WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

Colombia's Civil War Puts Children On The Front Lines.

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia -- When they came to recruit Ana, they told her
she wouldn't have to work and that she could see her mom and her
grandmother whenever she wanted. Instead, leftist guerrillas taught
the 13-year-old girl how to kill and marched her off to fight in the
mountains of northern Colombia, where she nearly starved before
surrendering.

"I was aware that on any day I could die, or that I might get hurt,"
said Ana (not her real name). "But I didn't cry once during the
fighting."

It has long been known that the numerous armed factions in the Andean
nation's 36-year civil conflict have used children to fight their
battles, but the stories that Ana and others like her tell about
their defeated guerrilla column -- part of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, known as FARC -- reveal that the problem is worse
than anyone thought.

In a series of skirmishes that began in November, 128 guerrillas
enlisted in the so-called Arturo Ruiz Column have either surrendered
or been captured by the Colombian army, while an additional 63 --
including 27 children -- have been killed. The approximately 170
insurgents who survived the pummeling are now surrounded and being
worn down by at least 1,000 soldiers, who are reveling in their
lopsided victory after a series of bruising defeats suffered by the
army in other parts of the country.

"From the stats coming out of this event, we've gathered that 46
percent of the original group were children," said Carol De Rooy,
director of the UNICEF office in Colombia. "If this sample is
realistic, we are grossly underestimating the number of children in
this armed conflict. Either that, or they're putting the kids out on
the front lines, which is just as bad."

The use of children in combat isn't a problem unique to Colombia:
Some 300,000 kids under age 18 are fighting in armed conflicts
throughout the world. But the probability that Colombia's factions
have bumped up recruitment of children is particularly worrying here,
where peace talks are on the brink of collapse and fighting is
expected to intensify.

Beginning this month, Colombian counternarcotics troops -- trained
and equipped through a $1.3 billion aid package from the United
States -- are expected to push into the rebel-controlled southern
state of Putumayo, which produces most of the country's cocaine, to
destroy coca crops and drug labs. Since the 15,000-strong FARC
bankrolls its insurgency partly by protecting peasant-owned drug
crops and labs and then charging millions of dollars a year for its
services, both Colombian and U.S officials expect heavy resistance
from the guerrillas.

For the poor village children who constitute the majority of the
youngest recruits to FARC, promises of glory, adventure and a
paycheck are often irresistible. Most of them, though, end up
shuttling messages between isolated rebel groups or trudging through
the dense countryside, alternately attacking and running from
better-trained and better-fed army and right-wing paramilitary
fighters.

According to the army and human rights groups, most of the 6,000
children believed to be fighting in Colombia's civil war are members
of FARC, which has been trying to topple the Colombian government
since the '60s, under the direction of its aging founder, Manuel
"Sureshot" Marulanda.

Children also are recruited by the nation's smaller, leftist National
Liberation Army, or ELN, and the right-wing paramilitary groups bent
on destroying the guerrillas. The government once staffed its
military offices with teenagers, but phased out the last of them in
1999. The number of children killed each year in combat here is
unknown.

"The violence they see isn't easy to forget," said Nelson Ortiz, a
psychologist with UNICEF in Colombia. "War is hard enough for adults,
but imagine how it is for children, who don't have the experience or
the development to deal with what they've seen and done."

Ana's experience began in July, when she met two FARC fighters
outside her school in the southern village of Puerto Concordia, part
of a Switzerland-sized swath of territory ceded to the rebels two
years ago by President Andres Pastrana as an incentive to begin peace
talks. Most Colombians believe the rebels are misusing this safe
haven to, among other activities, recruit combatants. Based on the
stories of the 57 children captured from Ana's column, they appear to
be right: All but four were recruited from FARC's southern
stronghold, said army Maj. William Ardila-Pena.

The two recruiters told Ana that if she joined, she'd have plenty of
time to study and wouldn't have to help her mom and her grandmother
with housework. That sounded good, so she said yes. But after talking
it over with a friend, she changed her mind.

"When they returned for me, I told them I didn't want to go, but they
said that I had already said yes and that I had to go," said Ana
during an interview on Dec. 19 in the northern city of Bucaramanga,
two days after she surrendered. "So they took me, and since then I
haven't seen my mom or anyone else from my home."

The rebels brought her to a clandestine jungle camp for training. Her
commanders woke her up every morning at 4 for an hour of exercise
followed by breakfast and combat training, where she learned how to
ambush army soldiers and paramilitary troops and assemble and fire an
AK-47. After dinner, she had to listen to an hourlong lecture on
Marxist-Leninist theory, followed by bedtime at 8 p.m.

"We couldn't make any noise," said Ana. "I never told them I didn't
want to be a guerrilla because someone told me that saying that is
dangerous. Even if you don't want to be there, you have to show a
happy face and a revolutionary spirit."

Twenty days after her training began, Ana was sent on a long hike
with hundreds of other combatants to reinforce another FARC column to
the north. In late November, some 200 miles into their journey and
8,000 feet up in the mountains of North Santander state, they were
unexpectedly surrounded by army soldiers who had been tipped off by a
rebel deserter.

Severely outnumbered and outgunned, the column quickly unraveled. The
combatants ran out of rice and salted meat and lived on water for
days. Ana traded fire with soldiers and once shot at an army
helicopter that was attacking her camp, but for most of the fighting
she ran for cover and didn't emerge until things quieted down.

During one skirmish, she lost the blankets she slept under and
thereafter had no protection from insects and the cold. The brutal
conditions left their mark: During the interview Ana's lips were
cracked and blistered and her lanky arms and legs were covered with
bug bites.

While the defeat of the Arturo Ruiz Column has been a welcome victory
for the army, which in October lost 22 men when rebels downed the
U.S.-built Black Hawk helicopter they were being carried on, it has
also further damaged FARC's reputation among Colombians -- many of
whom are convinced the rebels have devolved from idealistic
revolutionaries into a band of thugs.

While FARC leaders have yet to respond to charges that they've
stepped up recruitment of children, De Rooy said that FARC commanders
promised during a meeting last year to stop enlisting children
younger than 15. He hopes to meet with rebel commanders soon to
persuade them to demobilize children from their columns.

Hours after Ana surrendered, the army allowed a television news crew
to interview her and two other kids who had deserted. With her back
to the camera, Ana began to cry for perhaps the first time in months,
begging her mom to forgive her for what she had done. The next day
she was turned over to caseworkers at the Family Welfare Institute.

Since the guerrillas could try to recruit her again -- or worse -- if
she returns to Puerto Concordia, Ana may have to spend the rest of
her childhood under the protection of the state, which doesn't seem
to bother her. It won't be the adventurous life the guerrillas
promised her, but at least she will have food and a warm bed.

About the writer Michael Easterbrook is a stringer for the Associated
Press in Bogota, Colombia.