THE WAR IN COLOMBIA INTENSIFIES

Things may get a lot worse before they get any better in Colombia, the site
of the bloodiest and longest-running conflict in the Americas. Last month
President Andres Pastrana abandoned a failed three-year-old peace process
with the country's largest leftist guerrilla movement, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, and ordered the army to reoccupy an enormous and
desolate southern area that he had ceded to the insurgents.

It was a justified move. Exploiting its safe haven to engage in drug
trafficking and profitable kidnappings, the guerrilla group, known by the
acronym FARC, had shown little inclination to engage in meaningful peace
talks. The government's hand was ultimately forced by the group's hijacking
of an airliner to kidnap a prominent Colombian senator. Most Colombians
overwhelmingly support the offensive against the FARC, despite
well-grounded concerns that the guerrillas may conduct an urban terrorist
campaign in retaliation. The international community is also supportive of
President Pastrana's decision.

If the past is any guide, however, the government may soon cede the moral
high ground. The Colombian Army has a poor human rights record, and as the
conflict intensifies, the army may feel emboldened to ignore such issues
further. President Pastrana has mistakenly given the military too much
power in governing areas of conflict. Both he and his military commanders
should know that the world will be watching, and judging, how civilians who
are caught in the crossfire are treated.

Bolstered in recent years by American training and more than $1 billion in
aid, ostensibly earmarked to help it fight the drug trade, the Colombian
Army says it has become a stronger, more professional and more democratic
force. This assertion is too often belied by its closeness to right-wing
paramilitary groups that massacre innocent civilians in the name of waging
counterinsurgency.

The Colombian government must show a determination to crack down on
right-wing paramilitary forces that also engage in the drug trade to
finance their terror with the same fervor it fights the 17,000- member
FARC. The Bush administration and Congress must resist the temptation to
use America's war on terror elsewhere as an excuse to more deeply involve
the United States in this decades-long conflict. The United States can best
help the Colombian people by conditioning any further military aid on an
improvement in the army's human rights record.

Colombia holds legislative elections tomorrow and will elect a new
president in May. The frustration with the stalled peace process has made
public opinion more hawkish, but ultimately the only lasting solution to
the country's epidemic of violence is a political settlement. The
short-term hope is that increased military pressure will drive the
guerrillas to a more conciliatory position, and that in waging the fight,
Colombia's army can finally gain the respect of the very people it purports
to defend.