SHRUGGING OFF COLOMBIA'S ANGUISH

LIFE IS CHEAP in cocaine- and heroin-rich Colombia.

Three farmers were murdered this week - for their sneakers.

It wasn't theft. It was politics.

The men were sporting runners from a shipment hijacked by Marxist
guerrillas. They ran into some right-wing paramilitary killers.

The killers didn't much care whether the farmers were guerrilla fighters,
sympathizers or customers.

Colombia's political war has taken 35,000 lives in the past decade, and
displaced 2 million. But it's also inherently one of the most violent
societies anywhere, with 35,000 non-political murders a year.

Strapping its military boots on, the United States has just waded into this
mess.

Washington is spending $1.3 billion to train 2,300 Colombian troops, to
equip them with Blackhawk and other combat helicopters and to improve their
tactical intelligence-gathering.

President Andres Pastrana, a reform-minded democrat, recently sent the
troops into Putumayo province, a guerrilla stronghold where half the coca
crop is produced, to back up the police who are spraying herbicides like
glyphosate (Roundup) on coca and poppy fields, and dismantling drug labs.

It's the aggressive phase of Pastrana's $7.5 billion Plan Colombia effort
to bust up an unholy alliance of guerrillas and narco-traffickers, to cut
drug production in half by 2005, and to restore a semblance of order to the
country, which produces most of the world's cocaine and much of its heroin.

Colombia's economy runs to about $100 billion a year. Some $20 billion may
flow from drugs. Critics of the U.S. military aid decry it as a massive,
covert drive to help Pastrana beat back Marxists under the pretext of
waging a war on drugs.

But those critics, who range from Roman Catholic clerics to Amnesty
International to peace groups and other reputable voices, may be giving
U.S. policymakers credit for bigger designs than they have.

It's hard to imagine that a few Blackhawk helicopters will defeat the
guerrillas. They've been waging war for 40 years or more, financed by
drugs, kidnapping and extortion. Nor will the choppers frighten the
narco-barons out of business.

Moreover, some of the U.S. money at least is earmarked as well for rural
development and to encourage farmers to plant other crops.

If anything Plan Colombia aims low.

Pastrana would be happy simply to arrest Colombia's fast-deteriorating
security situation by making things hot enough so that the narco-barons who
operate on guerrilla turf have an incentive to take their drug labs and
money to other, quieter areas, thus squeezing the guerrilla cash flow.

One senior U.S. official calls it ``busting the nexus.''

Otherwise a full-blown, heavily armed narco-state the size of Switzerland
may emerge in the northwestern corner of South America, on the 40 per cent
of Colombia that the guerrillas control.

``What this assistance from the U.S. government does is give President
Pastrana an additional card to play as he works the peace process with the
Colombian guerrillas,'' Bill Brownfield told me this week. He's deputy
assistant secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs in the U.S.
State Department.

``It gives him the opportunity to say to them that you may subject
yourselves to this additional military and law enforcement pressure, or you
may break your links with the narcotic traffickers and engage in serious
peace negotiations.''

The new George W. Bush administration is considering pumping another $1
billion or so into fighting drugs in the region next year, with half going
to Colombia and half to neighbouring Andean states where the drug lords may
try to set up shop.

Critics of Plan Colombia fault the U.S. for fighting its war on the backs
of peasants, instead of attacking an insatiable American demand for these
drugs.

The Colombian police have doused not only drug crops with herbicides, but
also adjacent farms. Even villagers. People are fleeing.

Meanwhile, villagers and farmers are getting squeezed by the rebels, by
coke dealers and by right-wing paramilitary forces, all of whom demand
loyalty and support at gunpoint.

Critics decry this ``militarization'' of the landscape. They'd prefer to
see more effort put into Pastrana's faltering attempts to coax the
guerrillas into peace talks, into making sure the military and its
murderous and increasingly autonomous paramilitary allies respect human
rights, and into rural development and crop swaps.

Pastrana always hoped to do this.

But Colombia's fickle friends have been slow to deliver promised help.

The Europeans, for instance, talked about pledging $1 billion for peace,
justice and development, but have provided just $250 million, and that over
six years.

Canada, while praising Pastrana, coughs up a paltry $13 million a year in aid.

Whatever Ottawa makes of American military policy in Colombia, we could be
doing more, instead of wringing our hands in dismay.

That's what Beatriz Jaramillo de Gonzalez, whom I met two years ago, urged.
She's a human rights worker from Medellin, a drug cartel centre.

``People are dying, and no one cares,'' she said.

She asked Ottawa to give Pastrana political encouragement. To forgive
Colombia's debt. To provide generous aid.

And to express indignation at the barbarities committed against ordinary
people for ideology, and profit.

Until countries like Canada are prepared to invest more in Colombia's
struggling farmers, Marxist guerrillas will have easy recruits and drug
lords will have willing helpers.

And one of Latin America's oldest democracies will slowly collapse.

Gordon Barthos writes The Star's editorials on foreign affairs.