The Regional Impact of Plan Colombia: Ecuador
The following text is taken from a speech
given at the Colombia Solidarity Campaign Dayschool on 23rd February:
'Plan Colombia - Clearing the Way for the Multinationals'.
Plan Colombia is part of a regional strategy
and indeed of a continental one. It has a serious impact on all
of its neighbours. In the case of Ecuador, on the Southern border
of Colombia and very near some of the operating zones of the FARC,
I want to discuss four types of impact. First I will look at the
specific ramifications in terms of military activity by the US.
Second I will describe some of the environmental effects of the
operations of Plan Colombia. Then I want to look at the economic
and political implications of the Plan and of the general direction
of US policy at present.
Military Operations
The main focus of US military intervention
in Ecuador has been the huge Manta airbase on the coast of the province
of Manabi. An agreement for its expansion was signed by the Ecuadorean
government in 1999. The base has undergone a massive overhaul in
the last couple of years to make it a principal centre of USAF operations.
$62 million has been spent on runway construction, hangars, accommodation
for US personnel and maintenance facilities. There are now 400 US
military personnel there. The base is now ready to be the hub of
US airborne surveillance, with facilities for AWAC planes and KC-135
refuelling planes. Also deployed, according to the US Southern Command,
are C-130 giant transport planes, two US Coastguard P3s and one
of two US Navy P3s. These can cover the whole Caribbean region and
reach as far South as Bolivia, thus replacing Panama as the major
base for US flights. It also houses Special Operations forces. Colonel
Pausto Cobo, ex Director of the Ecuadorean armyís Escuela
de Guerra, summed Manta up succinctly: ëThe base permits the
USA to intervene directly with strategic, operative, technological
and logistical means in its whole theatre of operationsí.
In terms of regional military training,
there is the Coca (honest!) jungle facility, which trains military
personnel from Peru, Brazil and Ecuador and has been in operation
since March 1999. It is financed by the US Defence Department.
There has also been increased joint military
activity between US and Ecuadorean forces, especially in the Amazon
border regions with Colombia. The US provided $20 million to the
Ecuadorean armed forces to secure the border in 2001, with a further
$76 million projected for 2002. Ostensibly the funding is for operations
to prevent incursions by Colombian guerrillas either for rest or
for securing supplies. This in itself is likely to bring increased
militarisation and the displacement of large numbers of refugees,
as Plan Colombia has done inside the country. Colombian government
helicopters have already made incursions into Ecuador and paramilitaries
from AUC have attacked Ecuadorean indigenous people and forced them
to abandon their land. FARC commanders in the Southern Bloc have
indicated that Ecuador will be regarded as a military target if
its government continues to collaborate with the North Americans
in operations directed at the Colombian guerrilla. Despite continual
denials from Ecuadorean militry sources, it seems that the Ecuadorean
army is already playing a de facto part in the implementation of
Plan Colombia in its operations in the FARC rearguard.
US funding is also directed against coca
growers in the region and in particular it is part of a security
operation for a big expansion of oil company investment in the Ecuadorean
Amazon. There are 5,000 Ecuadorean soldiers posted on the border
at any one time.
Environment
A giant oil pipeline is under construction
from the Amazon to the port of Balao on the Pacific Coast near the
Colombian border. It will have a capacity of 450,000 barrels per
day and according to Ecuadorís Energy Minister Pablo Teran
will double the countryís productive capacity in three years.
Once in place, it will allow expansion of drilling, with US company
Occidental committed to spending £1 billion to expand its
jungle operations. Environmental objections to the plans have been
dismissed by President Noboa, who has pledged to allow no 'interference'í.
The pipeline is to cross traditional lands of indigenous people,
who may well find that the military operations outlined above are
used to clear the area of 'undesirables'.
The oil industry has wreaked truly terrible
environmental destruction in the Ecuadorean Amazon. There has been
widespread water pollution, the appearance of new diseases and increased
incidence of others, an utter disregard for the cultural traditions
of the regionís people and of course a brutal exploitation
of the wealth of the area for the benefit of the oil companies and
their partners in the Ecuadorean establishment. Plan Colombia will
inevitably extend its project of clearing the way for the multinationals
into Ecuador and other neighbours.
As well as the plunder of the jungle by
the oil companies, there have been specific instances of environmental
damage caused by the systematic crop spraying in the South of Colombia.
The details of this have been well publicised in terms of Colombia
itself, but the water and eco-systems of the region are such that,
of course, the environmental damage and human consequences of the
use of highly toxic defoliants are not confined to Colombia's borders.
Ecuadorean environmental and indigenous activists have already been
in Colombia to denounce the effects of fumigation in the province
of Sucumbios, presenting a detailed medical report commissioned
by Accion Ecologica and CONAIE, the Ecuadorean Indigenous Peoplesí
Confederation. The issue is part of an ongoing conflict between
CONAIE and Noboaís government.
Economic and Political Strategy
More generally, Ecuador is the target of
the same economic and political strategies as Colombia. We are arguing
today that Plan Colombia is about clearing the way for the multinationals.
It is about regional security for the interests of capital. It is
about breaking any resistance to the neo-liberal economic agenda.
It is about the criminalisation of dissent and its physical elimination
where necessary to achieve that agenda. It is about throwing the
regionís economies wide open to despoilation by the multinationals
and the banks. It is about propping up corrupt, venal and brutal
ruling classes who share in the rape of their countries and the
oppression and exploitation of their peoples.
Ecuador has seen all this in the last decade.
As a weak economy, it has been an early victim of globalisation
and the neo-liberal agenda. It has fallen deeper and deeper into
debt, while foreign bankers and individuals have enriched themselves.
Its industry and agriculture have been devastated by the WTO/IMF
free market models. Its people have been impoverished while its
rich have grown richer and secured their interests through dollar
bank accounts in which to salt away the proceeds of their corruption.
Its economy has been dollarised to fit the needs of capital. Its
environment has been ruined and its indigenous peoples ignored and
oppressed.
Conclusion
Plan Colombia seeks to extend all this across
the region and eventually through the FTAA the project is for the
whole continent. Fortunately, in Ecuador as in Colombia there is
resistance, both to Plan Colombia itself and its ramifications and
to the neo-liberal model. The popular organisations and human rights
groups in Ecuador are at one in their denunciation of Plan Colombia,
their governmentís slavish involvement in it and the ever
greater US incursion into their country. This is part of their own
continuing resistance to their government, the bankers and the neo-liberals
project.
Andy Brown
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