COCAINE WAR A special report. (Part I of V)

WEAVE OF DRUGS AND STRIFE 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.

Four hours later, his squadron of young marines stopped and marched into
the equatorial wilderness, guns at the ready. By nightfall, they had found
three crude cocaine-processing laboratories in the 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 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, visible from the air everywhere across southern Colombia.

Over all, 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. Using recent
satellite images, American 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, and that Putumayo and Caqueta provinces are responsible for
two-thirds of that.

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 F.A.R.C., has been fighting the government since the
mid-1960's, financing their war for most of that time with kidnappings and
extortions.

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, which have a long history of
collusion with elements of the Colombian military and are also dealing 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 United States 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 them with better equipment, including more than five dozen
helicopters.

Critics in the United States and in the region worry that Washington is
embracing an unrealistic 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 American military advisers will be drawn
into the broader war between the guerrillas and the government.

NEXT CHAPTER: The Combatants, http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n528/a01.html