DRUG WAR SQUEEZES COLOMBIAN PEASANTS

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia -- The highways into the countryside close at 6 p.m.
sharp each night. Drivers caught out after curfew risk a fine by the
military -- or a confrontation with guerrillas or right-wing paramilitary
squads.

At dawn, trucks and taxis line up at the military roadblock at the edge of
Puerto Asis, waiting in the half-light while soldiers with automatic rifles
slung over their shoulders peer under hoods and pat down drivers and
passengers.

Colombia is at war, and the evidence is nowhere more striking than in the
country's far southern provinces, where the army, Marxist guerrillas and
paramilitary squads are locked in battle over the world's most prolific
coca-growing region.

At the airport in Puerto Asis, the tiny terminal sits beside a fortified
redoubt, black sandbags piled head-high, with gun slits and a couple of
covered pillboxes. The police station looks the same.

On the 40 miles of rutted, bone-jarring highway to nearby La Hormiga, an
oil pipeline that snakes alongside the road has been blasted apart by
guerrilla bombers too many times to count, leaving black charred circles in
the dirt and twisted metal as evidence of their handiwork.

Army patrols string out along the highway daily, shoulders criss-crossed
with ammunition belts, plodding along as the early-morning mist rises over
the brilliant green landscape.

It is an area of constantly shifting power and control. One force sweeps
into a town, demanding loyalty, only to be pushed out a few months later by
opponents, who single out and kill suspected supporters of the other side.

It's a vicious, endless cycle that has waxed and waned for four decades.

Caught in the middle are ordinary Colombians trying to raise children, run
businesses and enjoy a normal life. And caught in the toughest position of
all are the peasants in the countryside. Their children conscripted by the
various military forces, they grow coca because there are no other viable
crops and sell their product under the watchful eye of the guerrillas one
season, the paramilitaries the next.

"The peasants want to leave, but most don't have the money," said Sister
Irene Sarai, who works at a Catholic mission in Puerto Asis. "They are
caught between the paramilitaries and the guerrillas. So many have been
killed. It's dangerous for them even to come into town."

Both the guerrillas and the paramilitaries force farmers to pay so-called
taxes on their coca. They also take tribute from the traffickers who
process the leaves and smuggle cocaine out of the country.

Three years ago, Puerto Asis was dominated by the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the oldest and most powerful guerrilla force
in the nation's 37-year-old civil war.

Then the paramilitary groups moved in, killing dozens of suspected
guerrilla sympathizers. Now the paras, as they are called, rule like a
silent force. Ask quietly about them and heads will nod toward muscular
young men riding motorcycles. The shadowy group is headquartered at a
sprawling, prosperous farm compound just outside of town.

"We had 150 murders last year," said German Martinez, the town's ombudsman,
a sort of government complaint-taker. "That's out of 35,000 residents."

But the guerrillas aren't far away. Take a boat across the muddy Putumayo
River to the town of Puerto Vega, five miles away, and you're back in FARC
territory. Nobody makes the trip unless they have to, because "the paras
will ask you what you were doing over there," said a Puerto Asis taxi
driver who declined to be identified.

The story is much the same in La Hormiga, a farm town at the heart of the
Guamuez River valley where the Colombian military, bolstered by millions of
dollars in U.S. aid, has recently fumigated thousands of acres of coca.

"It was a campaign of terror," said Cayo Miranda Montenegro, the municipal
ombudsman, referring to the arrival of the paramilitaries. "They cut off
heads and slit bellies. They killed a police officer in this building. In
January 1999, there was a massacre of 25 people in El Tigre, a nearby town.
Now the paras control the towns, while the guerrillas control the countryside."

A difficult choice

Out in that countryside, poor peasants want mostly to be left alone. Most
admit they grow coca -- it's useless to deny it, since it often surrounds
their homes. But many say they grow it only because there is no alternative
crop that earns anything close to the $1,000 or more they can make each
year off the bright green leaves.

Most have only a few years of education and profess no political leanings,
saying they simply wish the war would end.

"I want to quit growing coca because it's too dangerous," said Rigoberto
Rosero, 36, who watched recently as government planes fumigated his coca
crop -- along with his bananas and corn and his house and family of four
children. "The danger is from all sides -- the government, the
paramilitaries, the guerrillas."

The root of the conflict is the rich land that poor farmers such as Rosero
till. An agricultural paradise, Colombia was ruled by rural land barons
throughout the 1800s, with Indians and peasants pushed off their plots.

In the 1950s, the country was convulsed by a 10-year war called La
Violencia -- the violence -- in which the main political parties split and
a terrible bloodshed resulted. The conflict was over politics and power,
but also once again control of the land, which had become even more
valuable with Colombia's coffee boom.

Both the guerrilla and paramilitary forces at work today were born in that
conflict -- the guerrilla, who are disciples of Marx, and the paras,
essentially private armies run by the land barons.

For land and money

The conflict simmered through the 1970s. Then, during the 1980s, Colombia
emerged as the world's coca- and cocaine-producing leader, bringing a new
ruthless element into the picture: international drug traffickers.
Suddenly, there were billions of dollars at stake.

Now both the paramilitaries and the guerrillas skim millions from
drug-runners and coca growers, battling for control over swaths of valuable
countryside.

Both enforce their will through terror and murder. Informers spy for both
sides, reporting on neighbors and anything suspicious. Blood-curdling
warnings are given. Some slayings seem random, with unconfirmed stories
about drunken partisans killing people in bars for the sheer hell of it.

Last year, more than 5,000 people died in the conflict nationwide -- an
average of 14 per day. During the past four decades, more than 35,000 have
been killed.

Most people just try to keep their mouths shut, walking the invisible line
between the terror on both sides, hoping they won't say or do something
that will make them a target.

"People never know which side it may come from," said Carlos Palacios, an
ex-priest who now works with peasants who have lost their coca crops in La
Hormiga. "You have to be extremely careful of what you say and do."