The “Just the Facts” project seeks to help citizens understand and interpret the U.S. military relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean, by explaining the programs and activities it encompasses. Our goal is to provide a resource for those who oversee, analyze, critique, and advocate changes in this relationship.

In this second edition, we have updated the information last year’s book presented, while attempting to make it more “user friendly.” Many of the questions we received about Just the Facts came from readers trying to interpret the “Assistance by Country” section in the first edition, which contained only a set of tables to explain the U.S. military relationship with each country. While the tables return this year, they are now accompanied by narratives explaining and interpreting the information they present. We have left out lengthy descriptions of the law governing each program. That information, as well as a greater level of detail on many programs and regular updates of all data, can be obtained on the Internet at www.ciponline.org/facts.

Once again, this information is almost exclusively based on primary-source documents from the U.S. government. All tables and other numerical data are based solely on primary-source materials. Rare citations of other sources are clearly indicated. Unless stated otherwise, references to “years” imply fiscal years, which for the U.S. government run from October 1 of the previous calendar year through September 30 of the current calendar year.

1999 Status Report: Recent developments in the U.S.-Latin America military relationship

The following are the most significant changes or developments in U.S. military cooperation with the region between 1998 and 1999.

Base changes

By December 31, 1999 the final U.S. bases in Panama will close, and a century-long U.S. military presence will end as the last troops withdraw. Most assets and some components of the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom, the military body that manages U.S. operations in Latin America and the Caribbean) have moved to existing U.S. bases in Puerto Rico, while some have relocated to the Soto Cano air base in Honduras or to the continental United States.

With no agreement for the U.S. military to maintain a post-1999 presence in Panama, U.S. officials have been scrambling to establish "Forward Operating Locations" (FOLs) to carry out counternarcotics activities that had previously been centered at U.S. bases in Panama. These arrangements would allow U.S. military aircraft to access foreign airports or air bases for counter-drug detection and monitoring missions, with a small U.S. military contingent at the site for maintenance, communications and logistics.

The U.S. military is now using facilities in Manta, Ecuador, and the Dutch islands of Aruba and Curaçao. A ten-year usage agreement for the Manta site was signed with Ecuador in late 1999. By June 1999 these three locations were considered at least partially operational, although Southcom is soliciting funds from Congress to upgrade all three locations. Negotiations will soon be underway for the use of an additional facility at Liberia, Costa Rica.

Training

Under a variety of programs and funding categories, the United States is training a large number of Latin American military personnel. While this should not be considered a complete figure, the authors’ sources indicated that the United States trained approximately 9,867 Latin American military personnel in 1998, with most training taking place within the region and not at schools in the United States. In 1998, for instance, the number of military personnel trained in Ecuador alone (over 1,200) exceeded the entire student body at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia (875). The two largest facilities for training Latin American military personnel in the United States, the School of the Americas and the Inter-American Air Forces Academy at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, trained 1,719 students in 1998. That same year, another 102 facilities in the United States trained Latin American military personnel.¹

According to Gen. Charles Wilhelm, commander-in-chief of Southcom, 48,132 U.S. military personnel visited Latin America and the Caribbean in 1998 on 2,265 separate deployments. These included at least eighteen major training exercises. In 1998 Southcom completed two shifts in its policy for large-scale exercises: bilateral exercises have been phased out in favor of those involving several countries, and all now focus on such non-combat missions as peacekeeping, humanitarian relief and drug interdiction.² However, many smaller deployments, particularly the Special Forces’ Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, are carried out bilaterally and continue to perform joint training in combat-related skills.

Haiti and the Peru-Ecuador border presence

The 400-person U.S. Military Support Group in Haiti is scheduled to return to the United States in early 2000.³ The U.S. government is quick to point out, however, that this is not a termination of military involvement with Haiti. Humanitarian Civic Assistance (HCA) programs are likely to continue with regular deployments to the island.

By June 30, 1999, all U.S. military personnel were to have withdrawn from an international peacekeeping mission on the Peru-Ecuador border. The Military Observer Mission Ecuador-Peru (MOMEP) oversaw the cease-fire agreement that ended a brief 1995 border conflict between the two countries. In October 1998 Peru and Ecuador signed a peace agreement ending their long-standing dispute.

Counternarcotics

In the fall of 1998 Congress rushed to pass the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act (WHDEA). The WHDEA, which was both authorized and appropriated in the FY 1999 Omnibus appropriations bill, brought with it a large increase in counternarcotics funding for Latin America, chiefly Colombia. Much of the Latin America-specific funding was channeled through the State Department’s International Narcotics Control (INC) program, which saw its Latin America budget increase from $179.7 million in 1998 to $430.5 million in 1999.

In April 1999, the United States began training a 950-person counternarcotics battalion in Colombia. This came as a surprise to some in Congress who monitor foreign assistance-funded military training, as they were not informed of plans for this defense budget-funded program. As of late 1999 the first battalion has been trained, and at least two more are planned. The battalion is also being equipped through the president’s emergency drawdown authority. This large-scale move to train and equip the Colombian Army is a departure from recent U.S. policy, which favored aid to the police and avoided aid to the army over concerns about the army’s poor human rights record.

With the creation of new battalions, the United States is able to ensure that all of the units’ members are vetted for human rights abuses. U.S. officials have had difficulty finding Colombian Army units that met the human rights conditions in the “Leahy Law.”

The Leahy Law, named for its main sponsor, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, prohibits the United States from providing military equipment or training to foreign military units that violate human rights with impunity. The law’s scope was expanded in 1999 to cover foreign military training programs funded through the defense budget. Previously, the Leahy Law only encompassed programs governed by foreign aid funding legislation, leaving the Defense Department’s counternarcotics programs beyond the reach of this restriction. The addition of the Leahy Law to the Defense Appropriations bill thus closed a potential loophole. U.S. embassies in Latin America have established procedures to implement the Leahy Law, including a process for vetting all potential training candidates.

Over the past two years the U.S. military has developed an extensive riverine interdiction training program focused in Peru and Colombia. Up to $20 million per year to train and equip naval units in these two countries is authorized by a measure in the 1998 Defense Authorization bill.

Humanitarian and Civic Assistance

The Humanitarian and Civic Assistance (HCA) program took an unexpected turn in 1999. After Hurricane Mitch pummeled Central America in late 1998, the U.S. military put into play a three-stage assistance effort. The first two stages dealt with immediate emergency response and basic repairs to infrastructure. The third and longest stage involved dramatically increased civic action exercises in the region. Under “New Horizons,” an already existing exercise series, $56 million was made available to expand medical readiness training exercises and infrastructure-building projects. New Horizons, which is only one component of the HCA program in Latin America, is expected to bring 23,000 troops to Central America in 1999.⁴

Sales

The State Department projects Foreign Military Sales (FMS) agreements to quadruple between 1998 and 2000. The most drastic increase in projected purchases comes from Chile. FMS agreements with Chile, which totaled $1,371,000 in 1998, are estimated to reach $147,000,000 by the year 2000. A likely cause is the 1997 lifting of a prohibition on high-tech weapons sales to Latin America.

The United States licenses about a billion dollars in Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) to Latin America each year. This figure has been consistent for the last three reported years, 1996 through 1998.

Observations and Recommendations

Congressional oversight

Last year’s edition of Just the Facts found a serious lack of congressional oversight of U.S. military programs, particularly counternarcotics programs, in Latin America. The past year has seen improvement in some areas and continued deficiencies in others. Once again, the main dividing line in the quality of oversight is that between programs funded through the foreign aid process and those funded through the defense budget.

The 2000 National Defense Authorization Act includes a new requirement for the Pentagon to inform Congress about the U.S. military presence in Colombia. Other than this necessary but limited reporting requirement, however, no significant new oversight measures were included in either the Defense Department Authorizations or Appropriations bills that govern defense-budget programs discussed in this study.

Congress attempted to improve oversight of training programs, however, in its 1999 Foreign Operations Appropriations bill. This bill required the administration to present a foreign military training report (FMTR) documenting all training funded out of both the foreign aid and defense bills. This report could have been a critical tool for understanding the current rationale and nature of foreign military training.

Unfortunately, the administration’s response to the congressional requirement was less than helpful. In what appeared to some as an expression of resentment, oversight committees were presented with a four-volume, 2,000 page “data dump” with almost no explanatory narratives, no page numbers, and no totaling of figures. Redolent with inscrutable abbreviations and categories that bore no relevance to existing budget legislation, the document gave the committees little ability to analyze the information provided. The report presented data in a confusing fashion, with most programs outside International Military Education and Training (IMET) thrown together in a two-volume listing called “Other Security Assistance-Managed Training.” Worse, the introduction to these two volumes misidentified the categories of assistance included.

The law required the report to explain the foreign policy justifications for the programs it documented. The few vague paragraphs supplied to satisfy this requirement were unenlightening at best, and at worst betrayed a belief that U.S. military training programs -- even in countries with histories of military regimes and human rights violations -- need no justification.

The authors found significant discrepancies between the bound copy of the Foreign Military Training Report, the copy that was released on CD-ROM, information presented by the State Department in its annual budget presentation to Congress, and the annual Defense Department report on Special Forces training. The authors submitted questions to the Pentagon to clarify which reports should be considered the most accurate. The response acknowledged that problems existed.

Your analysis did, indeed, uncover a technical problem we had not previously detected. Discrepancies between the CD-ROM and printed versions of the training report appear to result from a coding error in the data translation algorithm used to produce the CD-ROM…. The printed version of the Training Report is the "official" product, formally delivered to Congress in response to the requirement, and takes precedence over any differences that might occur in the CD-ROM…. We recognize that inconsistent accounting methods have produced confusion in some areas of the Training Report. However, we reiterate that the deadline and scope of the requirement forced us to demand the best possible data available from DoD components. There was no time to request recalculation when it became apparent that inconsistent methods were used. However, we do believe that if the Report is read as a statistical snapshot, as opposed to a source of detailed information, it can be a useful resource.⁵

While a certain margin of error is understandable when compiling large amounts of information, the current level of discrepancy and confusion surrounding reporting on foreign military training reaches disturbing levels. It should be clear whether or not a foreign officer was or was not trained, and reporting must be able to reflect reality.

• Recommendation: While Congress has required the administration to produce a second Foreign Military Training Report by March 2000, it must insist that the new report is prepared in a manner that will allow a better understanding of the nature and extent of foreign military training.

The most contradictory training information received dealt with the activities of U.S. Special Forces. Information sources were so inconsistent, for instance, that readers may find the tables in this book’s Special Forces chapter difficult to read. As the authors could not discern which source materials most accurately reflected the extent of Special Forces training, we have included information from three official sources and will let the reader decide where the truth lies.

Last year saw some controversy over the Special Forces’ Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, when it became apparent that the program was training with units whose human rights records would have kept them from receiving assistance through the foreign aid appropriations bill.

One annual Defense Department report to Congress, known as the “Section 2011” report, lists JCET deployments -- Special Forces training activities whose primary purpose is to train the U.S. personnel involved. The report does not include counternarcotics training or anti-terrorism training. Since much of the Special Forces' training in Latin America is related to counternarcotics, this report provides only a partial picture. The first public accounting of the counternarcotics portion of Special Forces training was delivered to Congress as a classified annex to the FMTR. It was subsequently declassified.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) of the U.S. Congress found that the Section 2011 report is unreliable due to confusion within the U.S. military about the definition of a JCET. The GAO recommended that the Secretary of Defense issue a guidance to standardize JCET classification and reporting.

• Recommendation: The Armed Services Committees should require the Defense Department to modify the Section 2011 report to cover all Special Forces training, including counternarcotics, counter-terrorism, and humanitarian demining.

Furthermore, Congress should require a counternarcotics report, describing the anti-drug program in each country and explaining which branches of the U.S. government are involved in executing the program. Since similar reporting already exists, it would make most sense to include this information in the State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released on March 1 of each year.

Human rights conditionality

Though flawed, the Foreign Military Training Report clarified a misunderstanding about implementation of the Leahy Law, which prohibits the United States from providing military training or assistance to units of a foreign military accused of human rights violations. At the time the FMTR was released, analysts monitoring the Leahy Law’s implementation believed that members of only two Colombian military units were allowed to receive training under the Leahy Law. The FMTR, however, showed that individuals from about fifteen units had received training under the IMET program in 1998.

Administration representatives explained that since the definition of a “unit” is unclear, they are following a guideline that “the ‘unit’ to be trained is the unit that is vetted.” In other words, if an individual is to receive training it is the individual that undergoes scrutiny for past abuses; if an entire battalion is to be trained, the entire battalion is vetted. As the Leahy Law is being implemented, “clean” individuals from banned units can -- and do -- receive training.

While the convenience of this definition is evident, a key intent of the Leahy Law was to encourage militaries to prosecute human rights violators. Under the current operational definition, an entire brigade could be trained "individually" with the exception of those members implicated in a human rights crime. This provides little incentive for a military to bring violators to justice. Punishing the entire group for the few abusers’ actions, however, would provide a strong incentive to respect human rights and to prosecute abusers.

• Recommendation: The administration should abide by the spirit of the Leahy Law, prohibiting training and assistance to all members of units that include un-prosecuted human rights abusers.

Though this is not currently taking place in Latin America, the Defense Department can still legally fund JCET programs in countries for which Congress has expressly prohibited International Military Education and Training (IMET) training. In other words, one bill passed by Congress can prohibit training while another bill funds it. Oversight of IMET is more rigorous than oversight over JCET programs, and the potential for congressional intent to be thwarted is too great. Congress should close this loophole.

• Recommendation: Restrictions on foreign military training in one budget category should apply universally to training funded out of all budget categories.

The School of the Americas debate

While the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee added the Foreign Military Training Report to their oversight tools last year, they eliminated another, a fiscal year 1998 report on the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA). The Committee’s logic, at least in part, was that similar information would be included in the FMTR. However, considering the state of the FMTR and the 100-page length of last year’s detailed School of the Americas report, it was hardly an equal trade.

Controversy continued to surround the SOA in 1999, as the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut off funding for students in its version of the foreign aid bill. The school's critics focused not only on the track record of some of the school's graduates but also on the lack of change within the school's curriculum. While topics such as peacekeeping, demining and civil-military relations are taught, many of the most popular courses remain standard combat training. The only new complete course on human rights was listed in the school's catalogue but appeared to remain on the drawing board in 1999.

Questionable arguments were used in some of the U.S. Army's defense of the school this year. In congressional testimony, Gen. Charles Wilhelm of Southcom proudly cited the ten Latin American presidents who graduated from the SOA. The Army must be aware, however, that all of these men were dictators, among them leaders of some of this century’s most abusive Latin American governments. Another official set of SOA talking points in 1999 stated, "Many of the critics [of the school] supported Marxism -- Liberation Theology -- in Latin America -- which was defeated with the assistance of the U.S. Army."⁶ The assertion that the U.S. Army defeated a brand of theology is deeply disturbing. The perception among Latin American militaries that legitimate religious and civic movements in support of the poor were equivalent to armed insurgency led to the deaths of thousands of civilians, including six Jesuit priests in El Salvador and the El Mozote massacre. Many of those responsible for these crimes were trained at the SOA.

The persistence of this rhetoric indicates that at some fundamental level, those running the school have not yet grasped some very legitimate concerns about human rights and the history of the U.S. military relationship with Latin America.

• Recommendation: The Army should publicly recognize that it has trained some of the hemisphere’s worst human rights abusers, a fact that should fundamentally inform and influence the United States' future relationship with Latin America and the Caribbean.

The U.S. military should reshape training for Latin American military personnel, giving greater emphasis to courses qualifying for Expanded International Military Education and Training (E-IMET) status, which focus on defense resource management, civil-military relations, law enforcement cooperation, military justice and human rights.

As this book went to press in late 1999, media reports indicated that the U.S. Army is considering a reform to the School of the Americas. This may include removing one or more combat courses, adding more training in academic subjects, and a name change. The extent of the planned modifications, however, has not been made public.

Institute mechanism to track counternarcotics trainees

Most U.S. training of Mexican and Colombian military personnel is funded through Defense Department counternarcotics training programs, specifically Section 1004 of the 1991 National Defense Authorization Act. As Section 1004 only authorizes foreign military training for counternarcotics, these funds cannot legally be used to train foreign troops for counterinsurgency purposes. However, the difference between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency training is not always discernible.

Colombia and Mexico face insurgencies as well as drug production and trafficking. The line between counterinsurgency and counternarcotics activities in these countries -- particularly Colombia -- is not just blurry, it is almost erased. Some reasonably fear that counternarcotics training could draw the United States into another nation’s war.

Congress has already decided to use the U.S. military to support drug interdiction efforts in Latin America. It has not decided to become involved in either country’s conflict.  Furthermore, it is illegal for the administration to fund counterinsurgency efforts through the Section 1004 authorization.

• Recommendation: When the United States is providing counternarcotics military training to a country confronting both narcotics and insurgency crises, it should institute an after-training tracking program. By simply keeping track of the placement of soldiers trained for one year after training, the United States could both confirm that training is indeed contributing usefully to counternarcotics efforts and avoid inadvertent involvement in another nation’s internal conflict.

Transfer pipeline aid for Guatemala

Surprisingly, military aid remains “in the pipeline” for Guatemala. This money, appropriated many years ago, was frozen in 1990 after Guatemalan military personnel killed a U.S. citizen. In the past few years, non-binding congressional report language has directed that these funds be transferred to a “transition to peace fund” for Guatemala. The majority of the funds were transferred for this purpose. However, about $2.5 million still remains in the pipeline. Once again this year, the House Appropriations Committee report accompanying the 2000 Foreign Aid Appropriations bill recommended that existing special authorities be exercised to make the funds available "to implement the Peace Accords and build democracy in that country." Though this report was published in July, as of late 1999 these funds have still not been transferred.

• Recommendation: The administration should respect the clearly expressed intent of Congress and transfer pipeline military aid for Guatemala to a fund to help implement reforms outlined in the 1996 peace accords.

Update foreign police training law and unify application of restrictions

Foreign police training can now be funded either through the foreign aid or defense appropriations processes. A prohibition on U.S. training of foreign police (Section 660 of the Foreign Assistance Act) was put in place in 1974 due to concerns about human rights violations. At the time, foreign police training was funded almost entirely through the foreign aid appropriation. As time passed, numerous exceptions were added to this ban. Since 1991, the Defense Department has been authorized to use its own funds to train foreign police forces for counternarcotics purposes, beyond the scope of the restrictions Section 660 places on foreign aid programs.

• Recommendation: The rationale behind the 1974 prohibition on police training remains valid. Decades have passed, however, and the legislation governing police training has become riddled with exceptions and needs to be updated. This revision must occur in the context of an overall re-evaluation of the objectives of foreign police training, which current law leaves unclear. Restrictions responding to human rights concerns should apply equally to training funded through the foreign operations and defense budgets.

Humanitarian Assistance

While researching the Defense Department’s Humanitarian Assistance programs with Latin America, we were surprised to find a significant number of funded projects that had no apparent relation to national defense. These programs are to be distinguished from the Department’s disaster response activities, which have provided lifesaving assistance when no other options are available.

Unlike Humanitarian and Civic Assistance (HCA), the Humanitarian Assistance program funds activities that are not connected to any exercise or training program. The programs funded under this category appear quite similar to activities funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development or private charitable development groups. In one country in 1999, to give an example, the Pentagon sought to fund an animal husbandry project, veterinary diagnostic programs and epidemiological vector control.

While some see funding these programs through the defense budget as an example of fiscal creativity, it is neither good legislating nor good development policy, and it can in fact be dangerous. To fund human development activities from the defense budget, the problems being addressed must be defined as contributing to a potential “threat” to the United States. This expansion of the definition of “threat” could be used to justify new forms of military intervention. It also sends the wrong signal to Latin American nations in transition to democracy, implying that social services are appropriate “defense” roles for their own militaries. Finally, it is hardly a cost-effective, participatory, or sustainable development mechanism.

• Recommendation: Congress must question its tendency to fund good programs wherever it can find money. Projects to promote economic and human development in the developing world should be supported through civilian institutions, not the military.

Increasing E-IMET a positive trend

Worth positive note is the fact that the United States has increased the number of Expanded International Military Education and Training (E-IMET) courses being given to Latin Americans. E-IMET courses focus on non-combat topics such as defense resource management, cooperation with law enforcement, civil-military relations and military justice. In 1996, about 20 percent of Latin American and Caribbean students funded through the IMET program took courses that qualified as E-IMET. In 1998, that percentage increased to 29.6.

• Recommendation: E-IMET courses should grow to an even greater proportion of overall U.S. military training with Latin America. The region can benefit most by increasing capabilities in the areas of defense resource management, military judicial systems, human rights, and civil-military relations.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Ford Foundation for the support that made this study possible.

We would also like to thank the many people who helped us find and interpret information. The Southern Command was once again very helpful in facilitating interviews and answering our seemingly endless list of questions. We appreciate their helpful attitude toward our inquiries.

This project has an advisory committee which helps us throughout the year by answering questions and recommending avenues for research. A special thanks goes to them: Lilian Bobea, Tom Cardamone, Col. (Ret.) Jay Cope, Rut Diamint, Gen. (Ret.) Kermit Johnson, Lora Lumpe, Leticia Salomón and Coletta Youngers. Our deepest thanks go also to several interns who were a vital part of our offices and without whom this book would have taken at least another year to produce: Ryan Beiler, Shanna Brownstein, Jeff Clark, Teresa Lamar, Hannah Novak, Adrienne Shannon, Karen Turney and Ingrid Vaicius. Finally, we are most grateful to Lisa Haugaard for editing the final manuscript.

While the Latin America Working Group is a coalition of sixty national religious, human rights, development and policy organizations, the views in this book represent the opinions of the authors alone. Many people and organizations helped make this book possible; however, any errors herein are the authors’ sole responsibility.

Sources:

¹ Based on information from the United States, Department of State, Department of Defense, Foreign Military Training and DoD Engagement Activities of Interest in Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999 (Washington: 1999).

² United States, Department of Defense, General Charles E. Wilhelm, United States Marine Corps Commander in Chief, United States Southern Command, Posture Statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee (Washington: 4 March 1999) 13-14.

³ Statement of Ambassador Peter F. Romero, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemispheric Affairs, before the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, September 29, 1999, p. 12.

⁴ Wilhelm 19.

⁵ Ken Handelman, Special Assistant for Programs and Legislation, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Department of Defense, memo to Joy Olson, Director of the Latin America Working Group, July 29, 1999.

⁶ United States Army, School of the Americas, "U.S. Army School of the Americas Frequently Asked Questions," School of the Americas Website, May 1999.