Colombian dilemmas

One Friday last June, Pepe and Javier Daza were shot dead by men from the ELN (National Liberation) guerrilla army which plagues the wildly lovely Casanare province of north east Colombia. It's a region where savannah meets the foothills of the Andes. Once famous only for cattlemen and backwardness, it is now the site of the biggest recent discovery of oil in Latin America.

The find has attracted the British oil giant BP to one of the most violent societies on earth. Any firm which wanted to keep its hands scrupulously clean would have stayed away from here. Luckily, BP is run by pragmatists who can see that such virtue would do little for the locals, or any decent Colombians. Getting on for $4,000 per head a year is flowing into the region's government from oil revenues, a local supplement to the shareout of the 85% of the petrol dollar that goes into the public purse of this poor country. The tithe will soon deliver twice as much.

According to Olavio Lopez, the Roman Catholic bishop of Casanare, Pepe had been talking to people from BP, which operates the field for a consortium, the biggest member of which is the Colombian state oil company, Ecopetrol. He had sought BP's help in building a bridge across a river whose waters had claimed a family member by drowning.

Pepe was a small example of a vast new activity in Casanare. Armies of people are trying to get a piece of the oil action, whether it's a new school, or a new bridge. Indeed, some erstwhile anti-oil protestors are beginning cautiously to praise BP as the firm develops a canny but touchy-feely policy toward the locals. Quite a few former critics are also enjoying the fruits of contracts with oil firms.

The increasing amiability between the company and locals may have caused the guerrillas to raise the stakes in demonising oil. Having shot the two men, the terrorists, who use a revolutionary rhetoric when it suits them, rounded up the people of Nunchia, the local town, and told them that talking with the oil companies would henceforth be regarded as collaboration with the enemy, whose installations and workers had already been declared a military target.

As it defends itself against terrorism, BP is also a target for British journalists. Three weeks after the killings, ITV's World In Action screened a programme which retailed a long-standing campaign against BP's Colombian operations by its author, Michael Gillard. The programme alleged that BP's security arrangements involved overly close co-operation with Colombia's security forces, and especially criticised its use of Defence Systems Colombia (DSC), an offshoot of Defence Systems Ltd, an outfit started by ex-SAS officers.

A Labour MEP, Richard Howitt, had also been campaigning against BP and reported in 1996 that he had "received compelling evidence that the Colombian military is involved in serious illegal activities in Casanare, with what can be argued to be acquiescence by BP...".

Many of the allegations made against BP, even those like Mr Howitt's which combine righteous indignation with circumspection, flow from a 1995 report into the region by a Human Rights Commission established by the Colombian government. It included two non-governmental rights organisations which are variously described as well-respected or as guerrilla fronts. In Colombia, it is not impossible to be a bit of both.

Belying the weight attached to it by BP's British critics, the report makes only one serious direct claim against the oil companies. It says they passed film of community protestors to the army, which used it for its intelligence purposes. The inference drawn is that BP helped the army target victims for its illegal activities. BP insists that the filming was done with the knowledge of participants at local negotiations, and videos had to be made as part of its case to the environmental authorities that consultations were in hand. It bitterly rejects suggestions that it passed the material to the army.

The report makes various environmental claims. It says BP started operations in a mountain reserve, La Tablona. "We believed that the reserve had been redefined and did some limited seismic work in it," admitted Phil Mead, BP's boss in Casanare until a recent move. "We do believe there is oil on farmland there and are negotiating about tripling the park's area elsewhere if we succeed in making a case about extraction". Anywhere they are working in the region, BP are planting more trees than they damage and are bringing high standards to water treatment and road engineering. "The local regulators are keen and strict: they are often American educated, and rearing to go", said one seasoned BP health, safety and environment specialist. No other industry could bring a fraction of this wealth with as little local disruption.

The human rights report's most serious value, accepted by BP, is in airing difficult issues. Amongst them, it lists claimed atrocities and lesser violations by the army against people opposed to the oil development. Doubtless, people do get brought in for questioning, and some army people probably believe that protestors are as likely to sympathise with anti-oil terrorists as the next Casanarenas. They may feel they must start somewhere. There have been, according to Will Daniell, the head of DSC, "over twenty oil company contractors killed in recent years. Six police, the guys who protect the perimeter of oil installations, have been killed in the past year or 18 months". Kidnapping is routine, and two helicopters have been hit by bullets. A pilot has been killed. The guerrillas claim many of these hits and are certainly involved in constant extortion claims.

Not far short of the same number of local people who could be called protestors have also died. But the difficulty is that it is less clear who killed them. According to Enrique Santos-Calderon, the deputy editor of the El Tiempo broadsheet, there are various violent forces at work, between them targeting almost anyone who speaks out.

In Casanare, as anywhere in the country, there are two sorts of guerrilla. They loathe each other and they have long since descended into thuggery. There is a rag tag of "paramilitary" forces which ostensibly look after local communities in response to the guerrilla threat, but are also maintained by landowners, who are often drug-rich.

The Policia Nacional is mostly regarded as even-handed, but in the rural parts of Casanare it is simply absent where it is not over-stretched. The police commandant, Colonel Humberto Plata, displays a copy of the "Criminalidad" statistics and says: "Casanare has one of the lowest rates of crime in the country, and murder rates are low. Of course the oil boom has attracted people and that creates conflict but it is not severe." In the local capital, Yopal, there is at least one small shanty (not by any means the worse in the continent, it has electricity) and the centre of town is devoted to partying though street-fighting is frowned upon as unmanly. Yopal is hardly the scene of viciousness painted by the critics.

There is nearly unanimous acceptance that the army is inefficient and worse. At least some of its officers let the paramilitaries do its dirty work for it. But there is also a widespread belief that Casanare's local brigade, devoted to defending infrastructure from guerrillas and paramilitaries, is amongst the least corrupt. Its new staff officer, Colonel Gersain Sanchez, commanded the Colombian division of the UN Multinational Force and Observers in Sinai, and has a glowing testimony of his tact, maturity and sensitivity from an Australian major general.

Will Daniell, of DSC, insists that his firm's future depends on the reverse of a "death squad" reputation, though he admits that the ex-SAS tag, whilst not substantiated by the proportion of the Regiment's men on his payroll, is useful: "Image really does count for a lot in this business", he says. Phil Mead seemed the sort of person who might make a reputation as an enthusiastic head of science at a good comprehensive: firm but fair, but not obviously either flamboyant or Machiavellian. "We need DSC to tell us how to react to, and how to avoid, guerrilla attack", he said. "It's as simple as that". Daniell goes a little further: "We employ ex-army people, both local and British. When they point out to young police how to make a better defensive position it's natural they may be listened to. After all, we don't want them killed either." Mr Daniell says that his team liaises between the army and BP: clearly someone has to, but the firm vehemently denies closer involvement.

It is true that BP pays the government for some of its security, as is confirmed by Rafael Padre, a young ex-minister of defence, who now masterminds the presidential campaign of Alfonso Valdivieso, the former Prosecutor General who with great courage challenged President Ernesto Samper's reliance on drug money during the election in which he was victorious. Mr Valdivieso's erstwhile office, the Fiscalia, which had a nominee on the Human Rights Commission, is a part of the Colombian state which is mostly free of corruption. BP have successfully campaigned to have the office investigate the allegations against it. The report is due in March. DSC, keen to stress its interest in openness, has called for a permanent Fiscalia office in Yopal.

Mr Pardo, describing events which mostly took place whilst he was the responsible minister, says: "Early in 1991 there were 300 attacks on bridges and pipelines and other infrastructure. We had to impose a "War tax" on the big companies, to provide 15,000 men to protect 800 sites we had identified". All major firms now also pay an additional fee for defence which is needed because The War Tax hasn't flowed into additional security.

BP's biggest achievement is to be very serious about not paying off the guerrillas, and in trying to encourage its contractors not to either. "The guerrillas first became powerful from extortion of rich foreign companies" says Rafael Pardo. Oil is one of the few opportunities Colombia has to develop an affluent, legal economy. Potentially, but by no means necessarily, the oil money can also help the state's institutions grow in strength and accountability. In BP, Colombia seems to have found a partner which conducts itself with what is locally an almost comical probity. Weirdly, the allegations levelled against it don't really claim otherwise: they certainly don't suggest a better way for Colombia to give up the drug habit.