COCAINE WAR PUTS COLOMBIA IN CHAOS

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA -- Denise Sanchez, 31, has not seen her husband since he
went to milk the cows, leaving the house at 4 a.m. in August 1998.

At 5:30, when the bombs and bullets hit her house, she and her three
daughters -- ages 11, 12 and 13 -- survived by diving under a bed. When the
confusion ended, she searched for her husband among the dead bodies in the
village with no luck. She hopes that he is still alive.

"God willing, he is. But I don't know," said Sanchez, who had no idea who
attacked her village in the Arauca region or why.

America's relentless demand for cocaine is fueling a blood bath in
Colombia, where leftist guerrillas and a private right-wing paramilitary
army are clashing for control of the nation's lucrative coca fields.

With Colombia engulfed in chaos, 2 million people already have fled from
their homes and another 300 are joining the ranks of the refugees each
week, according to human rights groups.

Against that backdrop, Colombia looms as one of the largest issues awaiting
President-elect George W. Bush and the new Congress.

"In American foreign policy, this is really one of the hot spots in the
world right now," said Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., a member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, who visited Colombia last month. "And it's in
our back yard."

After living under a bridge with her daughters, Sanchez was rescued by nuns
and now lives in a refugee center in Bogota. She's waiting for the
government to offer help in getting a roof over her head and finding a job.

"I hope that someday there will be peace and that there will be mercy for
the peasant population," she said.

It could be a long wait.

As armed groups fight for turf, the number of massacres -- homicides where
more than four people were killed -- have quadrupled in the last four
years, and Colombia now leads the world in kidnappings.

The kidnappings are designed to frighten Colombians into following demands
from the various armed groups. Residents say that while guerrilla groups
offer to provide protection in place of a weak government, they expect to
be paid for their services. A failure to pay the "taxes" can result in a
family member being held for ransom.

Now, the United States is ready to flex its muscle in Colombia, increasing
the likelihood of more violence. After President Clinton approved a $1.3
billion aid package in July, the Colombian government is promising to step
up efforts to fumigate its coca, seeking to kill the crops that provide 90
percent of the cocaine that reaches the United States.

The fumigation plan is the brainchild of Colombian President Andres
Pastrana, who is promising to wipe out 50 percent of the nation's coca
fields within five years. Known as Plan Colombia, the campaign is ready to
kick into high gear: The United States is sending 60 helicopters, and the
second of three U.S.-trained anti-narcotics battalions -- each with 1,000
members -- graduated on Dec. 8; a third battalion will begin training early
next year. Under terms set by Congress, no more than 500 American U.S.
personnel can be assigned to Colombia at any given time.

Colombians expect the effort to produce more bloodshed: No one is
predicting that the armed groups will surrender the coca fields without an
intense fight.

"We've been living with violence for such a long time now that we
understand the risks involved," said Adriana Foglia, a senior adviser to
Pastrana. "This country has suffered so much at the hand of cocaine
production that people are fed up with it ... Plan Colombia's idea is to
attack the pocketbook of all of these actors of violence."

But despite its overwhelming support in Congress, Plan Colombia is coming
under increased scrutiny in Washington, where some are questioning whether
the United States is about to engage itself in a Vietnam-style conflict
that will be hard to escape.

At a news briefing in Washington earlier this month, State Department
spokesman Richard Boucher dismissed the idea, saying: "This is not another
Vietnam ... The issue of drugs is something that needs to be addressed, and
we are addressing the drug problem."

Critics, however, say that Congress is making a big mistake. They say it's
misguided to focus on the supply of drugs in a foreign country instead of
trying to curb the demand at home. "You have to deal with the problem of
addiction in the United States," said Pamela Costain, executive director of
the Minneapolis-based Resource Center for the Americas.

Of Plan Colombia, she said: "It makes it look like politicians care and it
provides a convenient excuse for intervention." Like many critics, she said
the fumigation effort will simply result in the coca moving elsewhere.
"Fundamentally, it won't work," Costain said.

In October, a report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative
arm of Congress, said that "long-standing problems in planning" could
jeopardize Plan Colombia. As examples, the report said that helicopters
provided to the Colombian national police and the military have not had
sufficient spare parts or the funding necessary to operate and maintain
them. It warned that more aid will be required and that any U.S. aid will
take years to produce results.

In November, a key supporter of Plan Colombia, Rep. Benjamin Gilman,
R-N.Y., chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, called
for "a major mid-course correction." He said that a decision to militarize
the drug fight by shifting U.S. aid from the Colombian national police to
the Colombian army was "a major mistake."

In a letter to Barry McCaffrey, the nation's drug czar, Gilman said that
the incoming Bush administration will be faced with the need for a new
strategy in Colombia. "If we fail early on with Plan Colombia, as I fear,
we could lose the support of the American people for our efforts to fight
illicit narcotics abroad," Gilman said.

No Alternatives

As police used dynamite to destroy yet another cocaine laboratory in the
remote mountains of Colombia one day last month, Manuel Bides could only
watch as his job blew up in a big puff of smoke. A lab that had been
producing 11/2 tons of coca paste each week was gone in a second.

Bides, a 44-year-old fisherman, had begun work at the lab 20 days earlier,
with hopes of making some extra money. His job involved cleaning the coca
leaves before they were mixed with chemicals to create a green paste, the
first step in the processing of cocaine.

For Bides, the Colombian drug war struck quickly: As he was working, planes
buzzed by, spraying herbicide on the coca. Helicopters then landed to
arrest the 35 workers, most of them poor migrants who appeared confused by
the events. "I'm just a poor worker," Bides said.

After the arrests, police tried to figure out what to do with the workers:
Police asked one boy why he wasn't home studying. He replied that he had to
work to help his mother survive -- his father had just left home.

Wellstone, one of only a handful of senators to oppose the Colombia aid
package, said it won't work unless the people of Colombia can find jobs
besides growing coca. "I have to wonder whether or not we will be able to
win this fight against this narcotics trade as long as the people in
Colombia and the countryside do not have other alternatives," he said. "Too
many people are getting killed ... The question becomes whether or not this
just invites further conflict if people have no alternative as a way of
feeding their family."

Wellstone got a glimpse of Colombia's violence when he traveled by
helicopter to Barrancabermeja, Colombia's most dangerous city. Shortly
before his visit, police defused explosives that had been planted along a
road not far from the airport. While one police official said the bombs
were targeted at Wellstone, others said there was no proof.

In a meeting with human rights groups at Barrancabermeja, Wellstone was
told that the United States should not be aiding the Colombian military.
Many critics of the aid package say it's hard for them to see a distinction
between the government of Colombia and the right-wing paramilitary, which
provides security for many middle-and upper-income residents.

"In my region, anyone who defends life or defends freedom or many other
rights is killed, many by the military," said Moises Alvarez, a
veterinarian. "We're deeply concerned about the fact that your government
- -- the U.S. government -- is supporting a government to strengthen the
power of groups that kill our people, that kill our peasants," Alvarez said

Pascual Nunoz, an educator with a group called Program for Peace and
Development, had another suggestion for Wellstone: Cut off the U.S. aid to
Colombia if human rights abuses do not end. "I would like to request that
the American Senate ask President Pastrana why nothing has been done to
stop this bloodshedding in Barrancabermeja," Nunoz said.

There is little faith in Colombia's justice system. Killers usually go
unpunished, and when judges and prosecutors do try to impose justice, their
lives and the lives of their family members are imperiled. The government
admits that it lacks the manpower to have a presence in many parts of the
country, especially rural areas.

David Martinez, of the Solidarity Committee with Political Prisoners, said
that paramilitaries control most of the country's jails. In one instance
this year, he said, prisoners in one jail killed 25 other prisoners while
authorities stood by. "The killings went on for 12 hours and the police did
nothing at all," Martinez told Wellstone. "This is very important for the
United States."

Francisco Anguelo, who works for a project called Municipalities for Peace,
told Wellstone that the people of Colombia should have been asked how to
spend the U.S. aid. "We would never have said we want it for helicopters or
for substances with which to spray the coca crops," he said. "The greatest
beneficiaries of Plan Colombia so far have been the producers of weapons in
the United States and the producers of the chemical agents used for
spraying ... Please try to convey our thoughts to the people of the United
States."

'A Long-Term Project'

Pastrana is no stranger to the kidnappings that terrorize his country. In
1988, at age 34, he was kidnapped by the Medellin drug cartel during the
election campaign for mayor of Bogota, then freed in a dramatic rescue.

Pastrana, who was elected president in 1998, now is head of a nation where
at least seven people are kidnapped each day, according to human rights groups.

Pastrana is trying hard to portray himself as an international leader in
the fight against drugs, saying the countries of the world must do more to
help Colombia to rid itself of cocaine. In a joint operation with the
United States last year, the Pastrana administration arrested 30 of the
most powerful drug-traffickers in the world, and it is promising to set up
additional anti-narcotics brigades.

When Wellstone met with Pastrana, Pastrana's spokeswoman described the
senator as "one of the tougher guys" in trying to sell Plan Colombia.

"We respect that," said Foglia, Pastrana's adviser. But she said that
Pastrana is banking on support from the Bush administration: "The vote in
Congress showed us very clearly that we have both parties' support on this."

If Congress tries to send more aid, Wellstone is sure to be among the
leading skeptics. When the Colombian aid package first surfaced, Wellstone
tried to steer part of the money toward drug treatment in the United
States, but his idea was soundly rejected. Now, Wellstone would like to
target more of the military aid toward economic development programs for
Colombians.

"Unless the government can live up to human rights conditions, there
shouldn't be any aid," he said. "I may not win right away, but I'm going to
continue to speak out and bring other senators with me ... I believe in
human rights for people more than anything."

At a refugee center in downtown Bogota, the homeless said they hope that
some aid eventually helps them. They want homes and jobs.

"The government hasn't paid any attention to us -- they haven't even looked
at us," said Libard Galvis, 30, one of the 270 occupants at the refugee
center. "The government right now is deaf, dumb and blind."

Galvis, who lived in the Cesar region, lost his bar and billiards shop in
September 1998. After three automobiles with dark windows parked in front
of his business, hooded men broke in and began spraying bullets. He was
running errands at the time of the attack and fled to the mountains as soon
as he learned what happened.

"They destroyed everything," Galvis said. "In my case, I don't know if it
was the paramilitary or the guerrillas who were looking for me. I felt
caught in the middle. When you're caught in the middle of a conflict, you
don't know who's who ... I just wanted to get out."

His wife, Rosalba, and their three children -- an 8-year-old girl and two
boys, ages 4 and 7 -- are at the shelter, too Food donations are down, so
Galvis stood on the sidewalk on one recent day, asking passersby for
change. He said that someday he hopes his family will have enough money so
that he can afford a home and send his children to school.

"The government should provide some kind of solution," he said. "We're not
asking for the world. We're only asking for a little work opportunity so
that when we do leave here we don't go under a bridge someplace."

For its part, the government of Colombia is trying to respond.

After guerrillas blocked roads in southern Colombia in an attempt to starve
out families, the government began airlifting food to the victims.

As part of Plan Colombia, the government is trying to help displaced
migrant workers by giving them bus tickets to return to their homes. And
it's hoping to entice small growers to stop producing coca.

"The little guys, we're convincing [them] one by one, house by house,
farmer by farmer, to pull their crops out by hand," Foglia said. "And we'll
give them assistance to plant other crops."

But no one's predicting a quick fix.

"We'll give them a few chickens," Foglia said. "You know, eggs can be an
additional source of income ... It's all a mix. Later on, you give them the
pig. Maybe later on, you give them the cow ... It's a long-term project.
This isn't something we're going to fix in three to six months."