BUSH'S WAR IN COLOMBIA

Following the statement from Robert Zoellick, senior adviser to
President Bush, that "we cannot continue to make a false distinction
between counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts ... the
narco-traffickers and guerrillas compose one dangerous network", it
seems the new US administration is setting its stall out early in
escalating US aggression in Colombia (20,000 grams under the sea, G2,
January 8).

Still, I suppose you've got to respect their odd kind of honesty.
While the assertion that narco-traffickers and guerrillas represent
one network is a total falsehood, at least the new administration has
stopped pretending that the war is only about drugs, as Clinton's
more touchy-feely office was prone to do. Typically, the Republicans
are making no bones about the fact that this is a counter-insurgency
war against the guerrilla forces; a war in which Washington has no
legitimate involvement.

Similar to the US's other illegitimate acts of aggression against
internal insurgency movements (Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador etc),
the guerrillas' main crime is not their acceptance of coca growing
among peasants in regions under their "control" but the obstacle they
pose to the exploitation of the vast mineral and oil resources by US
and European mining and oil companies; unchecked mastery of the local
economy that is deemed an unassailable right of multinational
corporations.

The Bush administration will help escalate the civil war and the
massacres and displacements: 2001 promises to be perhaps the most
tragic year yet for the butchered, exiled and terrorised people of
Colombia.

Matt Dykes
Colombian Peace Association