THE COLOMBIA PUZZLE

Colombia is not a quagmire, but a fog in which the players stumble around in
seemingly aimless conflict.

The couple of billion dollars in aid Congress and President Clinton
plan to use to fight the drug menace over the next three years may
also simply get lost. The heart of the problem is narcotics and the
money it spawns.

Colombia produces at least 80 percent of the cocaine and two-thirds of
the heroin consumed in the US. Despite all efforts, there are more
drugs than ever. Ironically, US customers pay the suppliers many times
what Washington gives the Colombian government to stop the traffic.
But the puzzle embraces far more than drugs.

Three-cornered civil war is a constant. Guerrilla factions, rich and
heavily armed, fight each other and mysterious right-wing paramilitary
death squads, as well as national police and armed forces.

The oldest and largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), has been the most successful. Its nearly 20,000
men have fought Bogota to a standstill and carved out a piece of
territory in the south the size of Switzerland. It is a "demilitarized
zone," an independent area free of any government authority. President
Andres Pastrana has been trying since his 1998 election to bring the
guerrillas into the political mainstream through negotiation. FARC,
not especially eager, finally agreed - but on its own terms.

It has continued attacking the Army and extorting "taxes" from
communities, travelers, and oil and mining companies.

It's selling drug lords protection and cooperation, kidnapping for
ransom, and using child soldiers.

Nor is it clear what FARC wants of the negotiations. It demands
undefined fundamental political, social, and economic change, but not
supreme power. These woolly views may reflect the 40 years the
guerrillas have spent fighting and out of touch with political reality.

So in February, a government-guerrilla delegation toured Europe
meeting with officials, aid donors, religious leaders, and
journalists. It was a government attempt to build confidence between
the groups and to show the guerrillas models of social democracy.

The result remains to be seen. Some think it has boosted FARC's morale
and status.

The government, responding to another wave of kidnappings and
sabotage, is ready to give the second-largest guerrilla group, the
National Liberation Army (ELN) its own independent zone in the north.
All this against a background of systemic national crisis.

Last year, the economy suffered its worst setback in 100
years.

Rural poverty matches the worst of the third world.

Unemployment is at 20 percent.

Foreign investment, essential for recovery, is at a dead stop. Drug
influence contaminates all the institutions of state and has
demoralized the justice system.

In four years, an estimated 800,000 people, including many highly
trained professionals, have left the country.

The murder rate is 10 times higher than that of the US, and the rate
of kidnapping is the world's highest. The question is why all this
should have happened to Colombia, inherently rich, with democracy well
established. Unfortunately, violence is well established in Columbia,
too. Upon gaining independence in 1819, Colombia had a series of civil
wars culminating at the turn of the century in the War of 1,000 Days,
which cost 100,000 lives. These upheavals, in which liberals and
conservatives fought for power, were marked by widespread acts of brutality.

After a relatively quiet period, the assassination of a liberal
president in 1948 touched off more than 10 years of war noted in
Colombian history as La Violencia, with more than 200,000 dead. In the
1960s FARC and ELN appeared; their insurgencies escalated when the
drug barons took center stage in the 1980s. Some think that the
habitual resort to violence to deal with differences in the past
century and a half has desensitized Colombian society.

Whatever the reason, Colombia is much more than a problem for the US.
It is a trial for the Western Hemisphere.

Richard C. Hottelet, a longtime correspondent for CBS, writes on world affairs.