U.S. forces expanding role in Colombia - Beyond drug mission, troops now working to protect oil pipeline

www.charlotte.com Posted on Tue, Jan. 21, 2003 JOSEPH L. GALLOWAY Knight Ridder

ARAUCA, Colombia - American Army Special Forces teams moved last week into what a senior U.S. intelligence official calls "the most dangerous place in Colombia." They will begin training Colombian soldiers to protect an often-bombed 500-mile oil pipeline that runs along a porous border with neighboring Venezuela.

At a time when American soldiers are policing Afghanistan and the Balkans, fighting a global battle against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, keeping watch on North Korea and preparing for possible military action in Iraq, the escalating U.S. military involvement in Colombia's drug war has gone largely unnoticed.

The arrival of the Green Berets signaled a more aggressive U.S. effort to help Colombian forces fight the guerrillas of the leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN, and newcomers to this region from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Until now, American efforts have been aimed almost exclusively at curtailing cocaine and heroin production.

The vulnerable oil pipeline is crucial to the Colombian government, which has seen millions of gallons of oil spill into the region's soil, rivers and streams and lost tens of millions in oil revenues.

The special forces team doing the training, A Company 3rd Battalion 7th Special Forces Group, is from Fort Bragg and is commanded by Maj. Bill White.

White will base 40 Special Forces troops on a small military base in the nearby town of Saravena and 30 others at a larger military post in Arauca.

Two more will be stationed at the sprawling facilities at Cano Limon, where Occidental Petroleum and Colombia's Ecopetrol produce $5 billion a year worth of oil.

The Americans will rotate out every three months.

As a sign of how dangerous a place this is, the Army also is sending in a medical evacuation team that includes several Black Hawk helicopters and their crews, a surgeon and nurse and several trained medics.

They will be based with the Special Forces team in Arauca to provide emergency medical care and evacuation for any Americans wounded in the area.

Smaller Special Forces teams have been in Arauca and Saravena for two months, setting up communications and intelligence-gathering facilities, building heavily fortified living and working quarters in compounds in the middle of the Colombian Army facilities, and planning the training mission.

Rings of concertina wire and heavily fortified bunkers surround the Special Forces compounds.

In Arauca, the compound has a tall guard tower with security cameras and motion-activated perimeter lights. A sergeant said they had filled more than 70,000 sandbags to construct a head-high wall around the compound.

The Americans based in Arauca will advise and assist the Colombian Army's 18th Brigade, which guards the long border with Venezuela, runs operations against terrorists and attempts to secure the Cano Limon pipeline in this region.

Those based in Saravena will run five-week training courses for units assigned to protect the pipeline, in hope they will begin more aggressive operations against the rebels.

In other action, rebels ambushed a pickup truck carrying policemen in northern Columbia on Monday, killing six officers and their civilian driver in a hail of gunfire and grenades, a state governor said.

The attack was near the village of Zambrano, 340 miles north of Bogota.

About 60 miles farther north, army and police forces searched Monday for at least 10 civilians who were among dozens kidnapped on a rural road by FARC rebels the day before.

Government security forces rescued 49 of the hostages on Sunday, hours after the rebels put up a roadblock near the village of Jagua del Pilar and forced travelers from their vehicles.

"The operations are being carried out with extreme caution so we don't put at risk the lives of those who have been kidnapped," police Col. Heriberto Naranjo told RCN radio.

Naranjo said government forces had clashed with the fleeing rebels, but he had no information on casualties.

Juan Pablo Toro of the Associated Press contributed to this article.