4-23-08, 9:59 am

Ecuador’s Poetic Defense Minister

Javier Ponce Cevallos, sworn in on April 9th as Ecuador’s new minister of defense, may be the hemisphere’s most literary belle-letrist high official. Ponce, a poet, essayist and novelist, will leave his position as personal secretary to President Correa to assume a senior position in El Palacio de la Exposición. Never having served in the military (a result of the temporary suspension of the application of conscription laws by military strongman Castro Jijón in the early 1970s), Ponce takes office despite publicly-aired misgivings expressed by Hector Camacho, chief of the country’s Joint Command, and Guillermo Vásconez, Commander of the Army.

Tensions between President Correa and top officials of Ecuador’s armed forces grew in the wake of the March 1, 2008 Ecuadorian-Colombian border crisis. An Ecuadorian civilian, Franklin Aisilla, an Ecuadorian national was killed in Colombia’s aerial bombing near the border hamlet of Angostura on that day. Correa learned of Aisilla’s death and his apparent links to Las Fuerzas Armadas de Colombia (FARC), a leftist guerrilla group, in an article published in a local news source some days afterward.

Fallout from this momentous event and other alleged “intelligence failures” associated with the bombing began with the resignation of Gen. Bolivar Cisneros, Commander of the National Police, and continued with the dismissal of Mario Pazmiño, the Army’s Director of Intelligence. Just a few days later, the tension crested again with Correa’s demand for the resignation of the country’s minister of defense, Wélligton Sandoval.

The recent upheaval gave emphasis to the harsh allegations voiced by Correa’s strong language about the questionable nature of Ecuador’s Armed Forces and intelligence services. In a speech, Correa announced, “We’re going to begin to be a sovereign and independent country. We’ve had enough of intelligence services that are financed by the United States embassy, financed by the CIA. We will end all of this and we will have intelligence services of Ecuadorians, for the Ecuadorians, not to serve external powers”. [ Translated from Spanish, Vamos a empezar a ser un país soberano e independiente. Ya basta de servicios de inteligencia que incluso son financiados por la embajada de Estados Unidos, financiados por la CIA. Cortaremos todo esto y tendremos servicios de inteligencia de los ecuatorianos, para los ecuatorianos, no para servir a potencias extranjeras.”] Such anti-imperialist rhetoric is not surprising from the left-leaning populist president who counts Hugo Chávez among his closest kinsmen.

The President’s actions provoked a strong response from the country’s armed forces. A statement issued on April 8th by the defense ministry strongly asserted that any cooperation in which it engages with other countries is a part of a normal, legitimate, and legal defense policy which has regional and national security as its goal. Camacho, Vásconez, and other military officers requested an audience with the president to discuss allegations that they felt indicated “la falta de respeto a la entidad.”

Correa’s Concerns: More than Just Empty Rhetoric?

Correa’s fears about US infiltration in Ecuadorian military affairs may sound to some as more of the region’s recent spate of leftist, anti-imperialist rhetoric, but his claims may not be unfounded. U.S. involvement in the Andean region in the recent past has centered on aiding counter-narcotics operations. Plan Colombia, a U.S.-led anti-drug and anti-guerrilla aid initiative, is the largest, and perhaps most controversial example of Washington’s most recent interventions in the region. The Plan is touted as a comprehensive response to Bogotá’s chronic drug problem, with aid being distributed to military, judicial, social, and development projects. A disproportionate amount of the funds, however, have been dedicated to arming and training the Colombian military in its fight against the FARC and ELN, both identified as terrorist groups by Washington.

While United States’ participation in the fight against ‘narcoterrorism’ is common knowledge, however the extent of the country’s direct military intervention in the war against the leftist FARC guerillas is still a matter of speculation. Rumors have long abounded over the role played by CIA and Delta Force operatives in the killing of Pablo Escobar, who headed Colombia’s largest drug cartel in the late eighties. The claims remain unsubstantiated, but newly declassified documents from the US National Security Archives reveal cooperation between United States intelligence services and Los Pepes, a Colombian paramilitary group. The cooperation between United States intelligence operatives and some of Colombia’s worst human rights violators proved to be a shortsighted attempt to accomplish immediate goals. Some analysts have argued that US anti-drug policy in the region actually inadvertently helped to further entrench narcotics operations, especially those controlled by the FARC.

Angostura

The aerial bombing of Angostura has had dramatic consequences for the Ecuadorian military and raises questions about the extent of both FARC infiltration in the region and US involvement in the war against the guerrilla group. The immediate dismissal of the commander of the Ecuador’s National Police was just the beginning of the fallout from the episode. Correa’s comments about links between Ecuadorian and foreign intelligence services and his replacement of the defense minister by his personal secretary have served to elicit the ire of the military establishment. His calls for increased transparency in military affairs may serve to be just the beginning of strained relations between military officials and civilian authorities, which could have lasting consequences for the internal balance of forces and the next year’s expiration of the U.S. lease on the naval base at Manta, Ecuador.

As one specialist described the present civil-military relationship in Ecuador, “the politicians accept that there is a quid pro quo in this arrangement (of military autonomy): the military does not involve itself in the areas reserved for civilian power, and the civilians leave the military in peace in their areas of putative professional expertise.”

Correa’s calls for the establishment of a high level civilian-led commission to investigate any wrongdoing in the military may serve to alter what traditionally has been a tight relationship. In an effort to alleviate the concerns of military officials, Ponce explained, “This is not a setup for a witch hunt, but a healthy critical process in the exercise of transparency. The stability of our democracy is not based on concealment, but in the courageous analysis of our acts to undertake a thorough review of its structures and practices.”

From Council on Hemispheric Affairs