U.S. MAKES PLANS TO GIVE WAR BACK TO COLOMBIA

Involvement Will Decline After Hunt Ends For Americans

FLORENCIA, Colombia -- One day last month, a U.S.-registered Cessna Caravan
radioed a mayday call to report engine trouble as it approached this town
from Bogota, the capital 240 miles to the north. Minutes later, the plane
carrying four Americans and a Colombian army sergeant, who were embarking
on an intelligence mission, crashed in the jungle.

The Colombian sergeant and one of the Americans were killed by rebel
gunfire immediately after the Feb. 13 plane crash. Since then, thousands of
Colombian forces have searched for the three surviving Americans,
apparently now in the hands of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC), a Marxist guerrilla group designated a terrorist organization by
Washington. The United States sent 150 U.S. military and civilian officials
to Colombia after the crash. The number of U.S. military officials in
Colombia is now 411, the highest number ever stationed there.

But the increased U.S. participation in Colombia's decades-old guerrilla
war is likely to last only as long as the Americans are missing, U.S.
officials say.

The Bush administration has made it clear that the country will have to
shoulder more of the military and financial burden of fighting its
guerrilla war. U.S. officials have used the words "exit strategy" and
"endgame" during recent visits here to describe Washington's desire to do
less in Colombia even as President Alvaro Uribe seeks more U.S. help.

"We're not looking to put more people in here," said Marc Grossman, U.S.
undersecretary of state for political affairs, during a news conference
Wednesday in Bogota. "This is a Colombian problem that the Colombians will
have to solve."

"Colombianization" of War Effort

Uribe's government contends that Washington should view Colombia's
guerrilla insurgency as part of the larger war on terrorism. So far,
Uribe's appeal has not worked, largely because the primary U.S. goal in
Colombia is to fight drug trafficking. Even though peace in Colombia
remains elusive, the United States contends it is making progress toward
eradicating coca cultivation. Colombia exports 90 percent of the cocaine
reaching U.S. shores, and revenue from the illicit trade provides much of
the financing for the 18,000-member FARC. Drug money also funds the United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a paramilitary force that works alongside
the military in many regions.

"You have a government here willing to go all the way, and in the next four
years you could really make a difference in this war," Vice President
Francisco Santos said in a recent interview. "This alliance must really
show itself now because to date it has not been fighting to win, and that's
not to say we aren't very thankful for the help that has come."

At the urging of the U.S. Congress, Uribe has taken politically painful
steps that will make it easier for Washington to leave Colombia's war.
Colombian officials describe the process as the "Colombianization" of the
war effort, and recognize it could mean significantly less U.S. help here
within the next three years.

Uribe has imposed new taxes intended to raise more than $1 billion this
year for the war effort, a longtime Congressional demand. He has outlined
plans to add 35,000 professional soldiers to the ranks, established a
civilian intelligence network, and deployed the first contingent of
"peasant" soldiers in the countryside.

In exchange, the U.S. Congress included $93 million in its 2003 aid package
for a new program to train up to 800 Colombian soldiers to protect a vital
oil pipeline. In 2001, guerrilla attacks on the 500-mile Cano Limon
pipeline, operated by Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum and the state
oil company Ecopetrol, cost the Colombian government $500 million in lost
revenue. The loss equaled U.S. aid to Colombia that year -- money
Washington wants Colombia to spend on the war effort.

A $1.3 billion U.S. anti-narcotics package, known as Plan Colombia, doubled
the U.S. commitment to this country when it was approved by Congress in
2000, despite concerns about the military's poor human rights record. The
Bush administration plans to send an additional $1 billion in military
assistance over the next two years. So far, the United States has paid for
more than 80 transport helicopters plus programs to train a new
anti-narcotics brigade, provide instruction for pilots and prepare elite
forces to hunt down guerrilla and paramilitary leaders. The military
equipment and training have helped stop the guerrillas from operating in
large columns, as they did with devastating effect in the mid-1990s. But
the aid has failed to turn the war in the government's favor.

A far smaller percentage of the aid has funded community courts, built
rural highways, expanded protection programs for journalists and human
rights workers, and coaxed coca farmers to give up illegal crops. Many
Colombians and some U.S. lawmakers say the military tilt of the aid package
underestimates the social roots of a war that has lasted for generations.

Mindful of those concerns, Congress tied every dollar of Colombian military
aid to a specific program or piece of equipment. "I think many of those
debates [over U.S. military involvement in a Latin American civil war] have
been won now," said Luis Alberto Moreno, the Colombian ambassador to
Washington. "But this package still operates on the golden rule -- he who
puts in the gold makes the rules."

The American who died in the plane crash was Thomas J. Janis, one of a
number of civilian contractors who often experience ground fire as they fly
reconnaissance missions or pilot herbicide-spraying planes over
guerrilla-protected coca fields. The body of Janis, 56, a pilot and
decorated former Army officer, was found near the Cessna's wreckage with a
fatal gunshot to the head. Investigators said he was either shot in an
escape attempt or in a futile effort to hold off the guerrillas.

Janis was one of the former military men working for Reston-based DynCorp
and California Microwave Systems, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman. He was
under contract to the U.S. Southern Command, which in turn assigned him to
work for the U.S. Embassy. The FARC says it considers such civilian
operatives mercenaries and thus fair targets. It took responsibility for
seizing the survivors, describing them as prisoners of war.

The dead Colombian was Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, a Colombian military
intelligence operative. Colombian officials said rules required that a
Colombian national accompany intelligence flights. He was found dead
alongside Janis, with a bullet wound to the chest. Authorities said the men
were killed after the crew managed to set the spy plane on fire to keep its
equipment out of rebel hands.

Coca Cultivation Drops

The Cessna's mission was to photograph coca fields for subsequent herbicide
spraying operations. A U.S.-trained anti-drug brigade based 15 miles
southeast of here at Larandia carries out the aerial eradication program in
this region.

The U.S. government says it has succeeded in eradicating some of the coca
crop, although there are complaints that the herbicides are also killing
food crops, thereby punishing peasant farmers. The CIA reported last week
that coca cultivation dropped 15 percent last year, the first decline after
a decade of skyrocketing growth. Several state governors in southern
Colombia challenged the report, saying it did not include new cultivation
sprouting up in other zones.

Uribe's government has been pursuing the U.S. crop eradication program with
enthusiasm. In the three months following his Aug. 7 inauguration, 115,000
acres of coca were sprayed in Putumayo province alone -- more than half the
national total for the previous year. Critics note the program has pushed
thousands of farmers out of the province, strangled the local economy, and
encouraged new coca cultivation in the Amazon jungle.

By comparison, former President Andres Pastrana was occasionally reluctant
to follow the spraying program as aggressively as U.S. officials demanded.

Gonzalo de Francisco, Pastrana's national security adviser, said the United
States applied constant pressure to accelerate the pace of coca spraying,
viewing it as cheaper than "alternative development" and crop substitution.
Pastrana instead focused on reaching a peace agreement with the FARC
guerrillas. "It was not so much a case of a clash of interest, but the fact
that our interests did not fit into the same box," De Francisco said. "It
was a balance, and I believe by the end much of it had been resolved."

Wiping Out Livelihoods

Luis Carlos Ledezma, 42, traveled to Putumayo in 2001 from the province of
Valle del Cauca with his wife and four children to pick coca. But the
spraying program wiped out the 40-acre coca plantation where he worked
along with acres of intermingled food crops.

Today Ledezma stoops in the dirt, planting palm seedlings under a thatched
roof to guard against errant spraying. Ledezma and his family tried to make
ends meet on his wife's $18 weekly pay as a maid. He has gone weeks without
a salary of his own.

"Send our regards to the United States," Ledezma said. "And see if they
might send us all a visa."

The FARC has taken advantage of the resentment created by the spraying to
attract new recruits. FARC leaders say the herbicide spraying violates
Colombian sovereignty. But U.S. officials contend the spraying is hurting
the guerrillas.

A reduction of 350 metric tons in cocaine exports this year -- a 35 percent
decrease -- has deprived the rebels of millions in revenue, officials said.
The plan this year calls for eradication of 440,000 acres of coca leaf, a
figure that accounts for replanted acreage. That would leave about 80,000
acres of coca scattered about the country.

But some Colombians say even that level of eradication will not change the
dynamics of the guerrilla war.

"I'd prefer that the FARC had more money and fewer people supporting them,"
said Sen. Antonio Navarro Wolff, a former leader of the demobilized M-19
guerrilla movement. "The FARC may need millions of people to win the war,
but they only need thousands to keep it going. These policies give them
that and more."

Uribe has failed to link Colombia's guerrilla battles with the Bush
administration's global war on terrorism. Colombia's three armed groups are
classified as terrorist organizations by the United States, although none
are considered to have the "global reach" of al Qaeda and other groups
higher on the administration's target list.

"If a deployment is being made because of Iraq, why isn't something similar
being thought of to finally solve the problem of drugs and effectively
control the Atlantic and Pacific oceans so the traffic of cocaine is
stopped between California and Colombia?" Uribe said recently.

But U.S. officials have been signaling to Colombian officials to prepare
for the day when the war will again be all theirs to fight.

"We've got requirements, Colombians have requirements, but our goal is to
help Colombians defend themselves," a U.S. official said. "What will remain
the basis . . . is having Colombians doing this job for Colombians."

Officials have been saying, mostly in private, that Washington will
consider its Colombia policy successful once coca cultivation falls beneath
100,000 acres -- something it intends to happen by the end of this year --
and the guerrillas are sent back to the distant southern jungles and plains
that were once their only domain.

Colombian officials disagree with that definition of success.

"If someone thinks that by taking coca away you solve our problems, they're
crazy," Santos said. "An exit strategy now is a disaster strategy. The only
sure thing is that without U.S. help we will not win."