COLOMBIAN FORCES GAIN IN WAR ON GUERRILLAS

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The images of row upon row of mangled and bloody bodies
of leftist guerrillas that appeared recently on Colombian TV were ghastly.
But to supporters of Colombia's beleaguered government, who have had little
to cheer about for years, they were encouraging.

More and more, the news pictures in Colombia depict not only dead and
wounded soldiers, but guerrillas killed in combat as well, a development
that points to a tentative but significant change in the largest armed
conflict in Latin America.

One year after suffering so many battlefield defeats that they feared they
were losing the war, Colombia's armed forces have scored a string of
impressive victories and hope to build on that momentum to gain the upper hand.

Although it is far too early to claim success, the armed forces say they
have killed or wounded 1,300 rebels in the past four months, including at
least two senior commanders. They captured 2,000 assault rifles and tons of
ammunition, food and gasoline.

And now the military is girding for a strengthened offensive against
guerrilla-protected coca plantations, designed to choke off the income the
rebels earn from protecting the narcotics trade, estimated at $100 million
to $500 million a year.

The Colombian military is readying 5,000 new army combat troops, including a
950-man battalion trained by U.S. Special Forces that was activated last
week, and is seeking more U.S. intelligence on drug traffickers and their
guerrilla allies.

The moves represent a new strategy that gives the military a bigger role in
the war on drugs and indirectly acknowledges that Washington's previous
approach -- to focus U.S. counternarcotics aid on police units -- was
mistaken because it allowed the guerrillas to flourish.

On Friday, the government unveiled a plan for "peace, prosperity and
strengthening the state" that calls for $3.5 billion in assistance from the
United States and other allies during the next three years. President Andres
Pastrana said he intends to discuss the proposal with President Clinton when
the two meet in New York early next week.

Colombia had previously asked for $500 million in U.S. aid in the coming
year, on top of $289 million approved but still largely in the pipeline. The
request has met a varying response in Washington.

Backers say a strengthened military is needed to crack down on those who
produce 70 percent of the cocaine and much of the heroin sold on U.S.
streets, while opponents warn against becoming too entangled on the
guerrilla side.

A lingering conflict

For the moment, a total victory for the armed forces seems impossible over
the short run. The war, after all, began 40 years ago and has claimed 35,000
lives since 1990. It rages across the nation, which is more than seven times
the size of Florida, covered with mountains and jungle.

The 130,000-strong military and 120,000 police face three powerful foes: up
to 22,000 guerrillas from the leftist Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces,
known in Spanish as FARC; 5,000 from the leftist National Liberation Army
(ELN); and 5,000 right-wing militia members known as paramilitaries.

And while President Andres Pastrana's efforts to negotiate peace with the
FARC have been stalled for months, he insists that talking, not fighting, is
the only way to halt the conflict.

Nevertheless, battlefield victories since May have the armed forces boasting
that they are on the winning track, and perhaps may even give rebels a push
to make peace. "I don't want to fall into triumphalism, but we're doing
better, Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez said.

Military's new look

At the heart of the changes involving the armed forces is a decision to put
under one command the army, navy and air force intelligence agencies, long
reluctant to work together because of fears of corruption by drug cartels.
As a result, government forces have assumed a more aggressive stance, and
they claim these changes are working:

The new Joint Intelligence Center correctly predicted one recent guerrilla
attack and the withdrawal route taken by rebels after a second, allowing
soldiers to ambush and decimate both groups, army officers said.

Guided by the improved intelligence and better aircraft maintenance, the
5,000-man air force caught several guerrilla units in open fields, killing
30 rebels in one strike last month.

The navy has been sending more of its 13,000 marines, including two
battalions trained by U.S. Navy SEALs, to patrol rivers that rebels and drug
traffickers use to move guns and narcotics.

The 106,000-member army has deployed more troops to front lines, giving them
more mobility and faster logistical support. Once saddled with 39,000 high
school graduates who were drafted but by law could not be sent into combat,
the army has started to replace them with well-paid volunteers at the rate
of 10,000 a year.

The army closed dozens of garrisons in remote areas and guard posts around
installations such as bridges, power lines and farms of the wealthy,
reassigning troops to mobile units on call to react to guerrilla movements.

Effects of pullback

The withdrawals reduce the chances that rebels can pick off isolated units
as they did repeatedly last year, said James Zackrison, a Colombia
specialist at the Washington-based Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

But the new tactic is not without its problems, in effect ceding territory
that guerrillas quickly occupy, Zackrison added. Although the armed forces
won't confirm it, the military seems to have adopted a tactic of not being
drawn in immediately to every rebel raid.

Thus, when 60 FARC rebels occupied a hydroelectric dam southwest of Bogota
recently, the armed forces made no move to recapture the dam, attacking only
as the guerrillas withdrew and killing or wounding half the column.

Colombian analysts credit many of the improvements to Gen. Fernando Tapias,
a combat veteran appointed last year as armed forces commander, also
overseeing the National Police.

Conveying a message

Among his latest decisions: an order that officers wear combat fatigues at
all times, to emphasize that their country is at war.

Colombian officials deny Bogota media reports that many recent successes
against the guerrillas were due to help from U.S. intelligence-gathering
planes deployed for the war on drugs.

The reports blossomed after a U.S. Army spy plane bristling with electronic
sensors crashed in Colombia on July 23, killing all five Americans and two
Colombians on board. U.S. officials said it was on a counterdrug mission.

"We need it, real-time intelligence from the United States . . . but we're
not getting it, Defense Minister Ramirez said. "I confess I have received
nothing so far from the U.S.

Turnabout in one year

Whatever the reasons for their victories, the armed forces have advanced
from last summer when a three-day guerrilla offensive killed 80 soldiers and
overran the country's largest military and police counternarcotics base, in
the eastern town of Miraflores.

The offensive turned out to be a wake-up call to Colombian political and
military leaders.

Colombia's armed forces were long among the smallest in Latin America on a
per-capita basis, and last year had only 29,000 combat troops facing 20,000
rebels. With the ratio recommended by experts to win a counterinsurgency
campaign at 10-1, the government was at a significant disadvantage.

"When we had to react to an emergency, we could not find any troops, Tapias
told The Herald. The army was "immobile, he said, and the air force "worked
Monday to Friday, and that was it.

U.S. aid was limited to counterdrug operations and went largely to police
units because of the military's reputation for murdering thousands of
suspected rebel sympathizers and allowing the right-wing paramilitary forces
to massacre others.

Period of rebel growth

The low-grade war began spinning out of control five years ago. That's when
the FARC and ELN, facing a weak and largely immobile military, started to
expand. As they grew, they moved into the drug trade, charging millions of
dollars to protect coca and opium poppy fields, processing laboratories and
drug shipments.

The drug trade grew under the guerrillas' protection, and the rebels used
their new revenues for more fighters and better guns. U.S. and Colombian
government estimates now say the rebels exert "significant influence in
about half of Colombia's 1,083 municipalities.

By last summer, Tapias said, the lightly armed police counternarcotics units
were finding they could not overrun coca and poppy plantations heavily
defended by rebels, and fumigation aircraft dared not fly over them.

By that time, the guerrillas had grown so strong that they were operating in
columns of 400 to 600 fighters, compared with 60 to 80 in previous years,
and planning attacks on provincial capitals as well as remote towns, the
general said.

Rebels were buying powerful weapons like automatic grenade launchers and
antiaircraft machine guns. And they were defeating armed forces units so
often that they captured 500 soldiers and police officers.

"Colombia could have fallen militarily, Tapias told The Herald.

Plans for offensive

The danger of a military defeat appears greatly diminished. The Colombian
armed forces have laid out a plan to focus stepped-up military and police
sweeps on the main coca and FARC strongholds in the southern states of
Putumayo and Caqueta.

Many of the plans may depend on the U.S. answer to Colombia's aid requests.
An inch-thick strategy document the Colombian government sent to Washington
last week acknowledges U.S. interests by making drug traffickers the main
targets of military units that would benefit from U.S. funds.

But officials in Bogota make it clear that their interest in stepping up
army attacks on the drug traffickers is to dry up the rebels' main source of
income.

"Our strategy is to fight the narcos because that is indirectly feeding the
guerrillas and the [paramilitary forces], Defense Minister Ramirez said.

Tapias, the armed forces commander, added: "As long as there are so many
acres of coca under production, the FARC will never lose.

Tapias said the campaign will be spearheaded by 5,000 new combat troops,
including three air-mobile army battalions and one special forces battalion,
each with 1,000 men, expected to be battle-ready by December.

Focus on drug trade

The main task of the 5,000-member "mobile force will be to punch into
heavily defended coca-growing areas in Putumayo and Caqueta.

Police units will move in later to eradicate plants and destroy drug
laboratories, Tapias said, making it clear that he wants the military to
take the lead role in the operations.

The army's First Counternarcotics Battalion, trained by U.S. Green Berets
and activated last week, will continue training until mid-December, when it
will be deployed in the field.

The battalion, and a second one to be trained by Green Berets next year, are
expected to receive U.S.-financed radio jamming pods, night-vision goggles
and 18 U.S. transport helicopters.

But those helicopters are "really a drop in the bucket when you look at the
air mobility they need for such a large country, a U.S. military official in
Bogota said.

Beefing up the army

The army, meanwhile, plans to expand from 106,000 to 160,000 soldiers and
finish replacing the last of the 39,000 high school graduates within three
to four years, Ramirez said.

The guerrillas, for their part, have often seemed as ready to settle for a
low-grade stalemate in the war as the armed forces were, showing little
coherent ideology and sometimes behaving more like common bandits, living
off their guns.

Perhaps that is why so many Colombians are hoping that the strengthened
armed forces may at least push the guerrillas to move more quickly on the
peace contacts with President Pastrana.

Said Defense Minister Ramirez: "A strong army is a necessary requirement,
but not by itself sufficient, for peace. timjohnson@herald.com