Letter being circulated for other Congress members' signature by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Missouri), March 2002

Letter being circulated for other Congress members' signature by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Missouri), March 20, 2002

U.S. Policy in Colombia

March 20, 2002

Dear Colleague,

The Administration has recently announced that it will send to Congress a request to shift U.S. policy and aid for Colombia from an emphasis on counter-narcotics to "counter-terrorism." We hope that you will join us on the attached letter to President Bush urging him to review several concerns before requesting such a shift in U.S. priorities and policies in Colombia.

To sign onto the letter, or for more information, please contact Cindy Buhl (McGovern) at 5-6101. Thank you.

James P. McGovern

Ike Skelton

George W. Bush
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Bush,

We write to express our concerns regarding recent reports that the Administration is planning fundamental changes to U.S. involvement and our military aid program in Colombia. These may include allowing Colombia's military to use the more than $1 billion in counter-narcotics aid we have provided since 2000 to fight guerrilla (and presumably paramilitary) groups in the country's brutal, decades-old civil war. They may also include broadening American activities to allow greater sharing of intelligence with Colombia's security forces, increased counter-insurgency training, and infrastructure protection.

Along with all our congressional colleagues, we strongly support your efforts in Afghanistan and the coalition of nations you have built to combat international terrorism. There is no wavering or dissent in our resolve to defeat and dismantle the al-Qaeda network and to eliminate the threat that they and other similar international terrorist networks pose.

We recognize that Colombia has three groups on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. However, Colombia's terrorist groups are quite unlike the networks of shadowy cells we are confronting elsewhere; the FARC and ELN guerrillas and AUC paramilitaries are armies that have nearly 40,000 members between them, control much territory, and have ill-gotten annual budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Confronting them militarily would mean supporting a long and costly counter-insurgency campaign, many times larger than all military aid we have given Colombia so far. Calling it "counter-terrorism" and changing the purpose of past aid would be nothing more than a tiny first step.

Sadly, to date, the more than $2 billion in U.S. economic and military aid provided to Colombia over the past five years has not stabilized the government, rooted out corruption, reduced the production or trafficking in illegal narcotics, helped end the civil war, or provided agricultural, entrepreneurial or development opportunities to Colombia's rural and urban poor.

The United States alone cannot fill the security gaps of a country the size and population of Colombia. Colombia's army is small and underfunded; of perhaps 130,000 soldiers, less than 40,000 are available for combat. It would need to triple (or more) in size to take on the illegal armed groups effectively. Yet Colombians pay so little in taxes that less than 2 percent of the economy goes to the defense of the nation. Current Colombian law, meanwhile, excludes recruits with high-school educations - virtually all but the poor - from service in combat units.

We fear that Colombia's leadership may be choosing a cheaper course of action: support for the terrorists of the right. The AUC paramilitaries have nearly quadrupled in size since 1998, to 14,000 members, and are promising to double again over the next year. Flush with drug money and donations from wealthy Colombians, last year the paramilitaries killed or disappeared the majority of the 3,500 non-combatants claimed by the conflict, and also forced from their homes most of the 342,000 people who were internally displaced.

Colombian and U.S. human rights groups agree that collaboration between Colombia's military and paramilitary groups continues to be a problem. The State Department's March 4 human rights report reminds us that "members of the security forces sometimes illegally collaborated with paramilitary forces" throughout 2001. Though the Administration has begun citing the Colombian defense ministry's statistics claiming that the AUC is being fought, many credible reports contend that aiding and abetting of the AUC is worsening. A notable change occurred with the July 2001 arrival of Attorney-General Luis Camilo Osorio, who has forced out several key human rights officials in his office and ended several investigations of paramilitary massacres and high-ranking officers accused of supporting the groups.

While we welcome the implicit recognition that Colombia's problems go beyond narcotics, we are concerned about intensifying our overwhelmingly military approach. Before embarking on what may be a long and painful counter-insurgency commitment, we must realize that Colombia's guerrillas, however barbaric their actions, are ultimately just a symptom of their country's deeper historic social and economic problems. Defeating the FARC without attacking these problems will do nothing to stop a future resurgence of equally brutal violence.

We do not believe the United States can or should walk away from Colombia. A true "counter-terror" approach to Colombia would ensure that the bulk of our aid support the civilian part of Colombia's state, provide humanitarian aid to the displaced, help alleviate the economic desperation of Colombia's countryside, and protect human rights and anti-corruption reformers both inside and outside of government. Before providing support for the counter-insurgency war, military aid must first be aimed at achieving the longer-term objective of professionalizing the army and require that the Colombian armed forces break its ties, especially at the local and brigade level, with the paramilitaries. At the same time, the full weight of our diplomacy must support all efforts to get peace talks restarted with the FARC and to facilitate a cease-fire agreement with the ELN. Our aid must seek to alleviate - not worsen - the insecurity, poverty and injustice that feed Colombia's violence.

Thank you for considering these concerns as you complete your review of policy options for U.S. involvement in Colombia.