AMERICA'S WAR, COLOMBIA'S PEACE

During his quick visit to the Caribbean town of Cartagena this week,
President Clinton seconded the Colombian government's insistence that the
"Plan Colombia" is a plan for peace and not war. For months, President
Andres Pastrana has been issuing tireless reassurances that political
negotiations, rather than a military solution, constitute the plan's central
strategy.

But the two presidents' stance is difficult to defend. The American
contribution to the three-year plan, from which Washington is hoping for a
significant reduction in narcotics production, aims at an arms buildup for
the Colombian military.

In fact, military assistance absorbs 80 percent of the 1.3 billion dollars
coming from the USA, and is for now the strongest pillar of the plan, the
total cost of which is estimated at 7.5 billion dollars by Bogota.

Drug production is only one of the factors in Colombia's civil war, which
has lasted for more than 40 years now - a relatively new factor at that, and
probably not the most important.

It may have come as a surprise to some people outside the country when a
recent opinion poll singled out Colombia's gravest problems as including not
the drug trade, but leftist guerrilla organizations, right-wing
paramilitaries, unemployment (currently at about 20 percent) and corruption.
That doubtless came as no news to the government. The Plan Colombia speaks
of these problems as well, mentioning measures to stimulate the economy,
alternative lines of development, the protection of human rights, peace
talks with the guerrillas, and the strengthening of government institutions.

In European countries, from which the Colombian leader is also hoping for
sizable contributions, Pastrana's project has been greeted with far greater
skepticism than in Washington. At a donor conference in Madrid in July,
clear warnings were issued about the risks of militarization in solving the
country's social and political conflicts, and priority was assigned to peace
negotiations with the guerrillas. With the exception of Spain, the
generosity of the Europeans remained well below Bogota's expectations. So,
despite all Clinton's and Pastrana's protestations in Cartagena, the focus
remains on military measures, making the Plan Colombia highly questionable.

Pastrana's project fits almost miraculously well into America's "war on
drugs." No one would question Washington's right to take steps against an
evil which America has declared a threat to its national security.

But, in a fatal reversal of the rules of the free market - which apply to
the drug business as to any other - America's repressive effort to combat it
has always been based on the assumption that there will be no demand if
there is no supply.

While heroin exports are growing, nearly all the cocaine consumed in the USA
today (an estimated 550 tons annually) comes from Colombia. That country's
coca-growing area has expanded dramatically since the more or less
successful destruction of plantations in Bolivia and Peru - at a time, be it
noted, when the campaign against the coca bush in Colombia had long been in
full swing.

There could be no better evidence of the strategy's failure on the larger,
regional level.

Having grown no wiser from this experience, the Clinton administration is
again relying on the same means while ignoring the roots of the problem.

As long as hundreds of thousands of impoverished campesinos have no
alternatives for survival, as long as they can find neither distribution
channels nor sales markets for other products, they will continue to clear
new patches of jungle and plant coca again and again.

The drug business is notoriously adaptable.

Just as small distribution rings have taken the place of the smashed big
cartels, and just as new Caribbean routes have been found to replace the
blocked smuggling routes through Central America, coca plantations and
laboratories will simply shift their locations, thus again shifting the
theater of operations in this "war." Fears to that effect have already been
expressed by the government of Brazil, while reports have come from Peru and
Ecuador about new plantations in border areas. Ecuador in particular, with
its severe economic and political crisis, now demonstrates those weaknesses
which the narcotics trade is always so skillful at exploiting.

That the USA sees the Plan Colombia as just an extension of its "war on
drugs" is demonstrated by how its assistance is to be divided up. Of the
total 1.3 billion dollars, only 230 million are earmarked for development
projects, for strengthening Colombia's justice system and for aid to the
country's internal refugees from violence, whose numbers by now are
estimated at 1.5 to 2 million.

At the same time, by releasing the funds last week Clinton, in a gesture
bordering on negligence, ignored the human-rights conditions which the U.S.
Congress had tied to the aid package - and which remain unmet.

Colombia's security forces, the chief beneficiaries of the American aid, are
unquestionably in urgent need of restructuring and modernization. But they
have a miserable reputation. Human rights organizations have repeatedly
pointed to the collaboration between army units and the paramilitaries, who
are responsible for a large part of the massacres of civilians and who are
so often apparently expected to do the worst of the dirty work in the
struggle against the guerrillas. The Clinton administration seems deaf and
blind to this problem, while Bogota shows no signs of undertaking the
necessary forceful steps.

On top of this, to issue reassurances that the new American combat
helicopters and reconnaissance planes, and the army units trained by
American instructors, will not be employed against the guerrillas, is either
mendacious or overly optimistic. Like the paramilitaries, both Colombian
rebel movements are financed in part by protection money from the narcotics
trade.

In the areas under their control, they are hardly likely to stand idly by
and watch that financial foundation destroyed.

There have also been warnings that the guerrillas could intensify their
operations in the already institutionalized and highly lucrative kidnapping
business.

Pastrana's calculations are not entirely the same as Washington's. In
theory, the military and financial weakening of the guerrillas should make
them more willing to enter into a peace agreement.

The timing of the American support could thus hardly be more timely.

But the dialogue with the rebels of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias
(FARC) stumbles from one crisis to the next, while that with the Ejercito de
LiberaciF3n Nacional has barely begun.

No concession, no compromise has been wrested from the self-righteous
comandantes so far, much less a cease-fire. Armed hostilities continue
despite efforts at peace.

Pastrana's yielding on the peace process has caused his popularity to drop
sharply and weakened his position, especially among the armed forces, which
have not overcome their mistrust of peace talks.

It says a great deal when a polling institute asks the question who has the
most power in Colombia, and nearly half those surveyed give the name of FARC
leader Marulanda, while only 10 percent respond with that of the nation's
president.

Thus a further tightening in the spiral of violence would seem built into
the latest "plan for peace." Colombia's neighbors, who view the plan with
extreme skepticism, have already reinforced the troops along their borders,
fearing that the conflict in Colombia will spread to their territory.

Some campesinos are faced with the destruction of their present livelihood
and no concrete alternative projects - a decisive element, if the
destruction of the coca crop is to be successful. That is why church
institutions and human rights organizations are already warning of new
streams of refugees that will also impact neighboring countries.

The plans of Clinton and Pastrana could become a serious stress test for the
entire region.