CONTRIBUTING TO COLOMBIA'S DIRTY WAR

Mention Colombia and the first thing most Americans think of is drugs, and
the second is violence.

Yet there are more than 10 times as many political murders in Colombia as
there are drug-related killings. And these political murders are being
funded with U.S. tax dollars.

The Clinton administration upped the ante last week with a proposal for a
billion dollars of "anti-drug aid" -- widely acknowledged to be
indistinguishable from other military assistance -- to the government of
Colombia over the next fiscal year. And now the peace talks between the
government and guerrillas that were supposed to resume this week have been
postponed.

A billion dollars is an enormous amount of money to fight an
extraordinarily dirty war about which most Americans know nothing. Even at
the height of President Reagan's war in El Salvador in the 1980s, U.S.
spending did not reach that amount.

The Colombian war is very similar to the 1980s war in El Salvador -- or
Guatemala, for that matter.

As in the Salvadoran war, most of the victims are innocent people -- labor
leaders, peasants and even human-rights workers. They are killed by the
government or its allies, who often use hideous torture and mutilation to
discourage their opponents' political activity.

And most of the murders and atrocities are carried out by paramilitary
groups with close links to the army and police. This allows the Colombian
government to deny responsibility, and allows U.S. officials to pretend
that they are aiding a democratic government.

These methods were brutally successful in El Salvador, from Washington's
point of view. After literally killing off most of the opposition's leaders
and organizers, it is now possible to have national elections in which even
former guerrilla leaders can run, without risk that anyone upsetting to
U.S. officials or their local allies may win.

Washington's problem in Colombia is that the guerrillas are much more
entrenched, for various historical and geographic reasons. The two main
guerrilla groups now control about half the national territory, and can
blow up oil pipelines whenever they want.

These realities -- as well as the overwhelming popular desire for an end to
the war -- have persuaded Colombian President Andres Pastrana to pursue
peace negotiations, which he began to do in January.

But Colombia's military, its drug-rich and commercial elite, and of course,
the paramilitary death squads want to pursue a "Salvadoran" solution: fight
the rebels while killing and terrorizing their potential supporters among
the so-called "subversive" citizens' organizations.

The social and political causes of the war cry out for a negotiated
solution. Seventy percent of the land is owned by 3 percent of the
population, and 42 percent of children do not make it to the fifth grade.
In the 1980s an amnesty was granted so that the left could participate in
the political process, but those who did were murdered at a rate of one
every 39 hours.

The United States has been less than supportive of the latest peace
overtures. Our government informed Pastrana that the demilitarized zone
that he created as a concession to the rebels must not get in the way of
anti-drug activities. But the paramilitary death squads, as everyone knows,
are much more tightly linked to big-time drug traffickers than the
guerrillas -- yet this does not seem to concern U.S. officials.

The facts of the Colombian situation are well-known. Human-rights groups in
this country -- including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch --
and even our own State Department recognize that the Colombian government
is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the 35,000 political
murders committed there over the last decade.

The Colombian army has publicly stated that its targets include civilians
across a broad array of citizens' organizations that it considers
"subversive." And our own government has pretty much given up the pretense
that its military aid is supposed to be used for "anti-drug" activities, as
opposed to taking sides in this dirty civil war.

Yet we are about to give Colombia a billion dollars in military aid, plus
$3 billion from the IMF and an additional $2 billion from other
multilateral institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank. Our
military is now sharing intelligence with theirs, oblivious to the
atrocities that may be committed with the help of this information.

For 78 days American planes bombed Serbia, supposedly to defend the human
rights of the Kosovars.

Now who will stand up in Congress for the human rights of Colombians, by
saying No to this latest billion-dollar installment to a government that
rules its people by means of terror?