THE TRUE STATE(S) OF COLOMBIA

Ignacio Gomez, who heads the investigative team at the
mass-circulation Colombian daily El Espectador and is completing a
Nieman Fellowship at Harvard in May, is watching his country divide
into five "states":

1) The land of the FARC left-wing guerrillas, 2) the land of the
right-wing paramilitaries, 3) the area controlled by the U.S.-trained
"good army," 4) the area controlled by the "bad" unreformed Colombian
army and 5) the area controlled by the central government, meaning
Bogota and other urban centers.

Gomez says Americans don't realize how deeply we have been - and are -
involved in the mess that is Colombia. In the mid-'90s, we helped to
train the "dirtiest army in Latin America." In the Mapiripan massacre
of July 14-20, 1997, paramilitaries used heavy assistance from the
Colombian military to take over the capital of a coca-growing region.
U.S. Green Berets trainers were nearby, Gomez says. It was as if the
army were using Mapiripan as a test in conducting operations. And
after an elementary school was blown up in Santo Domingo, the FBI
determined that an American-designed bomb had been used. It may have
been dropped from an American helicopter.

Now, under Plan Colombia, the United States trains Colombians in
counterinsurgency as well as drug interdiction. The latter is mandated
by U.S. law; the former is not.

The destruction of the Medellin cartel left an opening for the Cali
cartel, which, in turn, was destroyed. Paramilitary leader Carlos
Castano recently told the Colombian press that he can speak for 80
percent of Colombia's cocaine trade. So how can the war against the
FARC stop cocaine coming into the United States?

Gomez says the debate should shift to the United Nations, where ideas
about Colombia are more informed than in America. "Most of the
Colombian actors are tired of (this) war," he says. "Only the
Americans are not. Because they're new at it."