ARMS WON'T BRING PEACE IN COLOMBIA

On Jan. 25, across from a gas station in Tame, Colombia, 12 heavily armed
men killed Angel Riveros Chaparro and two other men.

Chaparro was president of the Peasant Association of Tame. I had met him
when he came to Chicago to speak at Northwestern University in September
2000. He was a quiet and dignified man.

Chaparro was killed by right-wing paramilitaries in broad daylight. When
the Colombia Support Network, the organization that I work for, called to
inquire about his death, Col. Gustavo Matamoros of the Colombian army said
to us, "I do not have to answer to you," and then hung up the phone.

Chaparro's death helps illustrate the trend of the 38-year-old Colombian
war, which is the elimination of popular civilian leaders whose activities
challenge the status quo. And his killing highlights a neglected fact: the
brutal violence of the paramilitaries.

The rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or FARC, as
it's known by its Spanish acronym), is also responsible for many deaths in
the country. The FARC recently hijacked a plane and kidnapped a senior
senator, which ended the tenuous peace talks between the Colombian
government and the rebel group.

Colombia's civil war began when some peasants demanded their right to land.
In 1965, these peasants allied themselves with the Colombian Communist
Party and later formed the FARC. Answering to overtures from the Colombian
government to become a political party, the FARC created the Union
Patriotica in the 1980s.

Soon after the Union Patriotica was formed, paramilitary forces killed more
than 3,000 of the party's activists -- labor leaders, teachers, elected
officials -- with the army's help.

Ranchers, plantation owners, industrialists and nouveau-riche drug barons
support the paramilitaries, which have killed thousands more like Angel
Riveros Chaparro. The main paramilitary group, the brutal United
Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (or AUC, as it's known by its Spanish
acronym), has been proven to have close ties with the Colombian army,
according to Human Rights Watch.

Ordinary Colombians, who desire peace more than anything, are caught
between the atrocities of the paramilitaries and those of the FARC, whose
strategy has been ultimately to win power with the use of arms. Its
messianic attitude, combined with its reprehensible methods such as
kidnapping and assassinating people, indiscriminately bombing localities
and extorting money, has created immense pain in Colombian society.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana made people believe that peace could be
accomplished quickly. But he was wrong. Neither the Colombian elite nor the
FARC is willing to make concessions for peace.

The pressure from the United States has not helped matters, either.
Washington has urged Pastrana to confront the guerrillas, and has given
more than $1 billion in aid, most of it to the military, ostensibly to
fight the war on drugs but actually to assist in the fight against the
FARC, and particularly to protect U.S. multinational interests. Now the
Bush administration wants even more aid to flow directly into the Colombian
war effort. This is precisely the wrong approach to take.

Peace can be achieved only when all sectors of Colombian society are
incorporated in negotiations that address fundamental changes, such as
social investments and land distribution. A quick, shallow and militarized
peace will only lead to more deaths.

The U.S. government should stop providing military material, intelligence
information and training instruction to the Colombian army. It should
instead use its weight to urge an end to the civil war, disarm the
paramilitaries and the rebels, to bring them to justice and seriously
commit to addressing fundamental structural changes in Colombian society.

The crisis in Colombia cannot be solved militarily. Washington needs to
learn that in a hurry, or it will quickly become more embroiled in the
hemisphere's bloodiest conflict.