COLOMBIA ORDER ERODING QUICKLY

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- Food and medicine are running critically low in a
southern province paralyzed by a rebel traffic ban. High-tech helicopters
are thrown into combat against leftist rebels, with disastrous results. And
now, two members of Congress have been kidnapped.

Government control is eroding quickly across much of Columbia, just as
Washington is throwing itself firmly behind the government with $1.3
billion in mostly military aid.

Few believe that the rebels, who have waged war against a succession of
elected governments for 36 years, can take over Colombia: Their strength
lies in the countryside and not the major cities.

But recent events suggest that authorities are helpless to control both the
rebels' actions and those of rival rightist paramilitary militias.

That helplessness is most evident in Putumayo, a southern province that is
being slowly strangled by a traffic ban imposed by the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, the biggest rebel group. Rebels and the rightist United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia are fighting for control of the province's
lucrative cocaine-producing industry.

Drivers violating the ban, now entering its second month, are likely to see
their vehicles shot at or set ablaze by the rebels. Supermarkets have run
low on food and gas stations of fuel, and now hospitals are running
critically short of medicines, blood, oxygen and anesthetics.

The government is flying emergency supplies to the province's only
commercial airport, in the town of Puerto Asis, then ferrying them by
helicopter to outlying areas. But to Puerto Asis' mayor, the response seems
feeble.

"The government has abandoned Putumayo," Mayor Manuel Alzate said in an
interview.

Although the army has sent in reinforcements, it has not tried to regain
control of its rutted highways.

"The government would have to station its troops every 50 yards along the
highways, and they lack the manpower to do that. And even if they did, the
rebels could creep up and kill them," Alzate said.

A U.S. diplomat predicted order will be restored after U.S.-trained army
troops launch an anti-drug offensive in Putumayo in coming months under
President Andres Pastrana's so-called Plan Colombia.

"The aim of Plan Colombia is to establish a government presence," said
Phillip Chicola, the State Department's Director of Andean Affairs.

"But this is not going to stop overnight. The government is not going to
show up one day and say 'OK, here we are. No more fighting, no more coca.'
This will take a while -- months, years - to implement," Chicola told
reporters last week.

Colombian troops will be flown into Putumayo's coca fields aboard U.S.-made
Black Hawk and Huey helicopters. But the vulnerability of the helicopters
was made clear in fighting elsewhere in Colombia last week.

One Black Hawk bringing reinforcements to the western town of Dabeiba
crashed after being hit by rebel gunfire, killing 22 soldiers.

Another Black Hawk sent to drive out rebels who had bombed an oil pipeline
in northeast Colombia had to turn back after rebel fire killed a soldier
aboard and wounded the pilot.

The rebels are reportedly now distributing pamphlets in Putumayo warning
that "the worst is yet to come" and vowing to main the blockade until
Pastrana "dismantles his imperialist Plan Colombia."

Colombia's large cities were once relatively immune to the violence.

But a smaller rebel faction, the National Liberation Army, kidnapped dozens
of people in a raid last month just outside Cali, the third-largest city.

In northwest Colombia, meanwhile, right-wing paramilitary gunmen were
thought Monday to be holding two members of Congress abducted over the
weekend in Cordoba province, their main stronghold.

One captive -- Zulema Jattin -- was a member of a congressional peace
commission. She had been pressing for an exchange of prisoners of war
between the rebels and the government, a deal the paramilitaries oppose.