A WOUND THAT STILL BLEEDS

Rep. Cass Ballenger, North Carolina Republican, the new chairman of the
House International Relations Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, says
that "the best way to find out what's going on is to go see for yourself."
He has been doing that for years.

Back in the days of the Evil Empire, he was one of a handful of congressmen
who cared enough to learn firsthand what was happening as the Soviets and
their proxies tried to establish a toehold in Central America. And that's
why, rather than taking off on a junket to some exotic clime during the
Memorial Day recess, Mr. Ballenger and two of his congressional colleagues
headed for a place where U.S. citizens and interests are at greatest risk
not the Middle East, the Balkans or the Persian Gulf. They went, instead,
1,150 miles south of Florida to Colombia, the nation plagued by the
deadliest armed conflict on the planet today.

In just the first four months of this year, more than 500 people mostly
peasant farmers were slaughtered in brutal fashion by paramilitary forces.
Decapitation, the use of chain saws and machetes in the killings, was
commonplace. Today, the violence continues.

Over the course of the last month, out of the eye of the world press, a
major guerrilla offensive and a series of deadly bombings have been causing
horrific casualties. Three days before Reps. Ballenger; Nick Smith,
Michigan Republican; and Collin Peterson, Minnesota Democrat, arrived in
Colombia, the National Police discovered and defused an American-made,
Mark-82, 500-pound aerial bomb rigged as a terrorist device. According to
the FBI, the bomb was part of a shipment made to El Salvador in 1992. An
inquiry is under way to determine how the bomb got to Colombia. Before the
three congressmen arrived in the capital, bombs exploded in Medellin, Cali
and Bogota, killing 12 and wounding nearly 200 civilians.

Mr. Ballenger and his colleagues were welcomed by Colombia's lame-duck
president, Andres Pastrana. The beleaguered chief executive, serving the
last year of his four-year term, has been pursuing a Clinton-inspired
"dialogue" with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the
Army of National Liberation (ELN). Thus far, his "negotiations" have
resulted in ceding a 16,000-square-mile "Separate Zone" designated as a
"safe haven" for the FARC. U.S. officials fear Mr. Pastrana may now do the
same for the ELN the country's second-largest guerrilla faction. "If he
does," one diplomat told me, "he will have left as his legacy, the
'Balkanization' of the second-oldest democracy in the Western Hemisphere."

Unfortunately, the 18,000-strong FARC and the 6,000 armed ELN
narco-guerrillas both espousing Marxist ideology aren't Mr. Pastrana's only
problem. Right-wing paramilitary organizations like the 8,000-member United
Self-defense Force (AUC) also threaten Colombia's law and order and next
April's presidential elections. All these organizations gain power daily
thanks to "narco-profits."

With drug gangs, guerrillas and vigilantes operating in 70 percent of the
country and unemployment pushing 20 percent, the Colombian economy is
plummeting. Meanwhile, 90 percent of the cocaine and 80 percent of the
heroin on U.S. streets originates in Colombia, neighboring countries are
being subverted and thousands of Americans are dying from illegal
narcotics. The most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control
show that in 1998 alone, 17,000 Americans died from drug overdoses.

As a remedy, the Clinton administration created Plan Colombia a
multinational, $7.5 billion effort to staunch the flow of drugs into the
United States, and shore up the Colombian democracy and economy. As usual,
they lied. No one in Washington or Bogota wants to admit that Plan Colombia
isn't stopping the cultivation, transport or trafficking of illegal drugs.
It ought to be called what it is a last-ditch effort using U.S. weapons and
a small cadre of military trainers to keep Colombia from descending into
anarchy.

When he returned from Colombia, Mr. Ballenger told me "The Bush
administration inherited this mess. The Clinton people took too long to get
Plan Colombia under way, took too long to get our $1.3 billion aid package
going, and now we're paying the price." The price has been high. Last year,
Colombia suffered nearly 23,000 murders in a population of just 39 million,
making it arguably the world's most dangerous country.

"It's important to remember that the FARC and ELN aren't rag-tag groups of
agrarian reformers. They number more than 24,000 and are the best-equipped,
best-trained and best-paid guerrilla army in Latin America. Worst of all,
they are being directly funded and supported, not by the old Soviet Union,
but by drug users in America," said Mr. Ballenger.

Mr. Ballenger believes Colombia is not "another Vietnam," he supports U.S.
Ambassador Anne Patterson's continued tenure in Bogota and hopes that next
April's presidential elections won't be disrupted. But at the end of our
conversation, I was left with the nagging sense that Colombia's future is
uncertain. With 40,000 killed in narco-terrorist violence in the past
decade, Colombia is the wound that won't stop bleeding.