FIGHTS RAGE OVER COLOMBIA DRUG PLAN

Guerrillas and Paramilitaries Escalate Battles in Coca-Growing Area

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia - Even before it begins, the Colombian government's
U.S.-backed anti-drug plan is changing lives in the heart of coca-growing
country, plunging this frontier town and neighboring villages into the worst
season of armed conflict residents can remember.

Intensified clashes between leftist guerrillas and rightist paramilitary
groups were expected, given the stakes in this region's 55 hectares (135,000
acres) of coca fields with army operations scheduled to begin in December
after an injection of U.S. military aid.

But the swiftness, scope and savagery of the fighting have taken the
Colombian Army, humanitarian groups and a weary population by surprise.

In recent weeks, guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
have tripled their strength to 1,500 troops in Putumayo, a large state that
accounts for almost half the estimated 300,000 acres of coca cultivated in
Colombia. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a privately funded
paramilitary counterweight to the guerrillas, has brought in 300 additional
men who camp in nearby farmhouses and control several regions in the state's
southwest.

Although casualty numbers are hard to come by, daily battles on the dirt
roads and in dense jungle thickets over the past three weeks have killed
scores of guerrillas, paramilitaries and civilians identified as partisans
in the conflict.

Army officials say the fighting, which they have joined only occasionally,
marks a significant increase in what had been months of desultory
confrontations between the armed groups, which battle on ideological grounds
but also both guard, and profit from, drug production.

In the midst of this conflict, Colombian officials have begun trying to sell
people here on a life untethered to coca, the main ingredient in cocaine and
the financial fuel for both paramilitary and guerrilla operations.

Although the government's $7.5 billion plan to eradicate coca cultivation
and stimulate the legitimate economy is heavily weighted toward the
military - most of the $1.3 billion U.S. contribution goes for military
equipment and training - it is Plan Colombia's social development component
that officials believe will turn a skeptical population into their most
effective force for peace.

The government plans to spend $40 million in Putumayo between now and March,
an enormous sum in a state where most of the 350,000 residents are
subsistence farmers. That does not include a $150 million road construction
program, known as "Routes for Peace," that is designed to link three
southern commercial centers.

But as the plan begins, the government program has virtually no support in
this most critical region. Farmers here have asked for such improvements for
decades to help get their yucca, plantain, rice and other legal crops to
market, and have seen little response. The most recent government attempt at
economic development, a nearby hearts of palm processing plant, sits
unfinished and abandoned.

In Santa Ana, a two-street town about 10 kilometers (six miles) north of
Puerto Asis where 65 people gathered last week in an open-air forum, dozens
of farmers said the government's hearts and minds program was only a war
strategy. They wondered aloud how an army that has been unable to restore
electricity to the sweltering lowlands for more than a week because of
guerrilla presence would be able to build roads, schools and health clinics
promised in Plan Colombia.

"So where is the army? All this money they are getting, and where are they?"
asked Antonio Diaz, 46, who sets aside a tenth of his 4-hectare farm for
coca cultivation. "The guerrillas have paralyzed everything here. This is
going to be money for nothing - nothing."