NO END IN SIGHT FOR COLOMBIA WAR?

Many Doubt Army Can Get Outright Win

LOS POZOS, Colombia -- Huge murals of smiling guerrilla leaders greet
visitors to the compound that was the nerve center of Colombia's peace process.

But there are no rebels or government negotiators in sight. Instead, a lone
security guard monitors the deserted white canvas tents and one-story
bungalows where representatives of both sides met dozens of times over the
last three years.

The abandoned peace talks "weren't a waste of time," maintains Eugenio
Chamorro as he fiddles with a string of keys. "But in the end, there was
not enough will" to end the war.

Now, the Colombian army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the
nation's largest guerrilla group known as the FARC, are gearing up for what
could be the bloodiest year yet in a conflict that has lasted nearly four
decades.

Polls show wide support for the Feb. 20 decision of President Andres
Pastrana to cancel the talks after FARC commandos hijacked an airliner and
kidnapped one of the passengers, a Colombian senator. Filled with patriotic
fervor, many Colombians are cheering on the troops as they march into
battle and attempt to retake rebel-held territory.

Yet many analysts insist that government forces will never score an
outright military victory. They predict that the fighting will grind on for
years and that, eventually, the two sides will end up back where they
started: at the negotiating table.

"There is a popular notion, especially in the cities, that war is the
solution," said Arlene Tickner, an American who teaches international
relations at the University of the Andes in Bogota, the Colombian capital.

"But what we'll see in the next few months and maybe longer is that war
isn't the solution and that negotiations under a different guise are the
only way to solve the myriad of problems that Colombia faces."

The peace talks began in January 1999. But little headway was made, and the
FARC stepped up its military attacks even as its representatives talked
peace. The rebels' behavior convinced many Colombians that the
17,000-strong Marxist guerrilla organization remained intent on waging war.

The Colombian army will now have to attack the FARC to regain momentum and
force the guerrillas to negotiate a peace treaty, some say.

"You have to change the balance of power" on the battlefield, said Michael
Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington
think tank. "You have to, perhaps, have more war to move closer to peace."

With the help of $1 billion in U.S. equipment and training, the Colombian
army has grown in strength since the now-defunct peace process began. The
number of professional soldiers has jumped from 23,000 to 55,000. The
military has acquired dozens of helicopter gunships, a vital factor in a
nation almost twice the size of Texas and divided by three Andean mountain
ranges.

Troops have already moved in to retake a 16,000-square-mile enclave that
was ceded to the rebels in 1998 to promote the peace talks. On Thursday,
the government declared the area a war zone and gave the military special
powers to control and monitor the civilian population.

"We are on the offensive against these bandits," Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora,
commander of the Colombian army, told a news conference last week. "We have
been advancing slowly but surely."

There are already signs, however, that the military strategy may not work.
For one thing, many observers believe the army requires far more resources
than it currently has to take on a rebel group that maintains a presence in
31 of Colombia's 32 states.

"The army is more sophisticated and better prepared than it has been in the
past 40 years. But it still lacks the skill, training and equipment for the
long-term, sustained kind of warfare that will be necessary to carry this
out," said Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean
Center at Florida International University in Miami.

The guerrillas appear to have adapted to the new circumstances. Rather than
confronting the army head on, they have adopted a strategy of industrial
sabotage. Carried out by small units of two or three rebels, the campaign
seems nearly impossible to stop.

Last week, guerrilla teams knocked out electricity and telephone service to
hundreds of communities and isolated southern Caqueta state by setting up
roadblocks and destroying bridges. The chaos led the army commander in
Caqueta to tender his resignation.

"Three or four guerrillas with some sticks of dynamite can leave a whole
city without energy," said Daniel Garcia-Pena, a former Colombian peace
commissioner. "It's not a matter of military capacity or superiority but
has a lot to do with the nature of the conflict. I'm very skeptical that we
can change the correlation of forces on the battlefield in a significant way."

The operation to reoccupy the former guerrilla haven offers some insight
into the difficulties facing the army. So far, troops have reoccupied urban
areas. But many towns remain infested with FARC militiamen dressed in
civilian clothes, and uniformed guerrillas roam the countryside.

Army troops "are not men of steel," said Arbey Ramirez, a midlevel FARC
commander manning a rebel checkpoint last week near the town of La Macarena
in the former guerrilla haven. "They haven't done anything to us. Why don't
they come and fight?"

When troops moved into La Macarena last week, the first person to welcome
the army's top officer was the head of the FARC's urban militia, said
Augusto Ramirez Ocampo, a peace activist and former Colombian foreign minister.

Some observers believe the only way to effectively combat the FARC is to
dismantle the cocaine and heroin trade, which provides the guerrillas with
millions of dollars annually. But many analysts consider the U.S.-backed
war on drugs in Colombia a failure.

For the Colombian government, the problems extend beyond the drug labs and
the battlefield. Many analysts point to a lack of national unity, which
they view as essential for Colombia to make any progress toward defeating
or debilitating the FARC. A handful of state governors and mayors, for
example, have forged local peace pacts with the guerrillas in defiance of
the Bogota government, which fears such deals will only strengthen the rebels.

Rich Colombians often avoid paying taxes that could bolster the army. Some
prefer to hire illegal paramilitary groups, which have been accused of
numerous human rights violations, to protect their properties against the
FARC and a much smaller leftist guerrilla group called the National
Liberation Army, or ELN.

The poor, in turn, sometimes view the federal government as a corrupt and
alien institution that ignores their needs. The children of poor rural
families fill the ranks of both the FARC and the ELN.

"There is so much misery in Colombia that it's difficult for the different
social classes to forge a sense of solidarity," said Vicente Torrijos, a
political science professor at Rosario University in Bogota. For years, the
FARC has focused its war effort on expanding its control over the
countryside. But Torrijos and others believe the FARC may now try to sow
panic in the cities with bombs and selected killings -- a strategy
pioneered by the late drug lord Pablo Escobar in the 1980s and '90s.

Washington has labeled the FARC a terrorist organization. Yet such a
designation, many say, probably won't stop the Colombian government from
dealing with the FARC in the future.

"There is a strong tradition in Colombia to reach deals and to negotiate,"
said Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue. "If, at some point, it seems
that the best way to end the conflict is through talks, I don't think using
the word 'terrorist' will stand in the way."