Ecuador: New Colombia Policy Poses Security, Political Risks

STRATFOR ^ | Feb 12, 2003 | Staff

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Ecuador: New Colombia Policy Poses Security, Political Risks
Feb 12, 2003

Summary

During visits this week to Washington and New York, Ecuador's president announced a "new era" in which his government wants to become America's "closest ally" in the war on terrorism and drug trafficking. This new course for Ecuador's foreign policy could mire the country more deeply in the Colombian conflict and will alienate key members of the ruling coalition.

Analysis

During a four-day trip this week to Washington and New York, Ecuadorian President Lucio Gutierrez announced a "new era" in which Ecuador wants to become America's "closest ally" in the war on terrorism and drug trafficking. The president has in effect abandoned Ecuador's policy of neutrality in the Colombian conflict and has opened a major political rift with the indigenous groups that hold four Cabinet seats in the government, including the Foreign Ministry.

This shift, which Gutierrez apparently decided without consulting his Cabinet, opposition leaders and senior military commanders, could quickly alter the regional geopolitical map of the Colombian conflict.

It could also suck Ecuador more directly into that conflict, leading to heightened violence and insecurity in northern provinces along the border with Colombia, including oil-rich Sucumbios department. Colombian rebels could interpret the policy shift as an act of overt hostility and start attacking targets inside Ecuador while Ecuadorean extremist groups could decide to step up activities in urban areas, possibly graduating from small pamphlet bombs to larger devices that could cause significant human and property loss.

The decision to engage more openly in the Colombian conflict also implies an expanded U.S. military presence in Ecuador.

Currently the United States operates counternarcotics surveillance flights over southern Colombia and parts of the Pacific Ocean from the Manta naval base in Ecuador. Under the new foreign policy, the Bush administration likely will seek to expand U.S. counterterrorism and anti-drug assets in Ecuador in order help the Colombian army fight rebels and paramilitaries more effectively in remote southern departments like Putumayo and Narino.

It's also likely that the Gutierrez government would receive more U.S. military and development aid to strengthen the country's northern defenses and disrupt cross-border corridors used by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) to smuggle weapons, explosives and illegal drugs. But the boost in U.S. aid Gutierrez might obtain probably won't be enough to prevent more instability and violence along the Ecuador-Colombia
border.

Meanwhile, Gutierrez has a more immediate problem within his own government. By dropping official neutrality in Colombia's civil war, Gutierrez may have inflicted irreparable damage on the indigenous-leftist coalition that helped him win the presidency.

The Pachakutik Movement, the political arm of the National Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Ecuador (Conaie), has not withdrawn any of its ministers from the government, but it no doubt views Gutierrez's actions as a major betrayal of Conaie's position on Colombia.

Moreover, many of Ecuador's indigenous peasants sympathize with the plight of Colombian peasants and might perceive Gutierrez's endorsement of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez's policy of talking peace but making war on the FARC as a longer term threat to their own ambitions for a better existence in Ecuador. This could weaken support for Gutierrez among Ecuador's poor Indians, particularly at a time when he also is implementing austerity and free market policies that in the near term likely will heighten social hardship in Ecuador.

Ecuador's military leaders have not reacted publicly to Gutierrez's decision. Leaders of the ruling coalition and opposition parties, however, were uniformly critical of a move they claimed would placed Ecuador at greater risk of violence and instability, in exchange for a promise of increased U.S. military and economic aid that likely will fall short of the country's real needs and Gutierrez's expectations.

Gutierrez began his presidency in January on sour terms with the political opposition in Congress. Now he also has created a major rift within the ruling coalition and has angered the indigenous, union and leftist groups that supported his presidential campaign. If he becomes too isolated, he could find it impossible to govern Ecuador effectively. And the Bush administration, instead of gaining a reliable ally on Colombia's southern border, easily could wind up grappling with another politically unstable country in the Andean region.

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Countries and people don't always fall into convenient categories, and this is a good example.

I have been suspicious of Gutierrez, due to the fact that he was supported by Chavez of Venezuela in his attempted coup against Ecuador's elected president, and continued to be supported by him.

The other young officers involved were also influenced by Chavez. But Chavez's influence outside the country is a little different than it is inside. We see him as a leftist conspiring with Saddam and Castro. But the message that officers like Gutierrez picked up on was the image of the military as the sole honest institution with sufficient integrity to save the country.

I have been assured by people who are there that Gutierrez is not Chavist, or leftist, in the sense that we mean, although he would qualify as a populist with all the negative baggage that entails. But supposedly he is devout Catholic, and honest.

The officers partnered with the indigenous organizations in trying to overthrow the previous government, and he was supported by them in his run for president. Consequently he has given them a generous share of government posts. But the indigenous groups are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the European left, and are heavily influenced by European advisors from a variety of NGO's. They do not back the Colombian FARC out of concern for the "peasants", but out of an ideological sympathy that is hard-core. The average Ecuadorian indian is not communist, but his leadership is.

The Ecuadorian borderlands are very much under the control of Colombian guerrillas. They use it as their safe-haven. They park their families there, they do their shopping there, take their R&R there. They are buying up property on the Ecuadorian side of the line, sometimes in their own names, sometimes using local proxy buyers. Sometimes from unwilling sellers; if a FARC guerrilla makes you an offer on your house, or hotel, or bar, how do you say no?

The approach of the out-gunned Ecuadorian military has previously been to turn a blind eye, as long as they don't show their weapons. But the region has become impossibly dangerous for tourists, for oil workers, even for residents. The military has been begging for increased support; Clinton's billion dollar aid package for the Colombians had almost nothing in it for the Ecuadorians.

There is another issue. FARC smuggles much of its weapons in through Ecuador, and this has been facilitated by corrupt customs agents, command-level officers, congressmen. For Gutierrez to move against the FARC may expose him to danger from where, he may not know.

So siding with the US, and the Colombian government, exposes him to political attack from leftist groups of all stripes, but especially from the indigenous groups that make up half his government, and from forces within the establishment that may attack him through third parties. This is common there. Establishment forces often work through proxies, student groups, labor unions, trade organizations, indigenous groups, enviros, who don't recognize who is pulling their chain. They could bring down his government just as he helped to bring down an earlier one.