BLACK HAWKS DOWN

Paramilitaries, Former Guerrillas And Even Legendary Green Berets Wage A
Dubious Battle In Colombia

EL PLACER, PUTUMAYO, Colombia -- It could be any of a thousand corn fields
here in the sweltering jungle of Putumayo. But a 15-minute walk along a
narrow path through head-high corn leads not to a farmhouse, but to a
jungle clearing outfitted with exercise and obstacle courses, a barbed-wire
maze and a half-dozen camouflaged wooden huts all hidden from the air by
tight jungle growth. It is the headquarters of the southern block of the
United Self-Defence Forces, AUC, the Colombian paramilitaries.

The walk starts at a house on the outskirts of El Placer, a small village
the paras have occupied since last summer. The ground floor is equipped
with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, full of medicine and bandages and stocked
with everything from suture sets to snakebite anti-venom kits. Each
paramilitary column of 30 travels with an enfermero, or male medic, and
there is a doctor based here "on call" for wounds the medic cannot handle.

It is the coca heartland. Ninety per cent of the more than 300 tons of
cocaine that North Americans consume each year comes from Colombia, more
than half of it from the jungle lowlands here in Putumayo province in
southern Colombia. Last summer, the U.S. Congress approved a $1.3-billion
US aid package aimed at cutting Colombia's drug production in half. It is
part of the $7 billion program called Plan Colombia.

Plan Colombia's first stage began here early this year. In six weeks of
aerial spraying, much of it done by U.S. contract pilots, 35,000 hectares
of coca were fumigated and killed with a powerful herbicide. This summer,
three counter-narcotic battalions, trained by U.S. Green Berets, will move
into the jungle east of here and begin Plan Colombia's second and most
controversial stage. Supported by a squadron of U.S.-made Blackhawk
helicopters, they will attempt to eradicate coca, burn drug processing
laboratories and root out FARC guerrillas who earn several hundred million
dollars a year by taxing small farmers growing coca and drug middlemen who
buy coca paste to refine into cocaine.

To anyone who spends much time here, it is clear that paramilitary soldiers
- -- not army soldiers -- are spearheading the U.S.-sponsored push into
Putumayo. In spite of the fact the U.S. State Department placed the AUC on
its list of international terrorist groups last month, and in spite of the
fact AUC gunmen have committed more than 40 massacres so far this year,
there is no government effort here to combat them.

El Placer is 15 minutes from the town of La Hormiga, home to an army
battalion and a police station. But neither the army or police have made
any effort to to fight the AUC since it took over the village last year.
Indeed, people here say the paramilitaries co-ordinate their incursions
with local army units to ensure they will not be interrupted once they
begin their grisly work.

Since arriving in Putumayo two years ago, the AUC has killed hundreds of
people it accused of sympathizing with FARC guerrillas. Its strategy is
brutally effective and since its arrival, several thousand peasant families
have fled the region ahead of the advance.

Comandante Wilson, a stocky former Colombian army officer who commands the
AUC's 800 men in Putumayo, scoffs at the notion of his men killing civilians.

"That's all media manipulation," he says. "Look, when the guerrillas know
we're getting close, they're so afraid of us they take off their uniforms
and put on street clothes. But they're still guerrillas and we kill them."

Because they distrust locals, fearing they might be guerrilla infiltrators,
most of Wilson's men were brought into Putumayo from northern Colombia,
where the AUC has its headquarters and is strongest.

Many are former soldiers, like Wilson, sacked because of human-rights
infractions or disciplinary problems. Others are FARC guerrilla deserters,
disillusioned after three decades of war. "They know the terrain and who's
who. That gives us a tactical edge and makes it easy for us to move in and
strike," Wilson says.

Unlike the guerrillas, AUC soldiers are well paid, earning from $150 US a
month for a new recruit to $600 for a senior commander.

The bulk of the paras here are camped in the hills to the west of the town
and in the jungle to the south, a day or two's walk away. Groups of 80 to
100 patrol the countryside, living off military rations for four or five
months at a time and then trekking back to El Placer for a rest. The town
is controlled by 20 or so young men in jeans and T-shirts, automatic
pistols stuck in their belts, walkie-talkies in hand. Five of them,
lounging on the hood of a new Toyota Landcruiser, man a checkpoint on the
outskirts of El Placer.

Although everyone here knows the AUC is heavily involved in every stage of
drug production -- the group's top commander, Carlos Castano, is listed as
a major Colombian drug trafficker in recent documents of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency -- Wilson denies any involvement in the drug trade.
"That's why we support Plan Colombia," he insists, "because it'll get rid
of the coca. And when the coca goes, the FARC will have to go too."

When asked how they get along with local coca growers and traffickers he
says, "We're not traffickers and we don't grow coca. What we do is protect
coca growers and drug buyers. But we don't force anyone to pay us. We're
like the security people in a big apartment building. You pay them to take
care of your building. That's what we do."