OUTLAW ROLE SEEN IN COLOMBIA EFFORT

UAMUEZ VALLEY, Colombia - While Colombia insists it is cracking down on
outlawed paramilitary groups, commanders of the right-wing units boast that
they are actually spearheading the government's US-funded offensive to wipe
out the booming cocaine industry in guerrilla-held jungles in the south.

President Andres Pastrana and the military's top brass have repeatedly
vowed to crackdown on the burgeoning paramilitary forces and on officers
and soldiers found collaborating with them. But there is credible evidence
to back the paramilitary commanders' assertions that they are actually
functioning as the vanguard of ''Plan Colombia'' - the campaign to
eradicate illicit drug crops that Washington is financing with $1.3 billion
in mostly military aid.

In months of covert operations in large swaths of Putumayo province in
remote southern Colombia, both sides say, the right-wing forces have driven
out leftist guerrilla units and killed suspected leftist sympathizers. That
cleared the way for the army's US-trained antinarcotics battalions to move
in without fear of ambush and with less risk of having their helicopters
and defoliant-spraying aircraft shot down.

The army's 24th Brigade and Anti-Narcotics Brigade "know where we are, and
they draw up sketches and decide to spray where they know we have
consolidated those zones. They have depended entirely on us," said a
paramilitary chieftain known by the nom de guerre "Commando Wilson." A
former member of an army antiguerrilla unit, he now runs paramilitary
operations in Putumayo.

"Plan Colombia would be almost impossible without the help of the
[paramilitary] self-defense forces. If we did not take control of zones
ahead of the army, then the guerrillas would shoot down their planes," he
added, speaking on condition that the village that houses the paramilitary
regional headquarters not be identified.

He said overall strategy was planned between his "superiors" and the
military, and he swaps the coordinates of his fighters' positions with the
army daily.

There are army detachments 20 minutes away on either side of the
paramilitary command post. The dirt road through the valley is pockmarked
with foxholes manned by paramilitary sentries. Trucks packed with up to 40
camouflage-clad fighters, bristling with machine guns and rocket launchers,
rumble along the road regularly as they head out on search-and-destroy
missions.

Since mid-December, US-donated cropduster planes and Vietnam-era Huey
helicopters have been buzzing over the Guamuez Valley, dumping a powerful
herbicide on illegal plantations of coca leaf - the raw material for cocaine.

Putumayo province, until now a stronghold of the Marxist Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia guerrillas, accounts for almost 300 tons of
Colombia's production of some 520 tons of cocaine per year. Revenue from
taxing the illicit trade has become a central pillar of the rebel war economy.

In just 2 1/2 months, however, the spray planes eradicated almost 75,000
acres of coca leaf - the goal set for the first two years. But senior US
military authorities concede that the bulk of that - about 62,000 acres -
was carried out around a cluster of four towns controlled by paramilitary
forces: La Hormiga, El Placer, La Dorada, and San Miguel.

''Between Dec. 25 and Jan. 15, aerial eradication operations were focused
primarily in that area of the Valle de Guamuez considered to be under
paramilitary influence,'' said a US military officer, speaking on condition
of anonymity. He rejected suggestions that the army and paramilitary are
colluding but said, ''It was anticipated spray operations directed against
paramilitary coca fields would experience fewer hostile fire incidents.''

Many paramilitary fighters say they are former soldiers, and some wear the
insignia of their former army battalions.

On a recent day, one gunman, dressed in plain clothes and standing guard in
a village, picked through a pack of US Army C-rations, hunting for chewing
gum and pound cake. He shrugged off questions about where he got the
supplies, issued to the three Colombian Army antidrug units that have been
trained by US Special Forces advisers.

In its annual human rights report, the Defense Ministry said its forces had
killed 89 paramilitary fighters and arrested 315 others last year, compared
with 970 guerrillas killed and 1,556 captured. But the report does not
convince German Martinez, the former human rights ombudsman for the town of
Puerto Asis, who quit this month after repeated death threats.

''The paramilitary phenomenon in Putumayo is the spearhead of Plan Colombia
to create territorial control for the areas to be sprayed and to control
the civilian population,'' he said.

In recent reports, the US State Department and United Nations have also
outlined evidence of complicity between security forces and paramilitary
troops.

Last September, complaints of military collaboration with paramilitary
forces by the UN's High Commission for Human Rights in Colombia prompted
the attorney general's office to launch an investigation. In confidential
documents, investigators recommended prosecuting at least five army and
police commanders, including former 24th Brigade commander Colonel Gabriel
Diaz. But the inquiry is bogged down at the preliminary stage, and Diaz is
in line for promotion to general.

As a result of alleged rights violations, the 24th Brigade is currently
banned from receiving US assistance. In an effort to spruce up its image,
incoming commander General Jose Antonio Ladron de Guevara sent the
brigade's entire 31st Counterguerrilla Battalion to Bogota for ''retraining.''

He estimated that 30 former members of the unit had quit to join the
paramilitary forces. Wilson put the figure closer to 100 and said his men
would continue to back Plan Colombia. ''We're ready to risk everything,''
he said.