UNCLE SAM FUELS FIRE IN COLOMBIA

Imagine a house on fire and firefighters throwing gasoline on it with the
hope of extinguishing it. The United States does just that in Colombia. The
gasoline, in this case, is a controversial aid package that goes by the
name Plan Columbia.

Last year Congress approved $1.3 billion as part of Plan Colombia. Much of
the aid will go to buy helicopters to beef up a losing war against
guerrilla forces that occupy almost half the country. Drug trafficking lies
at the center of a discussion in the House and Senate as to why Colombia
has become a national security issue. Drugs have taken the place of
communism as the flashpoint for military involvement in this front-burner
foreign policy issue. Drugs provide a wonderful excuse for the U.S.
military to maintain its hegemony in the Andes.

The United States and Colombia depend on the European Union, Canada and
Japan to raise $7.5 billion over a three-year period as part of the aid
package to Colombia and the region. This money, the most given to any Latin
American country, makes Colombia the third largest recipient of U.S. aid in
the world.

The economically strapped Colombian government made a commitment to raise
$4 billion. Yet in the thick of its worst economic crisis since 1933 it
looks unlikely that it will raise its share. Thus the United States will
end up footing most of the bill. Washington's glaring commitment to a
military solution to the conflict, and closing its eyes to pronounced human
rights violations, did not bode well with the European Union. Europe halted
its $250 million contribution and decided to channel its aid money through
non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Twenty-seven NGOs wrote that they had "ethical and political difficulties"
with U.S. assistance. Prodigious documentation from State Department and
United Nations sources link the Colombian military with paramilitary
forces, death squads that account for almost 70 percent of the violence.
The Clinton administration ignored this evidence and waived human rights
attachments to the aid, a move that emboldened paramilitary activity and
alienated human rights organizations whose members risk death documenting
violations.

Because of the aid the country's guerrillas have upped their kidnapping to
respond to the massive U.S. infusion of assistance to the government.
Congress, as part of Plan Colombia, gave the go-ahead for 300 U.S. advisers
to train three Colombian army battalions in counterinsurgency, capping the
number of advisers at 500. This move makes a stalled peace process all the
more strained. As does U.S. corporations contracting with the Colombian
military to train its solders.

The advisers will train Colombian pilots to fly Black Hawk and Huey
helicopters. The pilots will have as their objective to knock out guerrilla
forces protecting laboratories, coca and poppy plantations under their
control. Then, they will spray the crops with poisonous herbicides. This
intense war swipes the ones on the bottom the hardest. For it diverts
needed funds away from the poor who make up most of the two million people
uprooted due to paramilitary incursions. Plan Colombia does little to
address this.

Peasants can count on only 6 percent of the aid to help them deal with how
they're going to make a living once their illegal crops are poisoned and
their food as well. Washington makes little distinction between those who
grow coca and poppy to survive and the big drug lords who see it as a
lucrative industry. As aid pours into Colombia the country's poor fall
further into poverty. None of the aid touches their lives. On the contrary,
it exacerbates conditions that buttress violence.

In 1999, 20 percent of the country's poor possessed 2 percent of the
wealth. Meanwhile the top 20 percent enjoyed 62.5 percent of it. Ten
percent of Colombia's poorest make up for 65 percent of the country's
unemployment. This makes Colombia the hemisphere's most unequal country.
Awash in poverty, Colombia is the hemisphere's most violent country.

Massacres take place on a daily basis with paramilitaries committing the
overwhelming majority of them, followed by the guerrilla and the Colombian
army. Last year, 402 occurred. The death squads freely move about with
license to kill women and children unimpeded by the military that
unofficially supports them.

It's time we started dealing with the violence destroying Colombia. Taking
by the horns glaring structural problems that plague the country is a good
way to start the journey to peace. A close look at the "structural
violence," as Latin American Catholic bishops say, will bring us to the
conclusion that drugs are not the issue. What really matters is that we
listen and respond to the clamor of the poor: where the true solution lies.
And Plan Colombia has muffled that clamor.