Pubdate: Fri, 14 Feb 2003
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Mary Anastasia O'grady, Editor
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

DOES COLOMBIA COUNT IN THE WAR ON TERROR?

Thirty-year-old Maria Gladys Quiroga migrated from Colombia's rural 
Santander province to Bogota more than a decade ago. Her most recent job 
was in the kitchen at the upscale Club Nogal with her income going to raise 
and educate her daughter. On Friday night a terrorist car bomb at the club 
took her life.

Another victim in the attack was 23-year-old Yesid Castiblanco, a waiter in 
the club's restaurant. He loved his job, his family told Bogota's El 
Tiempo. "He said that besides learning about rare wines and food, he could 
also learn English," according to his aunt.

In all, the blast claimed 35 lives and left well over 170 injured, 
including a few passing by on the sidewalk. The club was hosting a wedding, 
a girls' ballet program and a children's party. A 12-year-old that survived 
had her leg amputated earlier this week. Her twin brother escaped unharmed 
but her parents and her four-year-old sister were killed.

This is the face of terrorism, cowardly and cruel. It professes noble goals 
while it gleefully annihilates babies, young men brimming with dreams, 
humble mothers working to give their children a better future. Maimed 
orphans are its trophies. Its main purpose is to instill fear. Survivors 
are left to wonder who will be next.

Fighting terror is a nasty task yet a nation that yields to it faces 
tyranny. Few countries understand this better now than the U.S. and 
Colombia, both of which have suffered at the hands of terrorists. Both have 
sworn to fight. Why is it, then, that the U.S. offers Colombia so little 
support?

After Sept. 11, the U.S. launched a counter-attack against al Qaeda and its 
supporters. Colombia faces an equally diabolical enemy linked to 
international terror networks but America has scarcely acknowledged its 
problem. A fair question for Colombians to ask is whether the U.S. doesn't 
see the parallelism or practices a double standard where Latin America is 
concerned.

Just think what the U.S. reaction would be if, in response to the Friday 
attack, Colombia rounded up 200 FARC suspects and held them in its own Camp 
X-Ray. For much less, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe already is labeled 
"authoritarian" or "right-wing" in the American press. In fact, although he 
wants to get tough with terrorists, he is a political moderate with a keen 
appreciation for the rule of law and a sensitivity to the suffering of the 
rebels' victims.

Mr. Uribe knows from his days in war-torn Antioquia province that 
organizing civilians so they can defend themselves is key to defeating 
terror. European and American leftists seem to think that shooting people 
should be a right reserved for the "revolutionaries" they so much admire.

Things are not much better among the Americans who make policy toward 
Colombia. Washington plays into the hands of a popular guerrilla tactic 
known as judicial warfare. Peasants from rebel strongholds are sent into 
court to make accusations of human-rights violations against military 
officers. The rebels know that U.S. policy is to pressure Colombia to 
relieve any officer so accused or risk losing aid. It is no accident that 
the victims of this tactic have been the most capable military leaders. 
Almost all have been cleared but their finances and careers have been 
destroyed.

This systematic dismantling of the military leadership at the behest of the 
U.S. has been a big blow to military morale and has done great damage to 
the country's defenses. "The officers don't like judicial warfare so they 
don't go after the bad guys the way they should," says one Colombian 
military expert. The effect, exactly what the rebels want, is a massive 
security vacuum in rural Colombia, in which criminals flourish. The 
paramilitary grew out of this chaos, first as a militia paid to defend 
landowners. Later some of them took to crime as well.

This is no civil war. Support for the largest rebel army, the FARC, which 
has ties to international terrorists like the Irish Republican Army and 
Spain's Basque separatists ETA, has been estimated by opinion samplers at 
about 3% of the population. The rebels prosper only through a powerful and 
savvy alliance with the Northern Cali cartel and other narcotics 
traffickers. These rebels-cum-mafioso run a vertically integrated criminal 
organization that professes an interest in social justice while making big 
bucks through kidnapping and drug trafficking. Their goals are money and 
power. Starry-eyed sympathizers in Manhattan salons and Senate offices find 
them romantic.

Until now, Colombia's rebel conflict, which has taken an estimated 35,000 
lives over the last decade, has been largely rural. The Friday explosion 
appears to be a shift in strategy, designed to hit Colombia's well-to-do 
urban population right in the gut. The message to Mr. Uribe is that if the 
guerrillas are not free to roam rural Colombia and terrorize peasants, they 
will attack the country's leadership. For many Colombians it is painfully 
reminiscent of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar's terror strategy designed to 
force drafters of the 1991 constitution to make extradition 
unconstitutional. Escobar achieved that goal with a ruthless series of 
bombings and murders.

The FARC is kept alive by the voracious appetites of U.S. and European drug 
consumers who crave the coca leaf, ground down to a fine mind-altering 
powder and stuffed up the nostril. This demand keeps prices up and the 
rebels rolling in cash, recruits and weapons. The moral burden is, of 
course, on the drug users. Prohibition has made little headway against the 
illicit trade in "controlled substances."

Given the complexity of the problem and U.S. complicity, it is hardly 
defensible for America to ask Colombia to fight the criminal networks under 
rules of conduct more suitable for Girl Scouts. Its army is short of 
weaponry and surveillance equipment that the U.S. could easily supply, not 
to mention the absence of U.S. moral support.

After Sept. 11, one would think the U.S. would have a more sympathetic 
understanding of what Colombia is up against and an appreciation of 
America's moral responsibility. But left leaning Latin Americanists in 
congress and the State Department seem to be still fighting the Cold War, 
on the wrong side.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom