SENATORS PLUNGE US INTO COLOMBIA'S CIVIL WAR

US intervention in the conflict in Colombia could have disastrous
consequences for the entire Andean region, writes Ana Carrigan

THE US/COLOMBIA: Potomac fever has overtaken US Latin American policy
once again - this time triggered by the failure of Washington's "drug
war" in a presidential election year, and corporate lobbying by US
arms manufacturers and oil men.

The result: last week's US Senate vote to approve $1.3 billion in new
military aid for Colombia, which will recklessly propel the United
States into the vortex of Colombia's civil war, burying the fragile
peace hopes with frightening implications for the entire Andean
region. The vote was immediately hailed by the US drug czar, Mr Barry
McCaffrey, as "a crucial step . . . that will greatly enhance
counter-drug efforts in Colombia". Mr McCaffrey should know. It was
his announcement of "a drug emergency" in Colombia last summer that
pushed the panic button in the Clinton White House.

President Clinton commended the Senate vote as showing that the US was
"committed to a democracy and to fighting the drug wars in Colombia,
and to strengthening the oldest democracy in Latin America".

The vote has still to be reconciled in conference with leaders of the
House of Representatives, who passed an even more generous version of
the aid bill last March.

The Republican Senate leader, Mr Trent Lott, who destroyed efforts to
reduce funds for the Colombian military and redirect the money to
social programmes and alternative crop development in Colombia, and to
drug treatment and prevention programmes in the US, said: "To those
worried about slipping toward being involved (in Colombia), where
better to be involved? . . . This is a question of standing up for our
children, of standing up and fighting these narco-terrorists in our
part of the world, in our neighbourhood, in our region." When the roll
was called last Thursday, the senators voted 95 to 4 to quadruple
current US aid to Colombia.

Another Republican senator, Mr Slade Gorton, who cast one of the four
No votes, disagreed with Mr Lott, saying: "The capacity of this body
for self-delusion appears to this senator to be unlimited. There has
been no consideration of the consequences, cost and length of
involvement."

The bill, he said, "let's us get into war now and justify it later.
Mark my words, we are on the verge . . . of involvement in a civil war
in Latin America, without the slightest promise that our intervention
will be a success".

Mr Gorton's efforts to make deep cuts in the package were routed, 79
to 19.

The bulk of this massive escalation in US aid will go to the Colombian
army, at a rate equivalent to $2 million a day over two years, to
finance three new battalions, trained by US Special Forces, and
equipped with American hardware and a fleet of American combat
helicopters. With a minimum training, 2,800 young Colombian soldiers
will go on the offensive against drugs and insurgents in the remote
jungles of one of Colombia's most neglected and lawless regions, the
south-western state of Putumayo.

Marine Gen Charles Wilhelm, commander-in-chief of US Southern Command,
and the man responsible for overseeing this joint American-Colombian
military strategy, told the Senate last February that the objective is
to "push" thousands of guerrillas out of their jungle bases to
facilitate US spray planes to fly in and eradicate the region's coca
crops. Once they have dispatched the most powerful insurgent force in
Latin America, the new battalions are expected to "secure" a vast and
impenetrable jungle area and "assist Colombia . . . to reassert its
sovereignty over its territory and to curb growing (drug)
cultivation".

In Senate testimony last February, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, State
Department Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, indicated
how this assistance would address Colombia's complex crises: "fighting
the drug trade, fostering peace, increasing the rule of law, improving
human rights, expanding economic development . . . and giving the
Colombian people greater access to the benefits of democratic
institutions".

Mr Pickering was Ronald Reagan's ambassador to San Salvador and
oversaw the US's disastrous involvement in the Salvadoran civil war.

Critics note that his testimony is at odds with realities on the
ground. Putumayo's 600 square miles of jungle and river produce 50 per
cent of Colombia's coca leaves. FARC guerillas dominate the
countryside, and right-wing paramilitaries, with the complicity of
local police and army officers, control the towns. Twothirds of
Putumayo's 300,000 inhabitants are small coca farmers and migrant leaf
pickers, and many are refugees, already displaced by the civil war.

In implicit anticipation of the human suffering that will result from
the assault on the coca fields, funds have been allocated to assist up
to 10,000 displaced people with emergency relief. However, Ecuador,
which shares a border with Putumayo, has been alerted by the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees to prepare for the arrival of 30,000 people
fleeing the US spray planes.

Perhaps, most disturbing, is the hermetic silence of US officials in
the face of persistent reports that the paramilitaries are organising
to support the military operation.