Tracknum: .v04011702b4a4fdea2d7f Pubdate: Fri, 14 Jan 2000 Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Copyright: 2000 San Jose Mercury News Contact: 750 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95190 Fax: (408) 271-3792 Website: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Author: BERNARDO RUIZ U.S. FUELS CIVIL WAR IN COLOMBIA THE Clinton administration's recent proposal of a $1.3 billion military aid package to Colombia can only worsen human rights in a country with one of the worst human-rights records in the world. Colombia's civil war has been raging for more than three decades now. Increasing funds and arms to the Colombian military will only prolong that bloody conflict. Funding the Colombian military is tantamount to using U.S. taxpayer money to support further human-rights violations. Tens of thousands have already died in Colombia's civil war. Amnesty International reports that an estimated 2,000 Colombians died or ``disappeared'' in politically motivated killings in 1999 alone. The Colombian military is closely linked to violent paramilitaries, including the Armed Self-Defense Units of Colombia, which claimed responsibility for a 1997 massacre of 30 peasants. According to a U.S. State Department report, of armed attacks in 1997, paramilitaries perpetrated 60 percent, guerrillas committed 23.5 percent, and the army 7.5 percent. Clinton administration officials continue to falsely claim that U.S. aid is combating the narcotics trade when, in fact, it is also being used to fight the guerrillas. The equipment and training the United States is providing -- 62 helicopters and two more elite battalions -- demonstrate that this is not just a drug war. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia -- Colombia's largest guerrilla insurgency -- is linked with the drug trade. But so are Colombia's other armed actors, including the military. According to a U.S. General Accounting Office report dated June 1999, the paramilitaries are also increasingly involved in drug trafficking. The Clinton administration's exclusive focus on the guerrilla groups shows that the war on drugs is as much about politics and ideology as it is about drugs. U.S. policy toward Colombia seeks to continue the traditional projection of U.S. power in Latin America. General Charles Wilhelm, head of the Miami-based U.S. Southern Command, has asserted that Colombia now constitutes the principal problem for Western Hemispheric security. This and the recent loss of the Panama Canal bolster the view that an increased U.S. presence in the region is a necessity. And the aid fails to address the question of U.S. drug consumption. According to the 1998 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, an estimated 13.6 million Americans were current illicit drug users. That's 6.2 percent of the population. If we invested a fraction of the money earmarked for Colombia in rehabilitation and alternatives to incarceration, it would be a dramatic step toward curbing the flow of drugs north. We shouldn't watch our tax dollars being squandered for an irrational drug policy. Nor should we send money to a military that's connected to death squads. Bernardo Ruiz is associate editor of Report on the Americas, the magazine for the North American Congress on Latin America.