IN FOR A DIME, IN FOR A DOLLAR?

PUERTO OSPINA, Colombia -- Sgt. Lerma Mezu swings his .50-caliber machine
gun from one riverbank to another as his comrades peer over their M-60s
into the dense foliage, fingers tensed on triggers. These Colombian marines
are speeding up the wide, brown Putumayo River for a day's work in the
drug- and guerrilla-infested southwestern jungle. Their mission: to find
and destroy cocaine labs hidden deep in this no man's land. The Riverine
Brigade is the first Colombian military unit to be trained by the U.S.
Marines and supplied with surplus U.S. guns, fast boats, and flak jackets
as part of a new push to roll back the country's exploding drug industry.
No one has to tell them to be on guard; in the town where they're landing,
a fellow marine was killed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC, last year.

As the marines hit the jungle, Colombian President Andres Pastrana met with
President Clinton last week to seek help for his country's mounting crises.
Alarmed by a doubling of coca cultivation and increasingly aggressive
Marxist rebels, U.S. officials had urged him to come up with a
comprehensive strategy.

Pastrana's response is a three-year plan. It calls for a whopping $ 3.5
billion in foreign aid--and would draw the United States more deeply into
Colombia's drug war. The cornerstone? Some $ 1.5 billion in U.S. training
and equipment for the besieged Colombian military and police, on top of $
289 million this year. Pastrana would also continue a decade-old drug
eradication effort, fund alternative jobs for poor coca-growing peasants
and 1 million people displaced by the 35-year-old war, and shore up an
economy mired in its worst recession in 60 years. The economy contracted by
7.6 percent in the second quarter, and investor jitters have sent the
Colombian peso down 20 percent against the dollar this year.

War Talk

Sending U.S. money abroad is rarely popular. But Pastrana, on a quick trip
to Capitol Hill, found congressional leaders receptive. U.S. worries go
beyond the burgeoning flow of drugs to the faltering of the region's oldest
democracy, the spillover of its conflict into neighboring countries, the
kidnapping of U.S. citizens, and the swelling numbers of Colombians fleeing
to the United States. While the administration is prepared to back a
substantial aid hike, direct U.S. military involvement is not on the table.
Seeking to stop rumors of a possible U.S. intervention, Pastrana said in a
U.N. speech last week: "The times of intervention are over. These are times
of cooperation."

Invasion talk has been fueled by the growing U.S. and Colombian military
role in the drug war. Colombia's police have been unable to penetrate the
guerrilla-dominated regions where most of the world's coca and a new crop
of heroin poppies are grown. Rebels guard coca fields and drug labs and
shoot down government helicopters and fumigation planes. So in the past
year U.S. marines, Navy SEALs, and Green Berets have begun teaching
Colombian military units infantry tactics, assault and infiltration
techniques, reconnaissance, and mortar handling. A U.S.-supported
intelligence center has been set up, and the first of three Army
counterdrug battalions has been trained in Colombia by the 7th Special
Forces Group of Fort Bragg, N.C. In an exercise earlier this month at
Tolemaida base, 70 miles south of Bogota, members of the 931-man battalion
scrambled out of a Blackhawk helicopter shooting blanks, smoke bombs, and
mock mortars at "narcotraffickers" dressed in blue pants and white
T-shirts, as music blared over loudspeakers.

There's no music where they're headed, however. The newly trained antidrug
troops will be deployed in December to Putumayo, the epicenter of new coca
cultivation. As the Riverine Brigade has discovered, the line between
fighting drugs and rebels here is murky. FARC rebels are so involved in the
drug business that the commander of the main Navy base, Capt. Amaury
Peniche, bluntly calls them "a cartel." He says they control refining labs
and have begun forcing coca growers to sell only to their collection
centers. The Marine unit here struggles to patrol 3,100 miles of rivers
with just 28 boats and has so little gas that its generators run only nine
hours a day.

Minutes after the marines dock at Puerto Ospina, Maj. Humberto Serna
outlines the day's operation and leads two platoons on a grueling march
into the thick jungle. Sucking mud grips the men's boots as they hump
quickly along a trail tangled with vines and roots, sweating profusely as
the tropical heat mounts. "Chiqui," one of the masked informants who were
brought along as guides, says the FARC'S finance unit comes every 90 days
to collect 50,000 pesos ($ 27) from each coca grower. No one knows if
guerrillas are nearby today, but the safety is switched off every M-16 and
Galil rifle. They spot the first lab, a rough wooden hut surrounded by coca
bushes. The men on point race over the hill after lab workers who have
already fled. "If we had helicopters, we could make lightning strikes and
catch more people," mutters Serna.

"The Holy Spirit"

Leaving a platoon to guard the drums of liquid cocaine and bag of
chemicals, the lead unit plunges deeper into the rain forest, once pristine
but now pocked by fields of burned trees where coca shoots sprout. Up ahead
the marines fire a shot to signal that they've captured someone, since
their Motorola UHF radios don't work in the rolling terrain. Calling in air
support is not an option. "We're protected by the Holy Spirit in front of
us and the Holy Trinity behind," jokes Serna grimly, as a torrential
downpour turns the trail to shin-deep mud.

Crossing a log over a rushing river, the men reach a large compound divided
into sleeping rooms and a covered porch, where coca leaves are steeped in
acetylene alcohol. They find 320 gallons of liquid cocaine waiting to be
distilled, coca leaves, and tanks of chemicals. Other than some chickens,
pigs, and two dogs, the place is deserted. The troops take logbooks from
the house and fill vials and baggies with drug samples, then spill the
noxious mixture out of the drums and ignite it. A tremendous explosion
shoots flames and billowing black smoke into the sky. "We don't burn
houses, but this one's attached so there's no way around it," Serna says as
he records the location with his global positioning system device.

The scouts, meanwhile, have discovered a third lab, where a barking dog
leads them to a man who denies any knowledge of the drug activities. After
his photo is found in the house, he pleads that he was laid off from his
lumberyard job. "They all have similar stories," Serna sighs. "They can't
find jobs, so they come here. There's no other work."

The platoon, tired and hungry, returns to torch the first lab, then races
through the hills and drenching rain to the boats. Navigating the
log-strewn river at night is too risky, and even in daylight they ran
aground twice, so as the sun sets they string hammocks behind two rows of
troops guarding their perimeter. Right across the river in Ecuador, armed
men believed to be FARC rebels have just kidnapped 12 foreigners, including
one American oil worker. Serna tells the soldiers to look sharp. "We gave
them some hard hits today, so they will be looking to hit back," he says.
They've destroyed the equivalent of 170 kilos of refined cocaine today,
adding to the 2,400 kilos of coca paste, 26 labs, and $ 100,000 in drug
cash the brigade has seized in its first month.

Daisy Chain

The United States would like to draw a neat line between the drug and
guerrilla wars, but the men on the ground know the FARC will come after
them since they are challenging their control of the region and a drug
business that finances their war. Indeed, the FARC issued a communique last
week denouncing the U.S.-Colombian drug war as a ruse to make war on them.
Colombian Defense Minister Lu s Fernando Ram rez says U.S.-trained troops
are authorized to go after rebels they encounter or who threaten them, even
though the United States insists that its aid is strictly for
counternarcotics efforts. The reality is that Colombia's problems can't be
parsed. "It's a daisy chain," says former U.S. Ambassador to Colombia Myles
Frechette. "Everything is connected to everything else--drugs, guerrillas,
kidnaps, paramilitaries, refugees. . . . We finally recognize that there's
no quick fix."

Success in the drug war hinges on Colombia's ability to gain control over
its territory. How? "Insurgencies tend to be resolved at the bargaining
table. The question is how Colombia is going to achieve a position of
strength at the bargaining table," says Gen. Charles Wilhelm, chief of the
U.S. military's Southern Command. "My own feeling is that they need the
leverage of improved performance on the battlefield."

The Army has less than a 2-to-1 ratio of combat troops to rebels, and fewer
helicopters than the police, so it will be sorely tempted to use the
antidrug units to turn the tide. A senior U.S. official doesn't see a
problem since U.S. troops won't be involved. "The concern in the public is
escalation," he says, "getting ourselves involved in an insurgency, and
that, I think, is not where we are going." If only one could predict where
mission creep stops.