COLOMBIA AND U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN ANOTHER VIETNAM

US military aid to Colombia may be on a large scale but the US government insists that it is not launching another Vietnam as American troops in the country are forbidden to engage in combat with the country's guerrillas. However, private American companies, paid for by the State and Defense Departments and staffed by ex-servicemen from the Special Forces and by pilots, suffer no such restrictions.

Last month the world's largest aerial eradication programme, funded by the United States to destroy drug crops in Colombia, ran into a spot of bother. Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fired on a crop-dusting aircraft and supporting helicopters. The pilot of an American-supplied Huey helicopter was hit in the barrage of small arms fire, but managed to land his stricken chopper. Two other helicopter gunships circled the grounded chopper pouring fire on the Marxist guerrillas, while a third helicopter rescued the crew. Then it transpired that the pilots of two of the choppers in the daring rescue were Americans contracted by the United States State Department.

"I had a pistol"
"The FARC were 100 to 200 yards away", Capt. Giancarlo Cotrino, the pilot of the downed chopper said from his hospital bed in Bogotá. "We fought for seven or eight minutes - one of my crewmen had a grenade launcher and I had a pistol - until the SAR (search and rescue helicopter) came in behind us, landed and picked us up in the middle of a very hot firefight."
In the SAR were American citizens and Colombians, all armed with M-16s. Most of the SAR teams are ex-US Special Forces, according to a US Embassy source. US personnel had suddenly become involved in the fighting in Colombia's 37-year civil conflict.
The company involved in last month's engagement with guerrillas is called DynCorp. It has been contracted since 1997 by the American State Department to provide pilots, trainers and maintenance workers for the aerial eradication programme. What was not known before was that they piloted helicopter gunships that are used as an attack aircraft when crop-dusting planes are attacked. Three DynCorp pilots have been killed in operations, but one pilot said that at $90,000 a year tax free, the rewards were as high as the risks.

Only 500 allowed in
Last year, when the $1.3 billion aid package to Colombia was approved by Congress, several rules were imposed. One was that no more than 500 US military personnel could be stationed in Colombia at any one time and another that they were not to get directly involved in fighting. "The Department of Defence will not step over the line that divides counter-narcotics from counter-insurgency," said Ana Maria Salazar, deputy assistant secretary of defence for drug enforcement policy, while testifying to a Congressional subcommittee.
American military personnel are currently engaged in a variety of training and monitoring roles. Three American-trained and equipped anti-narcotics battalions are being created, while American Navy SEALs train Colombian marines, who patrol the rivers that are the only means of transport through much of the country. Other American personnel man five radar and listening stations and serve as liaison officers at the Colombian Joint Intelligence Centre in the southern base of Tres Esquinas, which the United States helped set up.
The letter of the law on American involvement in civil conflicts has not been broken, as serving military personnel have not yet been caught in active combat roles. Sooner or later, however, somebody is going to argue that the Americans at the radar and listening stations providing information on guerrilla actions are already taking an active role in the counter-insurgency war.
What appears to be sensitive work for the American government is also done by at least six American 'security' companies. One of them, hired by the Defence Department on a $6m a year contract is Military Personnel Resources Inc. (MPRI), a Virginia-based military consultant company run by retired generals. Its 14 associates live in an attractive hotel in Bogotá and decline to speak to reporters. MPRI came under the spotlight over its involvement in training the Croatian army was revealed.
Brian Sheridan, the senior Pentagon official who oversees the work of MPRI, said in congressional testimony a year ago that MPRI's role in Colombia was far from sinister, just "a manpower issue", insisting that Southern Command did not have the men to spare to give strategic and logistic advice to the Colombian army.
"It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the U.S. armed forces, obviously," said the former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, Myles Frechette. "If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed forces."

Why secrecy is needed
MPRI spokesman Ed Soyster, a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defence Intelligence Agency, compared the need for secrecy in Colombia with Vietnam. "When I was in Vietnam, I wouldn't want to tell you about my operation," he said. "If the enemy knows about it, he can counter it."
Human rights groups say the use of private contractors is a deliberate ploy to ensure actions are carried out that American troops under Congressional restrictions cannot perform, and that deniability was the name of the game. "We're outsourcing the war in a way that is not accountable," said Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch.