On a trip to Colombia earlier this year, members of our group met a woman who runs conflict resolution programs. She had recently traveled north, to the interior rivers of Magdalena Medio, to talk to children, so often the victims in Colombia's protracted civil war. She asked them to draw a picture that told a story of their lives. They lined up to give them to her. Picture after picture was placed on her lap, and she was shocked at their consistencies: dead people on the ground, helicopters, guns. These were the leit motifs of childhood in the Magdalena.

That every child would choose to depict violence in the story of their lives is not surprising in a country where 20 people a day die violently. Left-wing guerillas (the FARC and the smaller ELN) battle both the Colombian government and privately financed right-wing militias, known as the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries commit the majority of political killings of civilians in Colombia each year, while the FARC and ELN commit most of the kidnappings and a smaller share of the murders.1

The Colombian military, while boasting an improved human rights record on paper, maintains high-level ties with the paramilitaries. According to Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Washington Office on Latin America, collaboration between the armed forces and the paramilitaries runs from overt assistance (the sharing of intelligence information and supplies, weapons and transport) to pre-meditated apathy (ignoring civilian calls for protection against attacks by paramilitary groups).2

Between 2000 and 2002, the U.S. provided the Colombian government with $2 billion in aid, most of which went to the mili- tary. The aid package passed in 2000, known as "Plan Colombia," was aimed at propping up the Colombian military's anti-drug work in the southern part of the country. It paid for the creation of two new counter-narcotics battalions, and training to protect the U.S.-donated airplanes that would drop U.S.-manufactured chemical herbicide onto fields of drug crops. A smaller portion of our country's aid supported development projects to help farmers in the region switch from illegal to legal crops. Plan Colombia was limited to the south, where FARC rebels controlled the land and taxed the peasants on their coca crops, the raw material for cocaine. By creating these battalions, the U.S. hoped to restore state presence to the region while eliminating one major source of the world's cocaine, most of which ends up on U.S. streets.3

Unfortunately, were one to line up the stated goals of Plan Colombia alongside the current day reality, it would become clear that this policy has failed. While in 2000, Members of Congress praised the strategy as a way to limit drug abuse at home, the supply of cocaine to the U.S. has remained alarmingly stable over the last two years. Prices have not climbed as expected, and purity levels continue to be high.4 Meanwhile, the U.S. government's own Office of National Drug Control Policy found that coca cultivation in Colombia increased by 25 percent in 2001, despite the spraying of more than 100,000 hectares of land.5

This increase can be partly attributed to a lack of alternative crop assistance for the farmers who grow coca. While money was budgeted for such projects, the rate of implementation would be laughable; if not for its human toll. Last June, 37,000 families in a province of southern Colombia signed pacts to pull up their coca by hand in exchange for aid to help them grow legal crops. They had 12 months to do so, or their lands would be sprayed. As of March of this year-nine months after the pacts' signing-fewer than 30 percent of these families had received any aid at all, and yet were expected to destroy their only cash crop. Last month, their fields were sprayed again. Documentation from local sources found that legal crops, including alternative development projects-some funded with U.S. money-were sprayed along with remaining coca. Not surprisingly, some of this region's families have moved to different areas of the country and planted coca again.

Despite such failures, the United States continues its support of the counter-drug programs of Plan Colombia. But the counter-drug strategy is no longer the only guiding principle: as with most of U.S. foreign policy post-September 11, our military involvement in Colombia has taken on an anti-terrorist focus. Following a request from President Bush, Congress will likely vote soon on whether U.S. tax dollars can be used to directly fund Colombia' s civil war against the FARC, which is on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations.

This is no small shift. U.S. aid was previously restricted to counter-drug operations; and while these operations took place in a region dominated by FARC, suggesting a thin line between counternarcotics and counterinsurgency, our program there was still limited in scope. It also professed, at least rhetorically, to support a 'balanced solution' to Colombia's problems, a solution that included the possibility of a negotiated peace process with the FARC. On the one side, the U.S. provided military assistance aimed to help 'professionalize' Colombia's straggling forces, boost their capacity to fight drugs, and help them eliminate one of the sources of revenue for the illegal armed groups (both the FARC and the paramilitaries profit from the drug trade). On the other side, the 'soft' side, Congress appropriated social and economic assistance to help farmers grow legal crops, to support the judicial system, to combat corruption, and to aid in the peace process. Peace negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, started in 1999 after almost 40 years of war, were struggling when the U.S. became involved in late 2000.

A shift to allow our aid and equipment to be used to fight the FARC expands our military involvement in Colombia dramatically, pulling us into another country's civil war. It also sends a very different message; a message that the solution to the conflict is military, and that the U.S. will support the effort. Most fright- ening is the impact that the shift could have on the potential for peace in Colombia, and on the civilians caught in the crossfire. When the U.S. offers money for war, Colombia's incentive for putting its own resources on a negotiated solution diminishes.

Members of the human rights community who covered Central America policy in the 1980s remember lessons learned in El Salvador, where U.S. counterinsurgency efforts cost us $6 billion, and 70,000 innocent Salvadorans lost their lives. It was only after the U.S. cut military aid, following a massive campaign by human rights groups to expose abuses by the Salvadoran military, that a peace process was able to take shape. El Salvador is not Colombia, but our experience with the former should prompt us to ask certain questions about the latter. In the case of El Salvador, escalating the civil conflict did not force rebels to the bargaining table, and did not result in a sustainable peace. To suggest that this strategy would work in Colombia, a country 53 times the size of El Salvador, with a war four times as long, and with well-financed armed groups who will retaliate if the military escalates the war - is a determination we might not want to make.

To lay out a reasonable alternative to the war, we should examine the nature of Colombia's conflict. The FARC-wrapped up in the drug and arms trade, indiscriminately killing civilians-does not represent a political alternative for Colombia. But the forces behind their longevity are decidedly political. Poverty, social inequality, and a history of poor land distribution in Colombia continue to benefit the FARC, as peasants take up drug cultivation for lack of alternatives, or send their children to fight with the FARC because they pay well and will guarantee the family's security. Until these root issues are addressed, violent uprisings-if not this one, then another-will continue to wreak havoc on the country's civilian population.

Moreover, the Bush Administration seeks to expand our military aid to armed forces that continue their active collaboration with paramilitary groups. Paramilitaries regularly target human rights workers, teachers, union leaders, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities, as well as any community living in a FARC-controlled area, claiming them to be rebel sympathizers.6 In January of last year, paramilitaries entered the northern town of Chengue and killed 25 people. An army battalion allegedly allowed the paramilitaries to travel past them to the town, and one officer was later charged with supplying the group with weapons. Despite repeated calls for protection from the community prior to the massacre, the army battalion stationed nearby did not respond.7

Expanding U.S. aid to the armed forces, despite a marked lack of progress in cutting ties with the paramilitaries, sends a terrible message. How can we call for a more professional military, the rule of law, and justice, and at the same time reward this relationship?

Human rights defenders are very worried now, following the inauguration of a hard-line rightist president, Alvaro Uribe, in August. After declaring a state of emergency-which has recently been expanded to allow police to detain suspects without a warrant, and to hold them for 24 hours without access to a lawyer 8-Uribe promoted to head of the army a general with credible allegations against him of collaboration with the paramilitaries.9 He then began the work of setting up a one million-person civilian intelligence unit, which would provide information to the army on suspected guerillas or guerilla collaborators. Another initiative will arm rural peasants to form civil watch groups.10 For the United States to expand military aid at this moment, before we know how his initiatives will play out, is an irresponsible use of our money; and, more important, could have dire consequences for civilians in Colombia.

Suggested Action: Tell your Members of Congress how you feel about U.S. military aid to Colombia.

As election time approaches, we have the opportunity to push for changes in U.S. policy toward Colombia by making Colombia policy an election issue. Your Member of Congress may be voting on the 2003 Foreign Aid Bill after the elections, which contains $731 million in aid for Colombia and other Andean countries. Almost $400 million of this aid would go directly to the Colombian military.

What you can do:

1. Call, write, or visit your Representative and Senators. Tell them that you are concerned about military aid to Colombia and tell them that you want your tax dollars to support programs in Colombia that work effectively for peace (see talking points below). Ask them to commit to working for a change in policy next year.
   
   
2. Go to town meetings, election events, or any forum where candidates will be rallying for support. Make Colombia an election issue by asking questions of the candidates. Ask the candidates their position on U.S. military aid, and make it clear that you will support a candidate who is working to change the current policy. Tell your current Members that you have been monitoring their voting record on Colombia, and will consider it when you go to the voting booth; if they've voted wrong in the past, ask them for a commitment to push for a change in policy next year.

   The Capitol Switchboard: 202/224-3121.
   To locate your member of Congress, go to www.house.gov/writerep and enter your zip code.

   U.S. aid for alternative development programs can help farmers switch from illegal to legal crops, which in turn can help address some of the root causes of the war. U.S. support for the sectors of the Colombian government in charge of investigating and prosecuting human rights offenses can help support the rule of law and human rights, and combats corruption. Aid for the displaced in Colombia is badly needed. With millions of people internally displaced already, the crisis is worsening daily as communities flee paramilitary and FARC violence. U.S. food aid and other forms of humanitarian assistance will help alleviate some of this crisis.

   Members of Congress have told us that they are waiting to hear from constituents; your call could make a difference!

The 213th General Assembly

• Calls for demilitarizing U.S. anti-drug policies in foreign countries, in particular Colombia.
• Deplores the rapid growth of armed paramilitary and guerilla groups in Colombia's countryside who support themselves through complicity in the drug trade and exercise domination of the people through terror.
• Decries the record of widespread abuse of human rights by the Colombian military and their documented ties with violent paramilitary groups; and declares it morally repugnant for the U.S. and its allies to grant large amounts of aid to a military with Colombia's grievous human rights record while waiving the obligation of the Colombian government to meet acceptable standards of human rights, as a condition of continued aid.

The General Assembly directs the Stated Clerk to:

• Write to the President of the United States and to all members of Congress informing them of the above statement and urging them to seek an end to human rights violations in Colombia, to support the granting of humanitarian aid to the people of Colombia, and to oppose future grants of military aid to Colombia.
• Write to the congregations of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to: Urge their members to write to their congressional delegations asking them for their support in seeking an end to human rights violations in Colombia, for their support for grants of humanitarian aid to the people of Colombia, and for their opposition to future grants of military aid to Colombia.

1. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, the AUC committed 82% of all civilian murders in Colombia in 2001. The Colombian Vice President's office found that the AUC was responsible for 89 massacres in 2001, in which 527 people were killed.
2. For more information, see the most recent Colombia human rights certification report on www.hrw.org.
3. According to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, 80% of U.S. cocaine comes from Colombia.
4. According to a report prepared for ONDCP by Abt Associates in 2001, the cost of cocaine at the retail level declined from an estimated $423.09 per gram in 1981, at 36% purity, to $211.70 per gram at 61% purity in 2000. (Abt Associates, "The Price of Illicit Drugs: 1981 through the Second Quarter of 2000" [Washington, DC: ONDCP, Oct. 2001], p. 43, Table 6).
5. See Associated Press, "Bush Dismayed By Coca Production." March 8, 2002.
6. See the February, 2002 human rights certification report by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Washington Office on Latin America at www.hrw.org.
7. See a letter to Secretary of State Powell from 45 members of Congress on July 23, 2002 at www.ciponline.org/colombia/02072301.htm.
8. Reuters: "Colombia Authorizes Warrantless Arrests." In The New York Times, September 12, 2002.
9. The case of General Carlos Ospina Ovalle is outlined in the February, 2002 report by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and WOLA (available at www.hrw.org).
10. See, for example, Jim Lobe, "U.S. Should Block Military Aid to Colombia, Say Rights Groups." One World US, Sept 5, 2002