GUERRILLAS, DRUGS AND UNCLE SAM

George W. Bush's inauguration coincides with a significant, and worrisome,
escalation in U.S. involvement in Colombia's 40-year-old civil war.

According to a plan approved by Congress last fall, the U.S. will provide
$1.3 billion in mostly military aid, supposedly to fight Colombia's
narcotraffickers.

"Supposedly" is the key word, because the so-called Plan Colombia is
riddled with subterfuge and wishful thinking. A dubious assumption is that
the U.S. can fight the narcotraffickers without getting bogged down in a
guerrilla war eerily reminiscent of Vietnam.

Fact is, ever since Cuban and Soviet subsidies dried up 10 years ago,
Colombia's two leftist guerrilla groups have relied heavily on drug
profits--in addition to extortion and kidnapping--to finance their
operations. In this double helix of drugs and guerrillas, any U.S. effort
to fight the former cannot but lead to a confrontation with the latter.

Just as troublesome is the failure of the U.S. plan to deal with the
paramilitary death squads now roaming the country. One human rights group
estimates that paramilitaries are responsible for as much as three-fourths
of all the atrocities against civilians.

These death squads first appeared in the 1980s as vigilantes hired by the
landowners and cattle ranchers seeking protection from the guerrillas.
Initially, the army treated paramilitaries as allies against the
guerrillas, and today still lets them operate with impunity.

Yet the firepower of paramilitaries today rivals that of the guerrillas.
And just like the guerrillas, they use drug profits to survive.

Any plan that pretends to address either Colombia's endless war or its
narcotrafficking industry cannot ignore the paramilitaries. For starters,
both guerrilla groups have demanded that the government curb the
paramilitaries as a condition for negotiating a peace. The atrocities of
the paramilitaries, mostly against innocent civilians suspected of
supporting the guerrillas, cannot remain unpunished.

And the open involvement of the paramilitaries in the drug trade--the
scourge that purportedly is the reason for U.S. involvement in the first
place--also argues for greater American pressure on the Colombian
government to take action against them. If the U.S. strategy in Colombia is
to have any chance of success, it must deal realistically with all the
actors and factors at play. To ignore the paramilitaries only undermines a
policy whose chances of success are, at best, arguable.