COCAINE-AND-REBEL QUAGMIRE PULLS U.S. DEEPER IN COLOMBIA

MONTCLART, Colombia - Nearly half the world's supply of cocaine originates
within 150 miles of this isolated Colombian military outpost on the
Putumayo River. So when Lt. German Arenas and his anti-drug troops recently
set out by boat, they knew that finding a target would be the easy part.

By nightfall, they had found three crude cocaine-processing laboratories in
the open jungle; more than 6,000 seedlings of a new, more potent variety of
coca plant; a half-dozen large fields brimming with ripening coca bushes;
and four hapless peasants.

But after they had destroyed as much as they could, arrested the peasants
and headed back downriver, the soldiers left behind at least 200 more labs
hidden in the dense, trackless jungle and thousands more acres of coca plants.

To the growing alarm of the Clinton administration, which has been
bankrolling much of the anti-drug fight here, coca production in Colombia
has more than doubled in the past five years. U.S. officials estimate that
the country now grows or processes more than 500 tons of cocaine a year, or
some 90 percent of the world's supply.

Colombian trafficking groups have also moved aggressively into the heroin
business, replacing Southeast Asia and Afghanistan as the source of most of
the heroin seized in the United States.

But here, as in many parts of southern Colombia, the army and the police
dare not send spray planes and helicopters to eradicate the fields, because
the instant they appear, the aircraft invariably draw ground fire from the
Marxist guerrilla forces that thrive on the drug trade.

The principal rebel group, the 15,000-strong Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, has been fighting the Colombian government since the
mid-1960s, financing its war for most of that time with kidnappings and
extortion.

But that has changed sharply in recent years. With the smashing of the
notorious Medellin and Cali cartels, the guerrillas gained greater access
to a far more lucrative source of income: coca and heroin. Now the rebels
provide protection and support to the dozens of smaller trafficking groups
that have sprung up to replace the cartels, and they are earning, by the
Colombian government's estimate, more than $1 million a day.

That, in turn, has blurred the lines of what was once painted in relatively
simple terms as an ideological battle between a pair of left-wing
insurgencies that enjoy almost no popular support and a flawed but
functioning democracy. Along the way, the focus of the conflict has
shifted, so that while the government still controls most of the country's
territory, the war itself is increasingly being fought over cocaine and heroin.

On one side is the popularly elected government of President Andres
Pastrana and its thin and poorly trained security forces. On the other are
the increasingly well-armed and richly financed leftist guerrillas. Equally
menacing are the right-wing death squads that have a long history of
collusion with elements of the Colombian military and also deal in drugs.

"It is the only self-sustaining insurgency I have ever seen," said Gen.
Charles E. Wilhelm, who is responsible for Latin America as commander in
chief of the U.S. Southern Command. "There is no Cuba in back of it; there
is no Soviet Union in back of it. It is this delicate merger of criminals,
narco-traffickers with insurgents."

After nearly a decade of trying with little success to give government
forces the edge in this confrontation, the White House and Congress are on
the verge of the biggest gamble yet: a $1.6 billion package over two years
that would beef up anti-drug training for the Colombian police and military
and provide better equipment for their forces, including more than five
dozen helicopters.

Though the national armed forces have more than 100,000 soldiers, barely a
third of them are ready for fighting. Under a law that reflects the class
prejudice and favoritism that run through Colombian society, high school
graduates are forbidden to participate in combat.

The prospect that U.S. aid may soon begin flowing clearly excites the weary
soldiers here. "Tell them we need air support, like the police get for
their operations," said Lt. Gustavo Lievano. "How much more money are they
going to give us to buy intelligence from informants?" a grizzled sergeant
wanted to know.

To some in Washington the prospect of increased U.S. involvement in
Colombia is viewed warily.

"Before we quadruple our military aid and embark on an open-ended, costly
commitment, the Colombian government needs to come up with a workable
strategy," argues Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). "The Colombian government
wants a blank check. That is not going to happen."

Critics worry that Washington is embracing an unrealistic game plan. They
say that Colombia lacks a concrete strategy for quickly getting the job
done, that attacking cocaine at the source will be more difficult in
Colombia than it was in neighboring countries, and that ultimately U.S.
military advisers will be drawn into the broader war between the guerrillas
and the government.

On the Colombian side, a recent poll shows that a majority of Colombians
favor U.S. intervention. "Pastrana has shown that he doesn't know how to
deal with this situation," said Diego Bedoya Hurtado, a Bogota accountant.
"Only the Americans are going to be able to get us out of this mess."

As the conflict deepens, the situation for ordinary Colombians has grown
worse. At least 35,000 people have been killed over the past decade, and
more than 1.5 million people, most of them peasants, have been forced to
leave their homes.

In addition, at least 2 percent of Colombia's 40 million people, some
800,000 mostly middle-class people, have left the country since 1996, most
for the United States. Investors are also fleeing in the face of extortion
demands by guerrilla and paramilitary groups, and unemployment is at a
record rate of one worker in five after a recession that shrank the economy
by more than 5 percent last year.

While the United States is determined to diminish the flow of cocaine and
heroin into U.S. cities, especially with an election upcoming, it does not
want to be pulled into what could only be a long, bloody and expensive
campaign in Latin America's longest-running guerrilla war.

All told, U.S. aid to Colombia has grown by 3,500 percent since 1993,
according to Barry McCaffrey, the director of the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy and a former commander of U.S. military forces
in Latin America. That makes Colombia the largest recipient of U.S. aid
outside the Middle East, even without the additional equipment and training
programs under discussion.

Washington clearly hopes that a sizable one-time injection of new aid will
prove sufficient for the Colombian government to regain the upper hand. But
Fernando Cepeda Ulloa, a former minister of the interior and ambassador to
the United States, was speaking for many Colombians, and some Americans,
when he recently suggested that a pair of fundamental questions remain.

"Is the elimination of narcotics trafficking the key to achieving peace, or
is the achievement of peace necessary to the elimination of narcotics?" he
asked. "That is a dilemma that has to be analyzed and contemplated."