LATIN BATTLEGROUND

The U.S. Is Joining Its Antiterror Fight With The War On Drugs In Colombia.
It Could Be A Success, Or A Mess.

LARANDIA, Colombia - Sweating under the equatorial sun, U.S. contractors are
busy clearing a swath of verdant jungle for a military heliport here.

In full view of insurgents and drug growers in the foothills nearby, they
are fixing barracks for U.S. Green Berets. They are digging bunkers for
Colombian trainees. Some days, the U.S. government is even asked to pay the
Colombian base's electricity bill.

Galvanized by the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States is escalating its
presence in violent Colombia and methodically expanding its $2 billion drug
war into a counterterrorism campaign. From this southern army base and
several other sites, the Bush administration is plunging deeper into
Colombia's long, bloody, three-sided fight against antigovernment guerrillas
on the left, paramilitary groups on the right, and drug traffickers
everywhere.

Washington is going after these groups under its new policy of opposing
anybody it considers "terrorists," even though Colombian outlaws attack only
inside their country, have no known ties to outside terrorists, and rarely
single out Americans in their bombings and extortion rackets.

Now Colombia, already the third-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid for
the war on drugs, also might become a proving ground for the Bush
administration's expansive antiterrorism campaign worldwide.

Or it could become a South American swamp, with echoes of El Salvador or
Vietnam, ultimately demanding from the United States more money, time and
possibly lives than officials anticipate to get both jobs done.

Either way, U.S. and Colombian officials say the dual antidrug and
counterinsurgency campaign is crucial, because fighting each war separately
did not seem to be succeeding for anybody.

"We see more clearly than ever the interdependence between the terrorists
that threaten American lives and the illegal drugs that threaten American
potential," Attorney General John Ashcroft said recently, summing up the
Bush administration's policy. "Lawlessness that breeds terrorism is also a
fertile ground for the drug trafficking that supports terrorism. To
surrender to either of these threats is to surrender to both.

"Such sentiments, however, may make a bad situation worse without a clearer
military strategy, said Julia Sweig, deputy director of Latin American
studies at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations.

"Washington may be tempted... to view Colombia's conflict primarily through
that post-Sept. 11 lens," Sweig said. "Doing so, however, would be a costly
military, political, financial and diplomatic mistake, just as it was a
mistake to regard all social conflict in Latin America during the Cold War
through anticommunist lenses.

"The expanded mission will build on the military-style drug war launched by
President Bill Clinton, under which Americans already have trained some
Colombian antidrug units and provided them with more than 80 helicopters and
fixed-wing aircraft.

U.S. planes kill crops, but often take bullets

Near Larandia, armored U.S. fumigation planes swoop low over fields of coca
bushes at 200 m.p.h., flown by U.S.-contracted pilots and escorted by U.S.
Huey helicopters packed with sweating Colombian soldiers. The blue, $1.8
million fumigation planes are pocked with bullet holes; AK-47-armed rebels
nail them from the ground at least a dozen times a month.

The U.S. program in the last year eradicated up to half of the estimated
400,000 acres of coca bushes under cultivation. It soon will expand to
fields of poppy, the raw material for heroin. But only a small share of
growers have switched to alternative crops, as officials had hoped. Instead
many trek into the jungle and cut down more rain forest to plant again,
often guarded by rebels.

Now, with congressional assent and even an endorsement from Clinton, the
Bush administration is rewriting U.S. regional strategy to free U.S.
advisers to expand their focus directly to the rebels, too. The Pentagon is
also helping the Colombian military create its own national-security
strategy, including a wish-list for future U.S. military aid.

U.S. Embassy officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say more
military aircraft will be essential. Mobile communications equipment is
being requested. Tactical seminars are being held.

The U.S. government officially leaves all fighting to Colombia, which bars
foreigners from taking direct part in combat on its soil. But U.S. advisers
likely will have a greater hands-on role in guiding Colombian combat
operations. Rules are being drafted for sharing U.S. satellite and other
intelligence data needed for pinpointing rebels for attack.

No changes are expected to the U.S. law that prohibits the United States
from employing more than 400 U.S. military personnel and 400 U.S. civilian
contractors in Colombia. To cope with the limit, the government and its U.S.
contractors employ hundreds of third-country nationals, such as Brazilians
or Venezuelans, in the antidrug operations.

Still, American personnel will be rotated into the country more actively and
deployed beyond the southern drug-growing regions, U.S. officials said.

Behind a security fence at Bogota's international airport, a tiny U.S. air
base has sprung up with a new hangar and refurbished military transport
planes, many manned by military contractors from the Virginia-based DynCorp.

Soon, a unit of U.S. special forces (Green Berets) will land in Arauca
state, one of the most dangerous areas of eastern Colombia, to train 4,000
Colombian soldiers in protecting an often-bombed underground oil pipeline
owned by California-based Occidental Petroleum Corp.

With all the expanded activity, the odds of an American getting shot or
killed will rise dramatically.

"Losing an American is a very real possibility," a U.S. Embassy official
said on condition he not be identified. "It almost seems inevitable... and
no doubt there will be a huge hue and cry when it happens.

"The odds also may rise of a dangerous "anti-gringo" backlash if U.S.
soldiers fire back, as allowed in self-defense.

"People would accept thousands of Americans here as long as they're not
combatants," said Enrique Aya Olaya, a prominent member of the governing
Liberal Party. "But the moment one of them fires a weapon as a combatant, it
would change everything.

"Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D., Vt.), a longtime critic of escalating U.S.
involvement in Latin America, accused the Bush administration of glossing
over such risks.

"The White House is... opening the door to a deeper, open-ended U.S.
involvement in Colombia," Leahy said. "Are we and the Colombian people...
prepared for a wider war, the huge cost, many more displaced people, and the
inevitable increase in civilian casualties?

"U.S. officials say the risks are justified, noting the United States has
major interests in supporting a loyal ally, neutralizing the armed groups,
and preserving oil exports, as well as stifling the flow of drugs.

"The problem is larger than drugs," said Brig. Gen. Galen Jackman, chief of
operations for the U.S. Southern Command. "This is really a crisis of
governance. The government cannot provide a safe and secure environment in
its territory... . So we're helping them reestablish governance there."

A nation where 85 people are killed each day

At stake, officials said, may be the stability of this Andean Mountain
nation of 42 million people on the northwest corner of South America - a
democracy with a sizable, educated middle class, bountiful farmland and
natural splendors, a resilient economy, and even a few tourist meccas.

Today half of the country is controlled by outlaw armies fighting each other
and the government. On the left are two groups that took up arms in 1964 as
Marxist insurgents to topple the government. On the right is a paramilitary
coalition that emerged in the 1990s to kill leftists, including civilians.

Combined, these uniformed militias control much of Colombia's farmland in
collusion with traffickers, who produce the estimated 600 tons of cocaine
and heroin smuggled yearly to voracious U.S. and European customers. Some
outlaw soldiers are known to guard and transport drug harvests. Estimates
say leftists alone earn between $100 million and $500 million from "taxes"
on traffickers and kidnapping ransoms.

This vicious mix of drugs and insurgency has made Colombia the most
homicidal nation on Earth. Colombian health officials say intentional deaths
numbered 30,906 last year - an average of 85 a day - mostly murders of
civilians caught by the trafficking, extortion and kidnapping that thrives
behind the actual front lines.

Lawlessness may threaten Colombia's economy, which produces world-renowned
coffee, two-thirds of the fresh-cut flowers sold in the United States, and
potentially much more oil than the 2 percent of U.S. imports it now
provides.

Every year more Colombians flee to the United States and Europe for safety.
The chaos is slowly shredding a society whose cultural legacy extends from
Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez to pop music's newest
diva, Shakira.

"People are so sick and tired of the violence," Vice President Francisco
"Pacho" Santos said in an interview with The Inquirer. "There is no
disconnect... between the United States and Colombia. Their conception is
very deep now that you have to go after both [insurgents and traffickers].
We are working with the U.S. to get results.

"Colombia sorely needs some governing and security. Outside big cities,
lawlessness is pervasive. The murder rate is the world's worst, according to
the World Health Organization. Roadside kidnappings and demands for
protection payments called vacunas - "vaccines" in English - are so common
that a recent weekend abduction of only one person was called progress.

The government acknowledges that about 450 small towns have little or no
police protection, the result of a half-century of neglect by the national
government in Bogota.

The northern city of Carmen de Bolivar long has been in the cross fire. With
its squat concrete buildings and 80,000 residents, the city lost a
staggering 254 people to the violence in 2000, triple the national rate.

Thousands of farmers displaced by guerrillas have created a belt of misery
around the town. Makeshift police bunkers have stood so long in the town's
center that thick grass grows over the sandbags.

"If we cannot find a political solution, we need to go to war," said Mayor
Ottomar Lascarro, whose family lives in hiding because of rebel death
threats. "If the Americans were here, we'd welcome their help.

"Three armed groups hold country hostage

The city is at the mercy of all three armed groups in nearby hills: the
leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, know by its Spanish acronym
FARC; the smaller leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN; and the
right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

The words "Vive FARC" are spray-painted on one building. A block away, "AUC"
is scrawled on another.

What each group stands for and demands for there to be peace is an open
debate. The FARC, for example, started as a revolutionary movement but now
is seen as mostly a steady meal and job for its 15,000 peasant fighters. The
sole aim of the AUC's 8,000 members, though, appears to be stopping any kind
of peace compromise with leftists such as the FARC.

Three years of peace talks collapsed in February without a cease-fire.
Today, polls say nearly three out of four Colombians support harsh steps and
more U.S. aid to stop the groups.

President Alvaro Uribe was elected in May on a pledge to bring the hammer
down on all armed groups and their partner traffickers, whatever the cost.
Since taking office in August, Uribe has declared emergency rule, imposed a
war tax, ordered army offensives, called up reservists, and launched
controversial civilian vigilante programs, including a snitch network. He
wants to freeze social spending for two years to pay for the war.

Still, Colombia will need more troops, resources and skill to beat the
rebels.

At a northern regional military base, there is only one aging helicopter
with an old machine gun - bolted on mainly for show.

Two days after Uribe declared an emergency zone in Carmen de Bolivar,
suspected FARC guerrillas sneaked into town and detonated dynamite bombs at
four homes - those of a councilman, a businessman, a cultural leader, and a
woman whose job was doing police laundry.

"Where were the police?" said the mayor, Lascarro. "We are hoping for
support with this emergency zone, but we've seen the opposite... . They've
promised us more armor for years, but nothing ever comes."

Santos, the vice president, said Colombia's military spending must be raised
from the current 2 percent of the gross domestic product - paltry compared
with other countries at war. Troops, now numbering 168,000, will perhaps
number 200,000 by next year. The goal is to strengthen the military, impose
order nationwide, and force the weakened armed groups to negotiate.

"We have to eliminate their aura of invincibility, without the resources for
now," Santos said. "When we get the resources, there will be a qualitative
and quantitative difference in the situation.

"U.S. and Colombian officials unanimously rule out the touchy notion of
deploying U.S. troops. But there may be pressure to boost U.S. support and
monetary aid already totaling $2.2 billion since 1997.

"The likely next step is a huge increase in U.S. aid to keep up with
expanded mission," said Ingrid Vaicius, a Colombian project associate at the
Washington-based Center for International Policy and a critic of U.S.
military aid.

But Stephen Johnson, a Latin American policy analyst at the Heritage
Foundation, said a limited amount of military and development aid may be the
best way to help Colombia get itself under control.

"I think Uribe can do it with what we're giving him, as long as Colombia
comes up with its own resources and has the political will of the elites...
to make sure it gets done," Johnson said.

Daniel Garcia Pena, a Colombian peace activist and political scientist at
Bogota's National University, agreed that U.S. aid will have some impact.
But he said guerrillas would just respond with terror tactics, making up for
any military disadvantage with fear.

"This is not only a military war," Garcia Pena said. "It's psychological.

"For Americans jumping deeper into the war, a U.S. fumigation pilot offered
some inadvertent advice. Standing on a steel-plate jungle airstrip in
Larandia, he quipped about his job: "If you're worried about taking fire,
you shouldn't be here."