Warrior Class
Why Special Forces Are America's Tool Of Choice In Colombia And Around The Globe
Arauca, Colombia--The lumbering cargo plane carrying the heavily armed men touched down at dusk. Its propellers churning, the U.S. Air Force C-130 popped its rear cargo hatch, and two dozen Green Berets spilled out. Straining against the hot engine blast, the men quickly unloaded pallets of ammunition, food, and gear. Minutes later, the big plane vanished into a moonlit sky.
In President Bush's global war on terrorism, America's Special Forces are on the front lines. But as the president said in describing that war after the September 11 attacks, the front lines would not always be readily visible, with many battles being fought in the shadows, far away from the bright lights of the television cameras. Around the globe, from Afghanistan to the Philippines, U.S. Special Forces are either fighting, getting ready to fight, or teaching friendly forces the arcane and deadly arts of war. In Afghanistan, it was Special Forces working with militias like the Northern Alliance that sent the Taliban fleeing in panic into a warren of mountain redoubts. If war comes in Iraq, Special Forces will play a key role early on, lighting up targets for smart bombs in the desert outside Baghdad and attacking Iraqi missile launchers before they can maneuver to fire. The new missions mean more money--lots of it. This year, Bush plans to increase the budget of all the Pentagon's Special Operations forces by 20 percent, to $6 billion.
Here in Colombia, the Green Berets deposited by the C-130 are prosecuting one of Bush's most important, and perilous, foreign-policy initiatives. With all the talk about Iraq and North Korea, Colombia hasn't received a whole lot of attention. But it has been very much on Bush's mind. Last fall, he promised Colombia's new president that he would do all he could to help him fight the rebel groups that control nearly half his country. In November, U.S. News has learned, Bush signed a secret order, National Security Presidential Directive 18, that officially widened the role of the American military here to do just that. During the Clinton administration, the Pentagon provided only counternarcotics assistance. Now, under Bush's new order, U.S. military and intelligence agencies are helping Colombia hunt down and wipe out the rebel groups. The directive "says to me that [the armed groups] are in fact more than simply drug guys," says Gen. James Hill, chief of the U.S. Southern Command, which directs all Pentagon operations in Latin America. "They are terrorists. And [the NSPD] directs us to go after them, in support of the Colombians." Colombia, in other words, is the latest battleground in the war on terrorism.
It is a very different battleground, however, from Afghanistan or the Persian Gulf. In this steamy, oil-rich jungle province, the rebel groups control the local government, extorting hundreds of millions of dollars in oil royalties. They regularly bomb a strategic oil pipeline--a joint venture of Occidental Petroleum and Colombia. They produce cocaine and heroin, then sell the drugs for weapons. Guerrillas have kidnapped or killed more than 120 American businessmen, oil workers, activists, missionaries, and tourists. All three of Colombia's armed opposition groups are named on the U.S. State Department's official list of terrorist organizations. Some of their most violent leaders are under indictment in the United States.
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