WAR RAGES ANEW IN COLOMBIA

Colombia is at war. The peace process has ended and the bombings have
begun. Government forces have unleashed their weapons against the same
guerrillas whose leader met with the country's president only three years ago.

The peace process that opened with great fanfare amid high hopes for
bringing an end to an insurgency that refused to die after nearly four
decades proved fruitless and, once again, the conflict is propelled to a
level that undoubtedly will bring even greater pain to the country's
long-suffering civilians.

Most Colombians support the government's decision to say "No mas" -- no
more talks, no more concessions and, especially, no more kidnappings and
killings by guerrillas. But the administration of President Andres
Pastrana, armed with hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid, must
tread carefully if it is to keep public support as it wages what must be
viewed as a just war.

The final act that brought on the end of the peace process, the drop that
caused "the cup of indignation to overflow," as the president put it, was
the recent hijacking of a passenger plane by members of the main guerrilla
group known as FARC. The plane was forced to land in a remote area, and one
of the passengers, a senator who leads the congressional committee on peace
talks, was taken away as a hostage.

Pastrana -- and practically everybody else -- called it an act of
terrorism, a violation of international law, and decided you cannot
negotiate with terrorists. The president decided to take away the
Switzerland-size enclave it had given to guerrillas as part of the peace
process and mobilized thousands of soldiers to do battle.

If this is a war against violence, against terrorism and against the
systematic targeting of civilians, then the war must take on all the
perpetrators of those acts.

Colombia's war is complicated. There are three well-armed armies in
addition to the government's: two leftist guerrilla groups and one
right-wing paramilitary militia. The United States has named all three as
terrorist organizations. But most attacks on civilians are committed by the
paramilitaries with the acquiescence and sometimes the assistance of
government forces.

The leftists guerrillas, purportedly fighting for justice and equality for
a desperately poor people, failed to win the hearts of the Colombian
people. Theirs was a cause once viewed by romantic idealists as just. But
most Colombians don't support the FARC. They simply want the fighting to
end. The sentiment is most intense among impoverished peasants who live in
the battlefields of the insurgency, whose sons are conscripted into the
army and whose families are caught in the middle, subjected to right-wing
massacres by paramilitaries who accuse them of siding with the left.

The United States has made Colombia its third largest recipient of foreign
aid after Israel and Egypt. Until now, the aid, mostly for military
equipment and training, has been channeled to the war on drugs (drugs help
finance the guerrillas.) The American approach is changing, however. After
Sept. 11, the Bush administration will no doubt want to support Pastrana's
war against the now-labeled terrorists without the cover of the war on drugs.

Colombia is slated to receive more than $500 million in aid from the United
States this year. Most of that will go to this newly intensified war. The
only way to keep the carnage from spiraling out of control is for the
Colombian government, and its backer, the United States, to do everything
possible to wage this war as a just one -- one aimed at bringing an end to
violence from all sides, from leftist guerrillas and from right-wing
paramilitaries.