Central America is a victim of the brutal market rules, the play of political, military and economic powers, the rush for profit and the never-ending drug trade.

To put an end to years of official collusion with drug traffickers U.S.-led sting operation last year and after netting many drug lords it offered a vivid illustration of the pervasive corruption that has undermined Guatemala’s battle against narco-trafficking.

The stakes of that fight, meanwhile, are growing higher by the day. Killing of four Salvadoran congressmen, followed by counter killing of the Guatemalan police officers who had confessed to waylaying the congressmen, in a high security prison marks the reach of organized crime in Central American nations.

Infested with cocaine and other contraband drug trade related gang violence, the Guatemalan state is still to establish institutions that hold the rule of law. Leftovers of the bloody civil war past often intrude into the present and jeopardize the uneasy peace that prevails.

In Central America’s new conflicts, profit has displaced politics as the governing ideology. The cocaine trade has created a dangerous synergy between political terror and drug trafficking, and especially so in Guatemala. The line between criminal and political violence has begun to blur.

Yet despite these problems, while the United States is focusing ever more attention on Central American affairs, few in Washington seem concerned with war linked to the drug trade. However, President George Bush in his forthcoming visit to Guatemala is expected to broach the issue of public security with his Guatemalan counterpart President ’scar Berger.

However, public security is on top of the Bush agenda to Guatemala but it is likely that the Bush administration is set to decide this month if it is satisfied with Guatemala’s anti-drug efforts or whether it will send the country down the road traversed by drug-producing nations in the 1990s, such as Colombia, Bolivia and Peru.

The worst fear is it could impose costly and embarrassing sanctions. It is no wonder that the Guatemalan government sinking neck deep in corruption can make up lost ground to avoid the stigma of “Colombianization,” as some call Guatemala’s current situation.