Colombia faces turmoil as peace process collapses

DURING the "Plan Colombia" debate in Washington in 2000, its supporters argued that increased military aid would bring peace nearer to Colombia by forcing the guerrillas to negotiate in good faith. They were utterly wrong: nearly two years later, the talks are dead and South America’s third-largest country is facing disaster.

At a weekend meeting with Colombia’s FARC guerrillas - who have mounted one of the largest insurgencies in history - a UN envoy tried to find a way to keep a struggling peace dialogue alight. The envoy failed, three years of talks have been broken off, the guerrillas were last night retreating into the jungle and Colombia will today return to a state of total war when government forces move into the rebel safe haven the size of Switzerland.

Granted, "total war" is a relative term, since the country’s four-decade-old conflict has claimed about 3,500 lives a year, even during the period in which the dialogues between the Colombian government and the FARC have taken place. But the level of violence could increase sharply with the failure of the peace process.

Clearly, the FARC - with roughly 17,000 members and hundreds of millions of dollars per year in income, much of it from charging taxes on the drug trade - is capable of doing much more damage to the country’s population and infrastructure than the rebels have inflicted during the past few years.

From the safety of the huge zone demilitarised as a venue for talks, the guerrillas have been able to strengthen themselves significantly. During the same period, the military has dramatically increased the number of combat-ready soldiers at its disposal and has received over $1 billion (700 million) in aid from the US.

The country’s brutal right-wing paramilitary forces have more than doubled in size since January 1999, when the government’s talks with the FARC began.

With all this added capacity, a return to generalised war in a year when the country is to hold elections could put Colombia among the world’s foremost humanitarian emergencies.

As is usually the case in Latin America, the United States is a constant presence on the margins. Washington, whose support for the peace talks was always tepid at best, darkened the mood at the negotiating table with an enormous arms shipment, the famous "Plan Colombia" aid package, approved in mid-2000.

Coincidentally, the biggest part of that shipment - a tranche of 14 sophisticated Blackhawk helicopters for the Colombian army valued at more than $200 million - was officially handed over in a ceremony on 8 January - a day before the talks broke down.

This aid - as a matter of law and policy - is not officially intended to support Colombia’s war effort. US officials insist the helicopters and battalions created from scratch to fly them are intended only to ease counter-narcotics operations, particularly a massive campaign of aerial herbicide fumigation.

The question that concerns many in Washington and Colombia is whether the United States will maintain that distinction, or whether this and future military assistance will be remembered as the first step in a costly counter-insurgency effort in a country 53 times the size of El Salvador.

A return to total war in Colombia might bring that ugly reality nearer, especially at a time when US foreign policy is ever more strongly guided by blanket imperatives of anti-terrorism (the FARC, as well as Colombia’s smaller ELN guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups, are all on the State Department list of foreign terrorist organisations).

We run the risk of finding ourselves in a situation where the United States helps pay the bills, and Colombians provide the bodies, in an endless and altogether avoidable war. This grim prospect must be averted. The United States must support the UN in its peace efforts with every ounce of its diplomatic weight. Washington must also use its vast network of ties to Colombia’s military - bought with hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of trainees each year - to urge the generals to exercise restraint and patience.

With the collapse of the talks, the primary objective of US policy should not be to alter the balance on the battlefield, but to get the peace process re-started.

Peace is achieved not with guns, but with diplomacy and dialogue. Washington’s policy from this point forward must be to foster both.

• Adam Isaacson is senior associate at the Centre for International Policy, Washington