DOES COLOMBIA COUNT IN THE WAR ON TERROR?

Thirty-year-old Maria Gladys Quiroga migrated from Colombia's rural
Santander province to Bogota more than a decade ago. Her most recent job
was in the kitchen at the upscale Club Nogal with her income going to raise
and educate her daughter. On Friday night a terrorist car bomb at the club
took her life.

Another victim in the attack was 23-year-old Yesid Castiblanco, a waiter in
the club's restaurant. He loved his job, his family told Bogota's El
Tiempo. "He said that besides learning about rare wines and food, he could
also learn English," according to his aunt.

In all, the blast claimed 35 lives and left well over 170 injured,
including a few passing by on the sidewalk. The club was hosting a wedding,
a girls' ballet program and a children's party. A 12-year-old that survived
had her leg amputated earlier this week. Her twin brother escaped unharmed
but her parents and her four-year-old sister were killed.

This is the face of terrorism, cowardly and cruel. It professes noble goals
while it gleefully annihilates babies, young men brimming with dreams,
humble mothers working to give their children a better future. Maimed
orphans are its trophies. Its main purpose is to instill fear. Survivors
are left to wonder who will be next.

Fighting terror is a nasty task yet a nation that yields to it faces
tyranny. Few countries understand this better now than the U.S. and
Colombia, both of which have suffered at the hands of terrorists. Both have
sworn to fight. Why is it, then, that the U.S. offers Colombia so little
support?

After Sept. 11, the U.S. launched a counter-attack against al Qaeda and its
supporters. Colombia faces an equally diabolical enemy linked to
international terror networks but America has scarcely acknowledged its
problem. A fair question for Colombians to ask is whether the U.S. doesn't
see the parallelism or practices a double standard where Latin America is
concerned.

Just think what the U.S. reaction would be if, in response to the Friday
attack, Colombia rounded up 200 FARC suspects and held them in its own Camp
X-Ray. For much less, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe already is labeled
"authoritarian" or "right-wing" in the American press. In fact, although he
wants to get tough with terrorists, he is a political moderate with a keen
appreciation for the rule of law and a sensitivity to the suffering of the
rebels' victims.

Mr. Uribe knows from his days in war-torn Antioquia province that
organizing civilians so they can defend themselves is key to defeating
terror. European and American leftists seem to think that shooting people
should be a right reserved for the "revolutionaries" they so much admire.

Things are not much better among the Americans who make policy toward
Colombia. Washington plays into the hands of a popular guerrilla tactic
known as judicial warfare. Peasants from rebel strongholds are sent into
court to make accusations of human-rights violations against military
officers. The rebels know that U.S. policy is to pressure Colombia to
relieve any officer so accused or risk losing aid. It is no accident that
the victims of this tactic have been the most capable military leaders.
Almost all have been cleared but their finances and careers have been
destroyed.

This systematic dismantling of the military leadership at the behest of the
U.S. has been a big blow to military morale and has done great damage to
the country's defenses. "The officers don't like judicial warfare so they
don't go after the bad guys the way they should," says one Colombian
military expert. The effect, exactly what the rebels want, is a massive
security vacuum in rural Colombia, in which criminals flourish. The
paramilitary grew out of this chaos, first as a militia paid to defend
landowners. Later some of them took to crime as well.

This is no civil war. Support for the largest rebel army, the FARC, which
has ties to international terrorists like the Irish Republican Army and
Spain's Basque separatists ETA, has been estimated by opinion samplers at
about 3% of the population. The rebels prosper only through a powerful and
savvy alliance with the Northern Cali cartel and other narcotics
traffickers. These rebels-cum-mafioso run a vertically integrated criminal
organization that professes an interest in social justice while making big
bucks through kidnapping and drug trafficking. Their goals are money and
power. Starry-eyed sympathizers in Manhattan salons and Senate offices find
them romantic.

Until now, Colombia's rebel conflict, which has taken an estimated 35,000
lives over the last decade, has been largely rural. The Friday explosion
appears to be a shift in strategy, designed to hit Colombia's well-to-do
urban population right in the gut. The message to Mr. Uribe is that if the
guerrillas are not free to roam rural Colombia and terrorize peasants, they
will attack the country's leadership. For many Colombians it is painfully
reminiscent of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's terror strategy designed to
force drafters of the 1991 constitution to make extradition
unconstitutional. Escobar achieved that goal with a ruthless series of
bombings and murders.

The FARC is kept alive by the voracious appetites of U.S. and European drug
consumers who crave the coca leaf, ground down to a fine mind-altering
powder and stuffed up the nostril. This demand keeps prices up and the
rebels rolling in cash, recruits and weapons. The moral burden is, of
course, on the drug users. Prohibition has made little headway against the
illicit trade in "controlled substances."

Given the complexity of the problem and U.S. complicity, it is hardly
defensible for America to ask Colombia to fight the criminal networks under
rules of conduct more suitable for Girl Scouts. Its army is short of
weaponry and surveillance equipment that the U.S. could easily supply, not
to mention the absence of U.S. moral support.

After Sept. 11, one would think the U.S. would have a more sympathetic
understanding of what Colombia is up against and an appreciation of
America's moral responsibility. But left leaning Latin Americanists in
congress and the State Department seem to be still fighting the Cold War,
on the wrong side.