DRUG WAR'S SECRET ALLIANCE

Right-Wing Gunmen Say U.S. -Backed Government Troops Helping Them
Drive Rebels From Colombian Coca Fields

VALLE DEL GUAMUEZ, Colombia - The U.S.-backed campaign to eradicate drug production in this nation's cocaine heartland is being carried out with the covert cooperation of paramilitary warlords, according to paramilitary leaders.

Gunmen of the ultra rightwing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
(AUC) boast that they are closely coordinating their "dirty war"
against leftist guerrillas in southern Putumayo province to pave the
way for a huge anti-drug offensive by U.S.trained Colombian troops.
They say they are being protected by army and police units in their
war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and
their civilian sympathizers.

The Colombian military"knows where we are and sprays
(defoliants to kill coca plant s) where they know we have
consolidated zones," said a paramilitary chieftain known by the
pseudonym Commando Wilson, who heads AUC operations in Putumayo
Guamuez Valley and, like many of his men, is a former army soldier.

"Plan Colombia would be most impossible without the help of the
(paramilitary) self-defence forces. If we did not take control of
zones ahead of the army, the guerrilla would shoot down their planes."

The army-paramilitary alliance has resulted in a resounding success
in the opening phase of Plan Colombia, the government campaign to
wipe out the drug trade rebel strongholds that is being bankrolled by
the United States with more than $1 billion, mostly in military aid.

President Andres Pastrana and his top military brass deny that there
is any army collusion with the AUC, and they have vowed to crack down
on paramilitary activities. In public statements, they argue that
armies of the left and right are simply battling for control of the
300-ton-a-year cocaine industry in Putumayo, which accounts for about
half of Colombia's total output.

But official promises to rein in paramilitary violence have failed to
convince many human rights officials.

"The paramilitary phenomenon in Putumayo is the spearhead of Plan
Colombia: to create territorial control for the areas to be sprayed
and to control the civilian population," said German Martinez, who
concluded his three-year term as municipal human rights ombudsman in
Puerto Asis in March. "This is a terror tactic."

A paramilitary hit squad first arrived in Putumayo's capital of Puerto
Asis in early 1998. A year later, they pushed into the Guamuez Valley,
a major coca-growing region, with a wave of massacres and murders that
killed about 100 civilians, according to the Catholic Church-sponsored
Center for Popular Research and Education.

Since then, hundreds of reinforcements have arrived from the north,
bringing the AUC's total combat forces in the area to 1,350, Commando
Wilson said.

EIsewhere in Colombia, the AUG has 8,000 fighters and is closely
linked to the drug trade, from which it reaps a fortune in drug taxes.
In Putumayo, however, paramilitary leaders appear to have sacrificed
potential income to wrest areas from the guerrillas, who also earn
millions by taxing the local coca trade.

Political analysts say the AUG may also be trying to win favor with
Washington, which has long threatened to include the group on its list
of foreign terrorist organizations.

Commando Wilson said the long-term strategy for Plan Colombia was
mapped out by his superiors and the military. lie admitted that he
swaps daily coordinates of his fighters' positions with army officers.

Uniformed AUG gunmen now routinely patrol the village that has become
the paramilitary regional headquarters. Recently, a Chronicle reporter
was allowed to visit the base on the condition that he not pinpoint
the location. Trucks packed with as many as 40 fighters and bristling
with assault rifles and rocket launchers rumbled down the main street
as they headed out on a search-and-destroy mission against FARC rebels.

Army detachments are located only a 20-minute drive away on either
side of the AUC headquarters, and the dirt highway carved through the valley is pockmarked with foxholes manned by paramilitary
sentries. Army units make no attempt to dislodge them.

Between mid-December and the end of February, spray planes, backed by Vietnam-era Huey helicopters piloted by armed American civilians,
eradicated 72,500 acres of coca fields - completing the goal set for
the first two years of Plan Colombia in the Guamuez Valley.

"Aerial eradication operations were focused primarily in that area of
the Guamuez Valley considered to be under paramilitary influence,"
said a U.S. military official. "It was anticipated that spray
operations directed against paramilitary coca fields would experience
fewer hostile fire incidents," he added, rejecting suggestions that
the two forces were working in unison.

Aerial spraying continues in other areas of Putumayo under FARC
control, but progress has been much slower since government aircraft
typically come tinder heavy ground fire.

in February, an armed rescue team that included several U.S. civilians
came under fire when the rescuers plucked the crew of a downed police
helicopter from the middle of a firefight with guerrillas. About 200
U.S. military advisers and 30 civilians work with the Colombian army.

AUC Supreme Commander Carlos Castano concedes that up to 70 percent of paramilitary revenue comes from donations from drug traffickers and taxes on the export of pure cocaine from Pacific Coast and Caribbean Coast ports. But lie insists the taxes are simply a means to finance his primary goal of destroying the guerrillas.

The destruction of coca crops in Puturnayo undoubtedly hurts the FARC
more than AUG since the bulk of rebel income stems from taxes levied
on the sale of semiprocessed cocaine, or coca paste, produced by
peasant farmers.

Analysts say there are several plausible explanations for AUC's
decision to join the anti-drug battle in Putumayo province.

"They are happy simply to see the FARC driven out and their income
from coca taxation reduced," said Adam Isacson, an associate at the
Washington based Center for International policy. "They also may feel
that the role in making the first fumigations ns (of coca crops)
happen so easily might make Washington view them more favorably."

Just this month, Castano began a public relations of offensive through
the U.S. media and letters to the U.S. Embassy in I Bogota, offering
to force 20 top Colombian drug traffickers to surrender to U.S.
authorities. The prop osition, which the State Department has already
rejected, appears to be designed to keep the Bush admininistration
from including the AUC on its terrorist list.

In September, Colombia's attorney general opened an investigation
into the actions of five army and police commanders, including former
24th Brigade chief Col. Gabriel Diaz for alleged collaboration with
the paramilitary forces after complaints from the United Nation High
Commissioner for Human Rights. The investigation is slow-moving, and
Diaz is awaiting promotion to the rank of general after leaving the
brigade in December

The 24th Brigade is temporarily banned from receiving U.S. assistance
as a result of allegations that soldiers killed three peasants in
1998.

In an apparent effort to spruce up its image, incoming commander Gen.
Jose Antonio Ladron de Guevara transferred the brigade's entire 31st
counter guerrilla battalion to Bogota for "retraining" last month. He
estimated that 30 former mernbers of that unit had quit since 1998 to
join paramilitary ranks, Commando Wilson put the figure closer to
100.

Highly sensitive to international criticism, Colombia's Defense
Ministry says it has pursued paramilitary forces as well a
guerrillas. In its annual human rights report, the ministry said it
killed 89 paramilitary fighters: and arrested 315 others in 2001.

Those figures, however are far below the 970 guerrillas as killed and
1,556 captured during that period.