Colombia’s Patience Ends

Four decades ago, a leftist guerrilla group set out to make life better for the poor people of Colombia. Today, they routinely kill those peasants’ children as they blow up buildings with car bombs and mine rural roads. They destroy power towers, oil pipelines and bridges. Two weeks ago, they cut off Bogota’s water supply. The cocaine trade they heartily embrace has rotted their ideology beyond recognition, and even the most adamant reformers wonder what they are hoping to achieve.

If the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, set out to turn their nation into a workers’ paradise, they have succeeded in creating what one Colombian attorney terms “a dysfunctional hell.”

Almost four years ago, Colombian President Andres Pastrana began a dialogue with these guerrillas. Later, he ceded a Switzerland-size zone to them as a haven for peace talks. His critics said he was naive. But Pastrana persevered. Tuesday, when the guerrillas hijacked a plane and kidnapped the president of the Colombian Senate’s peace commission, Pastrana’s patience finally ran out. The next evening, pressured by a frustrated public, he broke off the peace talks that had never really begun.

Colombia’s 130,000-member army should have no problem taking back the territory these 17,000 or so guerrillas occupy. But it must protect civilians as it drives out the enemy. The guerrillas, in turn, will probably increase their attacks, killing clerks and farmers and children who get in the way, as well as civilians they suspect of links to the country’s right-wing paramilitary forces.

Hired by the nation’s rich, these paramilitary thugs are as bad as the guerrillas, and if Pastrana hopes to keep the people on his side he must crush them as well. The United States should stand on the side of the Colombian people and make any further aid subject to Pastrana getting tough with both murderous groups.

Then Congress needs to lift restrictions on Colombia’s use of weapons that came as part of the U.S. anti-drug package: A guerrilla who traffics in drugs, after all, is a drug dealer. Sharing U.S. intelligence information with the democratically elected government could prevent terrorist attacks. President Bush and Congress should also heed Pastrana’s plea and begin teaching the Colombian army how to defend bridges, electricity towers and pipelines. All this would be easier if Europe and Latin American nations gave up the notion that FARC is a legitimate political force.

The United States must avoid sinking into South America’s notorious political quicksand. But it cannot abdicate responsibility. As the global war on terrorism continues, stability in the hemisphere becomes an urgent goal.