COLOMBIA'S MESSY, COMPLICATED WAR

Clinton Green-Lights $1.3 Billion For Drug Fight

TRES ESQUINAS, COLOMBIA­Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya indicates 10 blue
circles on a map of Colombia's southern coca-growing region, each
representing a unit of up to 250 insurgents. Then, he points to a
small red dot in the middle: "We are here."

It is from this red dot­the Tres Esquinas Army base­that Colombia is
launching its ambitious antinarcotics campaign, with 3,000 soldiers
being trained by U.S. Special Forces and supplied with $1 billion
worth of U.S. helicopters and other equipment.

Their initial targets are the drug labs and transport points used by
cocaine traffickers. But Colombia's Marxist rebels are increasingly
involved in the booming drug trade, and Montoya, who commands the
southern Joint Task Force, expects his forces will encounter them in
the field­or here. Twice, sometimes three times a week, Montoya drills
his men to repel a rebel attack. "The reaction must be as
instantaneous as this," says one officer, as he slaps an imaginary
mosquito on his forearm.

The messy, complicated war in Colombia has heated up in recent weeks,
as Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary groups battle for
control of territory rich in gold as well as the coca and opium
poppies that yield an estimated $550 million a year. President Clinton
plans to fly to Colombia's Caribbean tourist city of Cartagena on
August 30 to show support for Colombia's antidrug efforts.

Military Abuses.

Already, disputes are arising about when and where the U.S. aid can be
used. While the United States' desire to combat narcotics prevailed
over its fear of being dragged into a counterinsurgency role in
Colombia's 35-year-old war, Congress imposed eight conditions to curb
human-rights abuses.

Because human-rights groups accuse the Colombian military of aiding
the paramilitaries, Colombia is required to immediately return any
U.S.-supplied helicopter found transporting right-wing militias.

Other conditions include requiring soldiers accused of abuses to be
tried in civilian, rather than military, courts.

Colombian military chief Gen. Fernando Tapias rejects the portrait of
an abusive Army, pointing out that the armed forces rank just after
the Catholic church in respected institutions in Colombia. "Would the
Colombian people be supporting us if we were committing atrocities?"
he asks.

The right-wing groups are responsible for many of the abuses,
including 93 massacres in the first half of this year. Tapias says the
Army pursues them as well as the leftist guerrillas. Still, the Army
does appear to have allowed atrocities to occur.

The Colombian attorney general's office is investigating some
officers, including four generals, for ignoring appeals from towns
under attack from paramilitary forces.

Over many months, militias threatened residents of Puerto Alvira
before 18 townspeople were mutilated, killed, and incinerated in May
1998. The same bands had slaughtered more than 30 people in nearby
Mapiripan in June 1997, and a colonel has been charged in that
massacre for allegedly allowing the right-wing forces to pass through
the military base he commanded.

Tapias concedes that some officers may have failed to answer calls for
help and that former soldiers have joined up with the paramilitaries,
which pay handsome salaries of $300 to $400 a month in a country where
unemployment has just hit a record high of 20.4 percent.

But the main problem, he insists, is that "we don't have the capacity
to act."

Colombia's military is woefully underequipped: It has only 17
helicopters to cover mountainous jungle terrain three and a half times
the size of Vietnam, and only 55,000 combat soldiers to take on an
estimated 29,500 right- and left-wing opponents, far short of the
traditional counterinsurgency ratio of 10 to 1. The rebels have pushed
west in recent weeks, attacking isolated police posts with homemade
mortars that also killed nearby civilians.

After 14 policemen held off 300 guerrillas in Roncesvalles for 27
hours, they ran out of ammunition and surrendered­only to be executed
by the rebels.

Three U.S.-donated Blackhawk helicopters, used in police antinarcotics
operations, sat a mere 20-minute flight away. Under the rules,
U.S.-supplied heli-copters may be used on emergency missions­which,
by some definitions, occur almost every day in this war-torn land.