IN COLOMBIA, WAR AGAINST REBELS EASING

Ex-Guerrillas Find Way into Society; Drug Trafficking Still a
Problem

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The wounds of war are still fresh here in the
Quinta Ramos Peace House, a shelter for former guerrillas in the
Colombian capital.

Men who spent their entire lives fighting now worry about finding
work. Hardened rebels struggle to become mothers to children taken
away at birth.

After more than four decades, Colombia's leftist insurgency appears to
be on the run, in part because of $6.2 billion in U.S. aid during the
past eight years to its closest ally in South America.

At the same time, progress here has been lukewarm in battling drug
trafficking, the original reason for the U.S. intervention, according
to U.S. and United Nations officials. Colombia still supplies more
than 90% of the cocaine that comes into the United States, according
to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

This is the backdrop for Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican
presidential nominee, when he visits this country Tuesday to praise
the aid effort, known as Plan Colombia, and to push for a free-trade
agreement.

Colombia is the seventh-largest recipient of U.S. aid -- mostly for
helicopters, airplanes, guns, ammunition and training.

Colombia has indeed made recent strides. The main guerrilla movement,
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is on the defensive.

The Colombian military killed a top FARC commander, Raul Reyes, on
March 1 and found his laptop computer. The symbolic head of FARC,
Pedro "Sureshot" Marin, died of a heart attack later in March. And a
notorious FARC leader known as Karina surrendered in May, saying her
guerrillas were starving.

Kidnappings here have dropped 86% to 486 last year from 3,572 in
2000, the Defense Ministry said. Bogota's streets, once deserted at
night, are now full of people walking their dogs and going to
restaurants. Government tourism brochures tout a new slogan:
"Colombia: The only risk is wanting to stay."

"Plan Colombia has probably been the most successful bipartisan
foreign policy initiative the U.S. has had in its recent history,"
Colombia Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said.

Total success is still far off. A new U.N. report shows a rise in
cultivating coca -- the plant used to make cocaine -- despite millions
of U.S. dollars spent on spraying herbicide. The guerrillas still hold
hundreds of hostages, including three Americans. And Colombian society
is struggling to absorb more than 47,000 rebels who have put down
their weapons.

A sight that was unimaginable a few years ago unfolded Friday
afternoon as thousands of city dwellers jammed the highway heading out
of town for a long holiday weekend. "A few years ago, we would never
do this," said motorist Lizette Velasquez. "The guerrillas controlled
the roads. They would stop 30 or 40 cars at a time and just go down
the row, kidnapping people they thought had money."

The Colombian military says it has re-established a government
presence in every town in the country. More than 16,000 rebels have
deserted since 2002, the Defense Ministry reports.

Part of the secret to the government's success can be seen on a base
built with $10 million in U.S. funds in a sweltering valley southwest
of Bogota. U.S. Army Rangers fresh from Iraq are teaching the Junglas,
an elite police force, how to organize patrols and plan attacks. The
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building barracks and classrooms. A
former Green Beret runs classes in how to fortify outposts with razor
wire, trenches and tunnels.

"Before, bases were getting overrun all the time by the guerrillas,"
Junglas Capt. Edgar Flores said. "Not anymore."

During a recent exercise, U.S. Assistant Defense Secretary Michael
Vickers watched as Junglas burst into a house and shot paper targets
to rescue a "hostage" held by "guerrillas."

"I think we're doing great in Colombia," said Vickers, who oversees
special operations for the Pentagon. "The FARC are really set back on
their heels, half the strength they were some years ago, and so things
are heading in the right direction."

Some aren't so sure.

"If you focus on the major urban areas, there is enormous progress,"
said John Walsh, a senior associate at the Washington Office on Latin
America, a think tank. "But if you look at the rural areas, it's still
in very bad shape."

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed coca eradication has reached "a plateau phase"
as farmers get better at hiding their fields, said Thomas Shannon, an
assistant secretary of State. "What we were able to do is break the
kind of industrial or plantation production of coca leaf," Shannon
said. "We're now facing a more sophisticated group of growers."

While the amount of coca grown here is on the rise, the amount of
cocaine reaching the USA has declined recently, mainly due to a
crackdown on Mexican smugglers, not Colombian producers, according to
the U.S. National Drug Intelligence Center.

Walsh said Colombians are also opting to send more cocaine to Europe,
where they can make more money because of the stronger euro.

The transition into society has been rough for the former guerrillas.
Many rebels have spent their entire lives in the jungle. Many never
used an elevator or a crosswalk, paid an electric bill, managed money
or waited in line, said Paula Pedraza, a psychologist at the Quinta
Ramos Peace House.

Because the rebel groups force their members to have abortions or give
up their babies to relatives, many have never lived together as families.

"They don't know how to handle children or show affection," Pedraza
said. "Here, they learn to be parents."

Stripped of their rank and power, some slip into depression and drug
abuse, she said.

Many are peasants who have little education and who need to find jobs
to support their families.

At the peace house here, one of dozens of halfway houses for former
rebels around the country, a sign on a wall serves as a necessary
reminder: "You must never exercise violence against other people nor
abuse them."