LIFE TOUGH FOR CIVILIANS IN COLOMBIA'S "LABORATORY OF PEACE"

Factions In Country Still Sharply Divided

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia - This looks like any other ranching town
in southern Colombia, until you see the heavily armed guerrillas patrolling
the streets and the murals announcing you are in Colombia's "Laboratory of
Peace."

The safe haven of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC,
Colombia's biggest leftist guerrilla faction, has passed its second
anniversary, but nobody is celebrating. Not the government, which granted
the 16,200-square-mile demilitarized zone to the rebels - thus meeting their
precondition for coming to the negotiating table. Not the FARC, which has
just suspended peace talks.

The residents of the zone have recovered from the initial shock of finding
themselves living under guerrilla rule, but the last two years have been
hard for them.

Luis Eduardo Lopez, a veterinarian who is a longtime resident of San
Vicente, said the local population is the unwilling third party caught
between two powerful adversaries: "There is a cohabitation here. There is a
lawful state, that of the government; there is a de facto state, the
guerrillas, and then there is us, the civil population. So we have to be of
the three, a combination of the three. That is what we are living here."

The FARC has used and abused the safe haven as its own private fiefdom. The
list of abuses is long: the import of arms, the export of drugs, the
building of military power and the holding of kidnap victims.

Such things still go on, but for the civilian population, other abuses have
been much closer to their daily lives - the recruitment of their children
and the imposition of FARC "revolutionary justice."

"With respect to the recruitment of minors, it is true that some fronts
recruited minors, and various of these minors, under 15 years of age, have
been delivered to their families, have been returned to their families,"
said Simon Trinidad, one of the top FARC negotiators.

There has been no evidence of returned children, residents say, but after
two years the FARC has responded to complaints from the civilian population,
and most abuses have stopped.

A sort of normality

In San Vicente, the capital of the safe haven, residents have become used to
living alongside the guerrillas.

"Now the people have learned to live with the FARC, and in daily life they
have got used to seeing guerrillas in the hairdressers, in the dentists, in
the supermarket. There are no problems - this unique situation has become
normal," said Maria Luisa Murillo, a journalist for El Tiempo newspaper who
has lived here since the zone was established and is working on a book about
life within the haven under FARC control.

But after two years of talks between the rebels and the government, there is
no concrete progress, and the FARC has just broken off dialogue - again.

FARC is demanding that the government do more to fight against the
paramilitary army of the Self Defense Forces of Colombia (known by its
Spanish acronym, AUC). This 6,000-strong group of right-wing death squads
has had great success against the guerrillas - "cleaning" areas of FARC
supporters through the indiscriminate use of massacres.

"Until the president and his government clarify, to the nation and to the
world, their official position toward paramilitary terrorism and develop
policies to halt it, we believe the current talks should be put on hold,"
the FARC statement announcing the suspension said.

Purging the military

Despite the FARC demands, for the first time the government actually is
doing something about the paramilitary-military links, long criticized by
human rights groups. Under pressure from the United States and Europe, last
month Colombian Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez dismissed 388 members
of the security forces - the greatest-ever purge of the military.

Although he did not present the purge as clearing out all the paramilitary
collaborators from the forces, Ramirez did say the message was clear: "We
cannot say that all links between the military and self-defense forces have
been cut. What we can say is that we have shown there is no tolerance of any
associations, and that those discovered to have links will be punished."

What has infuriated the FARC most - and given them an excuse to suspend the
talks - was how the head of the AUC, Carlos Castano, succeeded earlier this
month in getting Interior Minister Humberto de la Calle to come to his
secret hideout for talks. Castano achieved this by kidnapping seven members
of Congress, and said he would not release them until he had spoken to the
minister about the lamentable manner in which the government was handling
peace talks.

For the FARC, the meeting of a government minster with the paramilitaries is
the first step toward official recognition of the right-wing army and its
potential introduction into the peace process - something the leftist
guerrillas bitterly oppose.

While the government has refused to admit the AUC to any peace negotiations,
many government sources have said privately that it is only a matter of
time, as o peace is possible without AUC agreement.

The FARC maintains that the paramilitaries are simply an organ of the state,
used to do its dirty work. They contend that the members of Congress
arranged for their own kidnapping in a ploy to give the AUC political
recognition.

Influx of U.S. money

The big unspoken issue in the current conflict between the rebels and the
government is the influx of U.S. funds - $1.3 billion in drug-fighting aid.
While the anti-drug money is aimed at the big narcotics producers, it also
is beginning to pour into areas where the rebels engage in narco-trafficking
to bankroll their guerrilla war.

Few believe that this suspension by the FARC signals the end of the peace
process. So far the FARC has gained much and given nothing.

The safe haven has proven a great boon to the guerrillas, allowing them to
build up their military strength and train troops free from harassment.
Kidnap victims are being held within the zone, where security forces cannot
try to rescue them.

Most important, the FARC has space to hold sway - a situation it does do not
want to give up.

Nor is the Colombian military in any position to take back the guerrilla
zone - yet. The accord that gave FARC authority over the haven is due for
renewal in December, and the government is not strong enough to retake
control of the region.

The frustration felt by all Colombians at the lack of prospects for peace is
particularly poignant here in the safe haven, where residents have long
wearied of decades of fighting between the government and the guerrillas.

Vicente resident Lopez, watching the children play in San Vicente's town
square, asked, "We have had not the patience, but the courage, to endure 50
years of war, so how can we not have the patience to build the peace in the
years it will need, so that our children and grandchildren can live in
peace?"