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Farc terror Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20020424/ts_usatoday/4054224http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usatoday/20020424/ts_usatoday/4054224
Colombia rebels could be target in terror war
Wed Apr 24, 6:13 AM ET
Donna Leinwand USA TODAY
BOGOTA, Colombia -- When the United States' top drug cop visited here recently, he traveled in bulletproof vans. Police with automatic weapons ringed the hotel where he slept. He was warned that if he left the city limits, he risked being kidnapped by rebels.
In short, Asa Hutchinson, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), found himself in something akin to a war zone.
This capital city is surrounded by anti-government insurgents who often finance their civil war with profits from trafficking in cocaine and heroin. If Hutchinson and the rest of the Bush administration have their way, the United States would equate the rebels with international terrorist groups such as Osama bin Laden (news - web sites)'s al-Qaeda network and include them in the international war on terror.
This would allow the democratically elected Colombian government to spend the money that Washington sends to fight drugs to fight the rebels, too.
''There used to be a distinction between drug traffickers and insurgency groups in Colombia,'' Hutchinson said during his visit in March.
''Now that the proof is clear that the terrorists are engaged in trafficking as well, our support for Colombia should recognize that the traffickers are also terrorists,'' he said.
President Bush (news - web sites) has requested sending $538 million in military and police aid to Colombia in 2003. For this year, Congress authorized $343 million.
Until now, Congress has seen its relationship with Colombia through the lens of the drug war. Hutchinson's trip last month became part of an adminstration campaign that was launched last fall to demonstrate that Colombia's problems stretch far beyond cocaine and heroin. Everywhere Hutchinson went and everyone he talked to seem to push the administration's point that the rebels' tactics are terrorist acts.
''We've had bombs go off,'' a DEA agent based in Bogota told Hutchinson during a breakfast briefing one day. ''You cannot leave the city. If you drive north or south, you are going to see a guerrilla. If they know you're an American, you're going to get kidnapped.''
Hutchinson visited police officers wounded in gunfights with rebels who were running drugs. He met widows of Colombian police officers who had died at rebel hands while gathering intelligence on drug smugglers.
The Colombian National Police showed him a video of the dismantling of a drug lab run by rebels. They recounted stories of abductions, car bombs and sabotage, all of which they said were linked to rebel groups.
President Andres Pastrana, who had refrained from calling the insurgents terrorists until peace negotiations broke down on Feb. 20, told Hutchinson straight out on March 26 that ''narco-trafficking is financing the violence and the terrorism in Colombia.''
Three insurgency groups in Colombia are on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations. Most powerful is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist group known by its Spanish initials FARC. On Monday, government officials say the FARC abducted a state governor and a former defense minister from a peace march. FARC rebels also hold hostage presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 12 state lawmakers they kidnapped during recent attacks.
The Colombian government also contends with attacks from the National Liberation Army, a leftist group known as the ELN, and the United Self-Defense Forces, a right-wing paramilitary group.
U.S. authorities say all three groups are involved in the drug trade.
Government figures released in March indicated that coca leaf cultivation, grown primarily in areas where the government has lost control to the rebel groups, reached an all-time high in 2001. Much of the drug is bound for the USA.
The administration launched its campaign to redirect aid from fighting the drug war to the broader war against the rebels last fall. Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, began calling the rebels a threat to hemispheric security. Hutchinson began referring to them as ''narco-terrorists'' in his public pronouncements. The National Drug Control Strategy issued by the White House in February listed Colombia, along with Afghanistan (news - web sites), as a place where illegal drug profits fund terrorism.
In March, Attorney General John Ashcroft (news - web sites) issued the first indictments against FARC guerrillas for shipping cocaine into the USA.
In the same month, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) asked Congress to give the Bush administration authority and money to ''deal with the counterterrorist aspects of the fight that the Colombian people are waging against terrorist organizations.''
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