FIRM FOUNDATIONS FOR DISASTER

BOGOTA -- The number of killings in this country's grinding civil conflict
tops 5,000 a year. Paramilitary gunmen, once shadowy killers who operated
in a few regions, have spread across the country. And rebels, despite
agreeing to resume peace talks, continue to threaten the state.

To many in America, Colombia's problems can be summed up in one word:
cocaine. But the strife tearing at Colombia has roots that predate the drug
trade, anchored in festering, decades-old disputes over land, worsened by
the lawlessness of Colombia's vast countryside.

They reach back into the 19th century, when land-owning strongmen ruled
like feudal lords. Indians were pushed off tribal lands; whole communities
were driven into the Andes.

In the 20th century, the problems solidified and spread, with peasants
driven from their plots as demand rose for the commercial production of
coffee and other crops. Land struggles evolved into the country's greatest
blood-letting, La Violencia, a 10-year orgy of violence in the 1950's that
pitted members from the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties
against each other. It started here in Bogota, with the 1948 murder of a
populist Liberal presidential candidate, and quickly moved out to the
countryside.

Today's rebel movements began then, as did early versions of today's
right-wing paramilitaries, who worked at the pleasure of the land owners.
In the end, some 200,000 people died -- all decades before Colombia became
the center of cocaine trafficking.

And though the power-sharing agreement that officially ended La Violencia
greatly diminished the conflict, it created a deeply flawed political
system that excluded millions. These problems afflict every corner of
Colombia by virtue of the simple fact that the central government has never
really governed much of this country, a land of towering mountains, jungles
and wide-open plains twice the size of France. In hundreds of towns,
government officials have been inefficient or corrupt. In others,
government is completely absent.

The result has been economic stagnation, poverty and violence in much of
the countryside, leaving millions stuck in a feudal world in which coca
farming, or membership in one of many armed bands, makes perfect sense. In
cities, too, violence has increased since the 1980's, when cocaine kings
began rising to prominence and drug gangs battled for the spoils.

"We live under a state that has no presence," said Ivan Marin, a historian
at Javeriana University in Bogota.

"You can attack the problems of narco-trafficking and make a case for it,
but the problem of narco-trafficking isn't just the illicit activity or the
coca crop," he added. "It's also finding a suitable economic activity for
peasant farmers that gives them enough earnings to have social benefits,
like education, health care, communication, justice."

Human rights activists point out that Colombia is awash in conflict-related
violence, massacres and selective assassinations. The deaths are often said
to have their roots in the drug war; the reality is that most are political.

And the numbers keep rising, mostly in the countryside. The Colombian
Commission of Jurists, a respected human rights group, says the number of
conflict-related deaths now exceeds 5,000 annually, possibly nearing 6,000.
On average, only 4 of the 14 daily conflict-related deaths occur in combat.
Most, they note, are perpetrated by right-wing paramilitary groups, run by
one Carlos Castano, groups that have long drawn support from big
land-owners. And there is another terrible statistic: criminal homicides,
most of them drug-related, number at least four times the conflict slayings.

Colombia experts say American policy would be better if it was informed by
the complex history and culture of Colombia, everything from the roots of
rural violence to its rich literature and political intrigue, topics often
as hard to decipher as the fog-shrouded Andes.

"People just look at the slices of Colombia's complex reality that they
want to look at," said Mr. Shifter, who works at the Inter-American
Dialogue, a Washington research group. "The real challenge, it seems to me,
is to get off this inability to see beyond the drugs. It requires a real
understanding of magical realism, of the complexities and subtleties. That
is not exactly the strength of United States policy toward Colombia."

AND even if the Bush administration moves toward addressing Colombia's
problems more comprehensively, many here find deeply offensive the idea
that Colombia -- a country that, despite its problems, has modern,
functioning cities, a large middle class and a rich cultural life -- is in
need of nation building.

And yet some try to sidestep that term while hoping for the kind of aid
that falls under it: help rebuilding its battered judicial system, economy
and government.

"What preoccupies the United States is drugs, but they should focus on
being a good neighbor, in other words showing concern for the other side,"
said Luis Felipe Gomez, director of the Program for Peace, an organization
that works on peace issues in conflict zones. "By de-narcotizing the
relationship, we would recognize each other as equals, with dignity for
each state."