WAR WITHOUT END, AMEN

WORLDBEAT: Call it revolutionary struggle, self-defence, the maintenance of
public order or settling scores, it amounts to the same thing -- misery for
the people of Colombia

BOGOTA -- If you had to watch the television news Colombians have to watch,
you'd probably want someone other than Peter Mansbridge or Lloyd Robertson
reading it. Here's an example of a single recent newscast.

Item one: The army took control today of a place called Campamento -- not
far from Colombia's second largest city, Medellin -- after fighting between
left-wing guerrillas and right-wing squads known as paramilitaries left at
least 25 dead. (Later reports said nearly 50 bodies were found and the toll
could be as high as 200.)

Item two: Three people died in a clash between government troops and the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the largest of two left-wing
insurgent groups. The site was just 30 kilometres from Bogota, Colombia's
capital and largest city.

Item three: Prosecutors began an on-site investigation of the killing of
119 civilians, one of the worst massacres in nearly four decades of
internal war. It happened on May 2 in the northwest jungle town of Bojaya.
FARC rebels fighting paramilitaries fired a bomb made out of a cooking-gas
tank toward a church where the civilians had taken refuge.

Item four: Police, aided by U.S. drug enforcement agents in Cali,
Colombia's third-largest city, said they had arrested 25 drug smugglers who
stuffed heroin into shoes before exporting it to the United States.

Item five: FARC guerrillas surrounded a town of 800 in central Caldas
province, seeking to take possession of it. Another town was under siege in
the northwest by the smaller leftist group, the National Liberation Army (ELN).

And, for relief, item six: an 11-year-old schoolgirl was killed when a
model volcano constructed for a school science project blew up accidentally.

I don't know what to say about that last item, other than to think of it as
destiny's twisted idea of a joke. What I do know, after eight visits to
Colombia since 1985, is that life in this vibrant nation of 42 million is
haunted by the spectre of violent death.

It dances over the rugged mountains, the rain forests, the beaches and the
windy plateaus, and touches down seemingly at will. It calls itself
revolutionary struggle, self-defence, the maintenance of public order,
taking care of business, settling scores, honour, virtue, even peace. In
the end it amounts to the same thing. And all too often -- as in a clash
this week in the slums of Medellin, where two children were killed when
police and soldiers stormed a rebel stronghold -- the victims are people
who have never taken sides.

The homicide rate here is about 30 times that of Canada's, and many
killings go unsolved. Besides criminal activity, about 3,500 deaths occur
each year as a result of what Colombians call "the armed conflict," or
simply "the war" -- shorthand for the clashes involving different
combinations of the FARC, the ELN, the paramilitaries and the armed forces.

Guerrilla war is history almost everywhere else in Latin America. But the
FARC, whose insurgency is now 38 years old, thrives on the proceeds of drug
trafficking and kidnapping for ransom. So does its bitter adversary, the
right-wing army known as the United Self-Defence Groups of Colombia (AUC).
Both of them have been responsible for major human-rights abuses. (The
government and the armed forces have been desultory, to say the least,
about cleaning up their own ranks.) Both of them have political objectives,
but minimal popular support. As far as I can determine, "the conflict" is
now the longest war in the Americas since the European conquest five
centuries ago. And it's not that far from home. If there were direct air
service, you could fly from Toronto to Bogota in just six hours.

Colombians will vote on Sunday for a new president, and not surprisingly
the war, usually referred to as "security," is the major theme in the
election campaign -- overshadowing a crippling economic recession. For many
years, most Colombians paid relatively little attention to the rebel
groups, but that is no longer possible. More than 2,000 people were
kidnapped last year by rebels and criminals, forcing families and employers
into a desperate search for ransom money. Bridges and electricity pylons
are blown up; a strategic oil pipeline was bombed 178 times last year. More
than 200 municipalities are under rebel control. The FARC, with 17,000
members, and the AUC, with 9,000, are essentially self-sufficient, and the
army, with 55,000 combat troops, is not even close to victory.

Because the government is impotent in large sections of the country,
Colombians who are poor -- in other words, most of them -- have no recourse
to authority when they find themselves used as pawns in other people's
battles. Driven from their homes by the conflict, more than a million have
swelled the slums of major cities and towns. Meanwhile, the rich and the
semi-rich circumscribe their lives drastically in an effort to avoid
kidnapping or robbery. Without security -- meaning, at the very least,
effective containment of both the armed conflict and the criminal behaviour
that surrounds it -- few will dare to invest here, and long-term plans will
be almost impossible to make.

Presidential candidates have proposed all manner of ways to bring security
to Colombia. There is talk of social investment to stop young Colombians
from drifting into violence and the drug trade, and of getting the peace
process restarted by reaching a limited accord with armed groups on
humanitarian concerns. But many Colombians want a much tougher line,
especially since the collapse of a three-year attempt at peace talks.

The country's next president will almost certainly be a hard-liner named
Alvaro Uribe Velez. He's a slight, cerebral former state governor with the
air of a missionary, who has promised all-out war against the rebels and
paramilitaries. No one knows where he will find the money to double the
size of the police and the army, as he has pledged to do. No one knows how
his scary proposal to create a million-strong network of informers is
actually supposed to work. Many are suspicious of his past, which includes,
if nothing else, evidence of insufficient attention to the rise of
paramilitaries. It doesn't matter. Everything else sounds too much like the
last couple of decades, and if there's one thing no Colombian wants, it's
more of the same.

If he becomes president in August, Mr. Uribe will likely ask the rest of
the world for more help -- including military aid.

This is truly a country in despair, and it might seem unhelpful to turn
down such a request.

But I hope those unlucky people who have to make the decision will keep in
mind the pall of suffering that already hangs over Colombia, for in the
short term, total war is likely to thicken it.