INCREASED U.S. MILITARY AID TO COLOMBIA WON'T CURB DRUG TRAFFICKING

THE LONG-NEGLECTED conflict in Colombia is emerging as Latin America's
major crisis and pulling the United States ever more deeply into an
unwinnable war. Escalating political violence, an entrenched insurgency,
increasing illicit drug production and growing concern from Colombia's
neighbors about the conflict spilling over have policymakers in Washington
searching for a solution to the problems besetting Colombia.

Many U.S. policymakers and military leaders are calling for increased U.S.
aid for the Colombian military. But this will only serve to pull the United
States closer to the most abusive military forces in the hemisphere without
reducing illicit drug production or contributing to stability and democracy
in that beleaguered country.

Though the Colombian army has declared itself "reformed," the nation's
military is far from a new institution. Military collusion with
paramilitary activity on a local and regional level continues, and
paramilitary violence has escalated in the past six months. These groups
target alleged guerrilla sympathizers, but their net of terror has been
cast wide over a growing number of Colombian peace leaders and members of
civil society. More than 400 people have been killed or "disappeared" in
the first three months of this year alone, and tens of thousands more have
been forced to flee their homes.

Two generals have been cashiered be cause of evidence of participating in
human rights abuses, but the army continues to harbor many officers linked
to rights violations, including high-level commanders. General Rafael
Hernandez Lopez, for example, was named chief of staff of the Colombian
Armed Forces, despite a pending investigation for his alleged participation
in the 1996 kidnapping and murder of a guerrilla leader's family member.
Human rights organizations and Colombian judicial authorities have gathered
extensive evidence of his implication in numerous human rights violations,
including summary executions, forced disappearances, rape and torture
committed by soldiers under his command. Increased military aid is not
likely to improve the military's human rights performance.
In 1990, the United States sent a team of military advisers to Colombia to
review that country's military intelligence organizations and recommend
changes. Colombia's military intelligence apparatus was reorganized, and
clandestine intelligence networks were established that, in at least one
case, functioned as paramilitary death squads. One such group, Naval
Intelligence Network No. 7, was responsible for the murder of more than 50
civilians. Five military officials, including Lt. Col. Rodrigo Quinonez,
were found guilty last year of creating and financing this paramilitary
group in order to murder local opposition leaders and union organizers.
Quinonez remains on active duty, with only a letter of reprimand in his file.

Now, drug czar Barry McCaffrey has requested $40 million in aid for
"regional intelligence programs," part of a nearly $600 million emergency
aid package for Colombia. This despite concerns substantiated by a General
Accounting Office report revealing that U.S. intelligence shared with the
Colombian military lacks mechanisms "to ensure that it is not being used
for other than counternarcotics purposes."

Support for the Colombian military is pulling the United States into the
quagmire of a protracted and dirty counterinsurgency struggle, with no
clear policy objective. There is no evidence that focusing counternarcotics
efforts on battling the country's largest guerrilla group, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, will reduce coca
production. In fact, right-wing paramilitary groups, linked to the
Colombian security forces, are more deeply involved in drug trafficking.
Aerial fumigation has pushed a desperate peasant population further into
the jungle -- or into the arms of the insurgency.
While only Colombians can resolve their crisis, the international community
- --and particularly the United States -- can and should do much to support
an eventual negotiated settlement. We should begin by correcting the
overwhelming imbalance in U.S. aid: more than $230 million in predominantly
military assistance for counternarcotics operations, less than $10 million
for development, judicial and law enforcement and human rights.

On March 10, President Clinton apologized for the U.S. role in Guatemala's
long internal conflict, saying that "support for military forces or
intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression . . .
was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake.`' Now, a
matter of months after the president's historic apology, we risk repeating
that mistake by intervening in a counterinsurgency war that the United
States cannot win.

Clear support for human rights and civilian democracy will prevent the need
for future apologies to Colombians who have suffered enough in the name of
misguided counternarcotics policies.