COLOMBIAN RIGHT'S 'CLEANING' CAMPAIGN

Takeover In Major City Illustrates Political Side Of Drug War

BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia -- The campaign of violence began just before
Christmas in the ramshackle eastern neighborhoods of this river city. It
uprooted leftist guerrillas who have flourished here for four decades and
imposed in their place the stern authority of Colombia's right-wing
paramilitary army.

The rightist army, known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
(AUC), declared war on Dec. 22 against the guerrillas and civic
organizations seen as their supporters. Going house to house through the
Kennedy, Boston and First of May neighborhoods, young men with cell phones
and pistols conducted what they called a "cleaning" against suspected
members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the
National Liberation Army (ELN).

More than 180 civilians have been killed since January, and another 4,000
displaced, as the city has become the largest in Colombia to fall to armed
rightists. Meanwhile, the Colombian army and national police have largely
stood by and watched, according to residents and human rights groups, who
say the security forces often treat the paramilitary army as an ally in the
fight against leftist guerrillas.

The battle for Barrancabermeja, a city of 220,000 people 165 miles north of
Bogota, challenges the view advanced by Colombian and U.S. officials that
the war is a struggle between two outlaw armies over the spoils of a $6
billion drug trade, with government forces attempting weakly to contain the
violence. Based on this premise, the United States is sending Colombia $1.3
billion over the next two years to eliminate the drug crops that finance
the conflict.

But the close-quarter killing here points to a more complex war, in which
drug profits are the means to an end for rival armies with ambitious
political strategies. As the AUC drives guerrilla forces from towns and
urban centers, the political contest for control of institutions from city
halls to neighborhood health clinics is intensifying in a way that is
fundamentally eroding Colombia's democracy.

The violence in Barrancabermeja has been financed by drug profits traveling
up the Magdalena River from AUC-controlled coca fields in neighboring
Bolivar province -- fields that belonged to the ELN until a few months ago
- -- and by right-wing businessmen. Whatever the source, the funds are being
spent for what seem to be clearly political ends, reached by brutal means.

Directed by guerrilla turncoats, the paramilitary patrols sometimes
produced seven bodies a day at the height of the killing in
Barrancabermeja. Shootings from motorcycles felled union leaders and others
in broad daylight. Many victims had clusters of bullet wounds in the head
that suggested the shooter had military training.

In February, the U.S. Embassy in Bogota condemned the violence and declared
most of the victims "innocent civilians."

After three months, the killing has now largely stopped -- for lack of
resistance. It has given way to a hearts-and-minds strategy being carried
out by the AUC through a mix of intimidation and cash incentives as part of
a national political program.

Despite the hundreds of police and soldiers who have been patrolling the
eastern neighborhoods for months, the Colombian government exerts little
influence in the street. The teens and twentysomethings of the AUC, who
exercise real control, have drawn up their own rules: No gatherings of more
than three people without permission. No stray dogs in some neighborhoods.
A man's hair must not reach his shoulders.

"We had to restructure this city, clean it and start over," said the
paramilitary group's 29-year-old political commander here, who goes by the
name Salomon. "Now we are making rules that must be followed."

The new rules are fine with Juan De La Cruz, a 38-year-old father of three
who drives a taxi for a living. He said the guerrillas -- and the
kidnapping, car burning and extortion they carried out for decades -- are gone.

"This place is improving every day," De La Cruz said. "Thank God for what
they have done."

First, the AUC carried out its violent purge against the guerrillas' urban
militias. Now, to win over the people, the AUC has begun spending thousands
of dollars in the poorest neighborhoods for development projects and loan
programs.

The money -- much of it believed to be drug proceeds -- has started produce
markets and civic organizations among the same disaffected population that
aided the guerrillas. In community meetings, paramilitary leaders have told
residents that some of their future funding may include money from Plan
Colombia, as the multibillion-dollar U.S.-backed anti-drug strategy is known.

"They have been in the process of trying to convert us," said Yolanda
Becerra Vega, director of the Popular Women's Organization, a community
group that the AUC has declared a military target. "They told us we would
not be continuing here. They offered us money, millions of pesos, but we
did not accept. These financial overtures are another way to kill us, to
copy our programs and take our members."

A History of Conflict

Built along a broad bend in the Magdalena River, the country's historic
highway to the sea, Barrancabermeja has long been a crossroads for
Colombian commerce and violence. In the late 1950s and early 1960s,
thousands of families settled in the city and its surrounding jungles,
displaced from western coffee-growing regions during a period of political
conflict known as "the violence." More than 300,000 people arrived with few
belongings and little money, changing the political landscape along the
entire Middle Magdalena.

This displaced population, angered by a limp state response, became a
talent pool for guerrilla armies then springing up near Barrancabermeja,
particularly the Cuban-oriented ELN. Also shaped by activist oil unions,
the city became a pocket of leftist sympathy and resistance to the government.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Colombian navy mounted an
intelligence network in and around Barrancabermeja that human rights groups
say became a state-sponsored killing machine targeting the left. The
Regional Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, or CREDHOS, attributes
130 killings of union activists, leftist politicians and other civilians to
assassins connected with Naval Intelligence Network No. 7. Six CREDHOS
employees were among the victims.

"How do you generate security in a place with such resistance?" said Henry
Lozano, a CREDHOS director. "You impose order through the armed forces."

Col. Rodrigo Quinones ran the network, using the code name "The Manager."
He has since been promoted to general after being exonerated of involvement
in the killings, and serves as the second-ranking officer in the Colombian
navy. International human rights groups have implored the U.S. government
to secure Quinones's dismissal or suspend the $1.3 billion U.S. aid package.

In the last decade, with what human rights defenders say is at least the
tacit approval of the Colombian armed forces and intelligence, the AUC has
taken up where "The Manager" left off in towns and villages around
Barrancabermeja. The decision to move into the city in force in December
was prompted by President Andres Pastrana's declaration that he intended to
withdraw security forces from an area 30 miles to the north as a way to
begin peace talks with the ELN. Carlos Castano, commander in chief of the
8,000-member AUC, opposes the idea of giving the ELN a zone of control,
saying a similar experiment with the FARC in southern Colombia has failed.

In recent days, the AUC has launched a 1,000-man offensive against
guerrilla positions north of this city in advance of any decision on the
demilitarized zone. The ELN and FARC, rivals ideologically and militarily,
have begun joint operations in the region to combat Castano's offensive.

Easy Recruiting

In a city where one in three working-age residents is without a job, the
AUC had no trouble finding recruits. The offer was simple. Young men who
signed up received a monthly salary of $250, a cell phone and a pistol --
power and prestige in a region where 80 percent of the population lives in
poverty. A 12-person operation a year and a half ago is now a 200-member
military and intelligence force.

Life in Barrancabermeja, always violent, turned more unruly as the year
began. The AUC cut lines of communication within neighborhoods held by the
ELN's "FURY" militia and the FARC's Bolivarian urban front. The AUC took
control of the Magdalena by severing phone lines in the riverfront
neighborhoods of Arenal and Cardales, eliminating the guerrillas' ability
to relay river-traffic information to their headquarters in the east. AUC
troops then gathered up all civilian cell phones in the city's poorest
neighborhoods to paralyze the guerrillas' early warning system.

With cash incentives, the AUC lured more than 40 former guerrillas, who
guided AUC patrols through the eastern neighborhoods. The AUC even managed
to turn the commander of the FARC's urban militia, according to police
intelligence.

By the end of January, the campaign had reached the home of Carlina Cano's
invalid father in the Divine Child neighborhood. At 7 a.m. on a Saturday,
she said, an AUC member named Raul Padilla knocked on her father's door to
inform him that if he remained in his house by 5 p.m. he would be killed.
Her father left at once.

Carlina Cano, displaced by the paramilitary army three times in the past 10
years, was about to lose another home. On Jan. 27, the AUC arrived in the
Pablo Acuna neighborhood, settled a decade earlier by displaced families.
An AUC member named "Pablo" knocked on her door at 8 a.m. with a message:
Her oldest son, Fran Jobani Guzman, was needed to serve in the paramilitary
army. If he did not report for duty by the end of the day, Pablo continued,
the whole family would be declared guerrilla sympathizers.

"I immediately sent him to live with my brother in Bucaramanga," Cano said,
referring to a larger city two hours by car to the east. "Then my brother
called a few days later and said the paramilitaries had arrived to tell him
they knew my son was there. If he didn't come with them, they would throw a
grenade in the house. My son left and now is in [the central province of]
Tolima, I think."

Although the AUC now controls these neighborhoods, many residents fear the
guerrillas may return to exact their own revenge, a bloody cycle that has
repeated itself throughout Colombian history. But most evidence suggests
that, like many problems in Colombia spawned by a lack of state presence,
this conflict has simply moved. Guerrillas and paramilitary forces have
taken the military component of their fight east to Bucaramanga, where
rival graffiti have begun to appear on houses leading into the city.

Col. Jose Miguel Villar, the police chief who arrived in Barrancabermeja
six months ago, said his troops have stopped the violence. Two tanks patrol
the eastern neighborhoods each night. Villar said more than 40 AUC members
and 20 guerrillas have been arrested, each side squaring off in a bloody
jail riot this month. Daily bombings stopped, he said, after his men
captured the ELN's Cuban-trained explosives expert in March. In February,
the Colombian army sent in its special forces to patrol the streets,
although no significant decline in violence accompanied their arrival.

Villar said it has been difficult fighting the AUC because most residents
are too afraid to file complaints against them. "But our task is to get rid
of them, if only the people would help us," Villar said. "This is up to them."

According to many residents, sympathetic police and military officials
filter any complaint filed against the paramilitary army back to them. "We
see them walking together, drinking soda at the stores together, sharing
their uniforms," Cano said. "There is no way to denounce them. To tell the
police is to be taken out of your home and delivered to the paramilitaries."