IN COLOMBIA, PIPELINE IS SAFE, BUT PEOPLE AREN'T

ARAUCA, Colombia - Under pressure from United States-based Occidental
Petroleum and the U.S. government, the Colombian military has redeployed
its forces to protect a key oil pipeline, leading to an explosion of
violence in the undefended countryside.

The army has reassigned most of its troops in the province to patrol the
pipeline, which is jointly owned by Occidental and the Colombian state oil
company. Leftist guerrillas battling the government shut down production
for months in 2001, but this year attacks on the pipeline have plunged.

Civilians in the countryside of Arauca, the province that surrounds the
pipeline, have paid the price. In the absence of any sustained military
presence since late last year, Colombia's violent right-wing paramilitary
squads quickly moved in, unleashing a campaign of murder and terror.

Hundreds of politicians, journalists, businessmen and ordinary civilians
have been kidnapped and killed. Brutal combat between the paramilitaries
and leftist guerrillas has forced thousands to flee their homes. Scores of
people have simply disappeared.

Arauca is now the most violent province in one of the most violent
countries in the world.

"Here, there is fire on all sides," said one man who was fleeing recent
fighting, using his tractor to pull a wagon piled high with household goods.

Until now, U.S. aid in Colombia has been limited to fighting drug
trafficking. But as soon as next month, the first U.S. instructors will
arrive to launch a controversial training program to help Colombian
soldiers better protect the pipeline. The United States is also planning to
send helicopters and improve intelligence-sharing with the Colombian army.

Critics charge that the plan forces U.S. taxpayers to provide security for
a private company, Occidental. And human-rights groups say the local
Colombian army unit, the 18th Brigade, has aided the paramilitary advance,
meaning that U.S. trainers may become party to human-rights abuses.

"If you bring in more troops, this conflict is only going to get worse,"
said Enrique Pertuz, executive director of a local human- rights group. "If
your enemy tries to overcome you with more arms and soldiers, you respond
in kind. There are going to be more killings, more massacres, more repression."

The Colombian army has long been accused of cooperating with the
paramilitaries because both sides share a common enemy in the guerrillas.
The paramilitaries, financed by drugs and large landowners, use massacres
and torture to fight the rebels in areas that Colombia's thinly stretched
armed forces have neglected.

U.S. and Colombian officials defend the plan, saying the training will
protect oil flow along the pipeline, which provides an important source of
revenue for the Colombian government. The additional income from the
protected pipeline will allow the Colombian government to step up efforts
to combat the rebels and paramilitaries, they argue, as well as the drugs
that flow to U.S. streets.

Colombian army officials don't dispute that their focus on the pipeline has
hampered their ability to maintain order in the disputed region, although
they strenuously deny paramilitary links.

"If I could free up 30 percent of the troops that are guarding the pipeline
in order to be able to go after the guerrillas and paramilitaries, things
would be different," said Gen. Carlos Lemus, the commanding officer of the
18th Brigade.

Impoverished Arauca province was long forgotten by the central government
in the faraway capital, Bogota. The neglect allowed Colombia's
second-largest rebel army, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, to take
almost complete control. The rebels determined who took public office
through vote-buying and intimidation, and extracted "taxes" from local
landowners.

Then, in 1983, oil was discovered. Occidental teamed up with the Colombian
government to develop the 1.3-billion-barrel Cano Limon oil field, located
along the border with Venezuela. A 483-mile-long pipeline was built.

By law, part of the oil profits had to return to Arauca. The budget for the
local government - dominated by ELN sympathizers and allies - jumped from
$300,000 per year to $60 million to $80 million as a result of oil royalties.

A tour of Arauca shows how little of that money found its way to the
community. The province is filled with incomplete building projects, the
result of money siphoned away by guerrillas. There is a half-built water
park, a half-built bus terminal, even a half-built velodrome.

"The guerrillas got rich," said one Occidental executive.

By 1999, the money had attracted the interest of Colombia's largest rebel
group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC. The FARC
demanded a share of the money. The local ELN-controlled government refused.
And the so-called "royalty war" began.

Beginning in 2001, the FARC unleashed a bombing campaign against the
pipeline that brought a halt to production - and thus the revenues that the
ELN relied upon to finance its army.

Occidental officials watched with growing nervousness as the FARC planted
as many as five bombs a day along the length of the pipeline. Oxy's oil
field - which accounts for about 5 percent of the company's total world
production of 133 million barrels of oil - was shut down for nearly four
months beginning in March 2001.

Top Occidental executives began meeting with Colombian and U.S. officials
in an effort to persuade them to step up pipeline protection. Their
argument was that Occidental wasn't the only one losing money in the
attacks. The Colombian government was giving up an average $40 million a
month in oil royalties, equivalent to 2 percent of the national budget.

"We made them realize that they could not allow the attacks to continue,"
one Occidental official said.

The effort to increase pipeline protection began in July 2001. The military
sent in a special-forces unit for two months that successfully stopped
attacks against the pipeline. That convinced the Colombian military to
redeploy more troops permanently.

Colombia more than doubled the size of the force protecting the pipeline,
adding three more battalions to the two already assigned there. So far this
year, there have been only 29 attacks on the pipeline, as opposed to 170
last year. But the improved pipeline protection has meant disaster and
terror for the rest of Arauca.

"There has been a huge amount of uncertainty and fear," said Luis Eduardo
Velez, the deputy governor of the province. "People had learned how to live
with the guerrillas. Now they have to learn to deal with a totally
different group."

Occidental executives said they regretted the violence and noted the
company had recently boosted its own spending on social-development
programs in Colombia from $2 million to $3 million a year.