Washington Post: Thursday, May 21, 1998; Page A27 

Colombia's Chance for Peace
By Bernard Aronson
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The United States soon will make a fateful decision about Colombia. We will 
either help launch an international peace process that could end that 
country's 30-year guerrilla war -- a war that last year claimed more than 
6,000 lives. Or we will get deeply involved in prosecuting that war and risk 
allying ourselves with paramilitary forces that recently massacred 21 
civilians, including a 4-year-old child, in a remote village in guerrilla-
controlled territory.

The stakes for the hemisphere are high. Colombia -- South America's 
second-most populous country -- supplies 80 percent of the world's 
cocaine. It is also the only country in Latin America whose guerrilla armies 
are growing stronger. They now control more than one-third of the country. 
As the war expands, it risks spilling across the border into Venezuela, the 
No. 1 oil supplier to the United States. 

Nevertheless, there are reasons for optimism. For the first time, a national 
consensus unites Colombian society in support of a negotiated settlement. A 
ballot initiative calling for negotiations gained the highest vote margin in 
Colombian electoral history. In recent weeks, also, leaders of the largest 
guerrilla army have sent messages to Washington that they support a 
negotiated settlement. The guerrillas offer -- as part of an overall political 
settlement -- to end all ties to drug trafficking and to cooperate in 
promoting alternative economic development for the peasants who grow 
coca leaf and poppy in the regions under guerrilla control. 

Moreover, the candidate positioned to win Colombia's presidency in June is 
Andres Pastrana, who four years ago blew the whistle on secret drug cartel 
campaign contributions to the current president, Ernesto Samper. Pastrana 
narrowly lost to Samper in that election. If he defeats Samper's hand-
picked candidate, he will wield the moral and political authority necessary 
to garner international backing for a peace process and to negotiate 
credibly with the guerrillas. Even Fidel Castro, the original patron of the 
guerrillas, today privately claims to support negotiations. 

There are also grave dangers. As Pastrana looks more like a sure winner, the 
drug traffickers may decide to assassinate him. In the 1990 presidential 
election, the cartels murdered the leading anti-drug candidate. Attention 
should be paid. Unfortunately, the U.S. Congress and the administration are 
embroiled in an election-year argument about who is "soft" on Colombian 
narco-trafficking. Pressure is mounting on the administration to provide 
anti-insurgency training, intelligence and aid to help the beleaguered 
Colombian army defeat the guerrillas in the name of fighting drug 
trafficking.

The army may need some short-term assistance following recent guerrilla 
victories. But the Colombian armed forces have not been able to defeat the 
guerrillas over three decades under eight different governments, and will 
not defeat them in the foreseeable future at any acceptable political and 
moral cost, regardless of U.S. assistance. The war is being waged, also, by 
irregular paramilitary forces -- some led by drug traffickers and smugglers 
-- which have massacred civilians accused of being guerrilla sympathizers. 
Allying with them would recall the worst days of El Salvador. 

The war has fostered instability, violence and a weak government with 
little or no authority over much of the countryside. That is the sea in which 
the drug traffickers swim. Widening the war will not reduce drug 
trafficking. Ending the war through negotiations would allow Colombians 
for the first time to isolate the drug cartels and their corrupt political 
allies.

The guerrillas began as committed Marxist-Leninists and currently finance 
their operations through kidnappings, extortion of oil pipeline companies 
and protection money from drug traffickers. No strategy for peace in 
Colombia should romanticize them. But before we start down the slippery 
slope of counterinsurgency, the guerrillas' offer to cooperate in ending coca 
leaf production in their zones should be tested seriously. 

As we saw in El Salvador, Guatemala, and now, perhaps, in Northern Ireland, 
there comes a time in the life of nations racked by bloody civil conflicts 
when the combatants grow weary of warfare, the larger society is pressing 
for peace, new political leaders emerge, and the chance to gain concrete 
reforms through negotiation brings all sides to the bargaining table. Such a 
moment may have come to Colombia.

A successful peace process in Colombia will require active involvement of 
the United Nations under the Security Council, including, eventually, 
deployment of peacekeepers. It also will require participation of nations in 
Latin America and Europe that have influence with all the parties, as well 
as substantial resources from the development banks and donor nations to 
help substitute legal crops for coca, finance reform of Colombian 
institutions and retrain former combatants. In the end, peace will depend 
foremost on Colombians. But now, as in the past, the leadership of the 
United States will be indispensable.

The writer was assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs 
from June 1989 to July 1993.