A WARY LOOK AT LIFE'S BATTLES IN COLOMBIA'S COCAINE BELT

CAGUAN RIVER, Colombia - Deep in the jungle, laborers scurried along
wooden walkways through a sprawling cocaine factory. The acrid stench
of chemicals hung in the air as coca paste, a breadcrumb-like powder
made from coca leaves, was refined into snow-white cocaine at the rate
of more than a ton a week.

A heavy-set man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat barked out
orders as he placed a kilogram brick of cocaine to dry in a microwave
oven before it was hermetically sealed in plastic - ready for the long
and profitable journey to the United States or Europe.

Here in the guerrilla-controlled jungles of the Caguan River region of
Caqueta province in southern Colombia, peasants sell their coca paste
to drug dealers for around $780 per kilogram (2.2 pounds). By the time
that kilo has been refined, cut, and sold on the streets of New York,
London, or Paris, among other cities, it will be worth as much as
$170,000, according to estimates of the US Drug Enforcement
Administration.

As Colombia's cocaine and heroin output soars, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the rebel army that controls up to 40
percent of the country, has been accused of jettisoning its Marxist
ideology and becoming little more than an international drug cartel.

Those charges, leveled by US and Colombian military and civilian
authorities, are the driving logic behind Washington's billion-dollar
package of mostly military aid designed to attack the drug trade in
rebel-held regions of the south.

If escalating rebel involvement in the drug trade is proven, some
analysts say it could open the door to providing wider US
counterinsurgency aid, rather than the present more limited
antinarcotics assistance.

The drug-trafficking claims also threaten to scuttle the two-year
peace process between the rebels and the Colombian government.
President Andres Pastrana has said he will scrap the talks if the drug
charges are confirmed. Such a move probably would trigger a surge in
the 37-year war.

This corner of Caqueta province, like parts of neighboring Putumayo
province, is one of the biggest cocaine-producing regions in the
world. But if the government is correct about the growing rebel role
in the drug trade, there is little evidence of it here.

The rebel army is the undisputed master of the lower Caguan region.
But the secret laboratory was not ringed by guerrillas nor staffed by
a rebel work force, which government officials suggest is routine.
There was not a gun in sight, and most of the 50 or so workers
questioned said they were peasant laborers.

''As long as we pay our taxes, the guerrillas leave us in peace. They
don't even come round here,'' said a lab foreman, who gave his name as
Elver Gomez, 42. He rejected suggestions that the rebels guard drug
complexes like his.

''This is a very risky business,'' he said. ''But as long as there's
hunger in this country, this trade will not stop.'' The complex, built
of wood and stacked high with steel drums of chemicals, belongs to a
cocaine capo from Caucasia, in northwest Antioquia province, he said.

The lab is in a region that is firmly in the sights of the US-backed
''Plan Colombia'' antidrug offensive that was launched in
mid-December. There have been a few aerial spraying sorties to kill
coca plants, but the Colombian Army's elite counternarcotics
battalions, trained by US Green Berets, have not yet seen action here.

For the time being, the drug trade continues uninterrupted.

On a recent weekend, peasants lined up outside a wooden shack on the
riverbank clutching small bags of coca paste.

Inside, a set of scales rattled, and a drug dealer burned a small pile
of coca paste on a spoon to test its purity. He pulled a stack of
20,000 peso notes (each one worth about $10) from under a poncho and
handed it to a peasant. The peasant received $780 for his kilo of
powder, the minimum price decreed by the rebel army to ensure what
they say is a fair deal for growers.

On a typical weekend, more than 440 pounds of coca paste change hands
at a single market.

The dealers then pay a nonnegotiable tax ranging between $220 and $350
per kilo to the rebels.

When no buyers show up - usually because of Christmas or New Year's
holidays or because a major cartel has been busted - semi-processed
cocaine becomes the currency.

The peasants use several grams of coca paste to barter for food and
drink or for a hurried sex session at the ''Grand Saigon'' brothel.

But US authorities insist that the rebels are not only taxing the drug
trade in regions they control, they are also acting as a cartel -
buying and selling drugs and helping to ship cocaine abroad.

US Ambassador Anne Patterson said in April that the rebels were ''up
to the head in drug trafficking.'' And Colombian Army chief General
Jorge Mora said recently that, ''We know that the FARC grow coca, they
own drug laboratories, and ... sell to international cocaine cartels.''

The Colombian government's National Planning Department estimates that
the rebel group makes about $290 million yearly from the drug trade,
less than 2.5 percent of the value of Colombia's estimated annual
cocaine output of 580 tons.

The allegations against the rebels have intensified since last month's
capture of alleged top Brazilian capo Luiz Fernando da Costa in the
rebel-held jungles of eastern Colombia.

The army said Da Costa confessed to receiving protection from the
rebels and paying the insurgent force $10 million a month for drugs,
and on occasion swapping weapons for cocaine.

A rebel leader, Fabian Ramirez, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
commander on the Caguan River, conceded that his fighters tax all
phases of drug production. But he rejected charges the rebels had
become a cartel.

''There's no reason for anybody to say that we've any links with
narcotrafficking. We only collect a simple tax,'' he said as he worked
on a laptop computer in a jungle clearing.

Ramirez said he has been ordered by his superiors to devise a crop
substitution plan to wean peasants off coca and grow legal cash crops
instead.

So far the government has rejected proposals to collaborate with the
rebels to promote crop substitution, and the peasants continue to tend
their drug plantations.

Once the peasant landowners have paid their laborers' wages and
purchased the gasoline, cement, and sulfuric acid needed to transform
the leaves into coca paste, they are left with about $220 profit for
every kilo of paste.

They are making a living, but most are far from rich.

''I'm from Tolima province but there was a lot of poverty there,''
said recent arrival Felix Romero, 61. ''I was growing coffee, but the
prices are so low, so what's the point. I've come here to earn some
money.''