| MESSAGE FROM COLOMBIA: SEND HELP |
| Written by Maria Elena Salinas |
| Monday, March 18 2002 |
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| Urgent message to President Bush: If you're really serious about fighting terrorism, then send help to Colombia -- soon.
With the possible exception of Israel in recent weeks, no other country has been more ravaged by terrorism than Colombia. Violence is a fact of life there. Bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and hijackings are commonplace. As I write this column, more than 2,000 people are being held hostage -- among them a presidential candidate, five members of the Colombian Congress and dozens of military and police personnel. Narcotraffickers, guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary groups and other criminal elements are killing innocent civilians on a daily basis. The annual death toll is more than 35,000 in a country with four standing armies, three of them illegal.
Americans should not be mere spectators to the bloodshed. After all, the United States shares a big responsibility for the murder and mayhem in Colombia. Here's why:
Colombia's civil war might have started as a social conflict between the rich and the poor, but it has degenerated into drug-financed terrorism. Two leftist rebel groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) -- and the right-wing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) are financed by $600 million a year from the illegal drug trade. The State Department designates all three of these groups as terrorist organizations. And where does most of the drug money that keeps these murderous groups armed and viable come from? The United States.
If cocaine and heroin were not in demand by drug users in American cities, drug traffickers in Colombia -- which produces 90 percent of the world's cocaine and two-thirds of the heroin consumed in the United States -- would have no market to sell to. Millions of dollars in drug money would dry up, and the FARC, the ELN and the AUC would be cut off from their cash pipelines.
On Feb. 20, Colombian President Andres Pastrana declared war on the leftist guerrillas. Colombian troops have moved into a once-demilitarized zone handed over to the rebels as part of Pastrana's ambitious peace process. But the peace process collapsed, and now Pastrana wants help from the United States.
Pastrana wants to use American military equipment to fight the leftist rebels. Polls show that most Colombians want full military intervention by the United States or other countries. Under U.S. law, the $1.7 billion in military aid in Plan Colombia can only be used in the war on drugs. But in reality, fighting the rebels would be fighting the war on drugs. After all, they are financed by drug money, and they protect narcotraffickers and their processing plants. But Pastrana must also fight the right-wing paramilitary forces. They, too, use drug money for their dirty deeds.
Some have argued that allowing the use of American military aid to fight Colombia's war would be the first step in another Vietnam-style conflict for the United States. No one wants the United States to enter another military quagmire. But if U.S. forces can act decisively in Afghanistan, they can also act with the same resolve in Colombia. After all, Colombia's war is our war. It is financed by money that comes from the United States.
So far, President Bush has not publicly supported the use of military aid in Colombia's war. In a speech commemorating the six-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Bush said that in the second stage of the war against terrorism, "America encourages and expects governments everywhere to help remove terrorist parasites that threaten their own countries." Bush only mentioned the Philippines and Yemen by name. Mr. President, don't forget to look to the south. It's ironic that a president who has vowed to fight terrorism wherever it hides is not focusing on fighting it in a place where it came out of hiding long ago. The United States asked the world to join in its war against terrorism, saying you are either with us or with the terrorists. It's time to reciprocate. The United States is not the only country threatened by terrorists. |
