary General about that, the OAS, other Latin American countries, while we do all the other things we are talking about--help the country economically, modernize their armed forces, and slowly bring these guerrillas out of the isolation in which they live. Not all of their demands are illegitimate, and it also is important to understand one piece of history. Between 1982 and 1986, there was a peace process involving the FARC, involving the Bettencourt government, and the FARC formed a political party called the Patriotic Union and 1,000 of its members who came out of the war when there was a cease fire were massacred and shot to death by the paramilitaries and other forces. So they have a long memory, and so when wesay, let us talk peace, they remember the last time they tried to talk peace. It was not a very good ending. We are going to have to provide security guarantees and do something about the human rights situation as we take them on in the battlefield, and that is going to take time. I think Mike is right. The time will come when they will negotiate seriously and we need to be there saying the door is open to peaceful negotiations. Senator DeWine. Just a quick follow-up question. I appreciate your answer. You talk about the weak institutions in Colombia. What institutions are you talking about? Are you talking about geographically in the region where the guerrillas operate? Mr. Aronson. Right. Senator DeWine. What else? Are we talking about the judicial system? Are we talking about what? Mr. Aronson. Well, I am talking first about the armed forces, which do not know how to do counter-insurgency and which high school students do not go into combat and all the things. They do not have all kinds of abilities they need, small operations, close air support, mobility, intelligence. The judicial system, absolutely. Three percent of the people in this country who are indicted are convicted. There is a lot of corruption. That system needs to be changed. There is no economic infrastructure in a lot of these guerilla territories, so when we are trying to say, do something besides plant coca leaves and poppies, well, there need to be roads and bridges and transport so farmers can take other kinds of crops out. There needs to be a governmental infrastructure in these countries that will take the place of the guerrillas or change sort of the nature of institutions on the ground. There needs to be protection for journalists in this country, who are being murdered now just because they support negotiations. There need to be protections for human rights workers. Probably, I think, more work needs to be done in cleaning up the corruption in the congress of this country. The traffickers still have a lot of influence, and supporting the Colombians who are clean and honest. So there is a kind of a long-term systemic process. But the institutions I would emphasize are the judiciary and the armed forces and the police. Senator DeWine. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Grassley. I have no further questions as chairman of the caucus and from my staff. You both have cooperated with us not only during this hour or so that you have been here but also in the planning. We thank you very much. The caucus is adjourned. Mr. Aronson. Thank you. Mr. Shifter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 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