COLOMBIA UPDATE

The news from Colombia early this week was anything but encouraging. Over
the weekend leftist guerrillas killed six people and kidnapped several
others. Bomb attacks in Cali, Colombia's third-largest city, leveled
buildings near a military base and injured three people. A bomb exploded
Sunday in Cartagena, a popular tourist spot on the Caribbean coast.

Then on Monday at least 24 people were killed in clashes between leftist
guerrillas (the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and
paramilitaries who may or may not be affiliated with the Colombian military
near the village of El Prodigio, about 45 miles south of Medellin. The
outlawed paramilitary Self Defense Forces (AUC) had warned that they are
prepared "to die or conquer" in an effort to prevent Colombian President
Andres Pastrana from turning over control of a 1,500-square-mile area in
northern Colombia to a second rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Last week President Pastrana was in Washington asking President Bush to
pledge more aid to Colombia in addition to the $1.3 billion in mostly
military aid to fight coca production, manufacturing and smuggling in and
out of Colombia, the illicit trade that finances much of the violence that
wracks the country.

The administration is said to be considering aid to Ecuador, Bolivia and
Peru, neighbors of Colombia whose governments previously had expressed
doubt about American involvement in Colombia's drug war - which is supposed
to be separate from but is inextricably linked to a 40-year civil war the
country has endured.

Before the involvement begun by the Clinton administration is so intense
that it becomes a matter of not wanting to appear as if the United States
is backing down, the Bush administration should take a hard-nosed,
skeptical look at U.S. intervention in Colombia. One can understand a
desire to help a country facing such a violent struggle. But the likelihood
of playing a constructive role is so low, and the cost of trying and
failing could be so high, that prudence would suggest ending the U.S.
commitment in Colombia.

The current civil war has its roots in the 1950s, when a 10-year struggle
called "La Violencia" followed the split of the two main parties. The
conflict simmered for years, then gained new energy in the 1980s when
Colombia emerged as a leading producer of coca and cocaine. Leftist
guerillas and then rightist paramilitaries offered to protect cocaine
traffickers for a share of the profits, and drug money has made it possible
for all sides to escalate the violence.

The notion that the United States can help the Colombian government
eradicate cocaine trafficking without becoming embroiled in the ongoing
civil war is naive at best. The United States might hope to play a strictly
advisory role, but U.S. forces are more likely to be drawn in or targeted
the longer the United States is an active player.

It is unlikely the U.S. government will end its war on drugs, which would
be the most effective way to take much of the profit out of the trade and
steam out of the civil war. But it should think long and hard before
increasing a commitment to a conflict that eventually must be settled by
those participating in it, not through the intervention of Uncle Sam.