COLOMBIAN REBELS ELUDE RAIDS

Army Offensive Seeks To Destroy FARC Column

RINCON DEL INDIO, Colombia -- The FARC guerrillas had fled their jungle
camp in a hurry when the Kfir jets bombed it, judging from the bowl of
lentil soup still on a table and the other gear they abandoned.

The Colombian army soldiers hot on their trail found a clinic with a
surgical table and three portable dentist's chairs; four computers; a
foot-high stack of communications code books; an open-air classroom with
seating for 100; a TV satellite dish; and tons of food.

Not a bad haul for the biggest military offensive in recent memory against
the FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. But the ultimate
prize -- the main guerrilla force -- has so far eluded the army's soldiers,
illustrating the difficulties of the counter- insurgency war being waged in
Colombia's vast wilderness.

For more than two weeks, 6,000 troops and 30 warplanes and helicopters have
been chasing 2,400 FARC rebels through a huge region of savannas, jungle
and coca fields in southeastern Colombia nearly one-third the size of
Florida, hoping to drive the rebels into waiting army units in classic
counter-insurgency "hammer-and-anvil" operations.

Israeli-made Kfirs and U.S. Black Hawk helicopter gunships daily pound
suspected FARC positions before helicopter-borne troops land nearby.

Their key mission is to destroy a 1,200-member rebel column that left the
FARC's government-approved sanctuary July 14 with orders to hook up with
another 1,200 fighters already here and launch a four-month string of
attacks on towns and military bases.

Results so far have been favorable for the army -- the deaths of the
commander of the column that left the FARC zone, Octavio Salamanca, the
highest rebel comandante killed in five years, and five other top FARC
leaders, said Gen. Carlos Fracica, head of the army's Rapid Reaction Force.

Some 10 deserters say the demoralized column has split into units of 50 to
200 fighters, spread around the states of Meta, Guaviare, Guainia and
Vichada, trying to dodge combat and return to the FARC sanctuary to the
southwest.

Fracica said his troops have recovered the bodies of 25 guerrillas and
suffered three casualties plus several dozen cases of malaria, but said the
rebels' death toll must be higher because of nighttime air attacks on
isolated guerrilla units.

But the terrain and the familiarity of the guerrillas with the local area
have hindered the military.

"In this kind of jungle, three bandits can hide behind a single tree,"
Fracica said in an interview in his headquarters in San Jose del Guaviare,
a drowsy town of 43,000 people 80 miles southeast of Bogota.

According to the army, the timing of the operation was dictated by the
sudden guerrilla thrust out of the sanctuary, but it happens to coincide
with an upcoming visit from a top-level Bush administration delegation due
Wednesday.

The U.S. visitors are expected to study all aspects of U.S. policy on
Colombia, including whether Washington should broaden its aid to Colombia,
now focused on counter-drug efforts, to include counter- insurgency -- a
taboo for Congress members who hear echoes of Vietnam wafting out of the
Colombian quagmire.

Most of the $700 million in U.S. military aid approved by Congress last
summer was earmarked for helicopters, weapons and other equipment for 3,000
troops trained by U.S. Special Forces in counter-narcotics operations.

But those troops and helicopters are restricted to the southern states of
Putumayo and Caqueta, home to half the nation's coca fields but a small
part of the FARC's operational area.

Colombian military officers find it hard to hide their pique with the U.S.
focus on those troops, while the rest of the 146,000-member armed forces
struggle against a FARC rich and powerful from protecting the cocaine trade.

Created two years ago, the 5,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force under Fracica
is Colombia's most elite counter-insurgency unit but receives neither
significant U.S. training as a unit nor weapons.

It uses helicopters bought with Colombian government dollars.

It has been repeatedly thrown into a succession of major operations, from
foot-slogging sweeps of 10,000-foot high Andean mountains to air assaults
on FARC jungle redoubts, without suffering any major defeats.

"These are top-notch troops, the elite of the elite, and they deserve
better from the United States," said Tom Marks, a retired U.S. Army colonel
who visits Colombia often and writes for military magazines.

Army commander Gen. Jorge Mora called the current operation "unprecedented"
in terms of the number of troops involved, the area and its offensive nature.

Some 4,000 Rapid Reaction troops, plus a 1,000-man counter-guerrilla
brigade and 1,000 soldiers regularly stationed in the region are using a
fleet of 20 U.S. and Russian-made transport helicopters to hopscotch across
the region.

But even army officials admit that it is difficult to find and engage
guerrillas who have maintained a presence for years in this region, the
capital of Colombia's coca trade until an intensive campaign with chemical
herbicides pushed many growers to Putumayo.

A FARC defector who led army troops to the rebel camp in Rincon del Indio,
just north of Puerto Siare, said that the city-block sized complex of some
20 open-sided huts had been there at least two years.

A FARC map found in the camp's bomb-shattered command hut showed a network
of footpaths and dirt landing strips and left Rapid Reaction officers
open-mouthed because their own up-to-date maps showed none of those features.

In the interview, Fracica pronounced himself satisfied that his troops have
broken up the FARC column and put them on the run, and downplayed reports
in the Colombian media that his forces have the rebels "surrounded."