COLOMBIA'S CREEPING WAR: NEIGHBORS FEAR SPILLOVER

Pioneros Del Oriente, Ecuador -- Guerrillas and drug traffickers from
Colombia have long crossed into Ecuador's frontier jungle for time off
and to buy guns or drug-processing chemicals. But as the Colombian
government, backed by a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package, prepares an
offensive against the traffickers and their allies, Colombia's civil
war is seeping into neighboring countries, and things have suddenly
taken a violent turn.

This remote area now lives by the law of the gun. Residents say about
15 armed Colombians took over three farmhouses in August. Pushed
across the border by escalating clashes among guerrillas, right-wing
paramilitary forces and the Colombian army, the newcomers drove
Ecuadoran farmers from their land, threatening them with "revenge,
Colombian-style" if they refused to get out of the way.

Ecuadoran soldiers have uncovered and destroyed four small
cocaine-processing labs on this side of the border in the past six
months. Fighters from Colombia's right-wing militia groups have been
arrested in Ecuador for running extortion rings. Colombia's largest
rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
crosses the porous border with increasing impunity. Another rebel
group, the National Liberation Army, has also increased activity on
the Ecuadoran side, where one woman was arrested recently after she
was found with documents linking her to the group, local police
officials said.

"We've always had problems in these parts, but never like this," said
Galo Murillo, a 37-year-old coffee grower who called a town meeting to
discuss the swelling tide of violence in the poor village of Pioneros
del Oriente, 150 miles east of Quito, 4 miles from the border and half
an hour by car from the nearest military checkpoint.

On the road that leads Pioneros del Oriente, police say, the FARC
ambushed three Ecuadoran merchants in August in a business dispute,
then stripped and buried their tractor-trailer truck after killing
them. The truck's unearthed skeleton lies in front of the police
station in the nearby provincial capital, Lago Agrio, a stark reminder
of how Colombia's four-decade guerrilla war is reaching into
neighboring countries.

"This is not our war, but it is now here, and we are helpless against
it," said Murillo, a father of two. "We've always been a peaceful
people in Ecuador. We don't know what to do."

As the United States has pushed the Colombian government's Plan
Colombia as essential to the war on drugs, Latin American countries
have criticized its potential for making Colombia's conflict regional.
In Venezuela, the United Nations estimates that more than 500
Colombians are seeking refuge from violence in their homeland, while
Panamanian authorities last month uncovered a smuggling ring
channeling arms to the FARC. In Brazil, the armed forces recently
launched Operation Cobra, a $10 million campaign to reinforce the
border with Colombia.

Most vulnerable

As the poorest of Colombia's neighbors and the one with the fewest
resources to protect its borders, Ecuador is perhaps the most
vulnerable to the conflict's spread. And along the northeastern
border, the spillover has become a reality.

In Lago Agrio, local authorities reported an alarming increase in
kidnappings and extortion. And officials fear more trouble because
Ecuador has agreed to let the United States set up a drug-surveillance
operation at a base in the port city of Manta, an act FARC leaders
have described as a "declaration of war."

Two new leftist youth groups -- including one called the FARE, or
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Ecuador, an echo of Colombia's FARC --
have launched propaganda campaigns in northern Ecuador against Plan
Colombia. Meanwhile, five camps for up to 5,000 refugees are being
planned near the 600-mile-long border. Officials said refugees could
be a serious burden in this economically troubled country of 12
million. Some fear the encampments could be used as rear bases for
guerrillas.

As part of Plan Colombia, Ecuador is to receive $20 million, but
anxious officials there contend that is not enough. They are calling
for assistance for economic development along the border, where many
of the largest cities have elected Marxist mayors who support the
philosophy, if not the tactics, of the FARC.

The mayors of the four largest cities in the region are demanding a
neutral zone to prevent a military buildup. The reasons are not only
ideological but also financial. In some border cities, as much as 80
percent of the commerce is based on dealings with the FARC, Colombian
paramilitary groups and drug traffickers, business leaders say.

"There is not only an economic and political, but an ideological
infiltration of the border," Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said. "We
simply don't have the means to cover it completely. We are doing the
best with what we have, but we know it is not enough."

In the past three months, Ecuador's military has deployed more troops
to the border, but it is still easy to cross. The back-and-forth has
turned Lago Agrio, a seedy frontier town of 25,000, into the
Casablanca of the Colombian conflict -- a watering hole for the FARC,
whose members walk freely in civilian clothing alongside their
paramilitary enemies, Colombian drug runners, government informants
and Ecuadoran police and soldiers.

On the city's steamy streets, the facades of two brothels sport large
painted faces of Ernesto (Che) Guevara, the Argentine-born icon of
Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution, as welcome signs for their guerrilla
clients from Colombia.

Inside the Panther, a grimy house of prostitution, beefy Colombian men
with the trademark flattop haircuts of the FARC and crew cuts of the
paramilitaries sit on opposite sides of the room, drinking beer and
paying $2 to have sex with Ecuadoran women.

"You can tell the Colombian jungle fighters from their boots," said
one police official in the club. "They are thick, black and more
expensive than any Ecuadoran in these parts could afford ... And they
can also afford a lot more beer."

'Their supermarket'

The FARC and members of the paramilitary groups also come to the city
for medical treatment, as do workers from Colombian coca plantations.
"They come in with hands as big as boxers' gloves from working with
the cocaine-processing chemicals," said Medardo Sanchez, a local
surgeon who said exposure to the chemicals causes workers' hands to
swell. "I just fix them up. They haven't usually come to make trouble.
They don't show their guns in public. This is their supermarket; they
like to keep things clean here."

There has been an uneasy truce between the Colombians -- the
paramilitaries and the rebels -- and Ecuadoran authorities, largely
because of border commerce, but also because the FARC does not appear
to be looking for a two-front war. Also, the Ecuadoran military is not
interested in, nor equipped for, a fight with the better-armed
guerrillas. Ecuador's main oil pipeline -- its largest source of
foreign revenue -- is an easy target, being just a 20-minute drive
from the border.

In any case, serious action against the FARC would be highly unpopular
among local left-leaning people. "I don't condone violence, but I must
understand fighting for justice and freedom," said Maximo Abad, Lago
Agrio's popular mayor, adding that the FARC's "message is universal,
and it resonates here and elsewhere."

In the past, guerrillas crossed the border to "help out" -- lynching
Colombian bandits they had driven into Ecuador and sometimes even
dropping off suspects at police stations. But recently, local police
say, Colombians -- including common thugs as well as those linked to
the guerrillas and paramilitary militias -- are infecting this area
with their quarrels.

"We are living in the middle of everybody else's war -- the U.S., the
Colombian military, the guerrillas, the paramilitaries," said Lt. Col.
Geraldo Zapata, chief of the Lago Agrio police. "All we're doing is
trying to keep out of it."