MASSACRES IMPERIL U.S. AID TO COLOMBIA

Paramilitary Groups Linked to Army

SAN PABLO, Colombia--A spate of massacres carried out by right-wing
paramilitary groups in Colombia has posed a new challenge to the
Clinton administration's policy of combating the country's rampant
drug trade by increasing aid to the Colombian police and military,
officials say.

Despite concerns about human rights abuses, U.S. assistance to the
Colombian army and police has been growing rapidly, in large part to
help combat resurgent leftist guerrillas who protect drug traffickers.
Colombia supplies 80 percent of the world's cocaine supply and
two-thirds of the heroin consumed in the United States.

In recent weeks, however, right-wing paramilitary units that also rely
on drug trafficking to finance their operation have been on a rampage,
claiming responsibility for a dozen mass killings of suspected
leftists in which 137 people died. In this sun-scorched riverside
city, 40 armed men disembarked from canoes on the night of Jan. 8,
pulled 15 people out of a pool hall and two bars and killed them in
the street, one block from a police station.

The offensive has raised the question of whether the U.S.-funded
Colombian military, which has long been accused of supporting the
paramilitary groups, is willing to crack down on them and their drug
networks. If not, senior U.S. officials fear that the fragile
bipartisan consensus in Washington to aid the military and the police
could rupture.

"The government of Colombia, the armed forces and the police need to
go after the paramilitaries and protect the innocent civilian
population," U.S. Ambassador Curtis W. Kamman said in an interview.

Few people here in San Pablo were surprised by the killings. A few
days earlier, right-wing paramilitary units distributed one-page
fliers written on an antiquated typewriter, warning the residents that
Marxist guerrillas, union members and anyone else "helping the forces
of the left" were "military targets."

"It was a massacre that was announced," said Felix Fuentes, 58, a
small farmer in tattered clothes whose oldest son was killed that
night; another son was wounded. The killers "were wearing military
uniforms and masks. They gunned [the victims] down like dogs. The
police were there but they never came out to stop the blood."

While most of the $289 million that the Clinton administration has
pledged to Colombian anti-drug efforts this year is slated for
counternarcotics police, about $40 million will go to the armed
forces. After years in which the Colombian army received little or no
U.S. aid because of its dismal human rights record, the U.S. military
is forging a closer relationship with its Colombian counterpart out of
concern that the leftist Marxist guerrillas pose a serious threat to
the state -- and hence to American efforts to stanch the flow of drugs.

Last month the United States agreed to train and equip a 900-man
anti-drug battalion in the army, and the first 200 troops will be
trained by U.S. Special Forces troops beginning in February, U.S.
military officials said.

Although about 70 percent of the estimated 1,100 political
assassinations carried out in Colombia last year were attributed by
Colombian and U.S. human rights groups to right-wing paramilitary
organizations, only recently have senior Colombian military officials

and U.S. officials begun to speak of the paramilitary groups in the
same harsh terms used for years to condemn the Marxist insurgents.

While both irregular forces feed off the illicit drug trade, the army,
police and paramilitary groups all view the Marxist-led guerrillas of
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia as a common enemy. Having
earned millions of dollars by protecting drug traffickers and cocaine
and heroin laboratories, the rebels have almost doubled their strength
to about 15,000 members in the past two years, according to Colombian
and U.S. intelligence assessments.

As the rebel group has grown and the military has suffered a string of
setbacks on the battlefield, the paramilitary organizations, also
profiting handily from the drug trade, have almost doubled their size
to about 7,000 armed men in the past two years, according to those
same intelligence assessments.

"The objective fact is that the military has not gone after the
paramilitaries," a U.S. official said. The military, the official
added, usually commits "sins of omission, not commission, where they
lie low if something is happening and often what is happening is a
massacre."

The paramilitary units were formed two decades ago with the army's
blessing. They were supported financially by wealthy landholders
seeking to protect themselves from kidnapping and extortion by the
guerrillas.

But in the mid-1980s drug traffickers such as Pablo Escobar and
Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, leaders of the infamous Medellin cartel,
bought huge tracts of land in the Magdalena River valley and
transformed the self-defense groups from poorly trained peasant
militias into sophisticated fighting forces.

By the early '90s, the main paramilitary leaders, brothers Fidel and
Carlos Castano, had allied themselves with the Cali cocaine syndicate,
according to Colombian police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration. In exchange for providing protection and intelligence
on the movement of police and army units, the Castanos were given
control of drug-trafficking routes that ran through the large swath of
Cordoba province that is their stronghold.

Despite a series of brutal massacres ordered by the Castanos, the army
protected the brothers because of their intense hatred of the Marxist
rebels, intelligence sources said. According to these sources, the
Castanos' father was kidnapped by the rebels in the mid-1970s. Even
though a ransom was paid, the rebels killed him and the sons vowed to
undertake a full-scale war of revenge.

Finally, when the level of violence in Cordoba caused a national
outcry in 1996, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Carlos Castano
and a reward of $1 million was offered for his capture. Fidel is
believed to have died in combat with the rebels. Shortly thereafter,
the main paramilitary organizations of the country coalesced under
Castano's command, calling themselves the United Self-Defense Groups
of Colombia.

Since then, arrest warrants for six of Castano's brothers and sisters
have been issued charging them with terrorism, torture and aggravated
homicide.

President Andres Pastrana, who took office in August, has promised to
make crushing the paramilitary groups a priority and has dismissed
several senior military officers with suspected ties to them.
Following the killings earlier this month, Pastrana vowed to create a
special joint army and police force to combat the organizations.

Senior officials cautioned that eradicating the groups will not be
easy. The military is already outmatched by the guerrillas and has few
resources to open another front in the seemingly intractable war.
While the government and rebels agreed to peace talks earlier this
month, the rebels abruptly suspended participation in the talks after
the latest massacres, saying they would not return to the negotiating
table until steps were taken to curb the right-wing armies.

"The paramilitary organizations are criminal bands, like drug
cartels," Defense Minister Rodrigo Lloreda said in an interview. "They

have the support of drug traffickers, they have the money to hire
people. . . . When the guerrillas have success, it creates the idea
the army can't protect places, so paramilitaries grow, which means
there is a lack of faith in us. We need to win the people's trust more."

But in places like San Pablo, a tropical city on the Magdalena River,
winning trust will not be easy. After a string of similar massacres
last year, 10,000 people fled to Barrancabermeja, the capital of the
province, a 90-minute launch ride up the chocolate-colored river.

After the government agreed in October to provide protection against
the paramilitary organizations, most people returned to their homes.
After that, according to community leaders and human rights workers,
about 200 people were killed. Then came the Jan. 8 slaughter. A police
spokesman said an investigation is underway to determine why police
did not intervene to stop it.

"The government makes promises it cannot keep, and we are the
victims," said Edgar Quiroga, a community leader, in a heated meeting
here recently with government representatives. "You have no
credibility here. We don't believe in the police or the army anymore.
They are killing us, and you do nothing."