PERPETUAL REVENGE BLEEDS COLOMBIA

This is a bleak, sad and ultimately despairing look at Colombia, the Job of
modern nations. Beset by violence -- political and criminal -- and by some
innovative blends of both, the nation seems stalled in a nightmarish
backwater of history.

Author Robin Kirk has done brave work in Colombia to advance the cause of
decency and human rights -- to little avail. Her politics lean leftward,
and her sympathy for the ideals that launched the country's enduring
Marxist rebel movements 50 years ago is clear. But her political
sensibility is confounded by the reality of Colombia.

No closer to victory today than when they started, the Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) and its lesser cousin, the Ejercito de
Liberacion Nacional (ELN), are still bombing, kidnapping and killing, as
are the private, right-wing "self-defense" armies that help fight them;
called autodefensas, or paramilitaries, these latter have longstanding ties
to the Colombian army. Both sides take out their fury primarily on hapless
civilians, most of whom have little sympathy for either side.

Drug Greed By All

The struggle is post-ideological. Both sides are rich with drug money,
having assumed leadership of the flamboyant criminal cartels that were
crushed with U.S. assistance in the 1980s and 1990s. Neither side has a
coherent political philosophy or a vision for the nation. Both are driven
by greed, ambition and revenge.

Kirk's liberal assumptions have been overturned by this intractable
dilemma. The murder of Josue Giraldo Cardona, a Colombian activist she
deeply admired, has left her feeling defeated: "To me, the obstacles seemed
insurmountable." The country's course has left her confused: "The point of
Colombia's war eludes me."

But the cause of Colombia's misery is no great mystery. The violence
endures because there is no authority to stop it. Outside the major cities,
in the jungles, plains and mountains, there has never been a consistent
presence of law and order and the institutions necessary for civil society.
That's why the country has long provided safe haven for bandits, smugglers
and guerrillas. Until its anemic central government lays claim to all of
its spectacularly beautiful land, the violence will continue.

Anyone who has ever wondered what life is like in a lawless zone need only
consider the dilemma of the butchers of Tierralta. As Kirk tells it, the
FARC began stealing cattle from wealthier ranchers and trading them with
poorer farmers. The guerrillas would trade five stolen steers for one
legitimate one. So the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), a
paramilitary army headed by Carlos Castano, began killing butchers in the
region who dressed the meat. The FARC countered by killing butchers who
refused to dress the meat.

"Over the previous months there had been dozens of reports of butchers
killed, their bodies eviscerated, burned with acid, dismembered, beheaded,
castrated, and dumped at the roadside," Kirk writes. She tells how her
efforts and those of other human-rights activists have failed again and
again to curb this kind of terror.

Numbed By Outrage

Her book makes a useful contribution. As far as I know, it is the only
account of modern Colombian history in English. It is not scholarly, but
brisk and colorful, even if its litany of atrocities begins to feel more
like a catalog than a narrative. The carnage just piles up and up, one
discovery of a mass grave following another, until we are simply numbed by
the outrages, and they fail to move us.

Kirk intersperses this bloody history with accounts of her own often daring
journeys in Colombia but doesn't pull them together into a coherent story
of personal discovery and change. She offers only brief, superficial
portraits of the courageous figures -- like her doomed friend Cardona --
who sacrifice themselves heroically against intractable odds. Here and
there she makes a self-conscious, ill-advised effort to imitate the style
of Colombian Nobelist Gabriel Garca Marquez -- "It was in the square that
Josue saw men preparing to kill him. He saw them from a seat in a coffee
shop. They saw him from a spot in the square. That moment is part of the
story I want to tell."

She also finds plenty of fault with the U.S. role in this conflict,
pointing out that it's the millions this country spends on illicit drugs
that finance the guerrillas and paramilitaries, just as U.S. tax dollars
support the Colombian army and police. This is familiar territory -- U.S.
money is paying for both sides of the war -- and not particularly
enlightening. Illegal drug use has hardly been encouraged by U.S.
government policies, and the tax dollars the United States spends in
Colombia to strengthen its government are vital and appropriate.

I recommend the book to anyone who wants an overview of the tangled local
politics that have produced such characters as Medelln cartel kingpin Pablo
Escobar, FARC leader "Marulanda" (Pedro Marn) and paramilitary commander
Castano. But don't look for answers or insight. Kirk doesn't have any.

The Colombian people are less bewildered. Kirk may despair of finding a way
out of this bloody anarchy, but the country voted overwhelmingly last year
(by the largest electoral majority in the nation's history) to elect as
president Alvaro Uribe, who has pledged to govern the whole country, and to
make war on the guerrillas and the paramilitaries. Sometimes, regrettably,
war is the answer.

MORE TERRIBLE THAN DEATH: Massacres, Drugs, and America's War in Colombia

By Robin Kirk

PublicAffairs, 311 pp., $27.50

Mark Bowden is the author of "Black Hawk Down" and "Killing Pablo."