As part of efforts to diversify its oil supply the U.S. is intensifying its military involvement in Colombia, the third most populous country in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico. Colombia is one of Latin America's most unstable countries; an estimated 3,500 people, mostly civilians, are killed annually and thousands of others tortured and extorted. Several guerrilla bands, left and right-wing, control about a third of the country making about $600-700 million a year in cocaine-related protection profits.

Arauca province is a petroleum rich area in northeastern Colombia near the Venezuelan border. In recent months, terrorist groups in this region - primarily the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) - have attacked the first 75 miles of the 480-mile Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline, notoriously known as "the flute." In addition to attacks on the pipeline, the region has become Colombia's most violent province; car bombings, assassination of government officials and forced displacement of rural dwellers in untold numbers are a matter of routine. As with narcotics, terrorist groups use oil to facilitate their violent activities. They extort and threaten oil companies, sabotage their operations when payments fail to arrive, and in other cases steal gasoline and sell it on the black market. The profits are used to finance more of the same and fuel a decades-old conflict that has already cost Colombia thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid, following Israel and Egypt. U.S. aid commenced under President Bill Clinton within the framework of Plan Colombia, intended to fight the drug trade, but now part of this aid will be directed toward protection of oil facilities. The threat to Colombia's oil prompted the Bush administration to initiate a pipeline protection plan intended to train, equip, and assist two elite Colombian army battalions of up to 800 soldiers to defend the pipeline against terror attacks. About $140 million are likely to be allocated to provide munitions, equipment, and training to the Colombian army in fiscal year 2004. Roughly seventy members of the U.S. Army's 7th Special Forces Group are already in Arauca providing counter-insurgency training to Colombian troops.

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Anne Patterson recently stated that the pipeline plan reached beyond the anti-narcotics mission to which the U.S. has been committed and that it is, in fact, designed to increase U.S. energy security. "Colombia has the potential to export more oil to the U.S, and now more than ever, it's important for us to diversify our sources of oil," the ambassador said.

It is unclear whether Colombia's oil potential justifies the risk of military involvement. Colombian crude represents a mere two percent of total U.S. oil imports. The country has a potential capacity of roughly 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) but pipeline attacks and natural depletion of fields reduced output to 600,000 bpd. Colombia's proven reserves of 1.8 billion barrels amount to 0.2% of global reserves. Projections of potential reserves indicate that more oil may be discovered but it is premature to assess whether Colombia may emerge as a major oil supplier to the U.S.

U.S. military involvement in Colombia presents several risks. First, by attempting to protect the oil pipeline, the U.S. risks being dragged into a conflict that is more complex and deep-rooted than most people realize. This could be to the detriment of U.S. national interest. Commanders of one of the main groups, the National Liberation Army, have already called the presence of American troops an act of aggression and threatened to target them.

Second, troops from the Colombian Army's 18th Brigade in Arauca responsible for fighting the terrorists with U.S. guidance have so far failed to bring peace and stability to the region. On the contrary, many of them have been accused of having ties with the paramilitary groups, being notoriously abusive, and violating fundamental rights of Arauca's inhabitants. This could instill a sense of anti-Americanism among Colombia's impoverished people who might identify the U.S. as an accomplice to these misdeeds.

Third, U.S. involvement in Colombia sets a dangerous precedent in terms of U.S. government protection of U.S.-based firms' overseas commercial interests. Forty-four percent of the shares of Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline are held by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum. U.S. companies operating in other restless global regions might demand similar federal government protection. As it is, the U.S. military is employed in dozens of missions throughout the world from Iraq to Afghanistan to Korea to the Balkans and cannot provide protection services to oil companies under the guise of "guarding U.S. energy security interests."

Despite all this, one underlying reason might justify U.S. military involvement in Colombia: the country's link to international terrorism. According to many reports the drug war has been folded into the war on terror. "Narcotraffickers" are now "narcoterrorists," says Robert Kaplan, one of the nation's leading foreign affairs journalists who was embedded with four different U.S. Army Green Beret regiments in Colombia. During the 2003 Pitcairn Trust Lecture held on April 9 at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Kaplan noted "some of the most violent parts of Colombia are on the Venezuelan border, where President Hugo Chavez has given these criminal groups rear bases while inviting Arab criminal and terrorist gangs into the islands off the Venezuelan coast."

There have already been documented links between Colombian terrorist groups and terrorists based elsewhere (specifically IRA,)  and as Kaplan notes there are signs  of  a  possible relationship of  convenience with  Al Qaeda. Kaplan says that the Colombian terrorists are much more highly developed than many others in Latin America: "They are so inventive in Colombia that they set up roadblocks where one must show ID so they can check your name against a computer database, which can take days, to see if you are worth kidnapping."

Colombia is one of the classic cases of collapsed state in which terrorism, crime, drugs and oil intertwine. Though its oil endowment is probably too small to be a major source of U.S. oil, it should be closely watched; the U.S. cannot afford to let Colombia turn into the western hemisphere's primary terrorist safe haven.

More info:
Colombia Monitor: Protecting the Pipeline: The U.S. Military Mission Expands
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