Washington — The provisional agreement that would allow the United States to use seven Colombian military facilities is a means of formalizing the access U.S. personnel have had for years in joint efforts to combat narcotics activities. It is not a proposal that would create U.S. bases or increase the U.S. military presence in the country, according to the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, Christopher McMullen.

In remarks to America.gov, McMullen said he had recently returned from trips to Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, mainly to explain to their governments the actual terms of the proposed defense cooperation agreement (DCA) between the United States and Colombia, and how they contrast with much of the heavy criticism directed at the DCA, particularly from Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.

“It’s a lot more innocuous than anyone imagines, but the problem is that, in an information vacuum, people speculated on the contents of the agreement … and reacted to bits and pieces of news information as well as disinformation,” McMullen said.

According to an August 18 fact sheet released by the State Department, the DCA is designed to facilitate bilateral cooperation on Colombian security matters, “including narcotics production and trafficking, terrorism, illicit smuggling of all types, and humanitarian and natural disasters.” (See “U.S.-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement.”)

Rather than creating U.S. bases, the agreement allows U.S. personnel access to seven Colombian military facilities: two naval bases, two army installations and the three air force bases located at Palanquero, Apiay and Malambo. “All these military installations are, and will remain, under Colombian control,” with the Colombian armed forces continuing to handle their command and control, administration and security, the fact sheet said.

Under the DCA, all activities conducted by U.S. personnel from those facilities will take place “only with the express prior approval of the Colombian government,” and the agreement “does not signal, anticipate, or authorize an increase in the presence of U.S. military of civilian personnel in Colombia.”

Deputy Assistant Secretary McMullen said that essentially the agreement “formalizes access that we’ve had on an ad hoc basis the whole time of Plan Colombia,” and in some cases even before. Plan Colombia is a 10-year-old Colombian-designed strategy in which the United States has assisted the country in fighting drug trafficking, ending civil conflict, fostering economic growth and strengthening the rule of law.

The impetus for the DCA, he said, was due in part to the amount of time and effort the two governments had been spending in working out the day-to-day terms of U.S. access to Colombian facilities through formal diplomatic protocols. In a broader sense, the DCA also serves as a framework agreement for U.S.-Colombia cooperation, and it reflects the desire of both countries to update bilateral military cooperation agreements, some of which have been in place since the 1950s and 1960s.

McMullen noted that the DCA is strictly a bilateral agreement with Colombia but is “emblematic of the type of cooperation that other countries in the region should be carrying out” against shared challenges such as narcotrafficking and international crime. Multilateral cooperation within the region can help “close down the ability of drug cartels to work the existing seams between countries.”

SHARING LESSONS LEARNED

McMullen noted that most indicators are showing that the productivity of Colombia’s cocaine industry has “significantly diminished” over the past seven to eight years as military operations have pushed coca cultivation into more remote and marginal areas where the crop yields are less. At the same time, drug interdictions have “dramatically increased,” he said.

Colombia’s successes in combating its drug problem and improving its security situation vis-à-vis rebel groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have caused it to begin sharing its expertise with its neighbors, McMullen said.

“It’s trying to take its lessons learned to other countries in the region,” through police training programs in Haiti, Mexico and Central America, and helicopter training for Mexican pilots as part of the Merida Initiative.

Also, Colombia’s success has enabled it, for “the first time in 45 years,” to broaden its bilateral dialogue with the United States “outside the traditional issues of drugs and security,” McMullen said. He added that the two countries are now discussing cooperation against climate change, how to improve the lives of Colombia’s Afro-Colombian population, and how Colombia can play a more active role in the regional free trade initiative known as Pathways to Prosperity. (See “Clinton Says Quality of Lives Defines Western Hemisphere Progress.”)

However, McMullen warned that “we cannot underestimate the FARC,” despite Colombian successes against the rebel group, particularly the 2007–2008 period, which saw the deaths of high-level FARC field commanders and mass defections by FARC soldiers.

The group, founded in 1964, “has gone though crises equal to, if not more serious” than what it is currently experiencing, and “it has proved itself to be a very resilient, adaptive organization,” McMullen said, noting that lately the FARC has shown signs of adapting its strategy and tactics in the face of new realities and in response to Colombian military actions. It retains safe havens in the porous jungle-terrain borders of Ecuador and Panama, and in Venezuela where “not only do they have safe havens, but there are indications of active support on the part of some members of the Venezuelan government.”

On Colombia’s human rights record, the deputy assistant secretary said the government has been making “steady improvements,” and “the broad trajectory has been mostly positive,” but the United States has expressed its concerns over issues such as the killings in Soacha, where job seekers were falsely identified as FARC guerillas and murdered by the Colombian military. (See “Statement on Human Rights Certification of Colombian Government.”)

“It was a human rights scenario that we had not encountered before, so it gave us pause,” McMullen said, adding that U.S. officials wanted to ensure that the incident was isolated and not systemic, and hope the Colombian government’s investigation and punishment of the perpetrators demonstrates that “the Colombians have gotten on top of this.”