COLOMBIAN REBELS RULE IN SURREAL FARC-LANDIA

Guerrillas Welcome Visitors To Their Huge Demilitarized Zone In
War-Torn Colombia

LOS POSOS, Colombia - Even in Colombia, land of Gabriel Garcia Marquez
and his sagas of myth and magic, this is surreal.

This country's biggest rebel army is deadly, disciplined, committed to
Marxism - and easy as pie to meet.

On one hand, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, is
busy blowing up the country. Just this weekend, guerrillas fired
homemade mortars at a police outpost in the northeastern town of
Carmen del Atrato sparking a battle with troops that left eight people
dead including two civilians and three soldiers.

On the other hand, they welcome visitors.

Once upon a time it took days of arduous, bone-breaking passage by
jeep, mule and boat through Colombia's Amazon region to make contact
with guerrillas.

Nowadays, you take a commercial flight from Bogota to the jungle town
of San Vicente del Caguan, on the muddy Caguan River in southeastern
Colombia's Caqueta state.

Check in at the FARC offices on the main square.

"Che Lives," says the poster inside the front door.

The clock face says "Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia" - it's
the FARC's new, still illegal, political party.

Guerrilla soldier Nora, welcoming and efficient behind her desk, does
the paperwork. Above her desk, there's a photo of FARC Comandante
Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, a one-time highways inspector, meeting
with Andres Pastrana during the 1998 election campaign.

That jungle meeting got Pastrana elected president. Colombians are
desperate for peace - an end to this bloody 36-year civil war.

What they got instead was "FARC-landia."

Next morning, bright and early, hop in your jeep and take a dirt road,
past FARC propaganda signs - "Protect the Children," "Don't Pollute
The Water," "No More Gringo Soldiers" - about an hour out to Los Posos.

Or, Villa Nueva (New Town) as the FARC calls it.

It's FARC central, the communications headquarters for a huge
demilitarized zone (DMZ), dubbed FARC-landia, which was authorized by
Pastrana in January, 1999, to facilitate peace talks with the guerrillas.

It's a rebel safe zone. It's also the only place in devastated
Colombia with a building boom.

There's construction everywhere: a motel strip to accommodate visiting
dignitaries, a conference hall and expanded offices.

One can hardly do interviews over the banging of hammers.

In the offices, fax machines hum. There are banks of computers along
both walls, multi-line phones on every desk, Internet access,
satellite phones and secretaries working messages of solidarity and
invitations to "public audiences" into polite Spanish.

It looks like an American Express office. Except for the plastic
chairs.

Sports utility vehicles are parked outside for regular runs into the
ranching town of San Vicente, population 15,000, where rebels tend to
daily business.

Business means drugs. This is prime coca country. Colombia supplies
about 80 per cent of the world's cocaine - and the FARC's take of the
action is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

No matter what happens now - even if peace talks collapse and the
rebels are driven back to the bush - they have gained critical
advantage. They've already got their own country in a slice of
Colombia the size of Switzerland.

Every few days, groups of pseudo-conventioneers - union leaders,
teachers, farmers, academics, diplomats - trek into the jungle of
Caqueta to "confer" with FARC rebels in "public audiences."

The rebels use the zone as a base for military forays: raids on police
stations, bombing attacks that kill civilians, kidnapping expeditions
- - including the abduction of children.

Pastrana negotiated the DMZ without first securing a ceasefire. Talks
are continuing to that end, with government peace negotiator Camilo
Gomez and his team routinely arriving in San Vicente in Gomez's
private jet.

He stays at the abandoned military barracks outside town. That's where
Canadian Ambassador Guillermo Rishchynski bunked recently during
meetings at the Villa Nueva compound between the FARC and diplomats
from Canada, Japan, Europe and the United Nations.

"Oh, come with me," mid-level commander Julian "The Poet" Corrado, 45,
says to a Star reporter waiting at the main gate. He signals to
sentries to let me pass.

It's just before 9 a.m., and he's arriving for work himself, in
camouflage fatigues, AK-47 over his shoulder, revolver at his hip and
briefcase in hand.

Not far from the main offices is a rebel encampment. It's in a
pleasant, shady jungle clearing, with raised plywood sleeping
platforms, a mess tent and stores, an infirmary and, scattered under
the trees on a recent morning, about 50 rebels in olive green camouflage.

They are cleaning weapons (some light automatic rifles stamped
"property of the Venezuelan Armed Forces,") sewing patches on
uniforms, packing kits and rolling mosquito netting.

Their day is intensely structured. From reveille at 4:30 a.m. and
morning parade at 4:40, they march briskly from breakfast to physical
exercise, from revolutionary instruction to battle drill, from evening
mess to bunk time at 8 p.m. and total silence at 8:20.

These are the grunts, the young men and women who live and die for the
FARC. Some come for the basics - food, clothing, shelter and
rudimentary skills training. Many have learned to read and write.

"I am very happy here," says Ana Maria, 26, (all rebels choose noms de
guerre.) She came from a Caqueta peasant family and, for the first
time, got three meals a day, including rice, beans, chicken, beef and
arrepas, Colombia's delicious unleavened bread.

"In civilian life, I suffered very much. We had nothing. I don't miss
my family in the slightest. We have everything we need here. We even
watch movies sometimes," she says. "What do I like? Jackie Chan,
Rambo, whatever . . ."

It's different for Christian Martinez, 34. He was a thesis away from
an electrical engineering degree in another lifetime, a student
activist fighting for a "just society." He fled Bogota after secret
police tried to assassinate him. He left his wife and young son behind.

"For me, the life of a guerrilla was my only option," he says. "The
International Red Cross told me to get out of Bogota or I would be
killed."

His sad, handsome face stands out. He yearns for his family and for
life in his big, beautiful, bustling city, Bogota.

"I come from a poor family. I studied night and day for my profession
and worked my way through school. Then, I had to leave it all. My home
was torn apart," he says. "My wife, my son - they don't know where I
am.

"My wife was questioned by secret police. She said, 'He chose this
road. I don't know anything.' That is true - when you take this road,
you know that in any battle, at any time, you could be dead."

Under the palm trees, lovely Doralba knots silken threads into a
macrame belt. She bends over her work, camouflage cap shading her
eyes, biting her lip with 14-year-old intensity.

She has been a child warrior for six months.

"We are going to build a better country," she says shyly. "That's why
we are fighting. The guerrillas are my family now."

While Doralba is among the youngest, this camp is full of teenaged
soldiers, boys with peachfuzz and acne, girls who swap lipstick and
nail polish and confide crushes on comrades.

Last year, in a meeting with U.N. officials, FARC commanders pledged
to stop recruiting children younger than 15. They made similar
promises to the townsfolk of San Vicente, bitter over watching their
young folk disappear into the jungle.

"Comandante Jorge Briceno promised us the FARC wouldn't take our
children. But they don't respect our youth," German Agudelo, a member
of the town's peace council, had said earlier. "They seduce them from
us with romantic notions of life so different from reality. They are
just kids. We are losing the future of our country, which is our
youth. We beg to have them back."

Carmenza, 16, with short thick hair and a dazzling smile, is on mess
duty today, slinging bags of rice and beans. She enlisted at 14 "in
order to help my people."

She recently lost four friends in an ambush. Maybe she'll be next to
die. Meanwhile, she says, she welcomes life in the jungle, without
marriage or children.

"If I wasn't here, I probably would be married with two children,"
says Elizabeth, 20, a two-year veteran. "Now, I can't imagine a future
with children. If somebody likes somebody, though, they are together,
just like in civilian life. But is is hard because you might have to
go and fight in one place, and he goes somewhere else."

She turns on comrade Rosenberg, 28, who is teasing her mercilessly as
she talks to a reporter. She punches him in the arm, shouting "I am
not engaged, you liar!" and collapses in giggles.

"We know we can't have children," says Valencia, 18, who joined three
years ago.

"My mother was sobbing. She begged me not to go. But I had made up my
mind. I have seen her only once since then. I have seen death many
times. Soldiers killed many of my friends," she continues. "I have
killed people too," and she shrugs, "but fighting is like that."

We are slipping into another surreal Colombian moment.

Just before noon, FARC Comandante Andres Paris, 42, an intellectual
and senior peace negotiator, with wire-rimmed glasses and a bookish
air, settles in a shady nook outside the compound and begins to
describe the FARC's "philosophy" on taxation.

"The FARC's tax policy responds to the needs of our treasury secretary
to collect the funds required for a guerrilla army to function," he
says, as if it is all perfectly logical.

"We have never received outside funding, not even when the socialist
camp (Soviet empire) existed, much less now. We are a revolutionary
army in a conflict that is completely Colombian," he says.

"And, so, the income has to come from the powerful nuclei of the
Colombian oligarchy who are already financing the official army and,
therefore, must finance - by force - the Colombian
insurgency."

In other words, make the rich pay.

Critics call the FARC "narco-guerrillas."

"This tax policy has been interpreted by some media, especially from
the United States, as proof we are involved in drug-trafficking," the
comandante continues. "We are not growers of illicit crops, nor
processors, nor exporters of cocaine.

"We just require that all capitalists - legal or illegal - pay
taxes."

The guerrilla brass (who recently welcomed the chair of the New York
Stock Exchange) have a big operation to fund, arms to buy on the black
market, fighters to feed.

Colombian defence officials estimate the FARC earns about $850 million
annually: 41 per cent from drug-trafficking; 28 per cent from
extortion; 19 per cent from kidnapping; 6.5 per cent from investments
(rumoured fried-chicken outlets, gas stations and bank accounts in the
Cayman Islands); and 4 per cent from assorted taxes.

Recently, the FARC streamlined its taxation policy.

"Law 002 on Taxation" states individuals and companies worth $1
million (U.S) must pay taxes to the FARC.

"If they don't pay, the guerrillas will go and get them and retain
them," says Paris, matter-of-factly.

In one high-profile case last year, Canadian Norbert Reinhart was
freed after spending 94 days in FARC captivity. He had traded places
with an employee kidnapped after his mining company apparently failed
to comply with FARC regulations.

At dusk, FARC rebels are packing up their San Vicente office. They
don't spend the night in town. Security reasons.

Locals are once again taking over the honky-tonks and greasy
alleyways. This is a loud, tough town, filled with cowboys,
adventurers and big-time drug dealers. Everybody does business with
the FARC.

"We buy and sell everything," says a flabby cocaine buyer, struggling
to hold on to consciousness after drinking all day.

The FARC is said to make $300-a-kilo. They take the coca leaf from
farmers on 50 hectare plots (without taxing them) and sell it to
buyers. It's estimated Colombia exports 772 tonnes of cocaine annually.

Streets are filled with manure, gas fumes and the stench of the Caguan
River. It's a town full of tropical fevers.

San Vicente overflows with drugstores. There are lineups for
antibiotics and medicines needed to survive.

Here, they sell cocaine to buy Aspirin.