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.