COLOMBIA'S CIVIL WAR SPINS OUT OF CONTROL

The Colombian Civil War

By Bert Ruiz. McFarland. 271 pages. $45.

With our attention diverted by the al Qaida terrorist threat, many
Americans are unaware that in recent months Colombia's long running civil
war has begun to spin out of control.

Colombian drug trafficking is booming, despite the defeat of the powerful
Medellin and Cali cartels in the 1990s and the continued pressure of the
U.S. The Colombian guerrillas, made rich and powerful by their involvement
in the Colombian drug trade, now control 50 percent of the countryside and
have begun to infiltrate the major cities. Some respected military analysts
are even warning that the insurgents are capable of toppling the government.

The United States's creeping interventionism involves distributing $1.3
billion in a mostly military aid package called "Plan Colombia," which is
designed to fight drug traffickers, although the line between
counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency operations is becoming
increasingly blurred.

The U.S. is giving the aid even though the Colombian government has failed
to meet the human rights conditions set by Congress. Meanwhile,
bloodthirsty paramilitaries, with the active support of the country's
military, continue to commit some of worst human rights abuses on the
planet with impunity.

The result: after a long history of neglecting its problems, Colombia today
is a complex mess. So how can Americans get the basic information that can
help them understand what many analysts are warning could be our next Vietnam?

They can start by perusing Bert Ruiz's "The Colombian Civil War," a
succinct, well-written overview and analysis of Colombia's chronic crisis.
Ruiz, a former Wall Street executive and current chairman of the Colombian
American Association, uses a wide range of sources -- U.S. and Colombian
officials, historians, journalists, human rights activists, congressional
investigators, among others -- to present a disturbing portrait of what
Colombia has become and what it could be.

What Colombia has become is a country corrupted not just by drugs, as the
conventional political analysis would have us believe, but also by class
and greed.

Yes, the thriving drug trade has corrupted all facets of Colombian society,
including the extreme left (guerrillas) and the extreme right
(paramilitaries), who use the drug profits to wage their vicious death
struggle while murdering innocent civilians. And yes, Colombia continues to
reel on the brink of morphing into a narco democracy.

Ruiz skillfully cuts his way through these and other symptoms to identify
the real issue: the Colombian political center is not holding because the
country's "large landowners and the ruling class elite" have failed to
implement the significant reforms that can alleviate the country's
egregious social problems.

In no other Latin American country is the distinction between rich and poor
so distinctly defined. To support this thesis, Ruiz provides some startling
statistics. For example, over half of Bogota's estimated population of 8
million is classified as poor. Well over 60 percent of the poor are
unemployed, and many of those who do work earn less than $26 a month.

The Colombian civil war will not end, Ruiz argues, until the poverty issue
is addressed. Otherwise, the guerrillas' power will continue to grow. The
author warns that in a few years it will be within the guerrillas' grasp to
"combat an effective war against Colombian army forces in the country's
major areas of the country."

So what does it mean for U.S. interests? Uncle Sam continues to respond by
shoveling advisers, military equipment and intelligence information into
the growing Colombian quagmire. Little of the aid, however, is targeted to
address and relieve the country's underlying social problems. Meanwhile,
the guerrilla war with the one million-plus refugees it has created
threatens the stability of the Andean region.

The U.S. doesn't need a destabilized neighbor in its backyard as it wages
war against international terrorism. What it needs to do, though, is to use
that aid -- and its political muscle -- to help push Colombia's oligarchy
towards significant reform of the system that can give Colombia's
dispossessed hope for a future .

Ron Chepesiuk is a Professor at Winthrop University and the author of two
books on the war on drugs and numerous articles on Colombian politics. His
latest book, "Silver or Lead: the Rise and Fall of the Cali Cartel,
History's Most Powerful Mafia," will be published by Praeger Publishers.