PARAMILITARY LEADER ADMITS RUTHLESS ACTS BUT COLOMBIAN SAYS HIS GOAL IS
HELPING PEOPLE

DORADAL, Colombia -- Ramon Isaza, a small, handsome, dark-skinned man with a
crown of curly black hair, greets a visitor to his second-floor patio
wearing black Top-Siders, black jean shorts, and a black-and-white T-shirt.

As the sounds of Colombian music float in from the living room, his wife,
Estermila, walks around in a red-checkered dress with cups of coffee for him
and his guests.

Everyone around Isaza, 59, addresses him with the title of Don as a sign of
respect. An admirer tells a visitor how Doradal, a village of 3,000 people
in the mountains of northern Colombia, loves Isaza.

On a recent breezy afternoon, Isaza retraced his life story. He talked about
growing up in abject poverty, about marrying because he needed a cook, about
whiling away the time singing and playing the guitar.

Before too long, he began talking about the men he has killed.

"I told my men to hold him," he says, remembering a messenger for the late
drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. "I killed him and we tossed his body into the
river."

Isaza speaks without a tinge of remorse.

An uneducated peasant whose Spanish sometimes is hard to understand, Isaza
is the founder of Colombia's notorious right-wing paramilitary movement. He
asserts that his movement is the answer to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, the Marxist rebels who have been at war with the
government since 1964.

A small man with muscular calves and a worsening back condition, he is at
home in the state of Antioquia, guarded by young men dressed in military
fatigues and armed with side arms and assault rifles.

"Ramon is the government here," says an associate, adding "you can assume"
that he operates with the military's blessing.

A National Police post is located down the road in Doradal, about 122 miles
northwest of Bogota.

If a foreign journalist could track him down, it would seem logical that the
Colombian authorities could nab him. But a high-level Colombian official,
who requested anonymity, said it wasn't that easy.

"You go into some of these villages, the paramilitaries are stronger than
the government, simply because there is no government. It's very complex,"
the official said.

"These guys have a level of security that is extremely effective, and most
of all, they have the support of the population, and that support, most of
the time, is out of intimidation, perhaps."

Human-rights activists allege that the paramilitaries, or so-called death
squads, are largely responsible for rights violations in Colombia's
protracted civil war.

Over the years, the paramilitaries have been implicated in a series of
massacres, and activists say they have played a major role in the
displacement of up to 1.5 million Colombians caught in the bloodshed.

As U.S. congressional committees begin considering a $1.3 billion emergency
aid package for Colombia's war on illegal drugs, some leaders are demanding
that Bogota rein in the paramilitaries.

"Before going down that road, the administration needs to tell us what they
expect to achieve, in what period of time, and what the costs and risks
are," Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a statement. "And we at least need
to see a concerted effort by the Colombian army to thwart the paramilitary
groups, who are responsible for most of the atrocities against civilians,
and a willingness by the Colombian armed forces to turn over to the civilian
courts their own members who violate human rights."

Isaza, however, prefers the term self-defense forces to paramilitaries. He
insists the movement is not funded by the Colombian government and says the
rival FARC guerrillas and their sympathizers are bandits, not worthy of
human consideration.

"I think human rights should exist, and we know about human rights," Isaza
said. "We know how to handle that situation, but come on, we should be human
with the people, but like the guerrilla is not human with us, we cannot be
human with the guerrilla."

A little over a year ago, the guerrillas killed Isaza's 33-year-old son,
Omar de Jesus, in an ambush.

Isaza, one of 12 siblings, was born on a ranch in this picturesque region of
mountains and rivers and cattle and crops. His deeply religious Roman
Catholic parents preached, above all, respect for the government.

Their property was so isolated, with no roads to speak of, that the nearest
village was 11 hours by foot. Although they raised coffee and corn and sugar
cane and beans, Isaza remembers a life of privation.

"Work was totally peasant work," he said. "My father was poor, poor, poor
but a fighter for his life, thanks to God. And I grew up that way."

At the age of 23, Isaza moved to Doradal and soon began battling cattle
thieves after he acquired a small ranch with 26 cows. He said FARC
guerrillas surfaced in his community in 1977. The rebels began extorting
money from the ranchers, and the ranchers complained to the military.

It was rough terrain, however, and the military needed guides. Isaza said he
volunteered.

"I lent my services as a guide to the military to start chasing the
subversives. I worked for a year, and after the military left, they left me
the region of Doradal. By then, the guerrillas knew who Ramon Isaza was and
that I was out to get them," he said.

In 1978, the paramilitary movement was born in collaboration with the
Colombian military. Isaza launched the movement, he said, with a shotgun and
"65 shells," given to him by a colonel in the military.

"I remember him saying, `Here, go clean your region. I know you can.'"

Isaza initially assembled a group of eight men, armed with shotguns, but the
landowners who financed their operations insisted the group should grow. The
group's original name was Death to Kidnappers, or MAS, its Spanish acronym.

Today, Isaza and eight other vigilante commanders operate under the umbrella
organization, the United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia. The government
estimates their numbers at 6,000 to 10,000 men.

Although the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has identified the
paramilitaries as major drug traffickers in Colombia--specifically the
organization of paramilitary leader Carlos Castano--Isaza denies any role in
the illicit drug trade.

To bolster his claim, he recalls the battles with Escobar, the late drug
lord.

In the early 1990s, Isaza said he and Escobar went to war because he
rejected Escobar's overtures.

Escobar killed one of Isaza's sons and several of his nephews. For his part,
Isaza said he did damage to Escobar's forces.

In 1992, Isaza said he was summoned to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota and was
offered $10 million to kill Escobar. The U.S. Embassy officials in Bogota
said they have no knowledge of a meeting with Isaza.

Escobar eventually died in a gun battle with police in late 1993.

In a nearly two-hour interview, Isaza rejected claims by the FARC guerrillas
that they are fighting for the people.

"They are a bunch of bandits who want power," he said. "And if the
government does not shape up, they are capable of overthrowing the
government. They are that powerful."