U.S. Special Forces Training

June 4, 1998

Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, several months ago, as the conflict in Indonesia escalated, United States Special Forces training of Indonesian troops came under intense scrutiny. As journalists and human rights groups compiled and publicized allegations of torture, disappearances and killings by `Kopassus,' an Indonesian special forces commando group, and other Indonesian military units, the Defense Department was conducting joint exercises with some of these same forces. It was only several weeks ago that Defense Secretary Cohen suspended the program because of instability in the country.

The training of U.S. Special Forces on foreign soil provides a valuable opportunity for our soldiers to learn how other militaries operate and to familiarize themselves with different cultures, climates and terrain. They need to be able to operate in the most difficult conditions. However, while the program benefits our soldiers, it also provides training to foreign security forces. And sometimes those forces have a history of involvement in human rights violations. Unlike the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program which screens foreign participants for any involvement in human rights violations, the Special Forces program, which conducted training exercises in 102 countries in fiscal year 1997, apparently does not. No credible effort is made to screen prospective foreign participants. If there were, there is no way this training would be conducted with Kopassus, which has been implicated in a pattern of torture and extrajudicial killings dating back many years.

A May 25, 1998 article in the Washington Post describes how the Special Forces program in Colombia has continued to operate and maintain close relationships with foreign security forces there despite the Colombian army's abysmal human rights record, pervasive allegations of drug-related corruption and accusations linking the armed forces with paramilitary killings of civilians. Just as in Indonesia, where Special Forces training continued despite a congressional cut-off of IMET assistance due to human rights concerns, the Special Forces training program in Colombia, funded by the Department of Defense, continued in 1997 even though our aid to the Colombian army was withheld on account of a human rights provision in our Foreign Operations law.

I do not oppose Special Forces training. Our soldiers need the experience. But we also need a consistent human rights policy. The human rights procedures that have been applied to the IMET program are far from foolproof, but they do help reduce the chance that the foreign forces we train have been involved in human rights abuses. These same screening procedures should apply to training conducted by U.S. Special Forces.

Mr. President, a country is judged, in part, by the company it keeps. By failing to establish a clear, transparent and comprehensive policy that governs all our military training programs and adequately takes into account human rights considerations, the United States, and our soldiers, will continue to be implicated in the atrocities of those we train.