<a href=www.sunspot.net>SunSpot.net By Jason Hagen Special To The Sun Originally published June 8, 2003

While Americans are pre-occupied with the Middle East, the U.S. government is furtively stoking a war in South America that has seethed for decades.

Since the advent of "Plan Colombia" in 1999, Colombia has been the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, following Israel and Egypt. That aid was originally intended to put a dent in the drug trade that bankrolls many violent groups in Colombia, including the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, and the right-wing paramilitaries calling themselves the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), who are allied with elements of the Colombian armed forces.

Washington regards all three groups, which count some 35,000 members, as terrorist organizations that threaten Colombian democracy, Andean security, and the prospects for free trade in the Americas.

Since the beginning of "Plan Colombia" the United States has spent more than $2.5 billion on its military and political campaign there and is expected to spend almost $700 million in the coming year.

But since last year, U.S. military assistance has expanded beyond fighting drugs to include defending the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline used by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. U.S. Special Forces are currently training Colombian soldiers in counter-insurgency tactics in order to protect the pipeline from guerrilla bombings.

By attempting to protect an oil pipeline and other sites of strategic infrastructure, the United States risks being dragged into a conflict that is more complex and deep-rooted than most policy-makers in the United States and even Colombia fully realize. What started as an open-ended but drug-centered Plan Colombia under President Bill Clinton has been transformed by the Bush administration into an ever-more-sprawling mission that lacks clearly defined goals, a definition of success, or an exit strategy. The choices made now regarding escalating assistance will limit the options available to policy-makers in both countries in the future.

Oil, like cocaine and heroin, provides revenues that enhance the armed actors' ability to participate in the war; the war in turn, provides them with opportunities for profit that they could not have under peaceful conditions. Guerrillas frequently extort money from oil companies in the eastern plains, while in the Middle Magdalena region, paramilitaries steal gasoline and sell it on the black market. For years, the Colombian armed forces have dedicated much of their limited resources to guarding pipelines and oil installations at the expense of establishing territorial control and protecting citizens from attacks by illegal armed groups.

Arauca province, nestled next to Venezuela in northeastern Colombia, is the center of Occidental's installations and increasingly the focus of U.S. and Colombian military operations. Intended to be a security priority and a showcase for how pacification can work under the new hard-nosed government of President Álvaro Uribe, the results in Arauca have been disturbing. The province has become a magnet for an explosive mix of characters, all jockeying to control the area's considerable material resources. The murder rate there is soaring, with about 160 killings per 100,000 people this year, twice the rate of the late 1990s. In the United States, the average is less than six per 100,000.

There are other telling examples of what U.S. engagement may look like in the future. In December 1998, a Colombian air force helicopter crew dropped a cluster bomb that killed 17 civilians (including six children) and seriously wounded 25 others (including fifteen children) in the town of Santo Domingo, approximately 30 miles south of Occidental's Caño Limón field installations. The bombing occurred with the participation of AirScan, a Florida-based aerial surveillance contractor that had recently worked for Occidental. Three U.S. citizens who worked for AirScan have been linked to the incident, one of them a then-active-duty member of the U.S. Coast Guard. No charges have been filed against them.

Although the AirScan pilots were employees of a foreign-based private-security company originally hired by a foreign oil company, they frequently provided assistance to the Colombian armed forces: in this case, for a counter-guerrilla operation that led to the death of innocent civilians. Because of their nebulous military status, the conduct of these and other contractors is unclear and their accountability to the U.S. public, and even the Colombian government, is limited.

This is particularly troubling when events go awry. At least 11 U.S. contractors have died in Colombia during the past five years (five already this year), and three others are being held captive by the FARC. Precious little information about them, and their activities, however, has been made public.

The Santo Domingo episode is symptomatic of a larger danger of U.S. policy in Colombia, because private military enterprises are a booming business, hired by the Pentagon to serve in Colombia and other global hotspots. Last year, three private companies had contracts with the State Department, and seventeen had contracts with the Department of Defense in Colombia. Colombia's most important newsweekly, Semana, has called these private contractors "a gang of lawless and godless Rambos." Despite these concerns, Undersecretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman has said, "Contractors will continue to be a very important part of our effort [in Colombia]. That is how the modern world works."

The State and Defense departments increasingly argue that their goal is to provide security for all Colombians, and that protecting the Caño Limón pipeline is part of an integrated package that includes aerial fumigation of coca and poppy, as well as counter insurgency assistance in order to bring about a safe and stable Colombia. Despite congressional requests for more transparency, it is unclear how much money will be spent or how many years the mission will take.

Such a loosely defined mission, however, is exactly what some Colombian government officials prefer, in the hopes that the United States will solve Colombia's historic social and political problems with heavy doses of military aid and eventually, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers.

Instead of wasting years dabbling in an intractable, decades-old conflict, at the cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars, the United States should put its diplomatic weight behind a peace process in Colombia. And it should stop supporting a notoriously abusive military so that it can protect the resources of U.S. companies.

Jason Hagen is a Colombia specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization.

Taipei Times-REUTERS Sunday, Jun 08, 2003,Page 10

Oil prices hit 11-week highs above US$31 a barrel on Friday as OPEC producers Saudi Arabia and Venez-uela sought assurances that non-member Mexico would follow the cartel in any move to tighten supply.

Renewed signs that looting and sabotage will disrupt the resumption of Iraq's oil exports further bolstered prices, which have gained 20 percent in the last month.

US crude futures jumped US$0.46 to US$31.20 a barrel, hitting its highest price since March 19. In London, benchmark Brent crude was US$0.36 higher at US$27.80 a barrel.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi and his Venezuelan counterpart Rafael Ramirez met in Madrid with Mexico's Energy Minister Ernesto Martens ahead of next week's OPEC conference on third-quarter production policy.

"We are coming here before the OPEC meeting to discuss the world oil market. We are also in contact with Russia and Norway and I think we will get good results," Ramirez said.

Saudi Arabia and Venezuela want to lay the groundwork for contributions from non-OPEC producers should the return of Iraq push prices down later this year, officials at the talks said.

"That's the key, because it indicates non-OPEC producers may be willing to cooperate, if nothing else by giving lip service to jawbone the prices higher," said a New York trader.

With oil prices near the top end of OPEC's US$22 to US$28 a barrel band, some ministers have said they see no need for OPEC to cut production limits when it meets next Wednesday in Qatar.

Iraq announced on Thursday it would this month resume oil exports, which have been halted since mid-March. But a full recovery of its pre-war exports -- some 4 percent of globally traded oil -- appears distant.

Baghdad's top US adviser on oil said on Friday that well-organized saboteurs are targeting Iraqi oil facilities in a campaign designed to hamper efforts to revive crude exports as the country recovers from war.

"It is very difficult for me to identify who they are and what their motives are. I can only say their techniques appear to be very professional and aim at causing harm to significant and important installations," Phillip Carroll told reporters in an interview.

Oil markets have now more than reversed losses following US government data on Wednesday showing an unexpected rise in crude and gasoline supplies.

June 7, 2003, 4:06PM Bloomberg Business News

ConocoPhillips bought 40 percent of a Venezuelan natural gas tract from ChevronTexaco, according to a prepared statement by ChevronTexaco last week.

ChevronTexaco, the second-largest U.S. oil company, retained 60 percent of Block 2 in Venezuela's offshore Deltana Platform tract, South America's largest natural gas reserve. The tract is between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago.

ChevronTexaco spokeswoman Monica Davila in Caracas would not disclose the terms of the purchase.

ChevronTexaco, which won development rights to Block 2 in February, said in April it planned to spend as much as $1 billion to develop the tract. Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, retained the right to acquire as much as 35 percent of the project, the statement said.

Venezuela is counting on natural gas from Deltana to reduce its dependence on revenues from oil exports. The Deltana Platform is divided into five blocks and comprises 27,000 square kilometers. Venezuela estimates the area holds up to 40 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Natural gas produced at Block 2 will be processed into liquefied natural gas and exported to the United States, the release said.

<a href=www.arabnews.com>ArabNews Staff Writer   RIYADH, 8 June 2003 — Oil ministers from Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela have pledged to cooperate with other producers in ensuring a fair price for the crude to stabilize the world market.

The pledge came in a joint statement issued after a meeting in Madrid on Friday between Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi, Venezuela’s Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez and Mexican Energy Secretary Ernesto Martens, the Saudi Press Agency reported yesterday.

The statement said the three countries would continue to cooperate to achieve “stability in the international oil market in a way serving the interests of producers and consumers, the oil industry and world economic growth.” They stressed the need to “continue monitoring developments in the market during the coming few months in a bid to avoid factors that may destabilize it,” the statement added.

The meeting of the two OPEC members, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, and non-OPEC Mexico came ahead of a ministerial meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on June 11 in Qatar’s capital Doha. The OPEC meeting will assess the state of the oil market, especially in light of the expected resumption of Iraqi production and the return of Venezuela and Nigeria to their normal production.

OPEC President Abdullah ibn Hamad Al-Attiyah said late last month that the group would probably agree to reduce output at the Doha meeting.

Venezuelan Oil Minister Ramirez said on Friday that his country was holding talks with Saudi Arabia and Mexico seeking an agreement to cut production.

“We have come to Madrid before the OPEC meeting to discuss world oil market situation. We are getting in touch with Russia and Norway and hopefully we would reach good results,” the Reuters news agency quoted Ramirez as saying.

<a href=www.indianexpress.com>The Sunday Express Liberty takes on democracy Setting up his argument, Fareed Zakaria argues the vote is only one ingredient of a liberal society. From a working justice system to civil rights, there’s much more

The future of freedom Illiberal Democracy at Home & Abroad By Fareed Zakaria, Penguin/Viking, Price: Rs 395

“Suppose elections are free and fair and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists,’’ said the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke about Yugoslavia in the 1990s. ‘‘That is the dilemma.’’ Indeed it is, and not merely in Yugoslavia’s past but in the world’s present. Consider, for example, the challenge we face across the Islamic world. We recognize the need for democracy in those often-repressive countries. But what if democracy produces an Islamic theocracy or something like it? It is not an idle concern. Across the globe, democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been re-elected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights. This disturbing phenomenon — visible from Peru to the Palestinian territories, from Ghana to venezuela — could be called ‘‘illiberal democracy’’.

For people in the West, democracy means ‘‘liberal democracy’’; a political system marked not only by free and fair elections but also by the rule of law, a separation of powers, and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion, and property. But this bundle of freedoms — what might be termed ‘‘constitutional liberalism’’ — has nothing intrinsically to do with democracy and the two have not always gone together, even in the West. After all, Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany via free elections. Over the last half-century in the West, democracy and liberty have merged. But today the two strands of liberal democracy, interwoven in the Western political fabric, are coming apart across the globe. Democracy is flourishing; liberty is not.

In some places, such as Central Asia, elections have paved the way for dictatorships. In others, they have exacerbated group conflict and ethnic tensions. Both Yugoslavia and Indonesia, for example, were far more tolerant and secular when they were ruled by strongmen (Tito and Suharto, respectively) than they are now as democracies. And in many nondemocracies, elections would not improve matters much. Across the Arab world elections held tomorrow would probably bring to power regimes that are more intolerant, reactionary, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic than the dictatorships currently in place.

In a world that is increasingly democratic, regimes that resist the trend produce dysfunctional societies — as in the Arab world. Their people sense the deprivation of liberty more strongly than ever before because they know the alternatives; they can see them on CNN, BBC, and Al-Jazeera. But yet, newly democratic countries too often become sham democracies, which produces disenchantment, disarray, violence, and new forms of tyranny. Look at Iran and Venezuela. This is not a reason to stop holding elections, of course, but surely it should make us ask, What is at the root of this troubling development? Why do so many developing countries have so much difficulty creating stable, genuinely democratic societies? Were we to embark on the vast challenge of building democracy in Iraq, how would we make sure that we succeed?

First, let’s be clear what we mean by political democracy. From the time of Herodotus it has been defined, first and foremost, as the rule of the people. This definition of democracy as a process of selecting governments is now widely used by scholars. In The Third Wave, the eminent political scientist Samuel P. Huntington explains why:

Elections, open, free and fair, are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Governments produced by elections may be inefficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, and incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. These qualities make such governments undesirable but they do not make them undemocratic. Democracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the relation of democracy to other public virtues and vices can only be understood if democracy is clearly distinguished from the other characteristics of political systems.

This definition also accords with the common sense view of the term. If a country holds competitive, multiparty elections, we call it ‘‘democratic.’’ When public participation in a country’s politics is increased — for example, through the enfranchisement of women — that country is seen as having become more democratic. Of course elections must be open and fair, and this requires some protections for the freedom of speech and assembly. But to go beyond this minimal requirement and label a country democratic only if it guarantees a particular catalog of social, political, economic, and religious rights — which will vary with every observer — makes the word ‘‘democracy’’ meaningless. After all, Sweden has an economic system that many argue curtails individual property rights, France until recently had a state monopoly on television, and Britain has a state religion. But they are all clearly and identifiably democracies. To have ‘‘democracy’’ mean, subjectively, ‘‘a good government’’ makes it analytically useless.

Constitutional liberalism, on the other hand, is not about the procedures for selecting government but, rather, government’s goals. It refers to the tradition, deep in Western history, that seeks to protect an individual’s autonomy and dignity against coercion, whatever the source — state, church, or society. The term marries two closely connected ideas. it is liberal because it draws on the philosophical strain, beginning with the Greeks and Romans, that emphasizes individual liberty. It is constitutional because it places the rule of law at the center of politics. Constitutional liberalism developed in Western Europe and the United States as a defense of an individual’s right to life and property and the freedoms of religion and speech. To secure these rights, it emphasized checks on the power of government, equality under the law, impartial courts and tribunals, and the separation of church and state. In almost all of its variants, constitutional liberalism argues that human beings have certain natural (or ‘‘inalienable’’) rights and that governments must accept a basic law, limiting its own powers, to secure them. Thus in 1215 at Runnymede, England’s barons forced the king to limit his own authority. In the American colonies these customs were made explicit, and in 1638 the town of Hartford adopted the first written constitution in modern history. In 1789 the American Constitution created a formal framework for the new nation. In 1975 Western nations set standards of behavior even for nondemocratic regimes. Magna Carta, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the American Constitution, and the Helsinki Final Act are all expressions of constitutional liberalism.

The Nub

In a world that is increasingly democratic, regimes that resist the trend produce dysfunctional societies — as in the Arab world. Their people sense the deprivation of liberty more strongly than ever before because they know the alternatives; they can see them on CNN, BBC and Al-Jazeera. But yet, newly democratic countries too often become sham democracies, which produces disenchantment, disarray, violence and tyrannySince 1945 Western governments have, for the most part, embodied both democracy and constitutional liberalism. Thus it is difficult to imagine the two apart, in the form of either illiberal democracy or liberal autocracy. In fact both have existed in the past and persist in the present. Until the twentieth century, most countries in western Europe were liberal autocracies or, at best, semi-democracies. The franchise was tightly restricted, and elected legislatures had limited power. In 1830 Great Britain, one of the most democratic European countries, allowed barely 2 per cent of its population to vote for one house of Parliament. Only in the late 1940s did most Western countries become full-fledged democracies, with universal adult suffrage. But one hundred years earlier, by the late 1840s, most of them had adopted important aspects of constitutional liberalism — the rule of law, private property rights, and increasingly, separated powers and free speech and assembly. For much of modern history, what characterized governments in Europe and North America, and differentiated them from those around the world, was not democracy but constitutional liberalism. The ‘‘Western model of government’’ is best symbolized not by the mass plebiscite but the impartial judge.

For decades the tiny island of Hong Kong was a small but revealing illustration that liberty did not depend on democracy. It had one of the highest levels of constitutional liberalism in the world but was in no way a democracy. In fact in the 1990s, as the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong drew near, many Western newspapers and magazines fretted about the dangers of this shift to Hong Kong’s democracy. But of course Hong Kong had no democracy to speak of. The threat was to its tradition of liberty and law. We continue to confuse these two concepts. American and Israeli politicians have often chided the Palestinian Authority for its lack of democracy. But in fact Yasser Arafat is the only leader in the entire Arab world who has been chosen through reasonably free elections. The Palestinian Authority’s problem lies not in its democracy — which while deeply flawed is at least half-functioning — but in its constitutional liberalism, or lack thereof.