STOP U.S. AID - IT'S COSTING COLOMBIANS THEIR LIVES

I've visited Colombia three times this year. One of my goals was to see how
one unique community was faring, a community dedicated to peace.

The community is called San Jose de Apartado, and it consists of 17
settlements. In 1997 it declared itself a peace community -- opposed to
Colombia's civil war and not affiliated with any of its armed factions.
This stance has made it a target. The military, the paramilitary and
guerrilla soldiers constantly harass citizens of San Jose de Apartado.

The community is under siege.

At 6 a.m. on July 30, 300 paramilitary soldiers surrounded one of the
settlements, La Union, while 15 heavily armed troopers invaded it. These
men ordered all members of the community out of their houses and into the
central square, threatening to kill anybody who did not obey.

Most complied, except for 17-year-old Alexander Guzman, who was killed
while trying to escape. Before leaving, the soldiers warned that those who
did not collaborate with their efforts were guerrillas and would be killed.
They then headed to neighboring communities to spread the same message of
death and intimidation.

The 55 families of La Union, fearing for their safety, fled their homes.

In July of last year, paramilitaries massacred six residents of La Union in
the same central square where residents were forced to gather last month.
More than 80 of the nonviolent community's farmers, fathers, mothers, sons
and daughters have either been killed or have disappeared since the peace
community was created in 1997.

When I visited the peace community in March and May of this year, residents
told me about their struggles to protect themselves from the violence of
Colombia's civil war and about their desire for peace and livelihood.

They told me that U.S. military aid to Colombia is helping to escalate the
country's conflict, and that it increases the danger they are in. The $1.3
billion aid the United States is funneling to Colombia is worsening the
country's already tragic situation. Much of this U.S. aid goes to the
Colombian military, which has close ties to paramilitary squads.

"Collusion between the Colombian security forces, particularly the army,
and paramilitary groups continued and, indeed, strengthened," writes
Amnesty International in its 2001 global survey of human rights. "The
principal victims continued to be civilians. The majority of killings were
carried out by illegal paramilitary groups operating with the tacit or
active support of the Colombian armed forces."

Since last year, when U.S. Congress passed the aid package known as Plan
Colombia, politically motivated killings have doubled from 10 per day to
20, according to the Colombian Commission of Jurists.

Congress presented this policy as part of the war on drugs. But this policy
has not only increased the number of civilian casualties in Colombia, it
has also done nothing to reduce drug abuse here at home. What's more, the
policy is dragging the United States into Colombia's ghastly 40-year civil war.

Both Plan Colombia, which the U.S. government passed last year, and the
Andean Regional Initiative, a similar aid package which it passed this
year, ignore the devastation the people of Colombia are suffering. Around
40,000 have died just in the last decade, and 6,000 last year alone. And
like the 55 families of La Union, more than 2 million Colombians have been
displaced since 1985.

As Congress continues its debate on the value of U.S. military aid to
Colombia, our political representatives ought not give one more cent of
military aid to a nation whose civilians wants to live in peace, not war.

Alvarez, a Colombian-American, is the Colombia Human Rights Program
Coordinator at the San Francisco-based international human-rights
organization Global Exchange.