COLOMBIAN CITIES NOW TARGETS OF WAR

Medellin Is Top Priority of Guerrillas

MEDELLIN, Colombia -- A message about a suspicious man wandering the
neighborhood crackled across the two-way radio of Roberto, an urban
guerrilla with a revolver tucked under his belt.

Along with two colleagues, Roberto marched off to investigate, cutting
short a conversation with a visitor.

Twenty minutes later, gunshots rang out and the rebels reappeared, dragging
the bloody corpse of a teen-ager by the legs. Then they dumped the body
into a wheelbarrow and paraded through the streets of Medellin's July 20th
slum.

"If the enemy comes in here, we greet them with lead," said Roberto, a
member of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, the smaller of Colombia's
two guerrilla groups, which controls the mountainside barrio. Ravaged by
clashes involving Marxist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and
government forces, Medellin is the most troubling example of how Colombia's
38-year-old war is expanding into the cities, experts say.

The guerrillas, who have mostly fought for remote jungle and mountain
regions, have reinforced their presence in Medellin in the past few years
as part of their campaign to target urban areas.

In response, illegal paramilitary forces that fight the guerrillas have
taken over dozens of Medellin neighborhoods, while the police and army have
launched attacks on the rebels' urban cells.

"For several years, the guerrillas have been pushing their plans to take
the war from the countryside to the cities," said Medellin's police chief,
Gen. Leonardo Gallego. "Our information tells us that Medellin is the No. 1
objective."

In the war's first pitched battle on city streets in nearly two decades,
1,000 police and army troops faced fierce resistance from guerrilla
militiamen last month, when they surrounded the safe houses of rebel
leaders in the July 20th slum. Nine people, including four minors, died in
what was widely viewed as a botched government operation.

"We live from shootout to shootout," said a tearful Edilma Tascon, whose
11-year-old daughter was killed by a stray bullet in the fighting. "The
attacks are indiscriminate, and the community suffers the consequences." A
week after the firefight, Medellin Mayor Luis Perez tried to enter the July
20th barrio to inaugurate a new bus terminal and was met by a hail of
bullets from rebel militias. He threw a flak jacket over his head and
canceled the event.

Because of its violent history, Medellin -- Colombia's second-largest city,
with a population of about 3 million -- has proved a fertile recruiting
ground for both guerrillas and paramilitaries.

During Colombia's cocaine bonanza in the 1980s, thousands of unemployed men
found work with the infamous Medellin drug cartel. Some worked as hired
assassins for drug lord Pablo Escobar, while others formed street gangs in
the labyrinth of ghettos that creep up the mountainsides overlooking
downtown. By 1991, the city was the murder capital of the world, with more
than 6,000 homicides annually.

"The drug traffickers tried to create a culture of illegality," Perez said.
"They turned these youths into their armed wings."

Today, drug-related violence has waned, and Escobar is in his grave. But
unemployment again is on the rise, and a new generation of gangs holds sway
over many neighborhoods.

By offering weapons, training and payoffs to gang members, the guerrillas
have persuaded many to join their ranks. According to the police, more than
1,200 rebels now live in the city.

In the 1960s, when the ELN and the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, were founded, the guerrillas focused on hit-and-run
attacks in the countryside. But now, 70 percent of Colombians live in urban
areas, and both rebel groups have turned their attention to the cities.

"Here in the jungle, all that will remain are rats, pigs, turkeys and
chickens because the guerrillas are going to the city," FARC military
leader Jorge Briceno said in a widely quoted speech last year. "That is
where we are going to pillage."

Analysts say a strong presence in the cities allows illegal armed groups to
establish strategic links to rural areas, set up intelligence networks and
more easily procure arms and other supplies for their fighters in the
countryside.

The FARC and ELN have long maintained small militias in Medellin and other
Colombian cities. Recently, the rebel groups have used their urban troops
to carry out terrorism attacks.

Since the Colombian government broke off peace talks with the FARC in
February, the insurgents have set off a number of deadly car bombs in the
country's largest cities and have tried to sabotage the water supply for
Bogota, the capital.

In April, FARC commandos stormed into the city of Cali and kidnapped 12
state legislators.

By focusing on the cities, the rebels could be counting on a long-term payoff.

Urban areas "will be used by the armed groups as proof of their territorial
power and as bargaining chips in future peace negotiations," wrote Alonso
Salazar, an expert on Medellin's violence, in the Bogota news weekly Semana.

In some ways, the rebels' increased attention to Medellin has backfired.
Alarmed at the growing guerrilla presence, hundreds of paramilitaries have
pushed into the city over the past two years and have wrested control of
some neighborhoods from the FARC and the ELN.

"In two more years, we will control all of Medellin," predicted the
commander of a paramilitary squad in the San Pablo slum who goes by the
alias Piolin.

Piolin's men wear black ski masks and carry shotguns and automatic rifles.
Rebels control nearby ghettos, and shootouts sometimes are fierce.

"Three of our guys were wounded today," Piolin confided as he sipped coffee
after a recent patrol.

The paramilitary commander has been at war for nine years. Tired of
extortion schemes and other abuses committed by the rebel militias that
used to control San Pablo, Piolin said he formed a street gang in 1993. A
few years later, he contacted Colombia's main paramilitary group, which
agreed to supply his organization with weapons, training and financing.

Piolin claims that his fighters have earned the respect of local residents
by cleaning up the neighborhood.

Yet it can be difficult to distinguish between paramilitaries, guerrillas
and members of street gangs.

According to authorities, paramilitaries hired one of Medellin's most
feared gangs, La Terraza, to carry out political assassinations, including
the 1999 killing of beloved humorist and peace activist Jaime Garzon.
Later, paramilitary leaders decided that the gang was getting out of
control and began to eliminate La Terraza members.

Critics contend that the police and army work in close coordination with
the paramilitaries, a charge that Gallego, the police chief, denies.

But there appears to be little effort by government security forces to take
on the paramilitaries.

When police officers cruised through San Pablo on motorcycles last week,
Piolin -- who was dressed in civilian clothes -- greeted one agent with a
hearty slap on the back.

Gonzalo Medina, a journalism professor at the University of Antioquia,
fears that many Medellin officials and residents view the paramilitaries as
"the good guys."

But the paramilitaries also commit abuses. Last week, Medina said,
suspected paramilitaries killed two students on the university campus.

"The cure could end up being worse than the disease," he said.