COLOMBIANS, U.S. ADVISERS HOPE PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

LARANDIA, COLOMBIA -- A brilliant blue butterfly the size of a wren
drifted through the jungle clearing. The Colombian general dropped his
voice to a whisper.

"At this moment, we can't see them or hear them. But they are only 50
meters away from us now," he said.

Suddenly, with a shout, the area turned into a war zone. The men in
the clearing, seemingly busy at work in a cocaine lab, dropped to
their knees and began firing. A percussion grenade exploded with a
skin-shaking thump. Men in camouflage uniforms with greasepaint on
their faces stormed from their hiding places, machine guns rattling.

For 10 minutes, the air was filled with gunfire and grenade
explosions. Then, just as suddenly as before, everything went quiet.
Smoke hung in clouds. A wounded man screamed out. Bodies lay sprawled
in the mud. The general poked one in the ear with a stick. "You're
dead," he said.

The man just smiled. The drill was over.

There is a real war going on all around this military base in southern
Colombia, as the military and police battle leftist guerrillas,
right-wing paramilitary groups and armed narco-traffickers in nearby
cocaine fields and jungle hideouts.

But the soldiers on this sprawling former cattle ranch are waging fake
battles under the supervision of 47 U.S. Special Forces trainers from
Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The Colombian soldiers and their U.S. trainers form the heart of Plan
Colombia, the scheme the United States has funded with $1.3 billion in
an effort to wipe out half the cocaine produced in Colombia in two
years.

Nearly one-fourth of that money is going to fund three specialized
anti-narcotics battalions, comprising about 2,400 men, and the Black
Hawk helicopters and other equipment they will use on drug missions.

Already, two of the battalions are in the field. The members of the
third are scheduled to graduate at the end of this month. The
Colombian government and the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, the capital,
invited the Los Angeles Times and other news organizations to witness
one day in the soldiers' rigorous, 18-week training regime.

Mission changes

One drill took place in a field filled with cows and 23 Huey
helicopters. A squad of 10 soldiers, marching beneath a hill filled
with trainers and media representatives, responded to a surprise
attack. As the machine guns and percussion grenades sounded through
the jungle, the cows fled in terror.

At the drug lab drill later in the day, in a muddy, humid open space
with a small stream, the soldiers practiced not only shooting at those
defending the lab but also arresting lab workers and evacuating the
wounded in helicopters.

Although the soldiers had rehearsed the drill the day before the
media's arrival, and there was no way to tell if the shots fired had
actually hit anyone, U.S. military officials pronounced the drills a
success.

"They make sure it's a valid firefight," one officer
said.

As originally conceived, the primary mission of the anti-narcotics
battalions was to kill guerrillas and anyone else guarding cocaine
plantations to make way for the arrival of spray planes to fumigate
the crops.

But as Colombia's rebels and paramilitary groups finance more and more
of their activities through narcotics, they have become more and more
involved in the processing of coca leaves into cocaine.

As a result, the battalions have also become increasingly involved in
search-and-destroy missions targeting drug labs, which has led them
into firefights with the insurgents that guard those facilities. Since
December, nine soldiers and more than 40 guerrillas or paramilitary
troops have been killed during the battalions' operations.

Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya, who oversees the three battalions, said
Colombia's war against drugs has become nearly indistinguishable from
its war against paramilitaries and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, Colombia's largest leftist rebel group.

The guerrillas and the paramilitaries "are in constant conflict simply
to see who will be able to have hegemony over the drug business. This
is the permanent battle," he said.

The U.S. light infantry instruction given the Colombian's troops
reflects this reality. For instance, one important part of the course,
according to the senior U.S. trainer at Larandia, involves "target
discrimination." The training is designed to teach the soldiers to
fire only on those guarding the drug labs, rather than the workers
inside.

"There's very strong emphasis on marksmanship and target
discrimination to ensure that the soldiers identify targets as
belligerent before they engage them," the trainer said. There are "a
large number of noncombatants working in the labs, making target
discrimination critical."

The soldiers also receive human rights training over the entire
18-week course, including one drill in which they act out 12 different
scenarios they might encounter in the field, such as a prisoner surrender.

Although it is privately referred to by some as the "Stations of the
Cross" drill, Montoya said the human rights training has been effective.

"There has not been a single complaint filed against us," he said.