• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

03 September 2003

U.S., Colombia Inaugurate Program to Combat Kidnapping for Ransom

State Dept. is funding $25-million anti-kidnapping initiative

By Eric Green
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- The United States and Colombia have inaugurated a new program designed to defeat the terrorist tactic of kidnapping for ransom.

The $25-million Anti-Kidnapping Initiative, funded by the U.S. State Department, will train and equip a large number of Colombian military and police units to help them resolve hostage situations.

The State Department's Coordinator for Counterterrorism, Cofer Black, said at an August 27 news conference in Bogota that Colombia's estimated 3,000 kidnap incidents per year afflict both Colombians and Americans and "also serve to undermine investor confidence."

The United States, he said, aims to work with Colombia to take away this "favored terrorist financing pool" of kidnapping, "just as coca and poppy eradication efforts are beginning to strip another longtime source of financing." Colombian anti-government forces have been using the proceeds from drug trafficking to finance a civil war that has continued in the nation for four decades.

Black, who was making a two-day visit to Colombia, said the new initiative is designed to rescue innocent people who have been taken hostage. The effectiveness of the program, he said, will be measured not in the amount of money or time spent on the initiative, but on the "number of hostages that are recovered and returned to their families."

The official also said the United States will "do everything that we can" to recover three U.S. government contractors who have been held hostage by Colombian rebels, as well as all other hostages in Colombia and elsewhere.

Black said the United States is "very concerned" about the fate of the three U.S. hostages who were captured by the leftist rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The hostages were seized after their plane went down in southern Colombia February 13.

"We, like our Colombian counterparts, do not forget," Black said. "It is our mission to recover our people."

The State Department said in its "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report for 2002 that payments and extortion fees demanded by the primary perpetrators of kidnapping -- the FARC and another left-wing guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army (ELN) -- continue to hobble the Colombian economy and limit investor confidence. Since 1980, the FARC has murdered at least 10 U.S. citizens. The Department said there is a greater risk of being kidnapped in Colombia than in any other country in the world.

Regarding Colombia's battle against narco-terrorism, Black said the Andean nation has been "as dangerous a counter-terrorism environment as you find anywhere in the world. The difference I think in Colombia is that you have a leadership that is absolutely determined to defend its people. It has the will to resist and has made dramatic progress in the last few months" in fighting terrorism.

The security situation in Colombia, said Black, "may indeed get worse before it gets better, but the alternative is another 40 years of low-intensity conflict, frustrated development, and generations of children lost to terrorist organizations bent on destruction rather than advancement."

Colombia, he added, "has clearly made its choice. With resolute efforts and support from the United States and other allies, Colombia can emerge from the tunnel as an example of perseverance for other violence-wracked nations."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)