Going Back to War.(Colombian government attacks Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)(Brief Article)

Everything has a limit--even the patience of Andres Pastrana. For three years the Colombian president tried to negotiate a settlement of the country's 38-year civil war. He bowed to the Marxist rebels' demand for a haven, letting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have free run of an enclave the size of Switzerland. Outside the haven, the guerrillas kidnapped civilians. They raked in hundreds of millions of dollars from the cocaine trade. They made prisoners of police and soldiers, then executed them in cold blood--and still Pastrana kept trying to make peace. But his forbearance finally ran out last week after four FARC gunmen hijacked a Colombian airliner and abducted a prominent senator from the flight. Pastrana announced he was through with talk. He ordered the armed forces to retake the enclave from the rebels. "We Colombians extended an open hand," the president said, "and the FARC has responded with a slap in the face."

The public's reaction was almost giddy. Motorists in Bogota honked their horns in jubilation, and as Colombian Air Force jets pummeled FARC positions with 500-pound bombs, the president's approval rating rocketed more than 30 points, to 63 percent. The cheers resounded in Washington, where the Bush administration is already pushing to win more military aid for Colombia.

The euphoria won't last. The war has killed more than 30,000 Colombians in the last decade, and now it's on the verge of an even deadlier phase, with no military solution in sight. "I think it's quite possible that the FARC will become more involved in terrorist activity," warns Colombia's armed forces chief, Gen. Fernando Tapias. "It's a sign of weakness, [but] their capacity for terrorism has risen while their ability to fight the military has fallen."

The rebels' sense of desperation is likely to grow. So far, the U.S. military role in Colombia has legally been confined to anti-drug operations. But the White House appears eager to give Pastrana more help against the FARC and Co-lombia's No. 2 communist rebel force, the National Liberation Army (ELN). Last week the Bush administration confirmed it plans to begin sharing intelligence with the Colombian government. The U.S. State Department has listed both rebel groups as terrorist organizations, making it that much harder for Capitol Hill to turn down requests for appropriations to fight them. "The policy was already moving toward a harder line," says Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Washington-based think tank ...