COLOMBIA CHALLENGES REBELS WITH A NEW WEAPON

Government Bringing Social Programs to Long-Neglected Regions in Bid
to Establish a State Presence

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia -- Marxist rebels once ran a visitors
center in this town in southern Colombia, the office staffed by a
young, amiable female guerrilla and the walls decorated with huge
posters of famed fighters. Rebels ran a court, built bridges and taxed
locals, including the farmers who grew coca in such abundance that the
region became ground zero for the war on drugs.

Those were the days when the government had ceded this town to
guerrillas for disarmament negotiations, simply making official the
absence of a state presence to which residents had long been accustomed.

Now, in an ambitious government program here and in 52 other towns
nationwide, a multi-agency task force operated out of Bogota has built
schools and roads and introduced public institutions such as courts.
In essence, President Alvaro Uribe's administration is trying to
create a functioning state, essential if the government is ever to
erode the power of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
FARC, the country's biggest rebel group.

If expanded, the program would amount to what Colombian officials
describe as a logical second phase of a U.S.-backed campaign, called
Plan Colombia, that combines military offensives with aggressive
aerial fumigation of coca and opium poppy crops to weaken rebels. With
the U.S. Congress now in the hands of Democrats, who have promised to
shift more aid from the military to social and economic programs,
Colombia may be better positioned to secure funds for nation-building
in regions practically devoid of any government presence.

"We have to go to the more remote areas, where we have drug
trafficking and illegal groups and we have poverty," said Defense
Minister Juan Manuel Santos. He said the idea, one that has never been
applied here, is for the military to work with the government's social
action agency and other institutions to provide schools, health care
and infrastructure.

"What we're doing now is aligning our efforts in a way that will allow
the state to go and clear those areas and then hold those areas --
what the military calls 'clear and hold,' " Santos said. "And the hold
aspect has to do with the presence of the state, of institutions
different from the military. We go in with brigades of doctors,
teachers, the justice system."

Here in San Vicente, symbolic because it was once in the heart of the
rebel-run zone the size of Switzerland, the old visitors center run by
the FARC was razed after negotiations collapsed in 2002.

Its replacement is a two-story building that houses offices offering
government services and even a gymnasium for the town's 32,000
inhabitants. A block away, a new city hall is going up, joining a
newly built police station and a community center. The government is
nearly finished building a sprawling school and campus for 2,000
students, while three modest schools have been remodeled.

"For us, this signifies a great advance," said Luis Francisco
Valencia, administrator of San Vicente and the No. 2 official. "For a
long time we were forgotten, and now the government is serving us
quickly and trying to resolve problems."

Observers such as Adam Isacson, a policy analyst who follows Colombian
military issues for the Center for International Policy in Washington,
said the nation-building plan "looks really well-conceived."

But he also said the huge scale of replicating the campaign across
Colombia will be a challenge. Even government officials, while holding
up the program as a sign of hope, admit it is only a small step
forward for an immense country that has 1,100 towns and hundreds more
unincorporated, isolated hamlets.

Colombian officials talk of spending $43 billion over the next six
years as a second phase of Plan Colombia. This time, though, officials
here say the vast majority will go toward economic and social programs.

"I think they're right to go down that road, to provide more resources
for it and show that the government can have a positive influence in
people's lives," said Tim Rieser, Latin America policy aide to Sen.
Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations
subcommittee on foreign operations. "We've always looked for
opportunities to support that kind of thing, and if we saw that it was
taken on seriously, we'd be more inclined to provide funding."

Congressional Democrats, who have had reservations about the emphasis
on a military solution to Colombia's problems, say U.S. aid redirected
from military to social programs could help Colombia's efforts, though
the assistance will probably never top $700 million a year. Colombian
officials said they will likely bear the brunt of the funding.

"It's something that has to be done," said Vice President Francisco
Santos. "It's very, very important, and that's why we're putting so
much attention to it, but you have to be realistic and, in the end,
it's going to be us."

Colombia's alternative, grim and violent, is readily apparent barely
120 miles to the southwest, in Narino state. The FARC regularly
battles government troops there. Thousands of poor farmers have fled
their homes. And paramilitary gunmen who participated in a
government-run disarmament program are rearming, forming new groups
that challenge rebels and drug traffickers for control of the cocaine
trade. The U.S.-funded fumigation of coca is a constant, pounding
farms in much of the state and leaving the shiny green leaves shriveling.

Outside the town of Naranjo, in southwestern, Narino state, residents
complain about the lack of potable water, intermittent electricity and
a dearth of health services. They say they have also been rocked by
the reemergence of paramilitary groups, just as violent as before but
more focused on controlling the drug trade.

"Here, they don't give us anything," said Amparo Ruales, 40. "No
housing subsidies, no education, no health care, nothing. Look at the
road there, we did that ourselves, out of our own pocket."

In San Vicente del Caguan and the surrounding cattle fields, there are
also plenty of signs of guerrilla influence.

Town officials say that many of the shopkeepers in the region have to
pay extortion to the rebels.. Authorities here fear being marked for
assassination; four town officials have been slain since 2004, the
most recent one earlier this year.

Rafael Rodriguez, who was displaced from his farm by rebels in 2004,
said that the FARC forms a parallel government. The rebels, he said,
seize livestock and forcibly recruit children.

"Every six months, they do a census, asking how many cows do you have,
how many chickens, how many pigs, how many children, what ages and
what shape are they in," he said.

Still, San Vicente appears to have undergone an important shift from
the early part of the decade. The wails of babies can be heard in a
new wing at the local hospital for mothers and their children. A youth
orchestra has new instruments, and the government has set up
nutritional programs for poor families. The curvy roads connecting San
Vicente to the outside world are being paved.

And all across the community, residents say they are optimistic in
ways they had never been before.

Carmen Yustres said she and her husband felt confident enough to open
a general store, with shelves climbing 20 feet along the back wall,
requiring nimble young men to climb up and fetch cereal boxes, toilet
paper or toothpaste.

On a recent day, the store was packed, with customers buying fruit and
chicken feed, fertilizer and tools.

"Things are very good, tranquil," Yustres said with a proud smile.
"Maybe people from the rest of the country will get enthused and come
here to invest."