U.S. POLICY IN COLOMBIA

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting Colombia recently, praised the
success of U.S. military aid there. Colombia is the third largest recipient
of U.S. aid. On a recent Witness for Peace delegation to Colombia, I saw
what this aid accomplishes.

Colombia's army is now "pacifying" urban neighborhoods by forcibly rounding
up community activists on the pretext of supposed ties to leftist rebel
groups. We visited displaced people on the hillsides above Medellin who
were terrorized by one of these middle-of-the-night military raids a week
before our visit - terror paid for in part with our tax dollars.

Meanwhile, ties between right-wing paramilitary groups and the Colombian
army allow mercenary thugs to do the government's dirty work while the army
claims to have cleaned up its act.

In the south, U.S.-supplied aircraft spray small farmers with the harsh
chemicals found in Roundup to eradicate coca. Imagine a similar policy here
that sought to control cigarette smoking by spraying Kentucky's tobacco
farmers with harmful herbicides.

This aerial fumigation seriously harms human health, destroys farmers'
licit crops and degrades a fragile ecosystem. I thought this administration
was opposed to chemical warfare.

Our fumigation strategy ignores the economic realities that drive small
farmers to cultivate the one crop that brings them a livable income in the
context of very high demand in the U.S., and a global marketplace stacked
against their other crops.

Rumsfeld admits that supply-side counter-narcotics strategies have failed
in Afghanistan (Boston Globe, Aug. 16). Why, then, do we continue to pursue
such strategies in Colombia, rather than education, treatment and other
more-effective demand-side approaches?

Perhaps this war isn't about drugs at all. After 9/11, drug war
restrictions for U.S. military aid to Colombia were lifted, and "Plan
Colombia" became part of the "war on terror." But, according to analysts
with whom we met, this is really a counter-insurgency war, like the Central
American wars of the `80s run by the same crowd now holding sway in the
Bush administration.

As in Iraq, our unquenchable thirst for oil is a key factor. While we were
there in January, new U.S. troops arrived to assist Colombia in guarding
the oil pipeline of U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum.

The time has come to suspend military aid, abandon aerial fumigation and
join with other countries in brokering an internationally monitored peace
agreement. Then we can redirect funds toward a serious national effort to
reduce the demand side of the drug problem while assisting Colombian
farmers with viable economic alternatives to coca. Otherwise, Sens. Mitch
McConnell and Jim Bunning and Reps. Anne Northup and Ernie Fletcher, in
their shortsighted and counterproductive support for Plan Colombia, are
guilty of throwing gasoline on a long-smoldering fire.

RICK AXTELL

Danville, Ky.