CRITICS: DRUG WAR CASH MAY FINANCE BRUTALITY

The U.S. Has Earmarked $1.3 Billion For Colombia; Critics Say The
Money Sponsors Crimes By Troops Linked To Right-Wing Militias.

LA HORMIGA, Colombia The death squad arrived just before
sunrise.

Men dressed in uniform ordered six peasants from their homes in the
hamlet of La Dorada and shot them to death.

Then they dressed the bodies in guerrilla garb, propped weapons near
them and took pictures.

The suspects: Colombian troops.

Later, the army tried to pass off the slayings as "combat casualties,"
according to human-rights reports, but residents here know better. The
memory haunts them.

Against this troubling backdrop, the United States is giving more than
$1.3 billion to Colombia, mostly so the armed forces can wage their
war on drugs. Included in the U.S. package is $28.5 million to teach
Colombia's armed forces and justice institutions how to behave.

But residents, critics and even some U.S. officials are questioning
whether underequipped and poorly trained soldiers, such as the ones
who mistakenly shot six schoolchildren on a picnic last month, can be
reformed.

As the U.S. military buildup begins, critics are alarmed that the U.S.
is supporting a military with a record of brutality.

They wonder whether the Colombian military can be trusted to cut its
ties to right-wing groups and carry out battle plans without abusing
Colombians.

This question will be among issues explored Friday and Saturday at
Northwestern University during a tribunal of opinion that will examine
the Dec. 13, 1998, massacre of Colombian villagers in the town of
Santo Domingo. The tribunal, a mock trial, carries no legal standing.
It is sponsored by the Northwestern University School of Law's Center
for International Rights and Amnesty International, among others.

A Human Rights Watch report earlier this year found that half of the
Colombian army's 18 brigades have ties to the right-wing militias, the
7,000-strong United Self Defenses of Colombia. Human-rights cases
against the military are on the rise--more than 200 last year alone.
The charges are mostly against low-level soldiers, and no one ranked
higher than major has had to answer hard questions in civil courts.

"Government forces continued to commit numerous, serious abuses ... at
a level that was roughly similar to that of 1998," a 1999 State
Department report on Colombia said.

"Individual members of the security forces actively collaborated with
members of paramilitary groups--passing them through roadblocks,
sharing intelligence and providing them with ammunition," it said.

With a dismal record on human rights, Colombian officials and
commanders have been told by the Clinton administration and Congress
to clean up their acts. "If Colombia aspires to be a First World
nation, then it has to do something about how it handles human
rights," said a senior U.S. aid official in Washington who oversees
money earmarked to teach the Colombian military how to treat civilians
in battle areas.

President Andres Pastrana, who sacked four generals last year, said
his country is committed to reforms such as transferring more
courts-martial to civilian courts. A new human-rights awareness is
being instilled across the military branches and state agencies, he
said. More than half of the 120,000 armed forces received training
last year.

"We know that there could be some links in some areas," Pastrana said
of collusion between regular troops and paramilitary units. "But I
think now they [the military] know it's not going to be tolerated."

The U.S. State and Defense Departments have completed rigorous
background checks of Colombian units due to receive U.S. training and
money. Military members under investigation or with blemished records
are removed from their posts. While acknowledging that the Colombian
government has failed in six of seven key human-rights stipulations of
the aid package, Clinton last month invoked national security concerns
to make the funds flow.

"We're confident that this package is not going to accomplish the U.S.
goals, but it is certainly going to deteriorate the human-rights
situation in Colombia," said Gina Amatangelo, a fellow at the
Washington Office on Latin America.

Supporting Colombian armed forces and police is key to curbing
Colombia's annual output of 550 tons of cocaine and up to 7 tons of
heroin.

Using at least 60 new and refurbished U.S. helicopters, three 950-man
airborne units are hoping to reclaim the lawless countryside and stop
the spiraling coca-leaf production.

In this fertile province, right-wing groups with ties to the Colombian
armed forces and leftist guerrillas are vying for control of up to
150,000 acres of coca growing.

Lawlessness and killings reign. In a region of 310,000 people, there
are more than 300 slayings a year. Countless more killings are
suspected to go unreported. Men in uniform, especially at night,
strike fear. People don't dare drive or get caught after sundown for
fear of encountering a rebel or paramilitary checkpoint.

At least 240 massacres were reported in Colombia so far this year,
roughly an average of one a day, according to the state Ombudsman's
Office in Bogota. About two-thirds of the nation's 3,000 annual
homicides are attributed to right-wing death squads; another 15
percent are committed by leftist groups and the remainder reportedly
by armed bandits, government forces and common criminals. Officially,
the Colombian government goes after the right-wing paramilitaries with
the same zeal used against guerrillas, and officials in Bogota deny
the armed forces cooperate with paramilitaries.

"That is totally false," said a government official when told about a
paramilitary contingent near the army barracks in Puerto Asis.

Nationwide, the reality is that most killings go unsolved. Military
courts reserve most cases involving high-ranking officers for
themselves. There are few prosecutions, and warrants gather dust.

"Colombian justice is a slow justice," the same government official
said. Among locals here, there is no trust of men in uniform.

"There's no credibility in the public force from the civilian
population," said Cayo Miranda, the town's ombudsman who has
repeatedly complained to authorities in Bogota about the lack of
security guarantees and the absence of forensics technicians in the
region.

"Here, we live in another Colombia where the strongest rules, and the
armed combatants wield power," he said.

Local police are limited by great distances, are stretched thin and
don't dare patrol by themselves, Miranda said. Prosecutors have
trouble finding witnesses and collecting evidence too.

"An investigation begins--there is no basis, there are no proofs, no
testimonies," he said. "And that gets shelved."

Outside the river town of Puerto Asis, members of an 800-strong
right-wing contingent travel freely in front of army checkpoints and
barracks. The heavy police detachment in town is indifferent to their
presence, residents charge. The Colombian army's 24th Brigade, 2,500
soldiers committed to counterinsurgency and anti-drug work, has
headquarters in the regional capital of Mocoa and several barracks in
Puerto Asis and Santa Ana.

At best, critics say, the brigade tolerates the group whose compound
is about 2 miles past an army checkpoint north of town.

"No area of Colombia has been taken by the government without our
presence," a right-wing commander told an Associated Press reporter in
July. "We can operate effectively because we don't have the judicial
restraints that are imposed on government forces."

The same man, a former sergeant in Colombia's special forces, told
Reuters that he was trained by elite U.S. Ranger and Navy SEALS units,
and his men backed the U.S.-Colombia strategy.

That spells trouble, observers say.

"It sounds like they're waiting to service the vanguard of this
southern push when it happens," said Adam Isaacson of the Center for
International Policy, a Washington think tank.

"The intelligence is almost bound to reach them. There's real
concern."

At times, residents say, the army has closed roads to abet the
paramilitaries' incursions.

"It is possible that in past times, abuses were committed," said a
Colombian army officer who spoke on condition his name not be used.

The brigade, which was cleared for U.S. aid, did capture eight
paramilitaries in 1998 and deliver them to local prosecutors,
according to a State Department report.

Facing them and the paramilitaries are an estimated 2,000 to 3,000
guerrillas from the largest rebel force known by its Spanish acronym
FARC. They are experienced combatants who overran several army bases
in recent years.