WATERVILLE -- Colombian human rights activist Nancy Sanchez knows her work can make her a target for assassination in her impoverished, war-torn country, but she does not plan to allow that fear to silence her.

Decades of clashes between various armed factions jockeying for a piece of the country's resilient cocaine production industry have killed countless Colombians and displaced nearly 4 million, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Sanchez, 39, a serious, spritely woman who in nearly 20 years of human rights work has lost several colleagues in politically-motivated killings, has felt the pain personally.

"Your family is most vulnerable when you work in human rights," she said in an interview at Colby College, where she is staying as a fellow of the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights. "Because of this, I have had to isolate myself a bit from them, and that is one of the hardest things."

Sanchez collaborates with civic and peace groups, primarily in the blighted and violent Putamayo region in the southern part of the country, to denounce political violence and help bolster the local social institutions that have been ravaged by the nearly constant killings and abductions.

Her work has been recognized by Amnesty International and the Institute of Policy Studies issued her the Letellier-Moffitt Human Rights Award in recognition of the role her work has played in Colombia and in shaping policy debates in the U.S.

"She works at the grassroots level in a coalition with her countrymen and women," Marnie Terhune, assistant director of the Oak Institute, said, explaining the college's decision to choose Sanchez as an Oak Fellow. "She has really proven herself to be a very articulate voice for human rights in her country."

Sanchez will describe her work and the situation in Colombia in a talk at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at the Diamond Building on the Colby College campus.

The violence has resulted from clashes between guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, widely referred to by the acronym FARC, the paramilitary organization United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) and the Colombian military.

Caught in the middle of the conflicts are the poor peasant farmers who often see little choice but to cultivate the illegal coca plant from which cocaine is derived. The U.S., through its $7.5 billion "Plan Colombia," sends aid to the Colombian government, in part to employ airplanes to spray powerful herbicides and eradicate coca crops.

But Sanchez accused the Colombian government of focusing its eradication efforts only on the coca crops in areas dominated by FARC, ignoring cocaine production operations of the paramilitaries that she says work hand-in-glove with the Colombian army.

Further, she accuses the United States of complicity in the imbalanced approach, saying that neither the U.S. nor the Colombian government are taking appropriate steps to ending the violence.

The United States uses its interminable "war on drugs" to maintain a presence in Colombia, which, despite its troublesome human rights record, has proven to be a useful ally against the leftist governments of nearby Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, she said. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's move earlier this week to withdraw his support for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in his role as mediator between the Colombian government and guerillas was a calculated move, because Uribe "was looking for any excuse to break this interchange," Sanchez said.

"If the United States wanted peace, the United States could change the climate in Colombia. Uribe is really responding to the United States," Sanchez said. "Uribe is really responding to the United States. He wants the war in Colombia because the United States supports it."

U.S. Department of State spokesperson Barbara Silberstein denied that the Colombian government discriminates between coca crops it eradicates.

"The government of Colombia targets and eradicates drug crops wherever they are concentrated and identified," Silberstein said, adding that Plan Colombia "targets the drug-related operations of all foreign terrorist organizations and drug trafficking organizations with identical vigor."

Noam Chomsky, a linguistics expert, philosopher and outspoken critic of United States' foreign policy, on Wednesday commented on Sanchez's assertions, saying that the United States has been disingenuous about its reasons for maintaining a presence in Colombia.

"For years, Colombia has had far and away the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, and has been the leading recipient of U.S. military aid and training, two properties that happen to correlate with depressing consistency," Chomsky said. "The 'war on drugs' has little to do with a war on drugs, but a lot to do with counterinsurgency in Colombia and control of a superfluous population at home."

Regardless of whose coca crops are eradicated, the peasant farmers suffer, according to Sanchez.

Since many farmers plant coca alongside their regular food crops, aerial spraying not only destroys coca, one of the only sources of revenue for farmers, but also destroys their food supply as well.

Sanchez displayed photos of children and adults who had rashes or complained of other ailments that they felt came as a result of exposure to the sprays.

"If you read the etiquette for applying (the herbicide), you have to have a mask, you have to have gloves, but there, it just comes down in a plane," Sanchez said. "My government and the U.S. government says that this is a lie, that you could be taking this from a glass of water."

The U.S. Department of State, through Barbara Silberstein, a spokesperson for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said that the herbicide used is not very harmful to humans.

"Colombian authorities selected glyphosate (sold in the U.S. as Roundup) for the aerial eradication program precisely because it is a relatively benign herbicide that has been used for years in Colombia for licit agricultural use," Silberstein said, adding that Plan Colombia's use of the chemical represents only 15 percent of total usage in the country.

"Pilots do not spray villages or people," Silberstein said. "Spraying takes place under rigid parameters for wind and humidity."

Although coca production showed initial declines after President Bill Clinton launched Plan Colombia in 2000, it is back on the rise. According to the CIA Factbook entry on the country, Colombia still is the world's leading cultivator of coca, with 144,000 hectares in coca cultivation in 2005 -- a 26 percent increase over 2004, for a potential production of 545 metric tons of pure cocaine.

The Plan pledges to help protect human rights by refusing aid to Colombian security forces "for which there is credible evidence of gross human rights violations," according to a government statement.

However, Sanchez said this sort of promise does little to help those killed by the paramilitaries or FARC, and described the mass graves that hold as many as 20,000 people in the areas surrounding Putamayo, the poorest region in the country and also one major target of Plan Colombia.

Plan Colombia "hasn't done much in terms of the FARC," Sanchez said. "The FARC continues attacking communities, recruiting young people, kidnapping."

Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., describes U.S. policy in Colombia as "incoherent," saying that Plan Colombia exacerbates drug-related violence by artificially cutting into cocaine's supply while doing nothing to reduce the demand.

"Sending guns and helicopters to Colombia isn't going to solve the problem of poverty in Colombia, and it's not going to solve the problem of addiction in the United States," he said.

Tree said Colombian farmers must have alternative methods of generating income, and they can't do it without heavy investment in infrastructure. Part of coca's allure is that drug runners will pick it up from the farmer's door and fly it up the United States, whereas farmers attempting to grow food crops must find a way to transport it across nonexistent roads to compete in a global market.

Roughly half of Colombia's population lives below the poverty line, according to the CIA.

Sanchez is helping to organize a series of "Audiences for Truth" in Colombia, inviting representatives of the U.S. Congress to mingle with local peasants and community leaders to discuss the effects of Plan Colombia and how the U.S. might improve its policies. Since the forums began at the first of the year, Sanchez claims the arrests of two allegedly corrupt local officials, one a mayor and one a hospital administrator, as the direct result of the voice these forums give to the Colombian impoverished lower class. The next forum is scheduled for March, 2008.

"Colombia has all of the good laws on its books in terms of international conventions, but in terms of applying them to the kidnappings (by the FARC), nothing," Sanchez said. "They've been more than 10 years in this condition."

Joel Elliott -- 861-9252

jelliott@centralmaine.com