COLOMBIA'S REBEL REPUBLIC

Farclandia doesn't officially exist, is run by Marxist guerrillas, and
funded by cocaine and kidnap. The rebels say they're creating a new
dawn for the poor; the US says it's time to get heavy. Duncan Campbell
reports

Lucero Palmera loved Braveheart. "What a beautiful story," she said
after she had stacked her AK-47 neatly in the corner of the office in
the main square of San Vicente del Caguan on a humid Colombian
morning. "It was so sad, it made us cry."

More than a third of Palmera's 26 years have been spent as a guerrilla
with Farc, the 17,000-strong Marxist Revolutionary Army Forces of
Colombia, which is engaged in the 36th year of its war with the
government. She can little have imagined when she joined as a
dedicated teenager that she would one day be sitting in what is
effectively the capital city of 24,000sq km of guerrilla territory, an
area officially known as the " zona de despeje ", the demilitarised
zone, the "laboratory of peace", but unofficially as Farclandia.

Foreign ministers from around the world met this month to discuss what
the future may hold for Lucero and her compañeros . European
governments want to decide what support to give to the Plan Colombia,
under which the United States would provide the Colombian government
with $1bn of military aid, officially to tackle narco-trafficking.

Few are under any illusion that the US's main aim, espoused by drugs
czar and cold warrior General Barry McAffrey, is to destroy Farc, much
of whose revenue comes from the drug business. The military hardware
will take the war to a new plane, prompting talk in Latin America that
another Vietnam war is about to start, although a closer political
parallel is that of El Salvador where the US waged a similar proxy war
in the 80s against leftist guerrillas, at terrible cost to the country.

This green territory in the south of Colombia, towards the Amazon
basin, was ceded to the guerrillas by the Colombian president, Andres
Pastrana, last year as part of an imaginative if desperate bid to
broker a peace treaty in a war that has cost more than 36,000 lives so
far and has disrupted the country with kidnappings and mayhem. His
move led to the resignation of his defence minister and many senior
generals.

San Vicente del Caguan is a bustling frontier town of 20,000 people.
It is a three-hour drive from the city of Florencia. While the first
three road blocks are manned by young Colombian army soldiers who have
learned to wield a rifle before they have needed to wield a razor, the
fourth has a different air: the guard checking papers is a young woman
with a Che badge in her combat cap and a bangle on her wrist. This is
the entrance to the Farc territory.

"There used to be 12 or 13 killings a week here," says Omar Moreno, a
teacher having a drink in a bar. "Now there are none. Everyone in is
Colombia would like to live like this." Not quite everyone. Miguel
Angel Serna is the parish priest, and an outspoken critic of Farc.
"Arms are a sign of weakness," he says, "because it means that you
don't have the authority without them."

Serna says that while there is "less barbarism" in Farclandia than
elsewhere in the country, "there is more to peace than just the
absence of violence. There has to be freedom of expression, freedom to
disagree."

The town's mayor, Omar Garcia, agrees. The successful Liberal party
candidate in the last pre-Farclandia election, he has the title but
not the clout. Although part of the agreement between government and
Farc was that the mayor would continue to hold his authority, his 60
civilian police have a Boy Scoutish air to them, wandering the town
armed with sticks that look like tentpoles snapped in half, while the
young men and women of Farc shoulder their AK-47s and pack a couple of
grenades. It is clear where the true power lies.

Garcia, a moustached, middle-aged man, has a world-weary air to him.
"Things were difficult to start with and they are more difficult now.
The guerrillas are continuing to recruit minors, and they carry out
the death penalty. We also want to change things in this country, but
we want to do it through the institutions and Farc doesn't. But I am
able to speak openly. Our differences are political."

Other mayors have a less sanguine attitude as Farc has often imposed
the death penalty - abolished in Colombia in 1910 - on their number.

A further hour's drive up a dirt road and across a swollen muddy
Caguan river, past herds of Brahman cattle, is where Farc has set up
its headquarters for conducting the slow and rambling peace process
"audiences". It is here that Simon Trinidad, a former economics
professor and a veteran of 16 years with Farc, expands on what the
future may hold for the best-equipped and largest guerrilla army to
emerge in Latin America.

"We are effectively the opposition now, we are the only ones fighting
for social justice," says Trinidad. He says that he does not even want
to imagine what will happen if the US military aid, which will include
many helicopter gunships, does become a reality. But he scoffs at the
notion that this is anti-drugs operation.

"All of Colombia knows where the narco-traffickers are," says
Trinidad. "They are in Medellin, in Bogota, in Cali. But, no, they are
going for the campesinos." Farc is widely accused of
narco-trafficking, catering to the US cocaine needs, but it claims it
is merely taxing both producers and exporters, as one would with any
other business. This, along with kidnapping, is the main source of its
funding; it has just unveiled what it calls Law 002, which states that
anyone worth $1m must pay a tenth of it in tax or face kidnapping.

"Eighteen million people live in extreme poverty here, and war is not
going to solve their problems," says Trinidad, whose name, like those
of his colleagues, is a nom de guerre . He says that they still have
hopes for the slow peace process provided that the government gives
them guarantees that they can operate politically, have access to the
media and the country's institutions.

And here lies the rub. When a group of Colombian guerrillas, the M-19,
last laid down their arms and went openly into the political arena,
they were almost all killed by the country's active paramilitaries,
the so-called self-defence forces, who make up in ruthlessness what
they lack in Farc's numbers. It is this failure of the government to
break the links between the army and the paramilitaries that is giving
the European governments pause.

The two major criticisms aimed at Farc are that it recruits children
and that it carries out acts of random violence. Amnesty
International, in its latest report published only last week, suggests
that during Farc's control of the zone it has killed 19 people, six
suspected paramilitaries and 13 members of a gnostic sect. Most
damaging as far as Farc's perception abroad was concerned was the
murder of three human rights workers attached to the U'wa tribe in
February 1999. This was, says Trinidad, a "grave error".

Some of those responsible have been made to do a form of community
service by working on the roads, and others have supposedly been
"killed in action". Farc denies involvement in the recent horrific
"collar bomb" attack in which a woman was beheaded by explosion
because the ransom was too late in coming.

"This is a war," says Trinidad, by way of explanation. "Every army in
the world gets infiltrated. We did not start this war, but there has
to be a just solution to end it. The oligarchy only wants a peace that
preserves their privileges."

As for bringing children into the guerrilla army, "we recruit from 15.
Some of them who want to join we tell to go home. But, for instance,
we have a 14-year-old girl from San Vicente who wanted to join. Her
mother implored us to send her back. Then it turned out that she
worked in a bar and had to be a prostitute for the customers. Now she
has respect, a uniform, an education. There are 1m children working in
the mines who are being exploited. For many the options are being
exploited orliving in the street."

The Farc courts are led by a young commandante . "It's mostly disputes
about debts and land," says Cesar Martinez as he listens to domestic
arguments. The system, seeks reparation, and sees prison as a
"repressive instrument of the state".

To its members and supporters Farc may seem a sort of open university
with guns, led by its legendary leader, Manuel Marulanda, towards a
new dawn for the millions of poor. To its detractors the rebels are
ruthless idealogues prolonging a war that cannot be won militarily. In
the meantime Farclandia, the "laboratory of peace", has been given an
extension by the government until the end of the year. War-weary
Colombians must hope that something from this experiment works. To
contemplate the alternative - an increasing supply of US weapons to
the military and from them to an often psychopathic paramilitary -
requires a brave heart indeed.