COLOMBIAN GUERILLAS WON'T GIVE UP

LA JULIA, Colombia - Colombia's defense minister helicoptered into
this leftist rebel stronghold with a clutch of U.S. Embassy officials
and heavily armed U.S. soldiers to assert emphatically that Latin
America's most enduring guerrilla army is on the run.

"The state has arrived to stay, and never again will the guerrillas
control this territory," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos
proclaimed in October while inaugurating the first police post ever in
this former hub of the cocaine trade.

But just weeks later, an Associated Press news team had to talk its
way past testy rebels just to reach the dirt-street town, from which
hundreds of people have fled since police and soldiers moved in.

"It's silly to say the government has finished off the guerrillas,"
said Gustavo Valencia, a 52-year-old vegetable merchant, as helmeted
soldiers shuffled by and an army radio station blared from
loudspeakers.

With more than $4 billion in U.S. military aid, this Andean nation's
armed forces have been trying hard to crush the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC. To try to measure the
campaign's success, the AP visited this longtime rebel bastion 120
miles south of the capital, Bogota.

In La Julia, Santos' victory declaration seemed premature, especially
judging from the distrust, even hostility, that townspeople displayed
toward police and soldiers nervously clutching assault rifles.

Since the 1960s, the peasant-based FARC has served as the only
authority in many long-neglected corners of Colombia. Less than a
decade ago, it was mounting big attacks on army bases and even briefly
held a provincial capital, seizing scores of police and military hostages.

But since President Alvaro Uribe won office in 2002, the government
has reasserted control over highways where guerrilla roadblocks once
harvested kidnap victims. It also cleared rebels completely from the
province around Bogota.

The FARC's international profile was raised by Venezuelan President
Hugo Chavez's recent efforts to broker a prisoner swap to free rebel
hostages including three U.S. military contractors.

Uribe canceled the initiative last month, saying Chavez overstepped
his authority. But he said Friday that his government is willing to
meet with the FARC in an unspecified rural area as long as neither
side is armed and international observers are present. There was no
immediate response from the FARC.

Under the government's anti-FARC offensive, the number of professional
soldiers has doubled to almost 80,000 in seven years, with 12 mobile
brigades and six high mountain battalions added. Plans call for an
all-volunteer army once a goal of 100,000 professional soldiers is
reached.

Washington's contribution under "Plan Colombia," begun by President
Clinton, shifted from anti-narcotics to emphasize counterinsurgency
after the 9/11 attacks.

U.S. Special Forces teams train elite troops and American military
advisers are attached to Colombian divisions. The aid also includes
encrypted radios and 60 helicopters.

Most important is the real-time intelligence provided by the United
States from satellite imaging and communications intercepts, Colombian
military commander Gen. Freddy Padilla told the AP in an interview.

"Colombia's armed forces are today able to go anywhere in the country
with surprise, precision and overwhelming force," Padilla said. "We
have at the moment access to or the support of all technology the
United States employs for its defense."

No longer can the FARC move hundreds of fighters without detection,
said Alfredo Rangel, Colombia's top military analyst. And the army got
a morale boost when it killed two senior rebel leaders in separate
operations - including the boss of the unit that held Colombia's
current foreign minister, Fernando Araujo, for six years until his
Jan. 1 escape.

But such gains hardly guarantee victory over a roughly 14,000-strong
rebel army rooted in a history of peasant grievances. Unlike most of
its neighbors, Colombia has never adopted reforms to more equitably
distribute farmland.

The FARC could easily survive Uribe's frontal assault unless he can
decapitate it by capturing some of its top leaders. One senior U.S.
military analyst told the AP that the FARC is on the "strategic
defensive" - with its leadership intact and its ranks easily
replenished despite record desertions. It is trying to outlast Uribe
and may succeed, said the analyst, who insisted on anonymity for his
safety because he frequently travels in Colombia.

Cocaine has long fueled Colombia's conflict, and the FARC's durability
owes much to revenue from the coca crops that once made La Julia a
thriving drug market.

The town was home to three generations of FARC loyalists and a
stronghold largely because of its inaccessibility. The rebels
regularly engage the military in this rugged region where Andean
foothills meet jungle-laced plains.

Only a few weeks after Santos flew in Oct. 5, an AP team was stopped
by the FARC on a bone-jolting dirt road after rebel sentries spotted
the journalists headed to La Julia.

"We just want to make it clear that we're the boss around here," said
one uniformed guerrilla, an AK-47 over his shoulder. "We don't want
the media going to La Julia and serving the state's
propaganda."

Neither he nor his commander would be photographed or identified by
name.

The AP team found La Julia a half-deserted town awash in fear.
Commerce was depressed. Heavily armed police and soldiers were everywhere.

Since counterinsurgency troops arrived in June 2006, half the people
are said to have fled. The size of La Julia's population is uncertain,
but the town priest, the Rev. Henry Arias, noted school enrollment has
dropped from 350 to 180 since troops came. All incoming and outgoing
vehicles are searched, and the cocaine trade has gone
underground.

Residents grumble that the government - much like the rebels in the
past - has done little to improve people's lives.

It has failed to deliver on promises of electricity, running water and
a ferry to cross the Duda River. Farmers depend on motorized dugout
canoes to get their corn, bananas and yucca across its rushing waters
and to market.

"We don't have power. We don't have [running] water. We don't have
anything," said Father Arias.

The command post "inaugurated" in October also has yet to be built, so
police make do with sandbagged fortifications and ditches dug into the
moist ochre soil.

Jose Cabezas, president of the town's trucking cooperative, said it
lost most of its members last year when security forces hauled away 24
people accused of rebel ties. He acknowledged some were indeed FARC
but said most were not. To date, none has been tried.

No one in La Julia would admit to a reporter that they back the
rebels, and only a few people - all newcomers - dared to praise the
army.

The town's police commander, Capt. Rafael Montoya, acknowledges he's
in hostile territory, with nearby jungles dotted with FARC camps.

The militants probe his defenses nearly nightly, he said. Men in black
throw rocks to measure the distance to potential grenade targets, then
melt away into the darkness.

"I'm up every night until about 3 a.m. Those are the hours we're on
high alert," he said.

Meanwhile, townspeople strive to stay neutral.

Valencia, the vegetable merchant, says he won't invite officers into
his business for coffee. Even Father Arias is cautiously neutral,
refusing to celebrate special Masses for the soldiers.

"They've got their own chaplain," he said.