U.S.-Trained Force Girds For Battle In Colombia Drug War

LARANDIA ARMY BASE, Colombia -- The men in thatched huts, lined with a
dozen microwave ovens drying coca leaves, feigned the business of making
cocaine. Outside, in a silent tightening circle, 45 select Colombian army
students staging a practice drug bust approached the huts from the ridge
above a creek.

"This is the most crucial moment for us," said Gen. Mario Montoya, head of
Colombia's Joint Task Force South, the chief recipient of an enormous U.S.
aid package. "They are within 20 meters of us now. And you cannot see them
or hear them."

Suddenly, a shout from the trees: "We are the anti-narcotics battalion! You
are completely surrounded!"

One of two people acting as armed guards, dressed in the rubber boots and
olive uniform of leftist guerrillas, opened fire with blanks. And a column
of men, faces streaked with green and black paint, rushed toward the
collection of huts arranged in a likeness of the real cocaine processing
labs that fill these southern jungles.

Once the area had been secured, a member of Colombia's attorney general's
office reviewed the "captured" drug traffickers, along with plastic bags
full of ersatz cocaine. Soldiers hurried away the "wounded" man to a
waiting helicopter.

"There were some problems," Montoya said after the exercise as a host of
U.S. officers in green berets and floppy camouflage hats looked on. "You
don't group the captured together. And there were too many people inside
the objective. Some should have stayed on the periphery . . . .But this is
as realistic as it gets."

This staged "take down" of a cocaine lab was part of a lesson plan designed
by the U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group training Colombia's new anti-drug
battalions in the art of war on this vast base 240 miles south of Bogota.
The class is almost over for the current batch of 728 soldiers, who this
month will become the final battalion to finish the course and enter the
intensifying fight against Colombia's assorted illegal armed groups that
dominate the drug trade in the south.

Taken together, the 3,000 members of the four-battalion anti-drug brigade
are the human spearhead of Plan Colombia, supported by a $1.3 billion U.S.
aid package designed to attack a drug trade here that accounts for almost
90 percent of the world's cocaine supply. Since December, the first two
field battalions totaling 1,500 men have been used mainly as ground support
for an intensive aerial herbicide spraying campaign over two southern
provinces. A handful of soldiers have been killed, including one Wednesday
night in a clash that also left seven guerrillas dead.

Colombian officials say that more than 60,000 acres of coca, perhaps as
much as a fifth of the country's crop, have been destroyed by the spraying
campaign that relies on U.S. intelligence for targeting. With the last
battalion's graduation and the impending arrival of U.S.-donated Black Hawk
helicopters, the drug war here is about to pick up pace and shift slightly
in focus to a more ground-oriented assault on the labs that turn leaves
into drugs, bringing the soldiers into closer contact with the armed groups
that guard them.

"They realized they had a unique opportunity to spray a lot of coca at one
time," said a U.S. military official here, explaining why the plan's most
controversial element has been the chief strategy so far.

To prepare for the social investment portion of Plan Colombia -- an effort
to help farmers abandon coca growing and turn to legal crops -- the
official said the Colombian military must start securing coca zones from
the armed groups that control them.

Most of the world's cocaine originates here in southern Colombia as coca
leaf; it ends up on the streets of U.S. cities in its processed powder
form. Much of the money from the sale of the drug fuels Colombia's civil
conflict, as armed groups of both the left and right profit by protecting
the coca fields, clandestine air strips and processing labs. Their role
blurs the distinction U.S. policymakers have tried to make between fighting
drugs and fighting Colombia's decades-old leftist insurgency.

This base of rolling pastures and jungle-covered knolls was once the
hacienda of a powerful local farmer, killed decades ago by the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the country's largest
rebel group. It sits on more than 20,000 acres 65 miles southwest of San
Vicente del Caguan, the main city within a demilitarized zone that
President Andres Pastrana turned over to the FARC two years ago for peace
talks.

Since April 1999, the base has served as the main U.S. training center for
Colombia's anti-drug battalions. Almost 90 U.S. military advisers, about
half of them trainers, work here with the Colombian troops. The course
includes everything from how to escape from a jungle ambush, to
administering first aid, to maintaining a tricky battlefield respect for
human rights.

The 7th Special Forces Group, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., added human-rights
training to the curriculum after some of its former clients -- the Atlacatl
Battalion in El Salvador, for example -- were accused of massive rights
violations during the 1980s. Now human rights training, mostly taught
through hypothetical scenarios and role playing, is woven into just about
every element of the 18-week course. To be selected, a soldier must be
vetted by the U.S. Embassy to ensure that he has a clean service record.

Montoya, a bluff general with a slightly graying crew cut, said: "We are
teaching the value of human life here. These are narco-traffickers, but
they are not enemies. When a man surrenders, he surrenders."

The fight here in the south would not exist without U.S. military hardware
and advice. Montoya, whose task force consists of 11,000 men, including the
three "line" anti-drug battalions and one support battalion, acknowledges
that he would have "zero" helicopters without Plan Colombia. And in a
remote jungle region where the only possible travel is by air or river, the
helicopter is the transport of choice.

Already 33 U.S.-donated UH-1N transport helicopters have arrived as part of
the package, with 16 of the larger, swifter UH-60L, or Black Hawks,
scheduled to begin arriving in July. U.S. advisers here say that the Black
Hawks, which can carry twice the number of troops as the helicopters
currently in use, will significantly intensify the tempo of anti-drug
operations by allowing the three battalions to conduct simultaneous strikes
against labs.

From a hilltop here, with groves of palms and hilly pastures stretching
into the distance, a U.S. military instructor looked down on a grassy
clearing where 22 U.S.-donated helicopters sat in long, straight lines. The
sergeant pointed to an adjacent pasture where a 10-man patrol moved slowly
in a wedge formation toward a cluster of bushes. "Actually there are cows
in the way now," the instructor said, shrugging as he explained the exercise.

Suddenly, rifle fire erupted and the patrol hit the ground. A grenade
exploded, which the instructor said was a signal for the members of the
patrol to "lift and shift" their fire to avoid hitting each other as they
retreated from the ambush. The cows scattered.

"Now each man will give an ACE report -- ammunition, communication,
equipment," the instructor explained. "That will determine whether they can
go on."

In a month, the drill will become reality. Meantime, Colombia's
drug-financed conflict is picking up in intensity. Montoya said that, after
years of profiting from the drug trade, the FARC has accumulated a
financial buffer that will take months to chip away.

"They are not suffering yet," Montoya said. "But if we continue at this
pace, they will feel the effects in a year or a year and a half."