USA - U.S. Will Probably Lose its Ecuador Military Base Used for Drug Surveillance

[Expat98]

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nati...ry/521279.html

ECUADOR

U.S. base is no longer welcome in Ecuador

Closing a U.S. base in Ecuador would hinder efforts to stem drug trafficking and hurt the economy, some say.

Posted on Mon, May. 05, 2008
BY JIM WYSS
jwyss@MiamiHerald.com

Police keep an eye on demonstrators in
Manta, Ecuador protesting the presence of the
U.S. military who run anti-narcotic operations
out of the local airport.

MANTA, Ecuador --
Mayor Jorge Zambrano pulled up to the Manta City Hall in his black Ford Explorer, expecting to find a rally in support of the American military outpost that runs drug-surveillance flights from this gritty port city.

He left an hour later behind a wall of riot shields and a cloud of Mace, as police fended off banner-waving protesters who crashed the event in March.

With 18 months left on its decade-long contract, the U.S. Forward Operating Location in Manta has few friends in this South American nation -- and fewer still who believe that the agreement has any hope of being extended.

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa has vowed not to renew the base's contract beyond its November 2009 expiration. And politicians drafting a new constitution have proposed banning the base or any other foreign military presence in the country.

If the Manta base closes, it would leave the United States shopping for a new airstrip for the radar-mounted AWAC E3s, and P-3 spy planes that ply the Eastern Pacific, looking for drug runners.

It would also be another dark turn for rapidly deteriorating U.S.-Ecuadorean relations.

The United States sees the Manta compound -- with its manicured lawns and staff of about 150 pilots and crew members -- as part of a multinational effort that helped block $4.2 billion worth of narcotics last year.

But in Ecuador, the Base de Manta is viewed largely as an affront to national sovereignty that threatens to drag the country into the regional drug war.

TENSIONS

The clashing views come as tensions between the nations are running high.

President Correa -- a staunch ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez -- has made the ousting of the Manta base central to his presidency, and he recently led a shake-up of Ecuador's armed forces, alleging that they were infiltrated by the CIA and too cozy with U.S. military advisors.

Colombia, a staunch U.S. ally, is accusing the Correa administration of sympathizing with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Colombia claims that a FARC laptop, seized during a controversial and bloody cross-border raid into Ecuador on March 1, revealed that Correa's election campaign took FARC money.

Colombia also alleges that María Augusta Calle -- a member of Correa's Alianza País party who is pushing constitutional changes that would ban the Manta operation -- allowed the FARC to use her bank account.

The commander of the Forward Operating Location in Manta, Lt. Col. Robert Leonard, admits that the United States is losing the public-relations battle.

''There is so much misconception out there as to what we do here and what's going on,'' he said. ``And as you get further away from Manta, those misconceptions grow.''

Soon after the Colombian incursion, which killed 25 people, including FARC leader Raúl Reyes and an Ecuadorean national, rumors swirled in Ecuador's press that it was spy planes from Manta that helped pinpoint the rebel camp -- and may have even carried the bombs for the strike.

The United States insists that the stories are fiction, and analysts point out that Colombia has little need for such help. But the rumors have found a receptive audience in Ecuador, and the government has called for an audit of Manta's operations.

What it will find, Leonard says, are a handful of unarmed aircraft, dedicated solely to looking for drug runners at sea and in the air.

The base is one of three in the region -- including El Salvador and Aruba-Curac¸ao -- that feed information to the Joint Interagency Task Force in Key West. JIATF South, as it's known, consists of different U.S. agencies and liaison officers from 12 nations, including Ecuador.

WRONG MESSAGE

Paco Velasco, a member of the Alianza País party, said that fighting drugs is a national priority, but that the Manta base sends the wrong message. ''A foreign military base here makes our armed forces look bad, and it makes our nation look like it's not capable of taking care of itself,'' Velasco said.

It also gives the appearance that Ecuador is helping U.S.-backed efforts in Colombia to fight the FARC -- a conflict that Ecuador has tried to stay out of, he said.

Responding to the opposition, the United States has said it is willing to abandon the airstrip and move its operations to the remaining Forward Operating Locations, or to new locations in either Colombia or Peru.

At the same time, however, Manta's command is in the midst of an aggressive charm offensive to win supporters and -- just maybe -- the chance to stay.

For the last few months, Leonard has been escorting journalists and politicians around the base, inviting them to ``open any door and look under any rug.''

On show is the $71 million investment that has helped turn this once tiny airstrip into an international airport, complete with a state-of-the-art fire station. The base's planes haul in tons of donations and emergency aid, and the base supports dozens of charities, including orphanages, schools for the handicapped and a beauty pageant.

The Manta operation pumps $6.5 million a year into the local economy and employs about 150 local staff members, Leonard said.

Those are figures that the government should be focusing on, said Zambrano, Manta's longtime mayor.

While the base is not the primary economic engine in this town of 250,000 that lives off industrial fishing, it does help, he said.

''The base not only creates direct jobs, but there are hundreds of small businesses that provide services to the base,'' Zambrano said.

Back in Quito, political analyst Simón Pachano cannot foresee a scenario in which the Manta base might be allowed to stay open.

Unlike his predecessors, Correa is enjoying unprecedented popularity. And his aggressive anti-American and anti-Colombian stance plays well in this nation accustomed to taking a back seat in regional politics.

In exchange for using the base free of charge for 10 years, the United States agreed to expand and update the airstrip, and cooperate with Ecuador on counter-narcotics initiatives.

The fact that the 1999 deal was never approved by Ecuador's full legislature -- only that body's International Affairs Committee -- has made it a political target, Pachano said.

''The Manta agreement has always been viewed as a mistake, and it's even less politically viable now,'' said Pachano, a professor at the Latin American University for social sciences.

As a cab driver in Manta, René Santana says he has mixed feelings about the base. While he appreciates the extra dollars he makes shuttling crew members or visitors to the airport, the extra money has its price.

''As an Ecuadorean, I can't go anywhere in the world without a hassle, but we let these U.S. military people come here like they own the place,'' he said. ``All human beings want their home to be respected. We all want national sovereignty.''

[Expat98]

Here's another article about this from the New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/wo...bbf&ei=5087%0A

Ecuador Opposes Outpost in American War on Drugs

By SIMON ROMERO
Published: May 12, 2008


The American air station at Manta
makes about 100 surveillance flights
a month.

MANTA, Ecuador — The scene at the Manta Ray Cafe, a mess hall here at the most prominent American military outpost in South America, suggests all is normal.

A television tuned to Fox Sports beams in a golf tournament. Ecuadorean contractors serve sloppy Joes near refrigerators bulging with Dr Pepper and Gatorade. Air Force personnel in jumpsuits preparing to board an Awacs surveillance plane leaf through dog-eared paperbacks.

But by next year, if President Rafael Correa gets his way, this base will be gone, and, with it, one of the most festering sources of controversy in Washington’s long war on drugs.

“It’s not panic mode yet,” said Steven Tate, 42, a Clearwater, Fla., contractor who moved here two years ago after retiring from the Air Force to help run the base fire station. “I’m hoping a miracle will happen that will allow us to stay.”

To the Bush administration, the American air station here is a critical component in the war on drugs in the Andes. The 180 service members based here conduct about 100 flights a month over the Pacific looking for drug boats from Colombia, the source of about 90 percent of the cocaine used in the United States.

Last year, those flights led to about 200 cocaine seizures, the Air Force said.

But to Ecuadoreans, Manta is a flash point in a regional debate over the limits of American power in Latin America.

In 1999, American officials negotiated a 10-year agreement with President Jamil Mahuad to set up the elaborate airborne radar detection project at Manta, a port of 250,000. The deal did not require the United States to pay rent to Ecuador. Nor did it allow Americans stationed here to be judged in Ecuadorean courts for crimes committed in Ecuador. Nor was it submitted to the Ecuadorean Congress for approval.

Mr. Mahuad was toppled in a military coup a few weeks later.

To Mr. Correa, 45, who opposes renewing the agreement allowing the American base at Manta, the base compromises Ecuador’s sovereignty. Many Ecuadoreans fear it could end up dragging their nation further into Colombia’s long civil war, a fear that was heightened in March, when Colombian forces raided a rebel camp in Ecuadorean territory. Particularly after the Bush administration explicitly sided with Colombia in the diplomatic crisis that erupted after the raid, critics of the United States here see little reason to keep the base.

But to Mr. Correa, the debate is personal as well as political. When he was a child in Guayaquil, his father was imprisoned in the United States for several years on smuggling charges.

He has no intent of ensnaring Ecuadoreans further in the American war on drugs. He has proposed pardoning couriers with long prison sentences for smuggling small amounts of cocaine. He is also one of the most vocal proponents of creating a Latin American defense council that excludes the United States.

In a shake-up of the armed forces in April, Mr. Correa picked Javier Ponce, a poet who advocates less military cooperation with United States, as defense minister. “Should Ecuador have a base in Miami? Or New Jersey?” Mr. Ponce, 59, said. “The decision of the government is not to renew this accord.”

For now, operations here continue as they have for years. When asked what his mission consists of, Lt. Col. Robert Leonard, the ranking American officer in Ecuador, points to the blue waters of the Pacific.

The Awacs sitting on the tarmac at Manta are useless over Colombian soil; the jungle canopy effectively renders them blind for spotting small aircraft, Colonel Leonard explained.

But over the ocean, sometimes the Awacs’ radar happens upon speedboats, some of which transport Colombian cocaine to points north. If this seems like using a $300 million plane to track down far more primitive and cheaper vessels, the personnel here are the first to acknowledge that it is.

“It is a big game of cat and mouse,” the colonel said. “We look for dots on a radar screen. Those dots are smuggling drugs.”

None of the planes here are armed; their mission is detection.

The military says it spends $15 million a year for its operations here, although that figure excludes major expenses like fuel.

Finding another location would have been easier a decade ago, when American standing in the region was higher and allies were easier to find. For now, American officials are resigned to transferring Manta’s operations when the agreement expires in November 2009, most likely to bases in Curaçao and El Salvador.

Together, officials here said, those three bases, known in military jargon as F.O.L.’s, or forward operating locations, helped seize $1.1 billion worth of drugs in 2007, with the focus of the seizures on smuggling out of Colombia. The officials had no estimate of how much cocaine eluded them.

“We have had a lot of success in the fight against drugs with the F.O.L.,” Linda Jewell, the American ambassador to Ecuador, said recently. “We will talk to the government to find ways in which we can continue working together.”

But some antinarcotics experts in Ecuador and the United States question whether it is worth the cost of maintaining the base, both economically and politically.

And many Colombian traffickers have shifted tactics in ways that render Manta less effective. Smugglers, for instance, have begun to rely less on speedboats and more on semi-submersibles, the low-tech subs built for $1 million each in Colombia’s jungle that easily elude high-tech Awacs.

Russell Crandall, a former White House adviser and an expert on Andean antinarcotics efforts, said interdiction efforts, as well as Colombia’s resilient drug trade, would survive without Manta. “Manta is just icing on the cake,” he said. “We had the drug war going full speed before Manta, and we’ll have it full speed after Manta.”

Meanwhile, the four-member crews take off each day here for 12-hour sorties. “We have hours of sheer boredom followed by moments of sheer terror,” said Lt. Charles Moore, the leader of one Awacs crew. “It is like finding needles in a haystack.”

Unarmed Awacs planes, like this one at the American base at Manta, search the Pacific for drug boats from Colombia.




"No more war bases. Gringos out of Manta," graffiti in Manta reads, reflecting opposition to American power here.

[stinky_plant]

The US drug war has royally fucked over South America, especially Columbia. I took a politics of drugs class, and we saw the most hysterical video. Some dumbass fat cat WAshington bureaucrat was going off how the farmers could plant other crops and get subsidized by the US government, that is paid not to plant coca. Then they next showed a coca farmer going off how the subsidizing didn't pay for a month's living and that it is near impossible to grow crops other than coca, let alone the fact that coca delivers decent yields in that region and is a cash crop. But that's what Washington is in business for, contracting the military and its contractors at the expense of 3rd world working class farmers.

[Expat98]

In case anyone is interested, here is some propaganda produced by the US Air Force about what a wonderful and successful job they're doing fighting the War on Drugs from this base in Ecuador:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBNnMdB62fw

You know what you're in for from the outset when you hear this as the opener:

"South America is one of the largest exporters of coffee and fruits like bananas. It's also one of the largest exporters of drugs, cocaine being the most popular."

Later in the video, we get this gem:

"The KC-135 and the AWACS provide a major contribution to the War on Drugs, but also provide a major service to the city of Manta. Keeping drugs off the streets means economic development and growth, not only for the city, but for the entire country of Ecuador."

[Panthers007]

Should rip it and re-do it: Have the camera pan out to cotton fields and slaves pickin' cotton for Masuh.

[zera]

Oh God, this shit's horrible and honestly why most people around the world have such a hard time agreeing to what should be a positive and peaceful process: free exchange of goods, services, people and ideas between nations. Why the fuck does the US always have to bring in its imperialism in one form or another? This makes it horribly unpopular for American citizens and firms to travel to, work in and trade with other nations, because of our idiotic, aggressive jock/bully government.