| July 15, 2002 Brazil's Escalating Role in the Drug War by Ronald J. Morgan Brazil began bolstering its border security almost as soon as Plan Colombia surfaced in 1999. After three years of military expansion, the Brazil-Colombia border is bristling with new installations. Among them is a new air force base, a naval base, and a set of border platoons stretching from Tabatinga through an area known as the Dog´s Head, where Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil meet. A new jungle brigade based in the Amazon city of Tefe provides support for the 2,500 troops stationed along the 1,000-mile border. These ground forces are supplemented with naval and marine units as well as aircraft at the new Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira airbase. The Brazilian military has also been busy putting in new roads, bridges, schools, health clinics, water wells and riverboat docks throughout the heavily indigenous area with a population of some 100,000. The Brazilian buildup, part of a revamped older border development program know as Calha Norte, includes $14.5 million in military security spending and $10.5 million in social development, most of it spent in the Colombian border region. The government has also dispatched to the border a 200-man federal police task force known as Operation Cobra to further bolster security and fight drug trafficking. Brazil says its programs are preventive medicine aimed at protecting the Amazon and that most activities are directed at controlling drug trafficking, stopping illegal logging, and clearing out poaching gold miners. As early as 1996, Brazil and the Raytheon Corporation began constructing a $1.4 billion radar system called System for Amazon Surveillance (SIVAM). Announced with much fanfare at the 1992 Rio Earth Conference, the project is about 70 percent complete and will be inaugurated in Manaus on July 25. This system uses radar stations, air reconnaissance and some satellite support to monitor air traffic, maritime movement, border activity, and intercept communications of all types. SIVAM will also keep track of weather patterns and land use, while making rural telecommunications in the Amazon more efficient. While originally designed to save the Amazon rainforest from various types of abuse, it is expected that its Manta FOL-type reconnaissance abilities will also be used to stop drug pilots from entering Brazil and provide timely information to border units. The Brazilian air force estimates that some 200 planes flew into Brazil illegally in 2001 and is calling for the government to issue a shoot down regulation similar to the type in place in Colombia and Peru. Last year, the U.S.-Peruvian program resulted in the accidental shooting down of a missionary plane. Brazil stressed that it was not interested in becoming part of the U.S.-backed Plan Colombia when the border buildup began. In October 2000, Admiral Hector Blecker, Brazil's assistant chief of intelligence, told the Brazilian congress that while it was obvious the probable impact of Plan Colombia would require Brazil undertake police, environmental and social action programs in the border area, "the idea of a multinational military operation in the Brazilian Amazon is unacceptable." During the congressional hearings it was stressed that the environmental impact to the Brazilian Amazon from Colombian aerial spraying, and the possible use of a mycoherbicide could destroy legitimate crop production along Brazil's jungle rivers. Blecker is concerned that "chemical agents such as glyphosate and biological agents such as fusarium oxysporum in the Putumayo and Caquetá rivers will flow into the Ica and Japura rivers respectively." But just as the United States originally claimed that Plan Colombia would confine itself to fighting drug trafficking but is now expanding to include counterinsurgency operations, Brazil role in the war on drugs has also experienced mission creep. Recent air, land, and sea maneuvers along the Brazil-Colombia border involving 4,000 men sent a clear signal that Brazil intends to use force to keep guerrillas and drug traffickers out of its territory. United States involvement on the Brazilian side of the border is also ratcheting up. In September 2001, Brazil signed a bilateral letter of agreement with the United States for counternarcotics activities that call for mutual cooperation and U.S. aid for Operation Cobra and other counter drug trafficking operations. The agreement also pumps funds into the newly created National Secretariat for Public Security, which has unified control over Brazil's Federal and local police forces. Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, while still officially claiming that Brazil is not involved in Plan Colombia, strongly endorsed Colombian President Andrés Pastrana's decision earlier this year to terminate the demilitarized zone granted to the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Cardoso also called the election of Alvaro Uribe in May a "clear example of the vigor of democratic ideas in South America." Despite Brazilian contentions to the contrary, South America's biggest and most prosperous country is slipping deeper into the drug war and the Colombian Conflict. In March, Brazilian military officers visited the Pentagon where they exchanged views with U.S. officers and gave presentations on Brazil's border security and development program. On a recent visit to Brazil, Otto Reich, assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, expressed Washington's desire for internationalizing intervention in Colombia's conflict, "We think that the threat to Colombia's democracy is a common threat not just to the United States and Brazil, but to the whole Hemisphere. And, if countries are worried about the spillover effect of, say, 'Plan Colombia', they should be even more worried about the effect of not stopping the terrorists and the narcotics traffickers inside Colombian borders." More |