Reaching for Peace in Colombia

...In response, Powell largely toed the party line...

...And there have been complaints of stomach ailments and skin rashes in the wake of recent spraying...

...Ever since President Ronald Reagan declared his "War on Drugs" in 1981, the United States has failed to recognize the futility of taking the slogan literally, let alone seeking a solution to a domestic problem beyond our own borders...

...Polls show that a large majority of the people have consistently opposed granting the guerrillas a safe haven, usually referred to as the demilitarized zone...

...A dramatic example came on March 8 when representatives of 25 countries from Europe, Latin America, Japan, and Canada, responding to a joint invitation from the President and FARC leader Manuel Marulanda, met directly with the rebels...

...Guerrillas, Right-wing paramilitaries andplain criminals kidnapped over 3,000 individuals last year, up from 2,757 in 1999, according to government records...

...Two months later paramilitaries were believed to be responsible the attack on Wilson Borja, president of Colombia's biggest labor union, the Federation of State Workers...

...Nor is any comfort drawn from the fact that to the United States this country's internal rebellion seems important only insofar as it relates to the battle against drags...

...Regrettably, there is no sign of this happening before Colombia suffers more grief...

...They especially feared, Castaneda said, being dragged into the conflict as it spreads inexorably over their borders...

...He emphasized that the Bush Administration "supports Plan Colombia as an effort to do something about the narcotrafficking problem in Colombia and the region at large...

...They pointed out that just months earlier the manager of the local branch of Hyundai, the Japanese automaker, was kidnapped and held for ransom by guerrillas who operate in the mountains a few kilometers from the village...

...Besides providing protection for cocaine laboratories, many of them are into drug trafficking...

...For its leader the mission is deeply personal...

...Those new U.S.trained battalions, officials of the two countries emphasized, will engage exclusively in countering narcotics activities and leave the counterinsurgency to others...

...My brother-in-law assured us that no guerrilla activity had been reported along the road we would be traveling on...

...Meanwhile, nearby members of the Latin American community have expressed concern that the conflict might spill across their borders...

...So are those raising legal crops, such as yuccas and plantains, which have been destroyed along with their illicit counterparts...

...Its Minister of the Interior and Justice, Winston Spadafora, has warned of a "risk for Panama and other neighboring countries" resulting from escalation of the drug wars...

...Besides, he added with a sigh, "something can just as soon happen to you in Bogota when you step out the front door...

...One reason for this is that his inability to exert any control over the paramilitaries was the main reason FARC temporarily halted peace talks last fall...

...During President Pastrana's February 27 visit to the White House, President George W. Bush made it clear as well that his Administration will not become directly involved in Colombia's political and civil conflicts...

...Peace clearly cannot be achieved without the paramilitaries at the negotiating table...

...If only life in Bogota could be as normal for us," one family member exclaimed wistfully on our way back...

...All are intermingled with the untold thousands of local peasants participating in the production, manufacture and transportation of drugs...

...Thus on January 28 the new ELN zone was officially established in the Northern region of San Pablo...

...The U.S...

...President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, conceived as a comprehensive approach to dealing with such critical issues as the peace process, human rights, drug traffic, and a battered economy, is an exercise in political and diplomatic risk-taking...

...In November Pastrana recalled his ambassador to Venezuela after a senior FARC representative was invited to speak on Plan Colombia at a high level government conference in Caracas...

...Yet despite the violence, insecurity and hard times, it is the scene of a potentially promising social and political experiment...

...The military's primary counternarcotics strategy is aerial defoliation...

...Nevertheless, away we went for what turned out to be apleasant vacation...

...But his Adminstration has so far blindly endorsed an overly militaristic solution to narcotraffic...

...In mid-March, he was accused of deliberately releasing a Colombian fugitive arrested in Caracas...

...So I was a little surprised to learn upon my arrival this past December that the family had scheduled a six-day outing to Chinauta, a small resort village about a two-hour drive from the capital...

...Pastrana has aggressively pursued peace...

...Where Drugs and Politics Collide Reaching for Peace in Colombia By Ron Chepesiuk BOGOTA WHEN I first began coming to Colombia regularly in the late 1980s, I could travel as far as I wanted—to the coast, the Andes Mountains, even the Amazon region—without worrying about safety...

...Tensions between Colombia and Venezuela, already strained, have deepened...

...Panama has taken steps to prevent the wave of refugees it anticipates as the defoliation proceeds...

...My Colombian friends begged to disagree...

...Previously the government had been meeting informally with the ELN in Cuba and Switzerland...

...activists visiting Colombia's U'Wa Indian tribe...

...With unemployment at a depression level 20 per cent, it is struggling to recover from its worst economic slump since the 1930s...

...Poor farmers who resorted to cultivating coca to feed their families are once again destitute...

...In 1979 FARC kidnapped Castano's father, a dairy farmer, and held him for a $50,000 ransom...

...At their January meeting in Washington, Castaneda drew attention to the anxieties of such countries as Brazil and Ecuador about their unstable neighbor...

...By now it has become apparent, however, that he often marches to a different drummer than the foreign policy establishment in the White House, where ultimate decisions are made...

...Castano is an admitted player in the drug trade, collecting a tax on coca paste and the movement of cocaine throughout territory he controls...

...The union had been facilitating peace talks between the government and the ELN...

...posture is necessary, there is its conspicuous absence (yes, it was invited) from the March 8 meeting of 25 nations in FARC'S demilitarized zone...

...Putumayo and Caqueta Provinces, the collective center of the drug-growing industry, harbor a significant number of guerrillas...

...No less than eight other Castano family members are believed to have perished in the civil war...

...In December, over the public's strong objections, he set the stage for a second demilitarized zone to accommodate Colombia's smaller guerrilla outfit, the5,000strong National Liberation Army (ELN) —which functions independently of FARC and is often at odds with it...

...The statistics continue to tell a grim story...

...Recently, social workers and women's and human rights activists in the Northern part of the country have joined the long list of innocents harassed and frequently killed by paramilitaries who suspect them of aiding or sympathizing with the guerrilla cause...

...At the end of the day," Powell said, "that will only be solved by a political solution, by negotiations...

...Perhaps the most untainted reservations about the antidrug effort have been expressed by Mexico's new Foreign Minister, Jorge Castaneda, to the U.S.' new Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell...

...The plan has often appeared close to collapsing under the intransigence of conflicting groups, but of late there have been some faintly hopeful developments...

...You can imperil their suppliers for a time, but so long as the demand for drugs exists, history has shown that it will be satisfied...

...We encourage President Pastrana to keep working to see if we can find—" He then paused to correct himself: "To see if he can find a solution...

...Lowflying airplanes have bombarded Putumayo and Caqueta with herbicidal spray...

...With two years left to fulfill his promise (the Constitution prohibits a second term), he has occasionally seemed desperate to keep the sputtering peace effort alive...

...If additional evidence of the U.S...

...Still, it is difficult to see how at least some overlap can be avoided in pursuing various objectives of Plan Colombia...

...Colombia averages 73 violent deaths and four terrorist attacks a day...

...Indeed, there can be no escaping the ability of drug producers and their facilities to simply pick up and move elsewhere...

...and its hemispheric partners must initiate a real dialogue that goes to the root of the issue and tackles the question of how to reduce the ongoing global demand for drugs...

...Since his election in 1990, Chavez has repeatedly come under public attack in Colombia for suspected ties to the guerrilla community...

...Led by Carlos Castano, one of the most feared men in the country, the AUC has moved into Putumayo and Caqueta and is bent on destroying the guerrillas...

...Gradually, the distances shortened as Colombia's longrunning civil war intensified and spread...

...Its purpose, Pastrana has countered, is to facilitate peace negotiations, and sometimes it does...

...That heinous act lost the guerrilla cause whatever liberal support it had here and abroad, but FARC remains the world's leading kidnapping organization...

...Over the past decade, all this has created a refugee flow that now totals more than 1 million...

...Given existing conditions, there is a touch of the surreal to the notion of normalcy in Colombia...

...Moreover, Pastrana has taken every opportunity to passionately denounce the Right-wingers in his recent dealings with the United States and Europe...

...But because they have vast land holdings and control major urban centers, they would undoubtedly view any peace arrangement as a threat to their power...

...To be sure, the President has proudly pointed to Latin America's primacy of place on his foreign policy agenda...

...But the Secretary gave an interesting answer when a reporter asked whether the United States was taking too militaristic an approach toward resolving Colombia's civil war...

...The provinces are further endangered by Right-wingparamilitaries, notably the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an outfit with 8,000 members suspected of having ties to the military...

...Corruption is so pervasive that the country is tied with Ethiopia and Thailand at the top of the Corruption Perception Index for 2000 compiled by Transparency International, a Germany-based worldwide monitoring organization...

...To keep them going, and to secure vital financial aid from foreign allies for the rest of his reform program, Pastrana can hardly appear ready to embrace the paramilitaries, even for diplomatic reasons...

...They know how precarious life has been in the territory controlled by FARC...

...For years FARC had staunchly opposed any outside intervention...

...The problem with this is that it is likely to exacerbate the violence, corruption and economic difficulties of not only Colombia but the surrounding countries...

...Another worry was the inevitable side effects of the widespread crop spraying, including pollution of the region's water supplies...

...He argues that his drug trafficking is a necessary evil, because it provides him with the financial backing needed to exterminate guerrillas...

...Not surprisingly, the area's residents are frightened...

...Some neighboring governments resent not having been consulted by the United States as it assembled its antinarcotics package...

...While that has successfully destroyed thousands of acres of coca fields, it has also endangered the peasants' health and livelihood...

...In December an elite force of 620 Green Beret-trained Colombian troops was honored at the Southern Larandia Army base...

...We are tired of letting the country's problems dictate how we live...

...He insists he supports Plan Colombia, yet is firmly opposed to the peace process...

...Borja survived the assault, but one of two casualties was an innocent street vendor...

...Last October, Castano's men kidnapped several national lawmakers to protest an exchange of prisoners between the government and FARC...

...Politicians have blasted Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who in turn has had some equally disparaging comments for his Colombian critics...

...When the family could only produce $20,000, the elder Castano was murdered...

...Both sides felt the change would help advance their negotiations...

...Ron Chepesiuk, a writer specializing in Latin American affairs, reports frequently from Colombia for The New Leader...

...When the Venezuelan government refused to acknowledge that the man had been arrested, the Colombian government countered by releasing photos of the arrest taking place...

...Its presence threatens to upset the delicate balance among parties in the peace process...

...Since the mid- '90s, neither I nor my wife, who is native-born, have ventured far from Bogota during our annual extended visits for fear of kidnapping or perhaps suffering bodily harm...

...Shortly after he took office in 1998, he ceded a stretch of land roughly the size of Vermont to the largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC...

...The heart of Pastrana's campaign for President was a pledge to end the civil war...

...Eventually, 3,000 troops are to be trained for the antidrug offensive, and Former President Bill Clinton committed $1.3 billion to the drug eradication aspect of Plan Colombia...

...Secretary Powell's emphasis on diplomacy has a refreshing ring to it...

...But now it agreed to have a consultation group from 10 nations—Venezuela, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Mexico, Italy, France, Spain, Canada, and Cuba—assess the recently revived peace talks every two months and perhaps help break deadlocks...

...In February 1999, for instance, it kidnapped and murdered a delegation of U.S...