US AID BILL FOR COLOMBIA CREATES JITTERS

Will $1.3 Billion In U.S. Aid Curb A Cancerous Colombian Drug Trade Or
Fuel An Already Rampant Civil War?

U.S. policymakers -- who haggled for 10 months before passing the
drug-fighting package late last week -- are banking that it will
produce peace. Colombian rebels and leftist critics swear it will
bring bloody battles. And a growing chorus of critics from Washington
to Bogota thinks the United States is getting too deeply involved in a
conflict it can never win.

"It is a policy that is destined to fail," said Herbert "Tico" Braun,
a Colombia native who teaches at the University of Virginia and is one
of many Latin America analysts who are skeptical of the U.S. plan.
"There is little good that will ultimately come of this."

The Clinton administration and Congress have been wrestling for years
over how to help Colombia, the source of more than 80 percent of the
heroin and cocaine on U.S. streets.

Supporters of the bill say it is part of the solution.

"This Colombian aid package is an investment in our future -- a future
free from the scourge of drugs," House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.,
a long-time proponent of the policy, said after the aid bill passed
last week.

Potential pitfalls

The final aid bill passed by the U.S. Senate on Friday was a
compromise between conservatives and Republicans who favored boosting
Colombia's anti-narcotics forces and Democrats and liberals who
preferred pumping funds into promoting democracy in Colombia while
curbing human rights abuses among the Colombian military.

The bipartisan solution, however, seemed to make few players happy and
has many potential pitfalls, analysts say.

Most of the money will be spent on 63 Blackhawk and Huey helicopters,
intelligence gathering and the training and equipping of Colombian
military and national police.

The aim: To shore up the woefully understaffed and inept Colombian
military so that it can destroy jungle drug labs and burn coca and
opium fields.

The risk: Guerrillas fighting a civil war for the past 40 years are
better trained and more heavily armed than Colombian forces. They
protect the drug labs for income and are already arming themselves
with weapons capable of shooting down the choppers. Colombia does not
have enough pilots able to fly the U.S. helicopters.

American officials promise U.S. troops will not be involved in combat
missions. Up to 500 advisers at a time will be in Colombia solely to
lend their expertise.

The aim: U.S. soldiers will train Colombian troops for quick strikes.
U.S. personnel will fly intelligence missions over the jungles to spot
drug labs and guide the Colombians to targets before the missions.

The risk: Even as the aid bill was being drafted, there were U.S.
casualties. Five U.S. soldiers died last July when their U.S. Army spy
plane crashed in the mountains of southwest Colombia.

The Clinton administration hopes beefed-up Colombian forces can clear
the jungles of drug growers and fumigate the areas. More than $145
million in U.S. aid is earmarked for alternative crops.

The aim: Ensure that drug plants cannot flourish again and replace the
drug crop economy with food crops.

The risk: Fumigation could damage the rain forests. More than 100,000
farmers and their families will likely flee in the fighting, aid
groups predict.

Drug production could merely shift into nearby Andean nations, critics
say.

Roughly $93 million -- less than 10 percent of the total aid -- would
go toward human rights programs in Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and
other nearby countries.

The aim: To reform judicial systems, crack down on money laundering
and train Colombians to make peace with the rebels.

The risk: In Colombia, it is hard to tell the good guys from the bad.
The Colombian military deals out bloody street justice, is infiltrated
by rebel spies, and has soldiers on the take from the guerrillas. Many
Colombian judges are corrupt.

But despite the downsides, Hastert and other supporters of the U.S.
aid package predict it will make a significant dent in the drug trade.

Without U.S. aid to Colombia, Florida will suffer the fallout, state
representatives say. Not only will lucrative trade routes falter --
commerce between the United States and Colombia is worth more than $12
billion annually -- the state could be flooded with Colombians.

Graham's support

More than 2,000 Colombians settled permanently in the United States
last year. There is already a 10-month waiting list for visa approvals
at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota.

"We've got a big stake in what happens in Colombia," said Sen. Bob
Graham, D-Fla., a backer of the U.S. aid. "What are the risks
associated with non-involvement? The situation would worsen and the
refugee flow would likely increase."

Colombian leaders are ecstatic that long-sought help from the
Americans will arrive soon.

"This is what gives us the tools to do the job," said Luis Alberto
Moreno, the Colombian ambassador in Washington.

But many Colombians, weary of civil war, are skeptical that the U.S.
aid will better their lives.

Two main leftist guerrilla groups are fighting the government.
Billions in drug profits fuel the war begun 40 years ago to defend the
rights of poor peasants. But in recent years, guerrillas have become
the protectors of the drug trade. In some parts of the country, they
function as parallel governments where Colombian authorities have no
control.

Terror, kidnappings and extortion mostly rule Colombia. The violence
has cost at least 35,000 Colombian lives in the past 10 years. More
than 1,000 victims are being held for ransom by various factions. Up
to a million Colombians have been uprooted from their homes. Coupled
with the worst recession in 70 years, the war is taking a toll. But
Colombians mostly see themselves as victims of U.S. drug consumers
rather than as casualties of a civil war.

Doubts among backers

"Colombians believe this is a problem of U.S. demand," said Braun, who
has written books about violence in Colombia. "The U.S. military aid
policy will not solve the problem in the U.S. of consumption. The war
will be won in the streets of the United States and not the jungles of
Colombia."

Even backers of the U.S. aid plan wonder how well it will
work.

It will take roughly two years to build the helicopters and train
Colombians to fly and support them. The expertise is severely lacking
in Colombia, military experts say. "We are talking about training
battalions from scratch and then putting them immediately into combat
situations," said Gabriel Marcella, a Colombia authority at the U.S.
Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. "These are novel operations and the
risks are heavy."

Rebels promise to purchase mortar power capable of bringing down the
choppers.

"What happens if there is resistance?" asked Marcella, who favors the
U.S. aid plan despite the risks. "The psychological impact of the
rebels bringing down just one of those helicopters would be enormous."

Fewer than one-quarter of the 120,000 Colombians now serving in the
armed forces are equipped and prepared for battle -- and barely
outnumber 25,000 highly trained rebels.

David Passage, a former senior U.S. State Department official and an
architect of early Clinton administration Colombia aid plans, said
Americans would achieve more success by teaching Colombian soldiers to
fight the rebels.

"You simply can't limit training to counter-narcotics forces," he
said. "The problem is too large and the forces are too small. You have
to train the entire military."

Human rights

Longtime Colombia observers say it is also unlikely American training
will significantly lessen the human rights violations in a country
with one of the world's worst records.

Most of the 23,000 murders a year in Colombia go unsolved. Police
officers and soldiers have been linked to beatings, robberies,
kidnappings and massacres.

While the U.S. aid bill urges the Colombians to "vigorously purse
human rights violators," it can't force Colombia to accept outside
scrutiny. "We will never have justice in Colombia while there is a
corrupt and abusive military," said Cecilia Zarate, who runs a liberal
American group, the Columbia Support Network. "The military has a high
degree of impunity."

Because of mistrust of the military and the U.S. role, few Colombian
farmers will warm to the idea of having their lucrative drug crops
destroyed because they know neighboring farmers across the Andean
borders will profit, analysts predict.

"Even if you eradicate all the drugs in Colombia, they will reappear
elsewhere," said David Bushnell, a University of Florida historian who
has studied Colombia for more than 40 years.

"Obviously growing coffee is not going to yield the same
payoffs."

Ultimately, Americans will judge the U.S. aid program not in terms of
the number of battles won by the Colombian military or whether
Colombians make peace among themselves, experts predict.

"The test is in a five-block radius of the average American middle
school," Passage said. "Are we seeing a decrease in drug distribution
there? Only then will Americans be happy."