COLOMBIA CAUGHT IN A STRUGGLE FOR POWER

Militias Squeeze Left-Wing Rebels.

Barrancabermeja, Colombia -- For most of 40 years, this oil city along the
Magdalena River in northern Colombia was a stronghold of the National
Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest guerrilla group.

Rebels of the ELN, as the leftist group is known by its Spanish initials,
extorted "taxes" from local businessmen, kidnapped at will, ran a thriving
smuggling business in gasoline siphoned from a local refinery and
controlled most of the cocaine smuggling routes through the coca-rich region.

Then late last December, right-wing paramilitary "self-defense" forces
declared they were taking over this town, and over the past five months
that is exactly what they have done.

The paramilitaries, now Colombia's fastest-growing outlaw group, seized
Barrancabermeja from the Fidel Castro-inspired ELN in a series of bloody
battles, driving the guerrillas into the nearby countryside and installing
a new "law and order" regime.

Che Guevara's image on the wall of the university was painted over. Parks
were cleaned up, murals painted. Residents, long too scared to go out at
night, returned to the city's restaurants and pool halls.

"We're working with people for the benefit of society," said Commandante
Claudio, a paramilitary leader with an emerald-eyed eagle ring--the group's
emblem--on his pinky. "Little by little we're creating a new ethic here."

Those who haven't adopted the new ethic are quickly filling
Barrancabermeja's morgue. Homosexuals, prostitutes, drug users, suspected
guerrilla sympathizers and the mentally ill who wander the streets have
been assassinated in what the local newspaper terms a "social cleansing"
campaign. Unionists, human-rights officials and journalists have been
threatened and believe they are next in line. Police and the coroner's
office estimate the deaths so far at close to 300.

Police recently had to rescue a man arrested by the militias and beaten for
fighting with his wife in the street, a violation of the new civil order
imposed by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

"This is a totalitarian regime," said Juan Carlos Galvis, a Barrancabermeja
union leader. "They're taking away fundamental rights of the people."

Militia's Heavy Hand:

Many of this city's of 220,000 residents say they are just happy somebody
has been able to get rid of the guerrillas. The paramilitaries "have done
away with most of the problems around here," said Gustavo Wolf, a pots and
pans salesman and a regular at Barrancabermeja's main pool hall. "I don't
like a heavy hand but I like peace, and we might need a heavy hand at first
to get it."

Across Colombia, paramilitaries have become the hot new players in a brutal
40-year civil war that has brought this nation, the region's oldest
democracy, to its knees. Created as a mercenary force in the 1980s to
protect drug traffickers and large landowners threatened by guerrillas, the
paramilitaries gradually have become an independent force.

Their growth has been explosive, far outpacing the rebels. In 1991, 850
paramilitary soldiers roamed the country. Last year the total was estimated
at 8,100 and it now is believed to top 11,000.

By comparison, Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, has about 18,000 fighters, and the ELN about
4,000, analysts say. "If this keeps up, the paramilitaries will be as big
or bigger than the FARC," said Alfredo Rangel, a top military analyst.

Paramilitary leaders say their goal is to combat drug-fueled leftist
subversion and help end a conflict that has left 40,000 dead in the past
decade. But as they seize more territory and power from the guerrillas, the
paramilitaries have turned to funding themselves with the same kind of
crime--smuggling, drug trafficking, kidnapping--as their left-wing foes,
military officials say.

Carlos Castano, the leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia,
or AUC, admits that 70 percent of the organization's finances now come
directly or indirectly from drug trafficking. In Barrancabermeja, it is now
the local paramilitaries that run the thriving gasoline theft rings and
control cocaine and gun smuggling routes.

"The money that the guerrillas get is almost all illegal, and with the
paramilitaries it's exactly the same," said Luis Fernando Ramirez,
Colombia's defense minister. "They act as subversives, but of the right."

According to the Ministry of Defense, paramilitaries have quickly become
the most deadly players in Colombia's ugly power struggle. While guerrillas
commit the lion's share of kidnappings and extortion, the paramilitaries
are the biggest killers. Last year they murdered more than 500 people in 75
massacres, most in remote rural villages suspected of sympathizing with the
guerrillas.

More Political Killings:

At Easter, paramilitary troops slaughtered at least 17 peasants in the
Cauca province town of Naya, slicing one woman with a chain saw. Already
this year, political killings have leapt by 75 percent, with the AUC
responsible for most of the increase, according to government human-rights
officials.

Still, the paramilitaries enjoy substantial popularity, especially among
the urban rich and middle class. In areas run by paramilitaries, families
say, their children can walk to school safely, and families can drive to
their country homes on the weekend without worrying about guerrilla ambushes.

"There's no family in Colombia that hasn't had one of its members or a
close friend extorted or kidnapped" by guerrillas, said Gen. Fernando
Tapias, Colombia's armed forces chief, explaining why the AUC enjoys
greater support than guerrillas.

The job benefits offered by paramilitaries help explain their phenomenal
recruiting success. Each militia member gets $250 a month, a pistol and a
cellular phone. That tempting deal, in a nation plagued by 20 percent
unemployment and widespread rural poverty, has allowed the paramilitaries
to recruit many highly trained former Colombian soldiers and even plenty of
turncoat guerrillas.

Commandante Claudio, the deputy commander of AUC troops in Barrancabermeja,
fought with the FARC eight years before swapping sides six months ago.

"A revolutionary looks for social change, and nothing was changing" under
the guerrillas, he said, sitting in a newly renovated park and explaining
his change of heart. Now there's no doubt "we're changing things, doing
things people like," he said.

Social change, however, was not what brought the AUC to Barrancabermeja.
Colombia's government has promised the ELN a "demilitarized zone" in their
stronghold in Bolivar state, just across the Magdalena River from
Barrancabermeja.

The zone, a smaller version of the Switzerland-size territory conceded to
the FARC two years ago, is intended as a sign of goodwill to bring the ELN
to the peace table and provide a neutral space for negotiations.

The problem is that the FARC has used its own zone around San Vicente del
Caguan primarily as a haven to build its military strength and grow huge
amounts of coca, while showing no serious sign of willingness to talk peace.

Critics fear the same thing could happen with the now seriously weakened
ELN if it is given its own zone of control. By taking Barrancabermeja and
nearby towns within the proposed peace zone, the paramilitaries hope to
sabotage that effort by effectively removing the region from ELN control.

Local Opposition:

In San Pablo, one of two main towns inside the proposed haven, "Say No to
the Zone" signs now hang over the little central park and are scrawled on
concrete walls around town.

"We've had 30 years here with violence and we don't want to continue with
it," says Eliseo Acevedo, head of the local Committee Against the Zone.

If the government insists on granting the ELN local control, over the
objections of the residents and the AUC, San Pablo will become a war zone,
he said, and "the victims will be us in the middle of the crossfire."

Not that San Pablo is exactly peaceful at the moment. Police and soldiers
hefting automatic rifles patrol the humid streets, and residents whisper
that this is a "hot" town, torn between the militias, who now hold power,
and the guerrillas, intent on retaking it. Kidnappings and other acts of
terror are common.

"There's a lot of uncertainty here. No one knows what is going to happen,"
says Father Jorge Camacho, a Jesuit. "There's an atmosphere of fear."

Colombia's military so far has shown only limited signs of being able to
stop the bloody war between the AUC and the guerrillas. In Barrancabermeja,
where gun-shy residents startle at the sound of a dropped glass or
backfiring car, tanks and troop carriers patrol city streets, but it is the
paramilitaries who are in charge.

Military Seeks Distance:

Almost since their inception, paramilitary groups have enjoyed close ties
with Colombia's relatively weak military, largely because both were
fighting the same enemy: the guerrillas. In recent years, with the AUC
accused of human-rights violations and of involvement in drug trafficking,
the government has set out to sever those links.

In the past four years, police and soldiers have captured 934 militia
members--including the chief of Barrancabermeja, Commandante Salomon--and
killed 150 in combat. About 800 members of the AUC are now in prison in
Colombia, double the number of guerrillas.

In March, the government pulled the 31st army battalion out of southern
Putumayo province to break ties there with the paramilitaries. Other
officers and soldiers have been fired--and almost overnight joined the
paramilitary, garnering a pay raise in the process.

And in late April, Colombia's military captured 58 paramilitaries involved
in the brutal Easter massacre at Naya, one of the first large-scale
captures of militia troops.

Critics, however, say such captures remain the exception rather than the
rule, and that while the government appears to have a real commitment to
combating the paramilitaries, such sentiments have been hard to get through
to all of the rank and file.

"What happened at Naya is something occasional," said Gustavo Gallon, head
of the Colombian Commission of Jurists, a human-rights organization.