Pubdate: Fri, 29 Mar 2002
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2002 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Mary Anastasia O'grady, Editor
Section: The Americas

COLOMBIA'S ANTI-TERRORIST EFFORTS DESERVE U.S. HELP

In 1996, retired Colombian General Farouk Yanine worked at the 
Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C. His boss was two-star 
U.S. General John Thompson. "One day he walked into my office and requested 
time off," says General Thompson. "He said he wanted to return to Colombia 
to answer charges that he had violated human rights." The accusation was 
for crimes in a region that he had long since left when they supposedly 
occurred.

General Yanine was a decorated soldier, confident of his innocence. 
Colombians widely recognize that he pacified the Magdalena Medio region, a 
hotbed of guerrilla activity. When he left his command there in 1985, the 
population feted him. In 1988, the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces -- 
FARC -- tried to kill him with a car bomb.

General Yanine was exonerated in court. But not before Colombia, under U.S. 
pressure, placed him under house arrest for nine months. Exorbitant legal 
fees exacted a huge toll. Later, because the U.S. revoked his visa, he was 
unable to return to his Washington post. In early 1999, three active 
Colombian generals underwent similar treatment; that was followed by more 
officers being relieved of their duties in order to satisfy U.S. concerns 
about accusations. This was done, despite the fact that actors sympathetic 
to the guerrillas had infiltrated the government's investigative bodies and 
amid claims that some witnesses had been bribed or intimidated. The U.S. 
never committed resources to investigate these charges itself. The State 
Department's Human Rights office in Bogota at the time had a staff of one.

Not a few pundits and politicians in the U.S. are warning against "getting 
involved" in Colombia's war, now that Bogota has called off the peace 
process and is getting tough. This is nonsense. The U.S. is already 
neck-deep in Colombia. Its self-righteous and appallingly naive harassment 
of a military at war is only one example. The U.S. is also the principal 
market for Colombian cocaine, sales of which keep the FARC in business and 
threaten to corrupt the legal system. The U.S. "source country" drug war 
places the burden of prohibition on other nations, Colombia in particular. 
Although failing to make a dent in U.S. supply, it has alienated peasants 
and helped convert the countryside into a killing field.

Yet when Colombia asks the U.S. to share satellite intelligence about 
guerrilla activity and to help train its military personnel, a hypocritical 
Congress wrings its hands about U.S. "involvement." Unless the U.S. comes 
to understand the dynamics of Colombian terrorism, including its own role 
in it, things will only get worse. It may end up alienating a whole 
country. For starters, Congress and the White House had better get hip to 
the propaganda campaign now gearing up against presidential candidate 
Alvaro Uribe, who not coincidentally, like the generals, takes a hard line 
against the insurgents. And they had better come to understand the "human 
right" of self-defense.

For three years Colombia tried to reason with the FARC. It ceded land; it 
held "peace talks;" it worked for a cease-fire. In return, it got only more 
violence. Earlier this year, in a stunning turnaround, President Andres 
Pastrana changed course abruptly and decided to fight. Public opinion was 
ahead of him. In presidential elections, just eight weeks away, Mr. Uribe 
looks set to win a resounding victory in the first round.

Colombians now recognize that they must confront home-grown terrorism with 
the kind of civilian-backed military strategy Mr. Uribe promotes. That's 
bad news for rebels, who have had the country on the run. Not surprisingly, 
the FARC has made a number of attempts to kill Mr. Uribe.

Another way that the guerrillas could destroy the leader of this nascent 
campaign against them would be to give him the "Yanine treatment," by 
suggesting collaboration with the paramilitary, spreading the word in Paris 
cafes and Dutch churches and letting the U.S. skewer him. That effort is 
well underway.

Mr. Uribe's real "crime" appears to be his success against the guerrillas 
when he was governor of Antioquia. In an interview in 1997 he told me that 
when he arrived as governor "guerrillas were all over the state. They were 
kidnapping local people, trafficking in drugs , keeping illegal 
plantations. Against them were the paramilitary. Wherever guerrillas 
arrived in one place, sooner or later paramilitary arrived there too, 
committing many similar crimes."

He saw this as a result of the power vacuum left by a weak state. He made 
security a primary goal by supporting both the military and the notion that 
rural peasants should be allowed to form communication networks for 
defense. Some enemies of the rebels, no doubt, became ruthless as well. But 
the practice of mobilizing the population was critical to Mr. Uribe's 
successful campaign to suppress the rebels. By the time he left, the place 
was pacified. One of the best generals in that effort was Rito Alejo del 
Rio, another victim of the State Department intervention mentioned above.

In a monograph published by the U.S. Army War College, Maoist insurgency 
expert Thomas Marks lays out what Colombia is up against. To start with 
there's the rebel control of coca cash. "FARC did not become a serious 
factor due to mobilization of an alienated mass base. Rather it became a 
serious factor due to the power which came from drugs grown by a 
marginalized population."

Secondly there is the Maoist strategy. To mobilize this power, Mr. Marks 
says, "FARC utilizes the tripartite approach embodied in Maoist insurgency 
- -- mass line (development of clandestine infrastructure), united front (use 
of fellow travelers, both internally and abroad, witting and un-witting, 
especially human rights organizations), and military action."

And third there is the contradiction between the need for civilian defense 
and the taboo the U.S. assigns it. "By refusing to work with Bogota to find 
an approach to popular mobilization that will work, Washington has made the 
situation much, much worse. Indeed, it has demanded that the military 
spread itself still more thinly by 'going after' yet another foe, the 
autodefensas [self-defense groups.]"

In the wild Colombian countryside, the need to legalize rural population 
defense is critical. It is a human right. Mr. Marks says that, "By refusing 
to mobilize the population, Bogota ensures that people's war is waged out 
of control in every nook and cranny. By encouraging Colombia to adhere to 
this misguided approach, the U.S. pours oil on the flames. The result in 
many areas is pathos." That's an involvement that the U.S. might want to 
reconsider. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom