COLOMBIA'S ANTI-DRUG PLAN FUELS FIGHT IN COCA COUNTRY

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 right-wing paramilitary
groups were expected, given the stakes in this region's 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 Vermont-size
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 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 is 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 will
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?" said Antonio Diaz, 46, who sets aside an acre of his 10-acre farm
for coca cultivation. "The guerrillas have paralyzed everything here. This
is going to be money for nothing - nothing."

President Andres Pastrana's three-year strategic plan to end four decades
of war targets primarily the vast coca fields in the south and
high-elevation poppy fields in the mountainous central states - all zones
of intense conflict between the army, guerrillas and paramilitary forces.
The plan's premise is that, without its primary source of income, the FARC
- - the acronym for the guerrillas' Spanish name - will wither away much as
leftist insurgencies in Central America did with the demise of the Soviet
Union. National peace talks are in progress.

To bolster the plan, the United States, as the world's largest cocaine
consumer, is sending 57 helicopters, military trainers and social
development funds to encourage farmers to end coca cultivation in favor of
legal crops. During a ceremony in Bogota last month, U.S. Ambassador Anne
Patterson signed an agreement with the Colombian government releasing $175
million for Plan Colombia's social component.

Colombian officials expect U.S.-financed helicopters to begin shuttling
American-trained anti-drug battalions around southern Colombia in December.
State Department officials announced this week that the United States will
send 13 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters to the Colombian army, rather than the
16 originally approved, because of cost increases associated with equipping
them for battle. But the Blackhawks, which are bigger and faster and have
more range than the other model in the aid package, will arrive more than
six months ahead of schedule, with all expected to be in Colombia by the
end of next year.

"It sounds like you'd have to secure the area before you begin the
projects, but the truth is, you do both at the same time," said Jaime Ruiz,
Pastrana's point man for Plan Colombia. "We are trying to convince the
population that we can do this without force, but they are afraid to trust
the government and end up with nothing, so this first step is very
interesting. The population is crucial to the balance."

The first step has been devastating. This town flickers at night, lit by
candles and motorcycle headlights in the absence of power. Jostling crowds
wait for scarce vegetables in front of supermarkets. Residents mob gas
stations to stockpile fuel, the price of eggs has doubled in three weeks
and police patrols sweep through unlit streets frisking people after dark.

The Red Cross has stopped providing battlefield services after guerrillas
stopped an ambulance, killing the wounded paramilitary soldier inside. A
blockade the FARC plans to expand to neighboring states has systematically
severed town from town by cutting off roads and rivers, leaving hundreds of
residents in La Hormiga, Orito, San Miguel and El Tigre without food.

At least four church workers have fled Puerto Asis amid threats. Guerrillas
stop taxis and buses that venture minutes beyond this town's last
wood-plank house and paint "FARC 48th FRONT" on them, warning drivers not
to remove it for four months. Most comply.

In the region's only major medical center, the 42-bed Hospital San
Francisco de Asis, employees say paramilitary informants have infiltrated
the staff, sending out word on which arriving guerrillas survive or die.
Two workers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, said armed
men have come to the hospital to kill at least three patients. The men did
not wear masks but have never been caught.

"Nobody here has any security," said the hospital worker, a young single
mother, noting that five hospital employees have been killed. "Nobody here
says anything. I don't say anything - not 'he was white, he was black.'
Nothing."

The only safe passage out of this commercial center is the highway to
Mocoa, the state capital. The headquarters of the army's 24th Brigade,
which recently lost U.S. military aid because of alleged human rights
abuses, sits along the road in Santa Ana, and several farmhouses used by
the paramilitaries also line the highway. Although their camps are common
knowledge, the army has done little to discourage them in what town
officials say is a tacit endorsement of their help against a common enemy.

Col. Gabriel Ramon Diaz Ortiz, commander of the 24th Brigade, denied any
support for the paramilitary groups and said his men have waged four or
five "intense" battles against them. The Defense Ministry decided this week
to send an undisclosed number of additional troops to the area.

Beyond Santa Ana, the road becomes impassable, a sign advertising the
"Routes For Peace" program marking the outer boundary of safe passage. But
this stretch of highway between Puerto Asis and the capital is crucial to
the government's crop substitution program, which started with fumigation
but has changed to "manual eradication" in an effort to win over angry farmers.

In the pale blue meeting room in Santa Ana, farmers said the government has
given them 10 months to remove their coca crops - usually one-to six-acre
patches - or face fumigation. Yet no money has arrived in Putumayo, or at
least none the farmers have seen.

Maria, who passed through roadblocks on her way here from a town near La
Hormiga where fighting has been fierce, said her community has received no
word on the thick file on public-works projects it compiled for
consideration under Plan Colombia.

"I don't believe the money will arrive, not to Putumayo," said Maria, who
cultivates seven acres of coca and did not want her last name used. "Only
planes and fumigation."