Not smart for U.S. to get involved in Colombia's war

Houston Chronicle
By Adriana Lopez
29 July 1999
This Month's News | CSN Home

The United States should start thinking quick and hard about the grave consequences of military intervention in Colombia's civil war.

On July 26, the Clinton administration's top anti-drug officer, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and State Department and military officials arrived in Colombia to assess the deepening crisis in that country. The United States stands ready to offer $1 billion in emergency assistance ostensibly to bolster the war on drugs. But that aid may end up financing the Colombian military's brutal war against the guerrillas.

McCaffrey said, "The United States has paid inadequate attention to a serious and growing emergency."

I fear that what McCaffrey means by "attention" is sending in more American troops to Colombia, selling more arms and war vehicles, installing more surveillance satellites and exacerbating an already dangerous crisis.

Tensions in the area are at an all-time high. The wreckage of a missing U.S. reconnaissance plane, on an anti-drug mission with five American soldiers and two Colombian military officers on board, was spotted Sunday in the jungles close to the border with Ecuador.

This southwest region of Colombia is bristling with guerrilla activity, and there is speculation that the FARC, Colombia's largest rebel army, may have brought down the plane. The United States is saying that it was probably an accident due to poor visibility.

Any U.S. disaster on Colombian territory can cause civilians on both sides of the Panama Canal to walk on eggshells.

Colombia is at a vulnerable, desperate stage, with an economy at its lowest point in 70 years. Meanwhile, peace negotiations between the FARC and President Andres Pastrana seem like a comic farce. Groups like the FARC and the ELN, another rebel group, have gained power over 40 percent of the rural countryside of Colombia and are now heavily involved in cocaine and heroin trade. The Colombian military and paramilitary squads are also involved in the drug trade. Fear has spread even to Bogota, where the FARC, the army and paramilitary groups have brought their skirmishes to the outskirts of the capital city.

Colombia is the third largest recipient of American aid after Israel and Egypt. The country is expected to receive $289 million in assistance for crop eradication and anti-drug programs this year alone. Many Colombians want the outside economic help but prefer to fight their war by themselves.

President Clinton's unwavering support for Pastrana and the recent rise in guerrilla presence has many in Latin America concerned about permanent American involvement in their region. Peru, Brazil and Venezuela have made recent statements condemning any outside interference in Colombia.

Colombia's future could be a hell. The last vestiges of democracy may give way to a military dictatorship. Colombia's rulers may move to wipe out guerrilla activity and engage in widespread human-rights abuses, as occurred in Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala, with the help of the U.S. government. The United States must never bolster another military dictatorship in any part of Latin America again.

During this deteriorating political and economic situation in Colombia, the United States should be supplying more economic and less military aid. American troops should be kept out of this volatile region.

I don't want to be left waiting for some kind of incident that "threatens U.S. interests" and pushes this country into another ugly Latin American war. Colombians shouldn't have to be the new war refugees in the United States.

Lopez is a free-lance writer living in New York City.