The Unidad Móvil Policial para Áreas Rurales (UMOPAR) (Mobile Police Unit for Rural Areas), a subsidiary of the Special Antinarcotics Force (Fuerza Especial de Lucha Contra el Narcotráfico—FELCN) of the Bolivian National Police (Cuerpo de Policía Nacional) was created in 1987 and is a Bolivian anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency force which was founded by, and is funded, advised, equipped, and trained by the United States government as part of its "War on Drugs".
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There have been complaints that UMOPAR, which is effectively controlled by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration and military, was the most powerfully armed and best trained military force in Bolivia. In 1984, UMOPAR troops kidnapped the President of Bolivia, Siles Zuazo, and staged an unsuccessful coup attempt against the Bolivian government.
U.S. involvement
Although UMOPAR is technically headed by Defensa Social, a branch of the Bolivian Interior Ministry, they are in practice controlled by DEA and U.S. military officials based at the U.S. Embassy in La Paz, who plan their operations, provide intelligence, and lead the drug raids, using UMOPAR mainly as a "strike force" for U.S. operations.
UMOPAR forces receive extensive training from DEA and U.S. military personnel, including the U.S. Army Special Forces, both in facilities in Bolivia (such as the Garras International Antinarcotics Training School), and at U.S. military bases such as Fort Benning, or the School of the Americas in Panama.
In 1987, under a U.S. State Department contract, an Oregon corporation known as Evergreen International Airlines provided several private military contractor pilots, many of whom had flown for the CIA's Air America in Laos and Cambodia, to transport DEA agents and UMOPAR troops throughout the Upper Huallaga Valley.
In 1988, U.S. Ambassador Rowell decided that UMOPAR troops needed their own airmobile task force to increase their effectiveness. The United States Department of Defense loaned UMOPAR 12 UH-1H helicopters, and Rowell assigned his U.S. Army-Navy attache, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Hayes to command the UMOPAR troops in the unit, which was called the Diablos Rojos (Red Devils).
Human rights abuses
UMOPAR troops have frequently been responsible for beatings, torture, rapes, extortion, robberies, arbitrary shootings, mass arrests without warrants, and various other human rights abuses.
The use of torture by UMOPAR forces has been widespread and systematic, and includes methods such as being hung upside down and beaten, burned with cigarettes, electrocution, death threats, and being submerged underwater to simulate drowning, amongst other methods.
UMOPAR forces act with almost total impunity, and human rights violations are rarely investigated, much less prosecuted.
Other examples of abuses include: