COLOMBIA'S REBEL FORCES BUILD RANKS, STIR FEARS OF CIVIL WAR

BUCARAMANGA, Colombia -- Javier Farfal is a skinny, 15-year-old guerrilla
who claims he never fired a shot in anger. But when he and about 40 other
rebels surrendered last week, Colombian military officers grew alarmed.

The tales told by Farfal and his mates supported army intelligence reports
that at least 1,100 new fighters had been recruited this spring by the
leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, a significant
manpower boost for a force previously estimated at about 17,000.

The FARC's expansion, together with significant increases by both the armed
forces and rightist paramilitary squads, comes as further evidence that
Colombia's bloody conflict is heading for a major upsurge as the military
finalizes plans for a U.S.-backed assault on drug traffickers and the
rebels who protect them.

All three sides are plotting new strategies, deploying fighters to key
areas and buying weapons. In the process, Colombia's 35-year-old insurgency
is turning into something that looks and feels more like civil war, with
the likely prospect of increased turmoil and bloodshed in the coming year.

CITIZENS FRUSTRATED

Polls show most Colombians want the military to get tough with the rebels.
And, the polls show, they are frustrated with the lack of results from
President Andres Pastrana's 2-year-old peace talks with the FARC in a
demilitarized corner of southern Colombia.

"No one wants more war, but put yourself in the army's shoes: When the
guerrillas and the [paramilitaries] are recruiting and arming themselves,
what is our alternative but to do the same," Defense Minister Luis Fernando
Ramirez said.

On paper, the 146,000-member armed forces should be well prepared to face
any ratcheting up of a conflict that has left 30,000 dead since 1990 and
turned Colombia into a country torn by Latin America's worst political and
military crisis:

By slashing the number of noncombat garrison troops, the army has gone from
74,000 combat-available soldiers in 1998 to 103,000 today. It plans to add
another 10,000 troops over the next year and create four new
counter-guerrilla battalions.

"Colombia had spent too long with insufficient manpower, without
professionalism . . . [or sufficient] logistical and transport equipment to
deal with the geography," Pastrana said in an Armed Forces Day speech last
month.

Volunteer troops, presumed to have higher morale than conscripts, rose from
21,000 to 55,000 over the past two years, and special "quickie" courses
have graduated scores of sergeants and lieutenants trained for
counter-insurgency warfare.

"It's not just a matter of getting larger numbers of soldiers, but of
getting better soldiers, with better training and equipment," Defense
Minister Ramirez said in an interview.

Promotions are no longer automatic after four years "in rank," health and
retirement benefits have improved and the best combat leaders get not only
medals but family trips to Disney World.

Army and police helicopter fleets have been rising from 87 aircraft in 1998
to a target of 172 by late 2001, including 57 helicopters paid for by
Washington and another 16 Black Hawks equipped as gunships and paid for by
Colombia.

Defense Ministry reports claim that enemy casualties rose 45 percent in the
first six months of this year compared to the same period last year, while
defections and captures doubled and military dead and wounded dropped by
nearly half. HEAVY REBEL LOSSES

The FARC and the smaller National Liberation Army, known as ELN, suffered
heavy losses in three recent army sweeps south of Bogota, near the
southwestern city of Cali and around the north-central city of Bucaramanga,
where Farfal surrendered.

Bucaramanga regional commander Gen. Martin Carreno claimed 29 members of
Farfal's 360-member unit were killed in combat over the past week and 41
deserted or were captured -- half of them minors, including three 13-year-olds.

Farfal's unit was one of three similar-sized columns recruited this spring
in the demilitarized zone and ordered to head north to Bucaramanga, south
to Putumayo and west to the Cauca region, Carreno added.

"We trained for 20 days, shot 10 rounds in a target range and then started
walking," Farfal said in an interview. "By the time the army jumped us last
week we were all hungry, weak and afraid."

He told his fellow rebels last Monday that he was going out to relieve
himself, walked out of their encampment and kept going until he found some
soldiers and surrendered, Farfal said. "They are really tough fighters, not
like the kids I was with."

SMALL MILITARY

But despite the strengthening of the armed forces, foreign analysts say the
military remains woefully small. One 15,000-member division must cover an
area in the eastern Orinoco River basin about one-third the size of France.

"There's been real improvements, particularly in mobility . . . but they
must increase in size, improve in intelligence collection and use,
close-quarters combat, night operations . . . and medical evacuations,"
said Gabriel Marcella, a U.S. Army War College specialist in Latin American
insurgencies.

Critics say the main problem with the military is the excessive caution
shown by some of its officers, especially older colonels and majors in
command of units not specifically trained for counter-insurgency.

"If they go into an area and come under fire, they will sometimes pull
out," said a U.S. Army veteran close to the security forces. "They don't
like to risk men or helicopters, and are very concerned about hitting
civilians."

The FARC, meanwhile, continues to hold the initiative in the conflict,
operating in about 40 percent of the country and receiving 10,500 AK-47
assault rifles in one deal alone this summer arranged by Peruvian
middlemen.

FARC HAS 20,000

The latest U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reports estimate the FARC grew
from 17,000 rebels to 20,000 over the past year, according to Washington
sources. And captured FARC documents show plans to grow to 30,000 fighters.

"The logic is that the more fighters you have, the stronger you can speak
at the peace table," said Otty Patino, former military chief of the
disbanded M-19 guerrillas. "And that also prepares you for a possible
collapse of the negotiations and a worse war."

Still a puzzle is how the FARC will react to the government's planned
assault on coca growers in Putumayo, who account for nearly half of
Colombia's 300,000 acres of coca plantations and pay the rebels millions of
dollars per year in the form of "taxes" and protection and middlemen's fees.

If the conflict intensifies, FARC negotiator Raul Reyes vowed in a
telephone interview from the demilitarized zone, "We will use guerrilla
warfare, which will become even more widespread in all of Colombia."

Other FARC leaders have threatened the type of guerrilla tactics they have
rarely used so far: bombings of power lines, as well as hit-and-run attacks
on highways and bridges to paralyze the nation and keep the military from
concentrating its forces in Putumayo.

"They will disperse to disperse the army, and they are likely to expand the
war to places outside Colombia, like neighboring Ecuador, to put political
pressure on the government," Patino said.

"The army may seize some of the initiative in Putumayo with its new
helicopters," he added, "but the guerrillas have the advantage that . . .
they have been on the ground for years and know where each little rock is."

Last week, a FARC bomb attack on the town of Granada, 125 miles northwest
of Bogota, killed at least 29 people.

The FARC's worst enemy these days is not the army, however, but the
right-wing paramilitary units known as Self Defense Forces or AUC,
estimated by Ramirez to have grown from 850 fighters in 1992 to 8,150 today.

Many are veterans of elite army units trained by U.S. advisors, and Ramirez
said the AUC tried to recruit many of the 400 military officers cashiered a
month ago. Media reports said many of the officers were dismissed under
suspicion of human rights abuses.

"The AUC are the best troops around these days because only they are fully
committed to war, and they have the best leadership because they have the
best-paid guys," said the former U.S. military advisor to the Colombian
armed forces. EXECUTIONS

While their primary tactic of executing thousands of alleged rebel
collaborators has been widely condemned, their terror has effectively dried
up peasant support for guerrillas in parts of Colombia.

Since September, some 800 AUC fighters have been slowly driving FARC rebels
from their decades-old redoubts in the coca-producing heartland of
Putumayo. And under withering AUC attacks around northeastern Colombia, the
ELN shrank from 6,000 fighters last year to about 3,500 this year.

Adding to the paramilitaries' strength, AUC leader Carlos Castano has
emerged as an increasingly popular figure among rich and middle-class
Colombians frustrated with the lack of progress in Pastrana's 2-year-old
peace negotiations with the FARC.

Drug lords are also reported to be increasing payments to the AUC, hoping
to break the FARC's growing monopoly on the business of buying coca paste
from farmers and selling it to refineries that turn it into cocaine.

"The AUC is on the move. Their brutality is being approved by the well-off
people, so they can recruit more and more," said Bruce Bagley, a University
of Miami specialist on Colombia who just wound up a two-week visit.

"The AUC's growth means the country may be heading to open civil war
between the left and the right, with the government caught in the middle,"
Bagley said. "Not a nice picture at all, what I saw there."