Plan Colombia and Beyond

Colombia granted this immunity, but twelve other countries in the region did not. Their non-drug military aid - largely Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and International Military Education and Training (IMET) - has been cut, as has aid from one economic-aid program, Economic Support Funds (ESF).

So I'm visiting some countries that got hit by the sanctions and others that did not, mainly to see what military-to-military relations with the United States look like today. The resulting report should go to press in late November.

Of course, this very week the White House just waived sanctions for one of these non-drug military-aid programs - the training program IMET - for nine countries in the region. And the new Defense Authorization law for 2007 would lift the IMET sanctions altogether. Still cut (according to the waivers, and probably the law too) is FMF - the largest non-drug military-aid program, which in Colombia is used to support pipeline protection and Plan Patriota, among other things - and ESF, unless this aid is going to non-governmental recipients.

But enough of that for now. In Managua I had a chance to sit in (as a silent observer) on some of the summit of Western Hemisphere defense ministers (the "Defense Ministerial") that was occurring there.

This was not as interesting as it sounds. There was a day of protocolary speeches by the ministers, but I was arriving in Managua that day and did not attend. I understand that Uruguay's defense minister gave a good speech urging limited internal military rooles, and that Argentina's Nilda Garré was good as well, while Venezuela was unexpectedly restrained. Donald Rumsfeld was also quite low-key, refusing to take the bait from reporters and say something bad about Daniel Ortega, the longtime Sandinista leader who holds a small lead in polls for Nicaragua's November presidential elections.

I did attend much of the summit's second day, when sub-groups of defense people from all countries got together to make presentations and to try to hammer out consensus statements on specific issues. The haggling over proper phrasing of every sentence was remarkably dull. At times, though, it brought into very sharp relief the lack of consensus that exists in the region over some of the most basic questions of military threats and civil-military relations.

(Now writing on my computer on a plane en route from San José to Lima, and thence to Buenos Aires:)

The United States clearly wanted all countries in the region to acknowledge that terrorism and narcotrafficking are threats that all countries in the region share in common. The United States did not get that. Many countries were emphatic that they were more worried about much different issues. Those from the northern tier of Central America spoke of gangs and organized crime. Venezuela spoke of the possibility of external aggression. Others simply spoke of the need to defend sovereignty and natural resources.

There was also little agreement about what the military's role should be today. The United States and northern Central America - and Venezuela in its own Bolivarian way - urged greater military involvement against non-defense threats within the country's own borders: gangs, common crime that exceeds police capacities, natural disasters, even development and education projects in the Venezuelan vision. Others - particularly the Southern Cone countries, which lived through years of extreme military involvement in internal affairs - urge a much clearer distinction between what is civilian and what is not, limiting the military mainly to external defense and peacekeeping missions.

I missed the third day, when the final declaration was handed out, as I spoke at events organized by Nicaraguan NGOs and at universities. In fact, I haven't even had a chance yet to see what this final declaration looked like.

The organizers of the Defense Ministerial are to be commended for allowing some non-governmental observers to attend the sessions as observers. It was a good opportunity to have some interesting and at times revealing discussions with defense officials in the corridors and at meals. Some Latin American NGOs were represented as well, such as Peru's IDL, the Costa Rica-based FLACSO directorate, and Argentina's RESDAL.

Some, however, were denied entry. The most egregious example is that of Guatemala's Myrna Mack Foundation - a group that is far from radical, and whose representatives traveled to Nicaragua with the understanding that their attendance had been approved. Here is a translation of their statement, which indicates pretty strongly that things are not at all improving in Guatemala.

Myrna Mack Foundation excluded from participating in the VII Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas

Before national and international opinion, organizations that specialize in continental security and before the VII Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, we denounce that the Myrna Mack Foundation has been deliberately and maliciously excluded from participating in this important event, which is taking place during the first week of October, in Managua, Nicaragua.

The Myrna Mack Foundation requested since last June its accreditation to participate as an observer at the VII Conference of Defense Ministers. At all times it met the deadlines established by the event's organizers and with the regulations defined by the high military functionaries. The request was made to Dr. Avil Ramírez, minister of Defense of Nicaragua.

We know that the Preparatory Committee of the VII conference, which met in June of this year, agreed to accept all civil-society organizations that registered before the deadline. Even though we acted within the procedures and regulations that govern the VII conference, the Pro Tempore Secretariat, which is in charge of organizing the event, did not furnish us with the corresponding invitation or accreditation.

Before this body's silence, we repeated our request twice more, in August and September; there was no official response to these repeated solicitations. In addtion to written communications, we have consulted by telephone with functionaries of the Nicaraguan Defense Ministry and the Pro Tempore Secretariat, from whom we have only received evasive and dilatory responses.

We have information that the minister of defense of Guatemala, General Francisco Bermúdez, has opposed the participation of the Myrna Mack Foundation in the VII Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, considering us to be an "enemy of the Army." We believe that Minister Bermúdez has vetoed the Myrna Mack Foundation's participation in this event, and that is the reason why our requests have not borne results.

A veto from Minister Francisco Bermúdez would explain the administrative silance, the evasion and delays with which the Myrna Mack Foundation's requests were processed, even though our organization for more than ten years has specialized in the study, analysis and elaboration of proposals about democratic security and national defense, especially military justice and other aspects of the army's reconversion, as agreed in the peace accords.

For this reason, the Myrna Mack Foundation:

1. Condemns the Guatemalan Defense Ministry's attitide, for the intolerance and observance of retrograde concepts - which have done so much damage to Guatemalan society in the past - shown by rejecting social organizations' legitimate right to carry out citizen participation, to oversee public affairs and to formulate proposals with responsibility and seriousness.

2. Asks the president of the republic, Lic. Óscar Berger Perdomo, in his position as commander-in-chief of the Army of Guatemala, to investigate the existence of these types of practices, which are contrary to democracy, and to carry out the indispensable corrective measures.

3. Asks the National Defense Committee and the Human Rights Committee of the Congress of the Republic to consider this situation and to intercede to preventn the military from putting at risk - again - the few democratic advances that we have been able to celebrate.