In July, Colombia's defense, interior and foreign relations ministers gave a press conference confirming that the United States was negotiating an agreement to establish U.S. military presence at seven military bases in Colombia. Immediately following the announcement, backlash erupted throughout the region and South American leaders voiced their concern to both the Uribe Administration in Colombia and the Obama Administration in the United States. In response to much of the criticism and concern, Colombian President Uribe said he would make the final text of the agreement public as soon as it was available.

After the agreement was signed last Friday, the Colombian State Council "found that the agreement gives the US the power to decide what operations will occur, gives immunity to US troops, allows access to bases beyond the 7 bases named in the agreement, and defers the most important questions about military operations to future 'operational agreements.'"

Yesterday, the Uribe government finally published the full text of the agreement. Below are excerpts from the text covering many of the Colombian State Council's concerns. The entire agreement can be read in English here and in Spanish here (PDF).

Article III: Goal of Cooperation and Technical Assistance in Defense and Security

1. ... the Parties agree to deepen their cooperation in areas such as interoperability, joint procedures, logistics and equipment, training and instruction, intelligence exchanges, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities, combined exercises, and other mutually agreed activities, in order to address common threats to peace, stability, freedom, and democracy.
....

Article IV: Access, Use, and Ownership of Agreed Facilities and Locations

1. The Government of Colombia, consistent with its domestic law, shall cooperate with the United States to carry out mutually agreed activities within the framework of this Agreement by continuing to allow access to and use of its facilities at: ... (lists 7 bases); and by allowing access to and use of other facilities and locations as may be agreed by the Parties or their Executive Agents. To that end, the Executive Agents shall establish a coordinating mechanism that authorizes the number and category of the persons (United States personnel, United States contractors, United States contractor employees, and aircraft riders), and the type and quantity of equipment, so as not to exceed the capacity of the agreed facilities and locations.

2. The authorities of Colombia shall, without rental or similar costs to the United States, allow access to and use of the agreed facilities and locations, and easements and rights of way, owned by Colombia that are necessary to support activities carried out within the framework of this Agreement, including agreed construction. The United States shall cover all necessary operations and maintenance expenses associated with its use of agreed facilities and locations.
....

Article VII: Respect for Domestic Law

United States personnel and their dependents shall respect Colombian laws and shall abstain from any activity incompatible with such laws and this Agreement....

Article VIII: Status of Personnel

1. ... Colombia shall grant United States personnel and their dependents the privileges, exemptions, and immunities accorded to the administrative and technical staff of a diplomatic mission under the Vienna Convention.

2. With regard to Colombian military personnel present in the United States to carry out activities related to bilateral cooperation within the framework of this Agreement ... The United States shall extend to the aforementioned Colombian military personnel courtesies ordinarily available to United States military personnel of similar rank, to the maximum extent permitted by United States law.
...

5. The appropriate authorities of the United States shall give sympathetic consideration to a request for a waiver of immunity in cases that the authorities of Colombia consider to be of particular importance.

The description of the activities allowed within the terms of the agreement is broad - covering just about any threat or mission necessary during the ten-year span of the agreement. However, a Pentagon document released by the Colombian news magazine Semana gives more details on the motives behind the United States' desire to have a forward operating location at the Palanquero air base in Colombia, one of the seven bases included in the Defense Cooperation Agreement.

Below are some excerpts from the document, which is the budget justification for the Fiscal Year 2010 Military Construction Program submitted to Congress by the U.S. Air Force in May 2009. The entire document can be found here.

Mission of Major Functions: This Cooperative Security Location (CSL) enhances the U.S. Global Defense Posture (GDP) Strategy which directs development of a comprehensive and integrated presence and basing strategy aligned with the principles of developing nations....

...Development of this CSL provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical sub region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters....

Current Situation: Access to Columbia will further its strategic partnership with the United States. The strong security cooperation relationship also offers an opportunity for conducting full spectrum operations throughout South America to include mitigating the Counternarcotics capability. Palanquero is unquestionably the best site for investing in infrastructure development within Columbia. its central location is within reach of Andean Ridge counter narco-terrorist operations areas; the superb runway and existing airfield facilities will reduce construction costs; its isolation maximizes Operational Security (OPSEC) and Force Protection and minimizes the U.S. military profile. The intent to leverage existing infrastructure to the maximum extent possible, improve the U.S. ability to respond rapidly to crisis and assure regional access and presence at a minimum cost....

Impact if not provided: ...Not funding this project will limit USSOUTHCOM to four other CSLs which are restricted to supporting aerial counter narcotics missions only and two other locations that, while not mission restricted, are too distant to accommodate mission requirements in the AOR.

...A presence will also increase our capability to conduct Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), improve global reach, support logistics requirements, improve partnerships, improve theater security cooperation, and expand expeditionary warfare capability.

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the acting president who deposed him in a June coup, Roberto Micheletti, arrived at an agreement last night to restore Zelaya to the presidency. Zelaya would complete his term under a power-sharing agreement, the product of a U.S. and OAS diplomatic offensive. The agreement still needs to be approved by the Honduran Congress, most of whose members supported the coup in the first place.

• Acting President Micheletti announces the accord and lays out its main points (text / video).
• U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applauds the "breakthrough." (text)
• OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza lauds the accord as "a moment of great satisfaction." (text)
• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon is "encouraged." (text)

In a private ceremony this morning, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield and Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez signed the “Complementary agreement for cooperation and technical assistance in defense and security,” which formalizes a U.S. presence at seven Colombian military bases for ten years. We still do not know what else is in this agreement, which was negotiated in secret and will not require the approval of either country’s Congress, though in the United States it will be shared with both houses’ foreign relations committees before it goes into effect. (We will add a link to the agreement once we obtain a copy.)

• Declaration from the Colombian Presidency (text - English and Spanish)
• The U.S. embassy in Bogotá says "this Agreement is a natural part of our relationship." (text)
• The U.S. embassy has produced a new "fact sheet" about the agreement, but it is only just over a page long. (PDF)
• Here is a video of officials signing the accord:

Today's news media includes multiple stories highlighting yesterday's UNASUR meeting in Quito, Ecuador and the groups' overall opposition to the Colombia-United States agreement to increase U.S. military presence at seven Colombian bases, despite its inability to come to a consensus on an official statement on the proposed U.S. military increase (a story which we covered yesterday on this blog).

While the majority of the stories cover Brazilian President Lula da Silva's
" target="blank">proposal for the United States to explain the plan to the concerned leaders of the region and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's statement that "the winds of war are blowing" in the region as a result of the proposed U.S. military increase, one article stands out. The Los Angeles Times editorial, titled "Washington is scaring our Latin American neighbors," calls on the United States to explain exactly what this military buildup in Colombia means. The editorial board writes that after Colombian President Álvaro Uribe had to spend three days last week traveling to every country in South America in an attempt to quell other South American leaders' concerns about the proposal, President Obama could at least try to explain in more detail what this really means for the region.

Uribe maintains that the purpose of the deal is to help Colombia defeat its leftist guerrillas, who are also the backbone of the country's drug trade. His assurances, however, can go only so far -- because the rest of South America isn't afraid of Colombia, it's afraid of the U.S.

While it is doubtful that whatever President Obama says will fix the tensions that this proposal has already created (especially since a lot of the concerns could have been avoided if the Obama Administration had talked to other leaders in the region about the ongoing negotiations before their content became public), it seems that, as the LA Times editorial puts it, "Washington too should be working hard to quell the fears it has raised in the region." So far, all the President and his administration have told us is that the United States is not putting bases in Colombia, but more details about the purpose and scope of the increased presence are needed.

The editorial wraps up with this:

It was clear that the United States needed to relocate military personnel who had been deployed in Ecuador but who could not remain after leftist President Rafael Correa refused to renew the U.S. lease on the Manta air base. But the deal with Colombia doesn't look like the mere shift in drug interdiction efforts that Uribe is selling to his neighbors. Worse, it gives Chavez cover for increased anti-American rhetoric, a nice distraction from his country's economic woes.

While President Uribe should continue to work with Colombia's neighbors in an effort to disclose the intentions of this proposed agreement, President Obama and his State Department must also play a role, in a process of transparency that should have begun weeks ago, since there are two parties to this agreement.

This is cross-posted from the Center for International Policy's Colombia-focused website, "Plan Colombia and Beyond."

This week, the United States is closing down its counter-drug operations at the Manta airbase on Ecuador's Pacific coast. At the same time, it has nearly completed an agreement with Colombian authorities to use several facilities in Colombia. Colombia's defense, interior and foreign relations ministers gave a press conference yesterday confirming this, after weeks of increasing speculation in the country's media.

The Colombian facilities in question are:

• Three air force bases that may host U.S. aircraft and personnel:
  • Alberto Powels, on the Caribbean coast in Malambo, Atlántico (basically, attached to the Barranquilla airport), headquarters of the Colombian Air Force's 3rd Combat Command;
  • Capitán Luis Fernando Gómez Niño, in Apiay, Meta roughly 100 miles southeast of Bogotá, headquarters of the Colombian Air Force's 2nd Combat Command; and
  • Palanquero, in Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca roughly 100 miles northwest of Bogotá, headquarters of the Colombian Air Force's 1st Combat Command.

• Two naval bases that might receive more frequent visits from U.S. vessels:
  • Bahía Málaga, on the Pacific coast in Valle del Cauca; and
  • Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast in Bolívar.

The Colombian daily El Tiempo reports that "Colombia is also interested in seeing that presence in at least two more bases where U.S. personnel are already assigned: Larandia (Caquetá) and Tolemaida [(Tolima)]." Both are army bases.

Colombian officials contend that the U.S. troops stationed at the facilities will not play combat roles or be involved in hostilities. Those at the bases will more likely be technicians, pilots, advisors and intelligence personnel. Their mission will extend beyond counter-narcotics to include "counter-terrorism" - presumably support for Colombian military operations against guerrillas. Intelligence-gathering is likely a principal role for the U.S. personnel at the bases, and El Tiempo reports that "the accord contemplates that Colombia would have access to real-time intelligence information gathered by the planes that land at the three bases."

The agreement establishing the U.S. presence at the bases would probably extend for 10 years or more, and could be signed in as little as two weeks, according to El Tiempo. The Obama administration's 2010 Defense budget request [PDF] already includes $46 million to make construction improvements to the Palanquero base.

Replacing Manta

The new arrangement seeks to replace the U.S. presence at the Eloy Alfaro airbase in Manta, Ecuador, which is about to end as a 10-year agreement signed in 1999 [PDF] expires in November. The Manta facility was one of three that the Clinton administration set up to replace Howard Air Force Base in Panama, which closed when U.S. troops left that country in 1999. (The other two replacement facilities, which remain open, are at Comalapa, El Salvador and Aruba/Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles.) Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who has famously pledged to "cut off his arm" before allowing the U.S. military presence to continue, refused to renew the agreement.

The U.S. facility at the Manta base, known both as a "Forward Operating Location" and a "Cooperative Security Location," has hosted flights whose mission has been limited to counter-narcotics missions (and, as needed, emergency humanitarian or search-and-rescue missions). "Counter-narcotics" was defined to exclude missions targeting Colombian armed groups, and U.S. officials have told us repeatedly over the years that missions from the Manta base only overfly the eastern Pacific Ocean seeking to detect maritime drug trafficking.

The Manta Forward Operating Location consisted of 22 buildings on 27 hectares (67 acres) of the airbase, about 5 percent of the base's total territory. The buildings, Southern Command reports, "include dining and lodging facilities, office buildings, warehouses, an aircraft ramp, hangar and fire station." This zone was ceded exclusively to U.S. personnel, who under normal circumstances totaled between 200 and 300 people, most of them employees of private contractors.

How will the Colombian facilities be different from Manta?

We can't answer that definitively yet, since we have no access to the draft agreement and are not privy to negotiations between U.S. and Colombian officials. However, three areas of apparent, and significant, difference from Manta are:

• The number of bases, obviously.
• The ability to carry out non-drug missions.
• How separate the U.S. facilities will be from the Colombian units using the same bases. For force-protection reasons, it is likely that U.S. negotiators would prefer an arrangement similar to Manta, in which access to areas where U.S. personnel live and work is strongly restricted. It appears, though, that Colombia is seeking more control over the entry, exit and location of U.S. personnel on its bases. The nature of this arrangement is not yet clear.

What will the new, non-drug missions be?

Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez said yesterday that "the objective is the fight against, and the end of, narcotrafficking and terrorism." Whether the mission definition will include only "terrorism" or will expand to include undefined "other" threats isn't clear. It is likely, though, that U.S. aircraft and personnel will be involved in more missions against the FARC. Intelligence operations - particularly those targeted at the FARC leadership - could increase significantly.

How is this different from what U.S. military personnel are already doing in Colombia?

With U.S. trainers, advisors, intelligence people and technicians already making frequent, long-term appearances at bases like Larandia, Tolemaida, Tres Esquinas (Caquetá/Putumayo), Arauca and elsewhere, what is different now? The answer is: we don't know.

One obvious answer is that the sorts of anti-drug surveillance missions that were occurring in Manta, involving sophisticated aircraft like P-3 Orions and E-3 AWACS, will now be originating in Colombia. Presumably, more planes and a slightly bigger footprint will mean more far more intelligence-gathering missions over Colombia than ever before, which may bring a notable increase in intelligence gathered about guerrilla locations and movements.

All of these airbases are on the other side of the Andes from the Pacific Ocean. How will the U.S. aircraft perform Manta's mission of detecting and monitoring maritime drug trafficking in the eastern Pacific?

Again, we don't know. The eastern Pacific, off the coast of South America, is a heavily used vector for getting drugs out of South America and into Central America and Mexico, as this 2005 map shows. U.S. officials claim that Manta has played a role in about two-thirds of drug seizures in that zone since 1999.

The new bases do not have the same ability to cover the eastern Pacific. Will the eastern Pacific then become narcotraffickers' preferred route, with little chance of detection? No idea. Possibly.

Is this constitutional in Colombia?

Opponents of the base deal insist that it is not. Indeed, Article 173 of Colombia's Constitution appears to require that the Senate "permit the transit of foreign troops through the territory of the Republic."

What is the immunity issue?

The degree of immunity from prosecution that U.S. personnel might enjoy is, according to press reports, one of the stickiest points in the negotiations. The newsweekly Cambio explains

:

This discussion is not minor, and it was one of the points that justified Ecuador's decision to close Manta. That country's Constituent Assembly considered that about 300 irregular and criminal acts - illegal detentions and seizures of Ecuadorians and their goods, robberies, murders, injuries and paternity cases - are attributed to U.S. military personnel, and received no response from U.S. judicial authorities.

Should the neighbors be worried?

Foreign Minister Bermúdez, today's El Espectador notes, "said that Colombia's decisions to allow operations in Colombia have no reason to affect relations with neighboring countries, since all activities will be carried out in Colombia's national territory." Colombia's neighbors, however, may not see it that way, argue critics like former Defense Minister Rafael Pardo, who said the deal is "like lending your apartment's balcony to someone from outside the block so that he can spy on your neighbors."

Colombia's neighbors have seen the country nearly double the size of its armed forces in the past decade. They condemned the March 2008 incursion into Ecuadorian territory that killed top FARC leader "Raúl Reyes." And they have noted frequent accusations from top officials, particularly recently departed Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos, alleging that the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador are actively harboring and supporting the FARC.

In that environment, the addition of more military personnel from the United States will not be viewed as a regional confidence and security-building measure. To the contrary - it is more likely to add to tensions.

Will this be a backdoor for U.S. military assistance?

"Among [the Colombian government's] objectives is also to fill the gaps left by the eventual cutbacks in aid for Plan Colombia," noted Cambio magazine's recent cover story about the base negotiations. John Lindsay-Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a U.S. advocacy group, worries that the bases will constitute an "end run" around significant cuts in U.S. military aid to Colombia since 2007.

They're probably right. Base construction funding is aid. Provision of real-time intelligence is aid. An increased presence of trainers and advisors will mean more aid too. And the Colombian government may expect this show of "goodwill" to serve as leverage to prevent further cuts in U.S. military aid. However, the kind of aid that made up the bulk of prior years' packages - grants of helicopters, expensive contracts to maintain Colombia's own aircraft, aerial fumigation, and massive Special Forces training programs - will not increase as a result of the bases.

What will become of the troop cap?

Since 2005, the United States has operated within a limit of 800 military personnel and 600 U.S. citizen contractors who may be in Colombia at any given time. Congress required such a "troop cap" when Plan Colombia began, out of concern that Colombia's complicated conflict offered a high possibility of "mission creep." In recent years, now that U.S. personnel are not helping the Colombian security forces to set up entire new units from scratch, the U.S. presence has not approached the cap, and U.S. and Colombian officials insist that the presence at the new bases will not require an increase to the cap.

It is not clear, though, whether the "troop cap" will be enshrined in the two governments' base-usage agreement, or whether it will remain simply a matter of U.S. law, which can always be changed.

What happens if a Colombian military unit stationed at the same base commits human rights abuses?

This is not wild speculation. For more than four years, the Colombian Air Force's 1st Combat Command, based at Palanquero, had its U.S. aid suspended because of its failure to cooperate with investigations of a 1998 indiscriminate bombing at Santo Domingo, Arauca, that killed 17 civilians. What happens if U.S. personnel at one of these bases suddenly find themselves co-located with a unit involved in a similar outrage?

The answer to that question is a big "we don't know."