U.S. AID COULD FUEL STRIFE IN COLOMBIA

Critics Warn Anti-Drug Program Threatens Peace Process With Rebels

PUERTO LEGUIZAMO, Colombia - A proposed $1.6 billion aid package will make
Colombia's southern jungles the new front line in this nation's U.S-backed
war against drugs and the leftist rebels that live off them.

Washington plans to send 63 new helicopters and to train two new
anti-narcotics battalions as part of a massive military operation to push
into the south, where rebels and right-wing paramilitary groups reap huge
profits from protecting the drug trade.

At the headquarters of the Southern Naval Force in Puerto Leguizamo, a
small town in Putumayo province on the Peruvian border, Colombian marines
who patrol nearly 2,000 miles of rivers that snake though southern Colombia
on their way to the Amazon, are bracing for the conflict to heat up.

The rivers are used by peasants to bring in chemical precursors used to
process coca leaf, the raw material used in making cocaine. Colombia
supplies about 80 percent of the world market for the drug, and an
estimated half of the nation's coca bushes are planted here, in Putumayo.

Not coincidentally, leftist rebels have a strong presence in the region.

"We have to prepare for a more intensified war because our enemy is doing
it,' said Lt. German Arenas of the 90th Marine Riverine Brigade.

Ostensibly the U.S. aid money, currently under debate in Congress, aims to
fight drug traffickers and producers in this faraway region.

But the enemy Lt. Arenas speaks of is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC), the nation's most powerful leftist insurgency, which
maintains more than 1,800 fighters in Putumayo.

For the marines in Puerto Leguizamo, the difference between the two doesn't
exist.

"When we conduct anti-narcotics operations, we know that at the same time
we are hitting the guerrillas," said Lt. Col. Jose Leonidas Munoz,
commander of the marine battalion. "The guerrillas and the narcos are one
and the same."

U.S. drug policy chief Barry McCaffrey acknowledged during a visit to
Colombia last month that the U.S. aid package would hit the guerrillas.

"The Colombian police cannot intervene successfully to conduct eradication
unless the Colombian armed forces can re-establish democratic authority,"
Gen. McCaffrey said, referring to the nearly absolute control that leftist
rebels have in the region, challenged only by right-wing paramilitaries.

But he stressed the rebels are not the target: "We're after the drugs."

The proposed $1.6 billion aid package would go to fund Plan Colombia, a
broad program launched by President Andres Pastrana in 1999 to stabilize
the economy, fight drug trafficking and bolster the ongoing peace process
with the FARC.

But with nearly 80 percent of the proposed U.S. package targeted toward
military aid, FARC commander Raul Reyes calls Plan Colombia "a declaration
of war by the United States." He warned it could derail the peace talks.

"There will be more confrontation with the FARC, and that seems dangerous
to us because it could end the talks," he said in comments to the
Espectador newspaper this month.

The FARC commander has also warned the rebels would organize peasants to
protest the offensive. Analysts have warned that the government can expect
massive demonstrations in Putumayo backed by the FARC against eradication
and interdiction programs, particularly if they are not immediately
accompanied by income-substitution programs.

Col. Munoz said he recognizes that drug operations in the region will not
be eliminated "with bullets alone."

Drug interdiction and eradication has to go hand in hand with social
programs, he said. "Peasants will always lean toward what is more
profitable, and obviously what is most profitable is coca cultivation."

One resident of Puerto Leguizamo who asked not to be named said the
government was going about eliminating coca the wrong way.

"Instead of planning a major military offensive, they should use that money
to help the peasants wean themselves off the money they make from coca,'
said the resident, who shuttles passengers and cargo between Puerto
Leguizamo and nearby towns.

On a situation chart that covers a wall at the base, red dots mark
guerrilla presence in Putumayo, while green mark show the location of coca
fields.

Most of the dots are concentrated in the Upper Putumayo around Puerto Asis.
Near Puerto Leguizamo, where the dense jungle makes any type of transport
more difficult, coca and guerrilla presence is more dispersed.

But once intensified fumigation begins in the Upper Putumayo as part of
Plan Colombia, officials expect the, coca-growing peasants and rebels to
push into the lower region.

The rebels are said to derive more than half of their income from "taxing"
drug production and processing in areas they control. But increasingly,
police and analysts say, the FARC itself is buying the coca from the
peasants that grow it.

"If we hit hard on drug operations, the guerrillas won't have money to buy
food for their troops and they will weaken:' said Lt. Arenas, who at age 27
commands 100 men. "The money they get from here [through] coca production
helps to make them strong."

During a recent training exercise, marines boarded U.S. -donated Piranha
speedboats that skipped along the river at speeds of up to 42 mph, pointing
heavy machine guns toward the jungle that hugs the banks of the Putumayo River.