A New Guatemalan Tragegy In The Making?

AS CONGRESS debates whether to approve $1.6 billion in aid to combat drugs
(and guerrillas) in Colombia, many warn against the dangers of ``another
Central America,'' i.e., deeper U.S. involvement in Colombia's civil war.

Less visible, but equally dangerous, is the political and military
re-involvement of the United States in Central America itself, threatening
the precarious peace settlements that took years to negotiate.

Since the end of the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala, the United
States has presented itself as a friend of peace and reconciliation. But
recent moves by Washington prioritize the drug war over the peace accords,
even increasing direct U.S. military presence for that purpose.

The United States recently signed an agreement permitting the presence of
U.S. personnel to conduct drug surveillance missions out of El Salvador's
airport -- an arrangement that the left opposition party will fight to
overturn in the legislature.

Even more alarming is the case of Guatemala, where U.S. troops have been
working with Guatemalan army officials and units as well as the civilian
police unit designated to counter drug trafficking. For the last four
decades, Guatemala's counterinsurgency army has been known as the most
brutal in Latin America. (This killing machine was largely a product of
U.S. training beginning in the mid-1960s.) As concluded by Guatemala's
Truth Commission report in 1999, that army committed 93 percent of all
human rights violations during the civil war; and it carried out genocidal
actions and policies during the early 1980s' ``scorched earth'' campaign
that killed up to 150,000 civilians, mainly highlands Mayans, between 1981
and 1983 alone.

Given this history, the centerpiece of Guatemala's December 1996 peace
accords between the government and leftist insurgents, ending 36 years of
civil war and six years of difficult negotiations, was the demilitarization
accord. That accord was designed to strip the army of the many functions it
had appropriated for itself and to reduce its mission to external defense
- -- a precondition for strengthening civilian power and democratizing Guatemala.

Clearly, given Washington's long-standing role as the Guatemalan army's
strategic ally and promoter, U.S. pressure would have been crucial for
implementation of that accord.

But before the ink had dried on the final peace accords, even as U.S.
officials attended the peace signing, they were proposing to give the
Guatemalan army a ``new mission'' in counternarcotics control and
pressuring the government to accept U.S. equipment and training for the
Guatemalan army. Subsequent reports in April 1997 confirmed U.S. plans to
send troops for anti-drug training to the army, as part of ``cooperation to
consolidate peace'' -- precisely the wrong message.

Furthermore, every year since the signing of the peace accord, the Clinton
administration has sought to reinitiate full U.S. military training and aid
to the Guatemalan army--even in the spring of 1998, the very week after the
bloody assassination of Auxiliary Bishop Monsignor. Juan Gerardi, architect
of a major report on human rights atrocities during the 36-year war. Only
congressional opposition has slowed down these plans to legitimize the
Guatemalan army once again.

During his March 1999 visit to Guatemala, President Clinton made a historic
gesture, apologizing to the Guatemalan people for the U.S. role in
supporting the brutal policies of the Guatemalan army for the past four
decades. But Clinton's gesture of recognizing U.S. responsibility in
Guatemala's war was contradicted by Washington's business-as-usual
relationship with the Guatemalan army.

Today, the stakes are far higher than at any time since the signing of
peace. Recent U.N. reports document significantly increased human rights
violations in 1999, as well as noncompliance with the peace accords by the
Guatemalan government and army. And in the new government that took office
in January, the major political party is led and dominated by architects
and henchmen of the 1980s holocaust.

Now more than ever, pressure from the international community is crucial to
gaining compliance with the peace accords.

The European Union is conditioning its assistance on such compliance; and
in Spain, the counterinsurgency leaders of the 1980s may be put on trial.

By contrast, the United States seems less interested in peace than in a
drug war that revalidates the Guatemalan army.

Today is the second anniversary of the 1998 Gerardi assassination -- a
peacetime crime that remains unresolved. U.S. actions giving the Guatemalan
army ``new missions'' and a new lease on life are an affront to the memory
of Monsignor Gerardi. They could also end up contributing to a Central
American tragedy: a lost opportunity to reform and truly democratize
Guatemala through the peace accords.