JUST SAY "NO" TO A BILLION DOLLARS FOR STATE-SPONSORED TERRORISM

Mention Colombia and the first thing most Americans think of is
drugs, and secondly violence. What most people don't realize is that
there are more than ten 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 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 that most Americans know nothing about. Even
at the height of President Reagan's war in El Salvador in the 1980s,
US 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 in order to discourage
opposition 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 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 US officials or their local
allies could win.

Washington's problem in Colombia is that the guerrillas are much more
entrenched, for various historical and geographical 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 convinced Colombian President Andres Pastrana to
pursue peace negotiations, which began in January. But Columbia'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 citizens' organizations that are seen as
"subversive."

The social and political causes of the war cry out for a negotiated
solution. Seventy percent of the land is owned by three percent of the
population, and 42% 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 US
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 another $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 in Congress will stand up 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?

Mark Weisbrot
Research director at the Preamble Center,
Washington, D.C.