US ROLE IN CHIAPAS

U.S. Army War College Professor Tells of Counterinsurgency Trainings and `Private Diplomacy'

By Garance Burke

El Financiero International

Vol. 8, No. 07, August 3-9, 1998 (Front Page)

Far from the eyes of the Mexican public, the United States government continues to play a crucial - and highly controversial - role in the Chiapas conflict.

Since 1995, hundreds of Mexican soldiers have been trained at elite U.S. military bases in counternarcotics, maneuvers that are virtually identical to the counterinsurgency tactics used in the Guatemalan civil war.

"The general (U.S.) response is that Mexico has to deal with its own problems," said Donald Schulz, an expert on Latin America at the U.S. Army War College. "At the same time, some of the training and equipment that has been provided to the Mexican military can be used for counterinsurgency purposes."

Moreover, if Mexico's political stability were at severe risk, said Schulz, the U.S. would militarize the U.S.-Mexico border and could consider further military deployment to Mexico.

"If there were major instability in Mexico of the kind that the country was getting too close to in 1994," said Schulz, "this would provoke large-scale immigration and could carry with it violence to the United States - this is what we have to consider."

Schulz's comments follow the detention of two U.S. military officials in Chiapas last week, which sparked a controversy over the position of foreign military personnel in Mexico. Meanwhile, as political maelstroms come and go, Schulz's direct employer, the Strategic Studies Institute, will continue to conduct "strategic studies that develop policy recommendations ... [for] the U.S. Army as well as national leadership."

Since 1994, the United States has sold and donated over 235 million dollars' worth of arms and equipment to Mexico, including 103 UH1H "Huey" helicopters, 4 surveillance planes, as well as night vision, electronic control and satellite equipment.

Furthermore, in recent years the number of Mexican generals, soldiers and pilots receiving counterinsurgency training at the U.S. Special Forces (Green Berets) base in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, has risen dramatically.

Schulz disclosed that several U.S.-leased counternarcotics helicopters were used in Chiapas."One cannot limit the uses to which they put our counternarcotics training, because that can be used just as easily for counterinsurgency," Schulz said. "There's a real problem separating the two, and I don't think anyone has come up with a solution."

A partial solution, according to a group of U.S. legislators - among them Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) - is a non-binding resolution regarding Chiapas.If passed, the resolution would recommend that U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urge Mexican officials to disarm paramilitary groups and reduce military presence in Chiapas, and assure that U.S. military equipment is not used in the conflict. It also suggests that the United Nations intervene, and for the peace process to be renewed.

Foreign Relations Minister Rosario Green blasted the resolution, calling it "unacceptable interventionism" based on "incomplete, inexact and ... biased information." Although the resolution has been tabled until after August, the U.S. House of Representatives' Western Hemisphere Affairs Subcommittee recently held a hearing on Chiapas, where scholars and human rights leaders testified.

"It's a process of educating the public that there is a growing institutional relationship between the U.S. and the Mexican armed forces," said Ted Lewis of nonprofit Global Exchange, which spearheaded lobbying efforts. "We don't see this as interventionism, we're trying to challenge U.S. policy."

Global Exchange's involvement was in part prompted by reports from S. Brian Willson, a Vietnam veteran and lawyer by training who has documented the flow of U.S. equipment to Chiapas. Willson writes that when Gen. Mario Renan - who was trained in counterinsurgency tactics at Ft. Bragg - served as the former commander of the Seventh Military Region in Chiapas, he directly supported ruling party-aligned paramilitary group Paz y Justicia, one of the area's most dangerous and best-funded counterinsurgency groups.

From all official accounts, the two Americans detained in Chiapas - the Embassy's Asst. Army Attachi Thomas Gillen and First Sergeant Elizabeth Krug - were on a "routine visit" when they were held in El Bosque for over four hours by Tzotzil Indians, who demanded to know their purpose in the area. They were freed once Chiapas state officials intervened, but not before making a splash in the Mexican press.

A meeting between Foreign Relations Vice Minister Carlos de Icaza and Charles Brayshaw, the U.S. Embassy's Charge d'Affaires, quickly ensued. "The Ministry confirmed the importance of foreign visitors' exercising prudence ... when visiting the Chiapas conflict zones ... so as not to interfere in internal affairs or endanger the positive path of bilateral relations," stated a press bulletin.

The ministry has also demanded that U.S. military personnel inform the Mexican government about their travel plans. Meanwhile, Schulz says in the event that the Chiapas conflict spreads to other states, there is no "clear-cut policy" for the United States. "The best results are from private, behind-the-scenes diplomacy, rather than diplomacy that is exercised in the public eye," he said.

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<A Href="http://www.globalexchange.org>Global Exchange</A>

2017 Mission St., Rm. 303

San Francisco, CA 94110

Phone: 415.255.7296 Fax: 415.255.7498

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*** 30-Jul-98 ***

CONFLICT-MEXICO: Gov't Terms US Army Presence in Chiapas 'Normal'

By Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jul 30 (IPS) - The Mexican government insisted that the presence of two U.S. military officers in the southern state of Chiapas, discovered Sunday when they were retained by local residents, did not indicate meddling in national affairs.

The foreign ministry said the officers were attached to the U.S. embassy and were on a "normal" visit. Government spokespersons said they cited embassy personnel Wednesday night and asked them to provide "timely" notice of their movements in the future so their missions could be "facilitated."

The rebel Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) and non- governmental organisations, meanwhile, maintain that the U.S. armed forces directly influence the strategies applied by the Mexican government in Chiapas by advising and training the Mexican military.

Indigenous supporters of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), identified as members of paramilitary groups by a spokesperson for the U.S. government, retained U.S. Major Thomas Gillen and Sergeant Elizabeth Krug as they drove through conflict zones in Chiapas.

The local peasant farmers asked the officers to explain their presence and demanded that they open several boxes they were carrying. The U.S. officers responded by saying they had diplomatic immunity. In the end, they were allowed to continue without providing information about their mission or revealing the content of the boxes.

Opposition groups demanded to know what the officers were doing in Chiapas, but the foreign ministry and U.S. embassy simply said such visits were considered "normal" in the diplomatic sphere.

The foreign ministry pointed out, nevertheless, that all foreign nationals travelling to Chiapas must act with "prudence and restraint" to avoid "risks to their personal safety," and must not "interfere in internal affairs nor compromise the good relations between the two countries by causing a delicate incident."

In the first five months of the year, the government of Ernesto Zedillo deported 76 foreign nationals accused of interfering in the conflict in Chiapas.

The Zedillo administration has consistently refused international mediation in the conflict which first broke out in January 1994, despite increasingly strong calls by growing sectors of society for foreign peace-brokering efforts.

The government describes foreign mediation - like that sponsored and supported by successive Mexican administrations to help Central American countries reach negotiated peace accords this decade - as "meddling" in internal affairs.

Although peace talks between the EZLN and the Zedillo administration have been suspended since 1996, and the team of peace-brokers headed by Bishop Samuel Ruiz broke up last month, the government continues to resist foreign mediation, insisting that it will directly negotiate with the Zapatistas.

The EZLN and the non-governmental School of the Americas Watch and Latin American Working Group say U.S. military officers are key actors in the conflict in Chiapas, advising, training and even supervising and giving orders to Mexico's armed forces.

Three years ago, the Zapatistas claimed to have evidence such as photos demonstrating that U.S. military personnel advised and trained Mexican troops stationed in the state of Chiapas. The rebels have never made such evidence public, however.

School of the Americas Watch, meanwhile, reported in May that at least 13 members of the Mexican army trained at the U.S. School of the Americas held key positions in conflict zones in Chiapas.

The U.S. organisation, which monitors the activity of the School of the Americas, said the officers had received special training in counterinsurgency methods, jungle operations, counter- intelligence, revolutionary war, communist ideology and terrorism.

Several of the officers have been fingered as human rights violators and accused of committing or ordering murders in conflict zones, School of the Americas Watch added.

Since its founding in 1946, the School of the Americas has trained more than 60,000 Latin American military officers, a number of whom have gone on to play leading political roles as dictators or have been accused of violating human rights. Twenty- four Mexican officers currently work as instructors in the controversial school.

The Latin America Working Group reported earlier this month that the Mexican army received more U.S. training in 1996 and 1997 than any other military force in Latin America.

In the past two years, the U.S. government has reportedly channeled more than 24 million dollars into training military personnel from Mexico, the Latin American Working Group reports.

That training apparently provided the strategy currently being followed by the Mexican army in the impoverished, conflict-ridden, largely indigenous state of Chiapas, described by rights groups as "low intensity warfare."

[c] 1998, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS)