HELP FOR COLOMBIA

FOR NEARLY four years Colombian President Andres Pastrana led a brave and
often lonely effort to negotiate peace between his democratic government
and the guerrilla insurgents who have terrorized the country for decades.

He persevered even after members of the self-styled Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) repeatedly sabotaged the peace talks and used a
huge safe haven he granted them as a base for kidnapping and drug
trafficking. Last month Mr. Pastrana granted the FARC a last chance to work
out a cease-fire; it responded with 170 armed attacks in 30 days,
culminating in the hijacking of a plane carrying the president of the
Colombian Senate's peace commission. Mr. Pastrana's decision this past week
to break off the peace process and order the army into the safe haven was
painful but inevitable; most Colombians saw it as long overdue.

An important U.S. ally in Latin America, Colombia now faces the escalation
of a war that has killed some 40,000 people in the past decade. It needs,
and deserves, a decisive change in what has been an unreasonably restricted
program of U.S. support.

The FARC has tens of thousands of fighters spread across the countryside,
many of them engaged in cocaine trafficking as well as the massacre and
abduction of civilians.

There are also two other large guerrilla organizations, including one of
the far-right that, in the name of fighting leftists, traffics in drugs and
regularly slaughters innocent villagers and farmers. All three groups are
on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

Compared with this threat and the country's size, the Colombian army is
understaffed, undertrained and underequipped. Many of its officers have
tolerated or even collaborated with the right-wing paramilitaries, and some
units have committed their own human rights abuses. Mr. Pastrana and other
Colombian leaders oppose the army's abuses and understand that they cannot
end the violence by military means alone.

Yet the past several years have demonstrated that the first step to a
solution must be strengthening and professionalizing the government forces
so that they can regain credibility with Colombians and pose a credible
threat to the guerrillas.

Though the United States has given Colombia some $2 billion in aid in
recent years, it has also hamstrung its ally. U.S. military assistance and
equipment, including 50 helicopters, can be used only against drug
traffickers, not guerrillas. The congressional Democrats who have insisted
on the restrictions have justified this policy by citing the army's human
rights record; they also claim that more substantial U.S. military aid will
lead to a Vietnam-like quagmire.

The comparison of Colombia's conflict to that Cold War battle four decades
ago is ludicrous. If a model exists, it is that of El Salvador, where a
sustained U.S. effort to strengthen and professionalize the military during
the 1980s eventually forced a Marxist insurgent movement to abandon
violence and reach a negotiated solution.

To its credit, the Bush administration has recently begun moving to adjust
Colombia policy to reflect its commitment to fighting terrorism after Sept.
11. The administration's new 2003 budget proposes $600 million in aid,
including $98 million for a program to help the army defend a crucial oil
pipeline repeatedly bombed by the insurgents. The administration is also
reportedly considering the sharing of intelligence about guerrilla
movements, just as it does with other governments around the world.

Congress should support that step, and also grant Mr. Pastrana's request
that U.S.-supplied helicopters and other equipment be freed for the fight
against the insurgents. This moderate democracy in the heart of the
Americas is now fighting for its survival; the United States cannot fail to
come to its defense.