Oil makes U.S. raise military stakes in Colombia

November 26, 2004


President George W. Bush's quick stop in Colombia on his return from the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Chile on Monday brought this forgotten front in Washington's war on terrorism briefly into the headlines. Bush promised Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe - his closest South American ally - to boost aid for his military campaign against leftist guerillas.

Just two weeks earlier, 100 unarmed peasants were killed in a massacre reportedly by rightist paramilitary troops in Colombia's southern jungle province of Putumayo. Unlike the Bush visit, this failed to make headlines here.

Colombia has received $3.3 billion in U.S. aid since 2000 - making it the top recipient after the Middle East. In October, Congress approved doubling the Pentagon's troop presence in Colombia to 800 - although they are officially barred from combat.

The Iraq war may have knocked Colombia off the front page, but Mideast chaos has made South America's energy resources more strategic to the United States. Colombia itself is among the top 15 global suppliers to the United States, and Uribe hopes to privatize the country's oil industry as part of his push to join President Bush's Free Trade Area of the Americas. Venezuela, bordering Colombia, is the fourth-largest U.S. supplier after Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Canada. Venezuela's populist leader Hugo Chavez is himself a White House target for Western hemisphere "regime change" - as seen by the current push for sanctions.

Meanwhile, the oil industry has charted a new thrust into the Amazon regions of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia - countries all now receiving U.S. military aid under the Andean Regional Initiative, the Bush administration's expansion of President Bill Clinton's "Plan Colombia."


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