The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 73/No. 31      August 17, 2009

 
U.S. troops leave Ecuador,
expand bases in Colombia
 
BY RÓGER CALERO  
The U.S. military is taking steps to move operations from Ecuador to military bases in Colombia.

Negotiations between U.S. and Colombian officials on a plan to run U.S military surveillance and interdiction operations from three airfields and two navy bases in Colombia are well under way, reported the magazine Cambio in early July.

Since the end of 2008, when the government of Ecuador announced that it would not renew a decade-long “antidrug” program allowing U.S. spy planes to operate from Ecuador’s Eloy Alfaro Air Base in the coastal city of Manta, Washington has been looking for another beachhead for its activities in South America. As a Forward Operation Location, Eloy Alfaro has been one of several air bases that replaced U.S. facilities shut down in Panama in 1999.

Last May U.S. officials announced that Washington would remove all U.S. military personnel from Ecuador in September, before the agreement expires in November, and move operations to Colombia.

According to Cambio, the agreement between Bogotá and Washington states that operations will not be limited to areas along the Pacific, previously covered from Manta, but will also include the Caribbean. The agreement also calls for greater cooperation in fighting “terrorism.”

The agreement leaves open the possibility that U.S. forces stationed in Colombia could “cooperate with other nations in the region,” and carry out “combined exercises to confront common threats to peace, stability, freedom, and democracy,” said the Colombian magazine.

The increased operations by U.S. forces from Colombian bases also seeks to complement those being carried out under Plan Colombia, the centerpiece of U.S. imperialism’s growing military presence in the Andean region. Plan Colombia was first announced in 1999 under the U.S. administration of William Clinton. Since 2000 the U.S. government has given more than $5 billion to Colombia’s army and police. A slight reduction in funds—from $547 million to $513 million—from Washington is scheduled for 2010.

Venezuela’s foreign minister Nicolás Maduro called the new military agreement between the Colombian and U.S. government “a threat to the entire region.”

Colombia’s foreign minister Jaime Bermúdez defended his government’s relations with Washington. The Colombian government “didn’t say anything when ships of the Russian navy carried out military maneuvers in the Venezuelan Caribbean,” said Bermúdez.

While the U.S. government has been pouring billions of dollars in military aid into Colombia, Washington and Bogotá have seized on the increased military cooperation between the Venezuelan government and those of Russia and China to step up its campaign of targeting Caracas as a “destabilizing” force in Latin America.

Washington is also cranking up its accusations that Caracas has been allowing Colombia’s guerrilla groups to use Venezuela’s territory as a launching pad for drug trafficking into the United States.

President Hugo Chávez said July 20 that he very much regretted the situation, “but we have to review relations with the government of Colombia because they are opening the doors to those who attack us constantly.” He said he has instructed his foreign minister to review all bilateral relations and warned of scaling back ties with Colombia. “The items that we purchase from Colombia will have to be purchased elsewhere, in countries that are truly friendly,” he said.

Despite frictions between the two governments, the total trade between Colombia and Venezuela amounted to $7.2 billion in 2008, favoring Colombia with exports reaching $6 billion.

This year so far, however, trade has slowed down under the impact of the world capitalist crisis, on top of trade restrictions being put in place by Venezuela. Colombia’s exports to Venezuela were $2.24 billion in the first five months of the year, down 1 percent from the same period last year. The drop is due partly to Venezuela’s restrictions on Colombian car imports, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Because of long delays in payments for Colombian goods, exports of some items from Colombia have dropped drastically.

The Colombian trade minister Luis Guillermo Plata urged the Venezuelan government July 22 to authorize overdue payments worth $275 million to Colombian exporters, according to the Journal.
 
 
Related articles:
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Imperialist war rages after nearly 8 years
All troops out of Central Asia now!
Washington presses for compromise from Kurds  
 
 
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