GROUND ZERO IN THE COLOMBIAN DRUG WAR

The U.S.-backed Plan Colombia will soon touch down in a region
battered by civil war and reliant on the cocaine trade.

Dec. 5, 2000 | BOGATA, Colombia -- An hour after Mayor Carlos Rosas
publicly described the "terror" that plagued his town of Orito in the
southern coca-producing province of Putumayo, he was dead. Gunmen
shot the mayor at point-blank range in front of his home in broad
daylight and sped away. They were never identified or caught.

In the radio address he gave just before his assassination, Rosas
described the fear that the citizens feel in an area that produces
most of the world's cocaine and has felt the full force of the
nation's civil war. "Corpses are appearing, cars are being burned,
and this terrifies everyone," he said.

As Colombia stands on the brink of a major counter-narcotics
campaign, most of which will be concentrated in Putumayo, the terror
shows no signs of letting up.

Last month, just as the Colombian government and the guerrillas of
the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) were about to begin
the most serious conversations of the 2-year-old peace process -- the
possibility of a bilateral cease-fire -- the FARC froze those talks,
setting the tone for a possible intensification of the civil conflict
that has torn at this Andean country for more than three decades.
The FARC was angered by a meeting between a high-level
representative of the Colombian government and a leading paramilitary
force, the United Colombian Self Defense Leagues (known by its
Spanish acronym, AUC) which the FARC has been fighting. The meeting
was held ostensibly to gain release of a group of congressmen
kidnapped by paramilitary forces last month. The FARC has claimed
that in meeting with paramilitary leaders, the Colombian government
shows a lack of interest in curbing paramilitary terrorism.

FARC spokesmen even accused the half-dozen congressmen reportedly
kidnapped last month by the AUC of having staged their own
kidnappings in order to facilitate the meeting between Interior
Minister Humberto de la Calle and AUC head Carolos Castano.

But the FARC also places blame on U.S. policy in the region and said
its decision to cut off peace negotiations was influenced by the U.S.
Plan Colombia. Though the U.S. calls that absurd, it's clear that the
future of the peace process will have a serious impact on the success
or failure of the counter-narcotics campaign .

Warring factions have not spared U.S. representatives from their
terrorizing activities, either. A bomb was found along the road last
week hours before U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., and U.S.
Ambassador Anne Patterson were to visit the notoriously violent town
of Barrancabermeja, in what officials called an apparent
assassination attempt.

The peace freeze came as the U.S. also announced it was delaying the
implementation of the Plan Colombia until January and a high level
State Department delegation visited Bogota to finalize points in the
plan

Originally the plan was expected to start early this month.
Undersecretary of Defense Brian Sheridan in Bogota said U.S. and
Colombian authorities had agreed to postpone the plan until January,
when 33 of 60 helicopters included in the $1.3 billion aid package
approved by Congress will arrive in Colombia and will be available
for the Colombian armed forces.

Fierce fighting between guerrillas and paramilitaries has raged
throughout the last two months in Putumayo, where most of Plan
Colombia will be concentrated. Hundreds of residents have fled for
Ecuador, since all roads to central Colombia are dangerous and
controlled by one side or the other. Some who haven't left remained
trapped by the rebels or the paramilitaries.

Putumayo was selected as the primary site of Plan Colombia because an
estimated 216 square miles are planted with high-yield coca
plantations, and over half of the entire Colombian coca production is
harvested in this province. About 300,000 people are employed in jobs
related to cocaine production.

"Putumayo is the FARC's Wall Street," said a foreign diplomat. "This
is not an area of small plantations, but of heavy cultivation."

The area has practically been a war zone since Sept. 21, when
paramilitaries took over important coca producing towns, killing
those citizens they knew were guerrilla collaborators. In La Dorada,
a key drug-producing town, the paramilitaries had killed up to 40
people suspected of leftist sympathies as of late October. U.S. and
Colombian officials say the drug traffickers who depend on the crops
produced in Putumayo had grown unhappy with the guerrillas and their
control over the coca production prices. "The narcos brought the
paramilitary because they didn't like the FARC controlling the
market," said a U.S. government official.

The area's residents have been living at the mercy of the warring
parties. The government has airlifted supplies, but the needs are
still greater. It took 56 days after the guerrillas took over Pasto
Mocoa highway for the Colombian army to reopen it. The road, an
important one that connects Putumayo with the rest of the country,
was littered with abandoned vehicles left after combat had stopped
their owners on their routes. Even after the army asked for the
vehicle owners to return, the cars remained.

Plan Colombia is expected to unleash the biggest military offensive
to date in Southern Colombia. Fumigation planes protected by
helicopters will spray bountiful coca plantations in the region,
which is controlled by the FARC. Colombian mobile military units,
trained by the U.S., will push into the territory and try to clean
the area.

But how well the Colombian military will fare is not known. They have
faced several military setbacks recently. The guerrilla ambush that
left 53 soldiers dead and one destroyed Black Hawk helicopter last
month has left foreign diplomats and Colombian military experts
wondering what they can expect in the next few months, when the war
is expected to get worse. "Putumayo is going to be one of the
toughest areas militarily," according to Alfredo Rangel, a respected
military analyst who advises the Colombian armed forces.

"When the army goes into that area to fight the FARC and end the coca
plantations it will ignite the conflict beyond anything we have
seen," he added.

Looming in the background of the decision to freeze negotiations are
reports that all the fighting forces involved in this conflict have
been making preparations to increase their troop size. Military
experts and foreign diplomats say the FARC has been recruiting new
soldiers, and expect the force to grow from 17,000 to up to 40,000.
Police intelligence reports also show that the flow of weapons to the
guerillas has intensified in the last few months, including the
shipment of handheld missiles that could down helicopters. The
Colombian army this week announced it would recruit 10,000 more men
for three additional anti-guerrilla mobile brigades, but these troops
won't be available for combat until next year. Meanwhile right-wing
paramilitary groups have been pushing to be given political
recognition by the government.

The FARC is playing a tough game that could backfire. Last week,
Colombian police released an intercepted radio address broadcast to
FARC troops by Jorge Briceno, aka Mono Jojoy, the FARC's top military
strategist, in which he said he did not believe the peace process
would work. Briceno told his troops that FARC was not "going to agree
to peace because it doesn't exist" and that even if the FARC was able
to seize power, there would not be peace "because there will then be
war with the gringos and other powers."

The U.S. State Department in turn has said it is "ridiculous" for the
FARC to use Plan Colombia as an excuse to stop all dialogue, and
urged the rebels to return to the negotiation table. But the U.S.
seemed to take a cautious approach too in announcing a postponement
of the launching date for Plan Colombia. Some analysts say the FARC
could use similar tactics as they used in 1996 to face the army. "The
guerrillas have the possibility of provoking civilian uprisings and
make them confront the army. What will that do for the international
opinion to see a soldier facing a starving looking peasant. I think
the potential in Putumayo could be terrible for us. At this moment,
militarily, Plan Colombia is teetering," said Rangel.

But a U.S. government official rejected that scenario. Information in
the press suggests that peasants in Putumayo are leaving rather than
submitting to the FARC's pressure to arm themselves against Plan
Colombia."

Nevertheless, even high military officials understand that the role
of civilians will be critical to how Plan Colombia will play out.
"The only way that the FARC will be convinced that they cannot win
the war will be to have a strong, solid, professional army that has
the support of the civilian population," Defense Minister Luis
Fernando Ramirez said.

About the writer: Ana Arana is an investigative journalist who
focuses on criminal organizations in Latin America and a senior
fellow at the Center for War, Peace and the News Media.