New wave of terror in Colombia

www.boston.com By Maria Cristina Caballero, 2/16/2003

ON FEB. 7, 12-year-old Camila Garcia was having dinner with her parents, her brother, and her 4-year-old sister at El Nogal, an exclusive club in Bogota. At 8:05 p.m., an explosion from a car bomb abruptly separated them. Sixteen hours later, Camila was rescued from the rubble. Her brother survived, too. But their parents and sister were dead.

Camila became a symbol because all Colombians could identify with the girl's struggle for life. She was mangled in the wreckage, brain injured and bones broken, her leg destroyed, so that doctors had to amputate it. Thirty-two people were killed and 162 injured by the car bomb.

Terrorism. Colombians have seen its tragic faces. This recent bombing, the first that targeted the Colombian business elite, is the country's worst urban terrorist attack in a decade. The Colombian government blamed the FARC, the country's largest guerrilla group; Defense Minister Martha Ramirez stated that it was a sophisticated operation that probably received assistance from foreign terrorists.

This was the latest in a series of bombings launched this year since 70 US Green Berets arrived in Arauca, a Colombian state bordering Venezuela: Five car bombs have terrorized Araucans and killed 14 people there. The US troops arrived to train Colombian troops assigned to protect the Cano Limon oil pipeline, which was bombed by rebels 166 times in 2001 and 34 times last year. The pipeline is partly owned by US-based Occidental Petroleum Co. The Green Berets are barred from participating in Colombian combats. But their captain, Lawrence Ferguson, disagrees with those restrictions. He told Reuters: ''Look at Afghanistan. The reason it was successful is that we worked with local troops, all the way.''

Anne Paterson, US ambassador to Colombia, warned in October: ''Sooner or later, official Americans will be killed in Colombia carrying out their duties; when that happens, it will be big news.'' Indeed, last Thursday, a US government plane carrying four Americans and a Colombian crashed in rebel territory in southern Colombia. Two bodies were found; three men were kidnapped by rebels.

Meanwhile, the battles in Arauca have been intensifying as different factions seek to control this oil-rich region. Colombia is the ninth largest provider of oil to the United States. About 6,500 local soldiers will be trained by the Americans, marking the first time the United States is openly training Colombians to fight rebels rather than for eradicating coca crops.

The Bush administration's 2003 foreign aid request to Congress included the first significant nondrug military aid to Colombia since the Cold War: $98 million to protect the pipeline, including 10 helicopters and weapons. While the 2003 foreign aid bill awaits debate, the Bush administration released $6 million to start the pipeline program. If all the aid is approved, Colombia's security forces will get more than $100 million more in 2003 than they did in 2002, and the pipeline program accounts for most of that increase. Democratic US Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi said, ''It is insane for this nation to spend $98 million to protect a pipeline that Occidental owns with American lives.'' Newsweek has noted that this might be what liberals call ''corporate welfare.''

As the United States worries about Colombian oil and other ''strategic points,'' there is still the matter of what to do about Colombia's crumbling democracy. Plan Colombia - a $2 billion US package aimed mainly at eradicating coca crops - has not achieved its goal. The overall amount of coca grown in Colombia is about 150,000 hectares: three times as much as it was when the US began large-scale crop-spraying in 1996. And, as Minister Ramirez points out, ''The massive consumption of cocaine in the United States and Europe finances the attacks against innocents by Colombian illegal groups.''

So Colombia's terrorism problem is intertwined with US interests. Oil and drugs are two of the most volatile commodities on the planet, causing endless conflicts. As the United States tries to keep one flowing and stop the flow of the other, more tragedies are certain. It is time to evaluate the US policies toward Colombia, to see how the United States can do more to strengthen all institutions, which ultimately should undermine the growing threat from violent groups. In the meantime, in the new age of warfare, casualties are more likely to be civilians like 12-year-old Camila Garcia, an orphaned child struggling to survive in a world gone mad.

Maria Cristina Caballero is a Colombian journalist and a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

This story ran on page E11 of the Boston Globe on 2/16/2003.