COLOMBIANS FLEE INTO PANAMA AS WAR FEARS RISE

By DAVID GONZALEZ JAQUE, Panama -- Bertilda Castro Tejada and her
family are living in this small Panamanian village where time and
trouble are all they have. The place may be dreary, but, unlike the
home they left in Colombia, it is not deadly. At least not yet. They
fled to Panama from their home in Jurado, Colombia, soon after leftist
guerrillas overran the police station and military barracks there in
December. After enduring an 18-hour siege, they feared that they would
not survive the inevitable: right-wing paramilitary death squads that
were sure to arrive, dispensing vengeance on those who had helped the
guerrillas.

"There are no police in Jurado," Mrs. Castro said, sitting outside a
friend's cramped home, where she and her family live for now. "The
guerrillas are in the mountains. When the paramilitaries come they
beat up the peasants, asking, 'Where are the guerrillas?' We are
defenseless. They do whatever they want with you because a town
without law is not worth anything."

Faced with endless fighting, hundreds of Colombians -- 800 by official
estimates -- have found refuge in Panama's dense jungle province of
Darien, crossing over the sprawling border as they did in more
peaceful times when Panamanians and Colombians alike went looking for
commerce and companionship.

So too have the guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym FARC, as have the paramilitary
squads, searching for refugees they suspect of giving medicine, food
or shelter to the guerrillas.

The arrival of more than 500 frightened refugees here just before
Christmas placed a sudden burden on Panamanian officials who, lacking
resources, turned to international relief agencies and the Roman
Catholic Church for help.

But the more unsettling question is whether the chaos and violence
from Colombia will spill over the unsecured border, especially if an
American program to help Colombia battle narcotics trafficking
escalates the country's civil war.

"The border between Panama and Colombia is at this moment the most
dangerous, conflicted and vulnerable one of Latin America," said
Bishop Romulo Emiliani of the Diocese of Darien. "The Colombian
conflict has been spilling into our sector because the effects of the
war are extending into Panama."

While officials said that neither the Panama Canal nor Panama City,
the capital some 200 miles from the border, face any imminent danger,
the incursions have become a nettlesome test for Panama's ability to
control the land over which it now has total sovereignty.

Panama abolished its army after an American invasion ended the
dictatorship of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega 10 years ago. And since
December, when the United States gave Panama the canal, the country
has lacked the deterrent of having American troops on hand.

"It represents a danger that is restricted for now to Darien," said
Ricardo Arias Calderon, a former vice president, and it "creates more
of a socioeconomic problem than a security problem. But there is also
a feeling among some people that we are not enforcing our national
sovereignty. We are not able to make our borders respected and give
security to the population."

Only about 30 miles from Colombia, Jaque is close enough that the
Panamanian border police say they often overhear radio transmissions
made by frantic Colombian forces under guerrilla attack.

It was one such attack last December that set off the exodus to
Panama. Throughout the night and halfway into the next day, residents
hid under beds or pressed themselves against walls during a battle
that claimed the lives of almost two dozen soldiers, about twice as
many guerrillas and one civilian.

"When it cleared up, they started to say that the soldiers were
defeated," said one Jacque refugee, who would give only his first
name, Pedro, for fear of reprisals. "We looked out and recognized a
few of the guerrillas. They came into my home. It was raining, and we
cooked for them. They said not to worry, nothing would happen to us."

But after they left, the military arrived with reinforcements, and
that is when many Colombians decided to leave.

An officer accused them of having helped the guerrillas.

"Then a military patrol came by and said, 'After us, the bad ones are
coming,' " Pedro said, referring to the paramilitaries. "They told us
we should leave for a while, five or six months, so we did."

He and five relatives each paid about 30,000 Colombian pesos, or $15,
for the three-hour boat ride to Jaque. Others risked the tangled
jungle paths. When they arrived, many of the refugees had friends or
family who took them in.

Life since then has hardly been easy. Although a few of the older men
who are experienced farmhands cut bananas each morning, most of the
refugees have not found work. Children are not allowed to attend
Panamanian schools. Except for emergency medical treatment, none of
the refugees are allowed to travel outside of the town.

Like Jose Perez, who arrived in December, all they can do is
wait.

Mr. Perez stood on the shore recently watching as some of the
townspeople clambered aboard boats that would make the overnight trip
to Panama City. It was a teasing diversion from his otherwise boring
routine. In Jurado, he was successful enough as a jack-of-all-trades
to keep himself and his family comfortable in a two-story house with
an electrical generator. "I had a house with everything," he said.
"Here, I sleep on a piece of cardboard on the floor."

He watched the boats and wondered when he might go
home.

But he and the others will stay here until the Colombian government,
with the help of the United Nations and human rights monitors, can
assure their safety back home. That may take as much as eight months,
since that is how long Colombian officials said it would take to
rebuild the destroyed police station.

In Jaque, about 15 Panamanian border policemen patrol the town,
walking at night in pairs with assault rifles slung over their
shoulders. Residents said they were worried that the police force
could be overwhelmed if Colombian guerrillas or paramilitaries came to
the area.

Last year armed groups attacked a settlement on the Caribbean coast,
burning several houses. In 1997, according to Bishop Emiliani, 40
paramilitary troops went to the Panamanian town of Yape and stayed
there for three days until they found their target, a Colombian doctor
who had treated guerrillas, and executed him.

"There is a vast stretch without any police presence," the bishop
said. "It is very dangerous. Little by little, Darien can become a
path for crime if this is not stopped."

By various estimates, there are about 1,000 members of armed groups in
Darien, with about three times as many support personnel and family
members.

"The Panamanians just don't mess with them, and for good reason,
because they would get their clocks cleaned," a diplomat said.

Panamanian officials are beefing up border police units with
helicopters and other equipment. The measures are part of the
country's first national security plan, which has been stalled for
months by political bickering.

"Panama has got to step up to the plate in that this is their border,"
said the United States ambassador to Panama, Simon Ferro.

Panamanian officials said they would welcome foreign assistance, but
they also do not want to re-establish their own army, nor do they want
a return of foreign troops.

"We as a government have a firm policy not to remilitarize our
country," said Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Aleman. "As a political
party, we lived a traumatic history under the military dictatorship.
We suffered a lot with exile, jail and no freedom of expression. We do
not want to reinstate the military in our country. We do not want the
border, given all that has happened, to be an excuse to remilitarize
our country."

Indeed, one approach the Panamanian government has undertaken is to
begin an $80 million development project in Darien, building roads and
providing services that would make the area seem less isolated.

At the same time, Mr. Aleman said his government was supporting the
peace effort started by Colombia's president, Andres Pastrana. He also
said no refugees would be returned to Colombia until Mr. Pastrana's
government could assure their safety.

But few people here in Jaque think peace will come
soon.

"I do not think it will ever be resolved here," said Silda Segura, a
nurse who lives here. "This is the border, and it will always be like
this. In this town you always had Colombians. If before they came here
when they had no problems, imagine what would happen if the situation
becomes difficult over there."