CORRUPT COLOMBIA: A NATION UNDER SIEGE

BOGOTA, Colombia Welcome to the Beirut of Latin America. The fear and
tension begin as soon as you arrive at Bogota's spooky, Third World
airport. Security personnel eye you menacingly. Outside, hands clutch at
you in the dark.

Bogota, a sprawling city of 7 million perched at 7,800 feet in the
northern Andes, is not for the faint of heart. I've seen many scary places
in my years; Bogota ranks right at the top.

A pall of fear hangs over this sinister metropolis. The downtown area is a
nogo zone. Wise people here pack pistols, and won't drive after dark.
Houses and apartment buildings are protected by high steel fences and
guntoting guards.

Armed holdups, kidnappings and robberies are the norm. This morning's
paper for example, showed a picture of a 50year old woman who had been
kidnapped outside her home in Bogota, with a pathetic plea by her family to
the abductors to begin ransom negotiations.

Heavily armed police and soldiers are everywhere: this is a city and
nation under siege. Despite these massive deployments, security in Colombia
is almost nil. This large nation of 33 million, so rich in agriculture and
natural resources, is in a terrible mess. Unemployment is 25%.

Colombia has three crushing problems. First, drugs. Despite the killing of
drug lord Pablo Escobar and his henchmen, the $50 billion annual cocaine
and marijuana trade flourishes unabated. The Medellin cartel was broken up;
but like the Mafia in North America, new gangsters simply replaced old ones.

Today, the Cali mob dominates the drug trade. These powerful
narcotraficantes, with their own private armies and mountains of cash,
either buy off politicians and police or murder the few brave patriots
who oppose their reign of terror.

Cocaine flows relentlessly to North America and Europe. The U.S. ships
Colombia an equally addictive, more lethal, alkaloid nicotine and arms.
The muchballyhooed war on drugs is a political farce: only 10% of
shipments are stopped.

Drug money

Colombia's government is the second problem. President Ernesto Samper is
widely believed to have been bankrolled by the drug barons. His
administration is paralyzed, utterly corrupted, and unable to deal with the
nation's mounting problems.

Third, internal warfare has made Colombia a second Lebanon. A bloody,
demented civil war raged from 19481963 that killed 400,000 civilians. Two
groupings of powerful families, calling themselves Liberals and
Conservatives, used private armies to battle for control of land and
resources.

As the civil war was dying down, a major communist insurrection, initiated
and armed by Cuba and the Soviet Union, erupted in 1963. Today, three
separate Marxist guerrilla groups, fielding 15,000 wellarmed men, are
fighting the central government. Having long ago lost their ideological
fervor, they are really bandit armies, operating under the cover of
communism.

The guerrillas have become extremely rich from kidnapping and extortion of
businesses. Their assets, hidden in European banks, amount to hundreds of
millions of dollars. They have turned much of rural Colombia into a
noman's land.

Travel anywhere in Colombia, as I found, is exceptionally difficult and
dangerous. Guerrillas routinely block roads and seize car or bus
passengers, collecting tolls or kidnapping any who look wealthy.

Army security checks do little but impede traffic. Marxist guerrillas and
the drug barons are now deeply in cahoots. The

guerrillas provide muscle and firepower for the narcotraficantes, keeping
the overstretched Colombian Army on the defensive. Constant extortion by
guerrillas has forced large, multinational oil companies here to hire
private armies of pistoleros to protect their operations and personnel.

British Petroleum has spent US$15 million on its private army in the past
three years. Now BP has apparently hired the Colombian Army's entire 8th
Division to provide security. The guerrilla groups cleverly countered this
move by gulling their naive, leftwing supporters in Europe into launching
a loud campaign accusing Colombia and the multinationals of human rights
abuses.

The army and police are unable to do more than protect major cities from
attack. Landowners have formed their own private armies of vicious thugs to
battle the guerrillas and common bandits. Even so, the Marxists stage
audacious bank robberies and kidnappings, even in Bogota's suburbs. A third
of Colombia's municipalities are under some degree of guerrilla control.

Many have fled

No one here is safe. Hundreds of politicians and senior police officials
have been murdered, along with their families. Two dozen political
candidates were killed in recent elections. Many wealthy and middle class
Colombians have fled for good to Miami or Canada.

Washington doesn't know what to do about Colombia's rapid deterioration.
It has cut aid, and last year even denied President Samper a tourist visa.
But isolating Colombia only helps antigovernment forces. Meanwhile, like
Lebanon from 197592, Colombia is disintegrating into armed camps run by
local gangs and warlords masquerading as political movements.

Colombians, a warm, charming people, have tragically become international
outcasts. Their beautiful, naturally rich nation is being relentlessly
destroyed by some of the most evil, vicious thugs on Earth.

The only possible solution I can see is dreadful: a military coup followed
by a ruthless, Argentinestyle "dirty war" to utterly exterminate the
Marxist bandits and drug lords who have kidnapped this entire nation.