By John Lindsay-Poland

The U.S. Air Force made its last flight from its military base in Manta, Ecuador in mid-July, closed because of Ecuador's concerns over arrogance and aggression. While the Pentagon abided by the eviction, it didn't use the occasion to re-examine its missions in the region or correct its overreach. On the contrary, the military appears to be escalating its operations in the Andes.

Now the United States is negotiating for the use of at least five military facilities in Colombia, in an agreement whose objectives include "filling the gaps left by the eventual cutting of [military] aid in Plan Colombia," according to sources in Washington and Bogotá cited by an explosive article published in early July in the weekly Cambio magazine.

For more resources on this issue, including documents in Spanish and English, click here.

If such an agreement is reached, it could constitute an end run around the grassroots struggles waged for years to demilitarize U.S. policy in Colombia.

It would also destabilize the Andean region, where relations between Colombia and its neighbors are already rocky. That undermines President Obama's moves to strengthen relations with other South American countries and his public stand supporting Colombian human rights. Call the White House Comment Line (202-456-1111) today to say NO to military bases in Colombia.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez responded to the news of U.S. military bases by announcing the recall of his ambassador to Bogotá and suggesting that Venezuela - Colombia's second largest trading partners - will seek ways to reduce Colombian imports.

The agreement would establish U.S. military operations for at least ten years on five sites -- at Palanquero, Puerto Salgar; Apiay, Meta; and Malambo (all air force bases); and in Cartagena and Malaga Bay (both naval bases). "Unlike the agreement for the U.S. military presence in Manta, the agreement at its start does not limit its application to counternarcotics operations in the Pacific, but extends to the Caribbean, and also includes assistance in the fight against terrorism -- that is, against the guerrillas," Cambio said.

The U.S. negotiators, the magazine says, "have made it known that even if they won't interfere in the exercise of command by Colombian officers on the bases, they will ensure the autonomy of U.S. military forces when operations go beyond Colombia's borders." So apart from U.S. soldiers' involvement in the Colombian army's decades-long counterinsurgency war, Colombian foreign policy in the region will be held hostage to U.S. actions in other countries that may be undertaken from the bases.

The Uribe government said that it was seeking to include two more bases in the agreement - in Tres Esquinas and Tolemaida - which are already used by the U.S. military.

A point under negotiation is whether the agreement would be automatically renewed after ten years, or require a new agreement, as Colombian negotiators reportedly want. Either way, U.S. use of the base would extend until after the Obama administration is gone from the White House. Some people liken changing U.S. policy to turning around an aircraft carrier, which takes a long time. In this case, the aircraft carrier is dropping its anchors.

Another sticky point is judicial immunity for U.S. soldiers and contractors, sought by Washington. "Immunity = Impunity" wrote one reader on the Cambio site.

The locations of the bases under negotiation raise further questions. None of them are on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, where aircraft from the Manta base patrolled for drug traffic -- supposedly with great success, reflecting how traffic has increased in the Pacific. Three of the bases are clustered near each other on the Caribbean coast, not far from existing U.S. military sites in Aruba and Curacao -- and closer to Venezuela than to the Pacific Ocean. Why are U.S. negotiators apparently forgoing Pacific sites, if counternarcotics is still part of the U.S. military mission? What missions "beyond Colombia's borders" are U.S. planners contemplating?

Annual funding requests for Plan Colombia, especially in the "Foreign Operations" bill, have been a space for debate about funding the Colombian military and are subject to conditions and reports on human rights. But funding for U.S. military activities in Colombia faces no such discussion. Even Colombia desk officers at the State Department don't know how much Defense Department money is spent in Colombia. And Congress exercises almost no direct oversight on the activities of U.S. military bases around the world -- with the exception of a couple high-profile sites like the detention center in Guantanamo Naval Station.

Moreover, Washington's and the U.S. military's priorities in Colombia are evolving. Congressional staffers have told us that Plan Colombia is scheduled to be reduced, and even many conservatives believe drug policy must change. The foreign aid budget approved by the House on July 9, which included $520 million for Colombia spending, zeroed out purchases of spray aircraft. It substantially cut other eradication programs from last year, although they still account for at least $80 million in military aid. The Malaga Bay naval base that hosts maritime interdiction operations received a boost in the bill.

But funding for military training and other non-drug war military aid -- that is, for counterinsurgency -- increased slightly (to $1.7 million and $60 million, respectively). The U.S. military budget will also likely include more than $100 million in aid to the war, not including $46 million requested for upgrades on the base in Palanquero.

The negotiations are set to conclude soon, since operations in Manta must cease by November, and U.S. officials have already indicated they will shut down operations there before September.

Some leaders are vocally opposing these negotiations, which may be concluded as soon as early August. They are incensed at the attempt to bypass the Colombian Constitution, Article 173 of which prohibits the presence of foreign troops except in transit, and then only after legislative approval. "It involves us in wars of the principal foreign power in the world, and it is an aggressive attitude against neighboring countries, which will go over very badly on the American continent," says Democratic Pole Senator Jorge Robledo. "It is openly unconstitutional."

Indeed, Bolivian President Evo Morales referred to Colombia's decision to accept U.S. bases, calling it "treason," and suggested banning foreign military bases from the region. Former Colombian Defense Minister Rafael Pardo said the deal is "like lending your apartment's balcony to someone from outside the block so that he can spy on your neighbors." The Washington Office on Latin America compared the base negotiations to "the disastrous rollout of the U.S. 4th Fleet, in which the United States, with little diplomatic preparation and without clear motives, announced that it was greatly enhancing its naval capabilities. Many, if not most, countries in Latin America took this as nothing less than a return to 'gunboat diplomacy.'"

If the Obama administration truly wants to broaden relationships with South America and value respect for human rights, it should not create a fortress in Colombia in concert with the region's worst rights violators, the Colombian army. Instead of treading the same path to nowhere in drug policy, it should use the closing of the Manta base as an opportunity to redirect resources toward drug treatment and prevention programs that actually work in reducing demand for illegal narcotics.

Congress, too, should take initiative, not just wait for the White House. Progressive U.S. lawmakers should build on the example of 242 members of the British Parliament (the U.K. is the second-largest donor to the Colombian military) who called for a complete cessation of military aid to Colombia earlier this month.

With an increasingly unpopular drug war and a president enamored with special operations, the establishment in Colombia of five U.S. military facilities for at least ten years, whose missions include counterinsurgency and transcend Colombian borders, would be the worst thing to happen to U.S. policy in the Andes since Plan Colombia began a decade ago. We invite you to work with us in mobilizing opposition to these negotiations.