THE ENDLESS UNDECLARED CIVIL WAR

Why Colombia's Guerrillas Haven't Made Peace

The long, entrenched struggle between the guerrillas and the authorities
rolls on. Yet neither side wants to be seen as intransigent, the obstacle to
peace.

Popayan, in Cauca department, has its colonial centre, its Colgate-Palmolive
recreational park, and its graffiti - "Yes to globalisation ... of the
people's struggle" and "USA nos USA" (The US is Using us) to show the
visitor.

If you go a bit further, and leave the prestigious Pan-American Highway, you
find earth roads and dilapidated villages, and you hear the resigned
complaints of the campesinos (those in the countryside, the campo). "I
remember when my dad would buy a weaner for $10 and sell it as a porker for
$160 (1). Today, the young pig costs $40, and when you've fattened it, it
sells for $100". Cattle are the same - a cow worth $250 five years ago is
still worth $250, but everything needed for rearing it costs more.

Everyone lives alongside the road, on a pocket-handkerchief of ground with a
building crammed on it. The fertile, rolling slopes of the fincas (farmland,
owned by a finquero) belong to people from somewhere else. A peasant,
talking as he stares into his cup of coffee, sells them his labour. "They
pay me the minimum wage, $118 a month.

Just enough to get by on." Another has the luck to own a scrap of land: "I
don't have very exact figures, but each month I must make around $90".

This is everyday Colombia, the one that never makes the headlines, with its
squabbles over field boundaries, village vendettas, and stories of land
wrested from the powerful at the end of, inevitably, bloody struggle.

The group that is organising itself to escape its miserable fate, and that
others want to break up. "As in any community, there are some who make
trouble. We've given them time, we've explained things to them. Some
improved, others didn't." Age-old peasant canniness means that things are
muttered, without being put in plain words. "It gets to the ears of other
people. And then what was bound to happen happens.

Driven out, some of them clear off, others end up dead. As for knowing who
killed them, well... forces from outside.

Some people may have seen them, but no-one knows who they are. Forces that
turn up to sort out the problems, now and then."

Even among themselves, the armed conflict is seldom spoken of. People say
that there are lawless killers roaming about "up there", in the pay of the
army or the big landowners. "If anyone plans to denounce the injustices,
then some time or other the paramilitaries will come and get him." As for
the guerrillas, there is silence - suddenly broken by an outburst from a
peasant saying, "When they attack a pueblo, they destroy it, they kill
civilians, and when they blow up pylons the cost of electricity goes up. And
who pays for all of it? We do." He has spilt out his feelings, trying to get
rid of the bitterness; his companions fall silent again.

A sturdily-built young man won't have it: "Well, I say the guerrillas are
the army of the poor." The man next to him nods discreetly, while a fourth
looks uncomfortable and changes the subject.

In this area, from 1-25 November, more than 50,000 peasants, teachers and
locals blocked the Pan-American Highway (here, it links Colombia with
Ecuador). They were protesting at the savage cuts the conservative
president, Andres Pastrana, was making in the social programmes taken over
from previous governments. Five army battalions, the military police and two
generals moved in. "An incredible show of force, you'd have thought you were
in Vietnam!" As the first wounded were being counted, local workers'
movements announced that Popayan was about to be occupied.

During the night of the 25th, a government committee negotiated, made a
grant of $50m, and at the very last minute defused the impending explosion.

Since then the movement's leaders, in fear of their lives, have taken to the
countryside and never sleep in the same house two nights running.

But they still carry on the struggle.

In a little village in Cauca, lashed by driving rain, a woman shivers,
wrapped in her shawl: "With this cold weather, there'll be more babies on
the way! Oh, what a headache it all is". Two trade unionists are doing the
rounds. In a tiny meeting room, the locals complain how hard life is: the
price of milk (dictated by the multinational company), teachers' posts
(being scrapped by the government), mothers (up from four in the morning).

After listening for a long time, the trade union man gets up to speak. Here,
in the back of beyond, he talks to them about the International Monetary
Fund and the G7 and foreign debt. "And what's Pastrana doing?

He's obeying orders!

Organise yourselves, companeros, or things will get worse still. Six years
ago," he goes on, "the M-19 guerrillas laid down their weapons. Did that
solve the people's problems?"

The question is not a empty one at a time when the whole country is crying
out for peace, so it is said. The answer comes as a unanimous grunt: "No! Of
course it didn't!" The conclusion seems so fraught with tension that a woman
shows her embarrassment and asks: "Is it true that the unions are tied up
with the guerrillas?" "Listen," she is told, "there are different ways of
being with the guerrillas. By being involved, by collaborating, or by
sympathising. They've chosen their way of doing things, we have ours. But
they're not upsetting the workers' movement.

They're supporting it." A far from oracular answer, that everyone can make
their mind up about.

And minds seem made up. There are congratulations, friendly hugs, and as
they split up, a date is fixed for the next meeting because, as someone
slips into the conversation, "we need the union to give us guidance".

The flight from Bogota (with its 4 million inhabitants) to San Vicente del
Caguan (with 21,000), the capital of Caqueta department and of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces-People's Army (FARC-EP), takes only an hour on
the Dornier-328 belonging to Satena, "the airline that unites Colombia". The
slogan has never been more to the point.

Satena is run by the military. At San Vicente, the air force crew and their
civilian passengers are greeted by guerrillas. And yet, they are at war. The
military do not hang about, but take off again at once.

The army had been suffering great setbacks - the offensive capabilities of
the guerrilla groups have grown spectacularly over recent years (2). As soon
as Pastrana was elected president on 21 June 1998, he decided to negotiate
with the most powerful of the groups, the FARC-EP and met their leader
Manuel Marulanda (3) face-to-face. Despite virulent criticism from the
defence minister, the generals and the United States, the president
implicitly recognised that the revolutionaries had taken up arms in a just
cause, so he set up the machinery for dialogue, and to facilitate this,
demilitarised five municipios - San Vicente del Caguan, La Macarena, Vista
Hermosa, Mesetas and Uribe - an area covering 42,000 sq km (as big as
Switzerland, or El Salvador) from which the army reluctantly dragged its
feet on 7 November 1998. The FARC-EP, present everywhere in the surrounding
countryside, peacefully took over the towns and made San Vicente their
bridgehead.

Inside the township, there is (so far as one can see) no tension.

It is a biggish place, rather cleaner than others like it, with vans, yellow
taxis and swarms of two-wheelers, noisy and crowded cantinas, and a few
guerrilla soldiers standing guard in front of the cultural centre building,
their daytime headquarters (they pull out when night falls).

As San Vicente still sleeps, our vehicle leaves town and heads out into the
misty darkness.

At the back, a woman endlessly tells the story of her life. She was born in
1951, and remembers a man being beheaded, yes, as if it were yesterday.

She remembers the finca, too. You had to go and fetch water, and collect
wood, and you worked, and worked, and worked.

As the bumps in the road are not really a problem, the driver steers with
one hand: "The government never did a thing.

The road's been done up by the guerrillas." "And it's quiet now," the senora
sighs contentedly. "Before, at this time of night, you'd get your throat cut
by the yobs." Her only other comment is that the guerrillas are very young;
and that there are many women among them, who are really very smartly
dressed. "You've seen them - elegantisimas." A little further on, she gets
out by a small, isolated farmhouse, and the vehicle carries on for another
hundred kilometres, to a "meeting place".

Hidden deep in the forest, the guerrilla camp lives its daily life, a
mixture of discipline and relaxation. The uniforms of the rebel soldiers
moving to and fro along the paths between the rows of cambuches (individual
huts) are, while smartly pressed, somewhat varied, ranging from olive drab
to camouflaged to black.

Here they are still, come what may, Marxist-Leninist. Between themselves,
they do not call each other companero, as in all other armed movements in
Latin America, but camarada. Wearing his eternal black tee-shirt with the
face of Che Guevara, and a wide smile that splits his greying beard,
Comandante Raul Reyes - number one in the FARC-EP delegation at the
negotiating table - explains: "No matter how socialism has chopped and
changed, neither Colombia or the world has got rid of poverty.

Capitalism hasn't solved anything.

Now more than ever, there's every reason to carry on the struggle.

Latin America is being smothered by the neo-liberal model.

Globalisation is affecting all of us."

To say that all these fighters can carry on a sophisticated Marxist
dialectic would not be telling the truth - they are too young.

Born into peasant families with ten barefoot children, they start helping
their parents work the land on their tiny smallholding. And though they
learn to read and write at primary school, there are no jobs to go to. At 16
they find a wife, have ten kids, and in turn raise them in the same penury.

In Caqueta where he was born, the young Manuel saw the guerrilla groups
passing by. "I was excited by them. With the situation the country was in,
my pals and I had often played at fighting the war; I was always one of the
guerrillas." Of course the army, too, were everywhere in the countryside.
"But them, they were something different.

The military knew my mum belonged to the opposition; that's why they beat
her up." At 14 Manuel joined the FARC. "Here, at 14 you're not a child any
more. You've already got a very clear picture of what's what."

That is how it is, confirms Camarada Olga Marin, a member of the political
and diplomatic mission, though she does not try to dress things up. "Among
the less politically-aware population, they obviously don't know anything
about Marxism-Leninism. They see our fighters, well-armed and well-fed, who
organise meetings with the people and tell them what the struggle is for.
They've got little in the way of prospects, life in a guerrilla group is
better than in the campo, so they join us." Most of those they find there
are other peasants who have come to get away from the landowners. But there
are townsfolk and professionals too, whose lives have been ruined by the
social situation, and militants and trade unionists who have had to give up
legal opposition to escape being murdered.

Argeni, a slim, long-haired peasant girl, says she is 22. In the campo,
machismo rules, and women are exploited on all fronts.

Not to mention sexual exploitation - when men are rock-bottom poor and
illiterate, they seldom have nice manners.

When a guerrilla group was passing through her area, Argeni, with no future
but a lifetime of breeding ahead of her, saw women who could fight for
themselves and say what they thought, women who were treated as equals by
the others.

She was only 16. By the time her parents realised she had gone, she was
already far away (4); and she has not been parted from her weapon since.

Accused Of Drug Dealing

In off-duty hours, in the camp where couples wander hand-in-hand, but with a
gun slung over their shoulder (and a contraceptive in their pocket), Argeni
goes about her activities wearing a bra and a Kalashnikov. "If trouble blows
up and your rifle's a hundred metres away, you'll be dead before you can get
to it." She is not keen on the idea of dying.

She dreams of one day seeing a Colombia where there is social justice and
women will be treated with dignity: "Here, there's equality.

There are even women comandantes. A guerrilla who discriminates against
women gets disciplined." Over the past two years a huge number of young
women (now 30% to 35% of the force) have joined this "implacable" guerrilla
group with its evil reputation.

The vans and 4-wheel-drives bear witness to the fact that the FARC-EP are
not on the poverty line. There is plenty to eat on their tables.

In the "information HQ" tent, amid the quiet hum of power generators, the
keyboards of a row of computers connected to the internet clatter all day
long. For the military high command and its US mentors, there is only one
way to explain this wealth of facilities - drug trafficking.

Though San Vicente del Caguan is in Caqueta, the four other municipios in
the demilitarised zone belong to the neighbouring department, Meta. A region
as large as France, with 1_ million inhabitants, it has one airport, and one
road! No-one chooses to live there for pleasure; they end up there driven by
poverty.

A peasant in the middle of Meta is five days' walk from the nearest village.
"His only choice is between joining a guerrilla group and growing illegal
crops.

The armed conflict is an option for people who have nothing.

As for coca, it's not like two crates of bananas, you can carry it out on
foot." The classic argument, some will object, that you hear from rebels
anxious to find an excuse for themselves; the only thing is, we heard this
from Alan Jara Urzola, the governor of Meta.

The guerrillas watched the coca industry spread in the days (the 1980s) when
the military, political and economic elite were doing well out of the trade
in cocaine.

Since then, the state and its politicians have parted company with their old
mafia allies (5). But the peasants have stayed just as poor. "They are our
grass-roots support," the FARC-EP leaders protest, furious at the
accusations that seek to makes them the commanders of a narcotics army.
"It's not up to us to force them into starvation by eradicating illegal
crops.

Anyway, the mafia are helping the army finance the paramilitaries. Why
should we be the only ones to look at this scourge from an ethical
viewpoint?

It's first and foremost an economic and social problem."

Where there is neither development nor an adequate food supply, it is simply
the neo-liberal philosophy of comparative benefit that is leading the
country both to war and to the narcotics economy.

The FARC-EP, regularly accused of being no more than a gang of bandoleros
who have forsaken all ideology, do not hide the fact that they levy a tax on
coca - sometimes on the base paste (the initial, cottage-industry stage of
transforming coca into cocaine), and on the raspachinas (middlemen), who
carry on their business undisturbed; but never on the peasants.

In the opinion of all the experts, however, they have neither the networks
for importing the raw materials and exporting the finished product, nor the
laboratory infrastructure needed.

Even less do they have a system for money-laundering (6). "If we had the
fortune that's wished on us," jeer the comandantes, "the revolution would
have been over long ago!"

When, at the end of 1998, the army moved out of the demilitarised zone, this
generated next to no excitement in the countryside. The guerrillas had, as
an invisible but omnipresent authority, been in charge there for a long
time. But when the FARC-EP's crack troops burst in on the villages, and in
particular at San Vicente del Caguan, there was a wave of panic among some
of the population. Abandoned by the authorities, with their mayors unable to
function if they have not discussed matters with this state within a state,
more than 700 pueblos all over the country had already discovered what
guerrilla rule was like. Now it was the turn of the villages. When the
FARC-EP says there must be no fishing with sticks of dynamite, and that the
forest must not be hacked down, those who break the rules suffer the
consequences.

Murderers are sentenced to death.

Anyone striking another has to pay a fine (of $25-50). Thieves do two or
three months of labour for the community. The bazuqueros (drug addicts) and
dealers, like rapists, are told to mend their ways or clear out (they get
two warnings before the ultimate penalty). Minors are banned from drinking
alcohol, and from hanging around the streets after midnight.

At San Vicente, where there used to be six deaths a month (through settling
of scores, or brawls, or general lawlessness), there have been only six in a
whole year since the FARC-EP took over (helped, for the jobs needing a less
"heavy" approach, by a civil police newly formed from civilian volunteers in
the region).

As a result, two funeral parlours have had to close down. "On the other
hand, we haven't stopped our 'sex-worker comrades' from earning a living:
they've simply been told to be discreet on the street." Even when applied
flexibly, the method is a tough one. But many of the inhabitants (though not
all, and least of all the mayor who has seen his authority seriously eroded)
like it that way. "Now, you can live with your door open!" In a Colombia
torn by everyday violence (with 25,000 killed each year), the return to
having a state to protect you is beyond price.

Part of the population - only part - has come to terms with the situation.
When the guerrillas arrived, there were only five made-up roads in the whole
place.

Using communal labour, which was for the most part happily accepted, they
undertook to sort out the mess, supplying the asphalt and tools. To be sure,
they knew how to take charge and give orders; in this cattle-rearing region,
trucks taking animals to market were told not to return empty, but to take
on a load of asphalt they were given on the way back.

Individual liberty has taken a knock, but the town has been transformed - 60
streets are now made up - to the obvious satisfaction of its inhabitants.
Not of the local priest, however.

Padre Miguel thunders from the pulpit: "No-one asked them to pave the
streets!

This 'work for the community' of theirs is forced labour, and they're doing
the same here as they did in Siberia!" It makes Comandante Jairo Martinez
smile: "Of course. Before we came, there were six deaths a week at $65 for
each burial, plus the collection at the end of the mass. He's had a nice
little business spoiled. That's what our dissidents are about."

Not entirely.

That would be too good to be true. During the first months, there was
growing condemnation of the guerrillas' excesses - belongings ransacked,
civilians arrested, selective murders. "Today, things are better,"
Comandante Reyes assures us, though without trying to deny the facts. They
had had to manage, in the full sense of the word, a territory the size of El
Salvador. "What was on trial was our credibility. What wouldn't people have
said if we had let chaos develop, or continue?" A matter of keeping order,
and stopping crime.

And then there is the war, the real one. Before it was demilitarised, San
Vicente had housed the Cazadores battalion.

Over years, its soldiers had gained a psychological hold on the population.
When the army went, it left behind not only sympathisers, but agents as
well. Their job was to create more and more obstacles so that the peace
talks would break down. "We had intelligence on them, and we had to take
serious measures.

The problem is that agents who've been infiltrated into a population don't
wear uniforms. This led to objections from those who didn't understand that
these apparently harmless people were gathering information, pinpointing who
our officers were and who sympathised with us, and preparing sabotage and
assassinations."

There have been around 15 "disappearances" in the area, according to Amnesty
International. And that goes right to the heart of the tragedy that few dare
to call by its proper name - a civil war (7). The same thinking is found
among the paramilitaries, though with one important difference. The
paramilitaries came into being in the late 1960s, as part of a policy
recommended by US advisors for stamping out any stirrings for social change.
From 1985 on, they were the muscle-men for the drugs traffickers, and gave
back-up to the army by doing its dirty jobs for it (8). Reorganised since
April 1998 as the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), they wreak
havoc among the grass-roots supporters - real or assumed - of the guerrilla
groups. "A lot of civilians do die in this war," admits their chief Carlos
Castano. "You know why? It's because two-thirds of the guerrillas' actual
forces don't carry arms, and act like members of the civilian
population"(9).

On 28 May 1984, when a ceasefire was signed between Belisario Betancur's
government and the FARC-EP, the authorities undertook to launch a series of
political, economic and social reforms.

A deadline of a year was set for the armed resistance to organise itself
politically. In November 1985, the FARC-EP set up a new, broad-based
movement known as the Patriotic Union (UP), which was successful in the 1986
elections, with 350 local councillors and 23 deputies and six senators
elected to Congress. There was an unprecedented wave of assassinations that
killed more than 4,000 of the UP's (and Communist Party's) leaders,
organisers and militants.

The guerrillas vowed not to make the same mistake again, and said that even
if peace agreements were signed, they were going to keep their weapons.

Civil War

Since then, in a socially-divided Colombia where both the liberal and the
conservative parties protect the economic interests of an oligarchy, the war
has resumed and spread.

An exact (and terrible) count of the victims can't on its own tell the
story, putting all the parties to the conflict on the same level.

Though, the guerrillas do not shrink from the harshest tactics, impose the
vacuna (tax for the revolution), snatch hostages to ransom (which loses them
the sympathy of the middle classes), and get mayors and councillors of their
own choice elected by intimidation. And, when they decide to take over a
pueblo, they use gas canisters wrapped in sticks of dynamite - weapons that
inevitably kill civilians.

This is the only point on which the guerrillas are on the defensive.

In a leaflet entitled "Recommendations to the civilian population", they
urge: "Do not allow barracks and military bases to be built close to your
homes, because we are at war". But how does an ordinary citizen stop the
army from setting up camp right in the middle of the population?

The army fumes with rage: in the protection of the demilitarised zone, the
FARC-EP are stocking weapons, and recruiting and training their fighters.
Camarada Marin shrugs her shoulders: "The troops who are inside the zone
today have always been there.

We've always recruited, and always trained. What's happening is they never
realised before there were so many of us here." The military top brass,
shuttling constantly to and fro between Bogota and Washington, drive home
another point: demilitarising this strategic zone is allowing the
guerrillas' crack troops to launch attacks into nearby combat theatres, and
then retreat to shelter in their sanctuary.

The pressure is such that President Pastrana has been making the accusations
himself.

The reaction has been swift. "We have told the head of state that if he
can't continue the dialogue because the gringos (Americans) won't allow him
to, or because the army and business groups are preventing him, then we'll
hand back the towns, break off the talks, and the conflict will start again
in these five municipios just as it's going on in the rest of Colombia." To
make their point clear, the FARC-EP launched violent attacks, roughing up
the army all over the country, hundreds of kilometres away from the
demilitarised zone.

Last September Pastrana returned from Washington with the promise of $1.6bn
of aid over three years to fight the drugs trade - meaning, in fact, the
guerrillas. Using the flexible pretext of the war against drugs, the US has
between 300 and 400 civilian and military advisors in Colombia. The first
"anti-narcotics battalion", trained by 67 gringo instructors, has been
formed. Two more are to follow, with the real aim of taking back the
territory controlled by the FARC-EP. Despite the negotiations, war is,
irremediably, on the way, in a Colombia that is more divided than it
appears.

All anyone wanted to hear about over recent months is the mass demonstration
on 24 October that brought millions of Colombians onto the streets, wearing
a little green ribbon on their lapel and shouting "No mas!" (Enough). It is
no reflection on those who demonstrated in good faith to mention - as few
have - that this longing for peace has been orchestrated by an establishment
eager to have done with the guerrilla groups so as to carry on enjoying the
old order in safety.

An unprecedented media campaign called people out to demonstrate; it was led
by the daily papers El Tiempo and El Espectador and the radio and television
stations, all owned by an elite that is, in fact, financing and feeding the
conflict. Few thought to ask the opinion of the other half of society that,
ignored by the middle classes, lives in the daily grind of poverty.

In a poor quarter of Popayan an old woman who for the whole of her life has
struggled to survive, snorts with laughter: "That? That's rich people's
peace! No, I didn't go on the demo." The head of a non-governmental
organisation says: "People are tired of the war, but they're tired of being
hungry, too. You can't make peace just a matter of stopping the guns." There
are many heads of workers' organisations who, secretly, are in constant
contact with the guerrillas.

The leader of a big trade union organisation says: "If you were to organise
a demonstration calling for social justice, you'd get far more impressive
crowds out on the streets.

But that's something you can't do." During the last general strike last
September, two of his colleagues were killed, and more than 200 others
imprisoned (27 trade union leaders were murdered last year; 3,000 since
1986). While voicing some misgivings about the armed resistance ("too
vertically organised ... sometimes a brutal hold on the population"), he
still approves of it when he says that peace cannot be reduced to just a
signature on a piece of paper or the handing-in of weapons; it has to lead
to real changes in the country. "In the situation we're in, the guerrillas
need to keep up the pressure."

Deep in the forest, in December 1999, Comandante Reyes mused:
"Marxism-Leninism has to be updated, and adapted to new realities in the
world. We can't go on aiming to build a Soviet, or Chinese, or Vietnamese or
Cuban-style socialism.

We're at a different time in history, in the cyberspace and internet age.
The tools of science and technology have to be put to use for economic and
political and social ends." At the beginning of February, Reyes changed his
combat uniform for a three-piece suit and, together with a government
delegation and representatives of the Colombian private sector, travelled to
Stockholm (and then other European capitals) to study "the political and
economic models of the Scandinavian countries, and how they might be applied
in a South American country".

Are both sides looking for a new path to take? Perhaps. There is more to it
than that. As the winds blowing from Washington rekindle the embers of the
war, it is a matter of not appearing, in the eyes of the country, to be the
one who is perpetuating the conflict through intransigence or a closed mind.
And, by raising European awareness of the problem, escaping a stifling
twosome with the US.

(1) $1 approximately 2,000 Colombian pesos.

(2) Land in agricultural production, owned by a finquero.

(3) Besides the FARC-EP with between 15,000 and 18,000 combat troops (and
possibly more), the 5,000-strong National Liberation Army (ELN) is also
operating in the country, as well as a few hundred fighters of the People's
Liberation Army (FPL).

(4) Manuel Marulanda, alias "Tirofijo" (Sure-Shot), a young peasant hunted
by the conservatives during the period known as The Violence (in which
300,000 died), formed the first guerrilla group in 1948, in the Quindio
region. Adopting a classic Marxist stance, the peasants' self-defence
movements became the FARC in 1966.

(5) The general rule (respected to varying degrees, as we see here) is that
there has to be a parent's permission for minors to join a guerrilla group.

(6) There have, however, been many cases that prove the links between the
drugs trade and the army, paramilitary and economic and political
establishment - right up to the US embassy.

(7) Though, given the geographical extent of the conflict, one cannot rule
out a few fronts not being under the control of the central command (the
fighters of the FARC-EP, found in over 40% of Colombian communes, operate on
60 fronts with at least 100 personnel each).

(8) The 12 million persons displaced from their home areas by the war
between 1985 and 1998 were joined by a further 200,000 over the period
June-August 1999 (Unicef and Codhes [Information Bureau for Human Rights and
Displacement], Bogota, 1999).

(9) See the explosive report by Human Rights Watch on collusion between the
paramilitaries and the army, "Colombia's Military linked to Paramilitary
Atrocities", New York, 23 February 2000.

(10) Carlos Castano, interviewed by Castro Caycedo in En secreto, Editorial
Planeta, Bogota, 1996.