Rafael Correa (AP Photo)
Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa led the inauguration on Monday of two new military outposts along the country’s 720-mile border with Colombia.
Most news reports indicated there were only two outposts, located in Cantagallo and Palmar, both in the Amazonian province of Sucumbios across the border from the Colombian department of Putumayo. Xinhua news service reported a third outpost, located at Freddy Alcivar, also in Sucumbios.
The outposts will have a capacity of about 240 men, according to Defense Minister Javier Ponce.
Correa said in a speech that the new military outposts were set to “guard national sovereignty.” He also said the Colombian government was absent in shared border surveillance, while dozens of military outposts had been established in the frontier by Ecuador. Correa called on the Colombian government to “make efforts to guard its southern border.”
According to Poder360.com, Correa said that the Ecuadoran Army's mission is to ensure the protection and control of the border through constant patrols along the Putumayo River and San Miguel.
The shared border between Ecuador and Colombia has seen a lot of cross-border activity by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC), a designated foreign terrorist organization operating mostly in the canopied jungles of the upper Andes. The FARC originated in and maintains a very strong presence in southern Colombia.
In March 2008, the Colombian army initiated a cross-border raid of a FARC camp approximately one mile inside Ecuadorian territory. The camp was run by the FARC’s then-no. 2, Raúl Reyes, and resulted in the seizure of computers and hundreds of documents.
The documents are still being reviewed, and have implicated the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian governments in providing materiel and financial support to the FARC—a charge both governments deny.
The raid was strongly condemned by both Correa and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and led to a freeze in diplomatic and economic relations between Ecuador and Colombia. Only recently did the two governments redeploy their ambassadors and begin working towards mending relations.
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