Pubdate: Sat, 07 Jul 2001 Source: The Post and Courier (SC) Copyright: 2001 Evening Post Publishing Co. Contact: http://www.charleston.net/index.html Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/567 REVIEW COLOMBIA POLICY American policy under the Clinton and Bush administrations has focused on drug trafficking. A government-funded study strongly challenges this emphasis, arguing that the left-wing guerrilla insurgency is a much more urgent threat to hemispheric security. President Bush and his advisers should gave the study serious consideration. As the the title of the RAND study, "Colombian Labyrinth," indicates, the situation of the South American country is exceedingly complex. Successive Colombian governments have been under attack from several guerrilla armies for nearly three decades. The major guerrilla organization, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by its initials as the FARC, controls an area the size of Switzerland. President Andres Pastrana has been unsuccessfully attempting to negotiate a peace agreement with the FARC. U.S. policy so far has been to channel aid, in the form of money, training and equipment, to strengthen the government's hand in its efforts to eradicate drug production, manufacture and trafficking. The Colombian cartels supply roughly 80 percent of the narcotics consumed in the United States. The rationale behind the policy is that if drug trafficking can be eliminated, guerrillas will no longer be financed by the drug cartels and that they will seek peace. The RAND study, commissioned by the U.S. Air Force, contends that the guerrillas, if deprived of drug money for protecting coca plantations, would turn to other means, like kidnapping, to finance their war against the Colombian state. The study rightly questions President Pastrana's policy of ceding territory to the guerrillas, pointing out that the vast demilitarized zone he handed over to the FARC constitutes a "state within a state." It would be a mistake to provide yet another sanctuary to the National Liberation Army, the second-largest guerrilla organization, as President Pastrana has proposed. The lesson that should have been learned in Central America, where guerrilla insurgencies gave way to peace processes, is that U.S. military aid should be used to back legitimate governments so that left-wing guerrillas realize that they cannot seize power by force and that their best option is the negotiating table. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart