NO MILITARY AID

Colombia needs help, not guns

Plainclothes men wearing sandals made from old tires and carrying automatic
rifles stopped us at a roadblock on a twisting mountain road above
Villavicencio, Colombia, one sunny day in 1982. We showed them our papers
and they waved us through. I asked my Colombian companion, "What was that
about?" She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head, clearly frightened,
and I drove on toward Bogota.

Three months working on a cattle ranch in Colombia gave me a glimpse of a
complex political situation that could become a foreign policy nightmare if
Congress approves an emergency proposal to send nearly $1 billion in mostly
military aid to Colombia.

Several factors suggest we shouldn't rush the Colombian aid: The convoluted
political scenario doesn't lend itself to a quick good-vs.-bad analysis; the
Colombian military we are training is aligned with paramilitary death
squads; and our war on drugs is failing spectacularly in Colombia.
Increasing military aid to Colombia will resolve its conflicts about like
gasoline puts out a fire.

The roadblock above Villavicencio was likely part of Colombia's "dirty war."
For two decades the Colombian military and ruling class have used armed
civilians, usually referred to as the "right-wing paramilitary," to fight
several well-organized, left-leaning guerrilla groups. At least 35,000
Colombians have been victims of political killings in the last decade,
mostly attributed to the paramilitaries.

While we tend to associate Colombian violence with drugs, it's an
oversimplification. "This stereotype linking violence in the country to
drugs . . . has served the Colombian government well," wrote Father Javier
Giraldo in "Colombia, The Genocidal Democracy."

"On the one hand," he wrote, "it has enabled it to present itself in
international forums as a 'victim' of violence outside its control by drug
traffickers and the guerrillas, and on the other, permitted it to neatly
conceal crimes of the state which exceed these others many times over but
which are so rarely mentioned in the international media."

People affiliated with every faction in Colombia are involved in drug
trafficking, including paramilitary groups and guerrillas. Former president
Ernesto Samper was alleged to have accepted drug money in his campaign. And
the wife of the former commander of the U.S. Army's anti-drug effort
admitted sending heroin, by the kilo, from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota last
year.

Drugs are not the only commodity that interests Colombia aid proponents.
Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Georgia, recently wrote, "A decade ago the United
States went to war with a powerful enemy partly to stabilize a major
oil-producing region . . . . Where is that same concern with Colombia today?
The destabilization of Colombia directly affects bordering Venezuela, now
generally regarded as our largest oil supplier. In fact, the oil picture in
Latin America is strikingly similar to that of the Middle East, except that
Colombia provides us more oil today than Kuwait did then."

After spending billions on drug eradication, we are seeing more and cheaper
cocaine and heroin than ever before. As we've doubled our anti-drug aid to
Colombia annually over the last few years - up to almost $300 million last
year - Colombian coca production has skyrocketed. The lesson from this drug
war is that where there is a demand, a supply will emerge.

We should stop blaming other countries for our drug problems, and admit that
the enemy in the drug war is us. Instead, we are extending our military
tentacles into yet another country with a very complex conflict. Over 200
American soldiers, DEA and CIA agents are already on the ground in Colombia.

Colombia is a beautiful country of snow-capped mountains, vast savannas,
jungle rivers and tropical beaches. It is a country of unparalleled
biological diversity and incredible cultural diversity. And it is a country
full of people who hope against hope for a peaceful future.

Murray Carpenter is a free-lance writer who lives in Belfast.