Previous Story
Ecuador will ask Colombia to deploy permanent forces at the border
Posted On 15 Feb 2018
Ecuadornews:
Ecuador will ask this week Colombia in the meeting that will maintain both governments the permanent deployment of forces in the common border to actively combat drug trafficking, advanced Efe high sources of security today.
That is the main message that the Government of Ecuador will take to the meetings that begin tomorrow, Wednesday, in the Colombian town of Pereira and that will continue on Thursday with the celebration of the Presidential Meeting and the VI Binational Cabinet.
“From a helicopter you can see the coca fields along the border,” lamented the sources, complaining that the Colombian Army is not present perennially in the area of the demarcation and that the weight of the fight against bands fall on Ecuadorian positions.
“The presence of our troops in the border as well as the Colombian troops in the Colombian space is fundamental. What we see is that Colombia should be reinforced more by the presence of military personnel in the border area, “they said.
The high sources of security explained that the Colombian Army now remains at a prudent distance “of 10 or even 20 kilometers” from the border and that its members descend to the boundary line carrying out specific raids before returning to their bases.
This is translated, always according to the consulted sources, in which the border strip has been under the control of groups of drug traffickers, one of which is allegedly behind the recent bomb attack against a police station in the city of San Lorenzo, in the Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas.
The Colombian security forces, as well as the FBI, collaborated in the investigations in San Lorenzo, and analyzed the type of weapons and explosives used in the attack, which caused 28 injured and 37 houses affected by the explosion of the bomb used.
Last week, in a meeting with foreign media, the Ecuadorian president, Lenin Moreno, said that Ecuador would ask Colombia for a commitment of “co-responsibility” to face the problem, because “it is not possible that it originates there and we are the ones who have to pay for the broken dishes, “but did not specify what kind of measures would require his counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos.
In statements to Efe, security sources revealed that “co-responsibility” must be understood as a commitment that brings Colombian forces closer to the border area, just as Ecuador has its forces stationed along the entire divide.
“The meetings will allow us to position our ideas and our visions of what is happening on the border” and therefore, Ecuador will ask for “greater presence of the State (Colombian), greater presence of the military, greater work in the field of intelligence and of cooperation in the field of information “.
With more than 580 kilometers of border, the Ecuadorian police and military forces have registered in the last period a considerable record of dismantling of drug and weapons caches, which could be the trigger of a “reprisal” by a known drug trafficker as the “Guacho”, alleged dissident of the FARC.
“They are residual groups that are working in border areas, in areas that the FARC had as a point of work. For us it is problematic because Ecuador becomes like an anvil for what the Colombian Army does when trying to eliminate all these groups, “the sources said.
Regarding the type of cooperation to which Ecuador aspires, they emphasized that, although these frameworks already exist, “a lot of work must be done on the issue of joint intelligence, on the transfer of information, and on the position of the Ecuadorian armed forces in the area, ecuadorian and Colombian women in Colombian territory “.
However, for now, they ruled out the possibility of creating a joint command, or liaison, either police or military, to streamline and coordinate the activities of both forces, and recalled in this regard, that the Constitution of the country prohibits the presence of foreign forces.
But it is “possible to evaluate what would be the benefits or strategies (of a joint command) so that this would converge to the benefit of the defense of strategic security” of Ecuador, provided that the military presence of each country is maintained on each side of border. (I)
