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