COLOMBIAN INFORMANTS COULD FUEL VIGILANTISM

Human Rights Group Wary Of Uribe's Plan

SAN PABLO, Colombia -- Men in this town on the banks of the wide Magdalena
River walk the sun-baked streets with guns stuffed in their waistbands.
Loudspeakers on lampposts near the main square alert neighbors when Marxist
guerrillas slip in at night from the nearby mountains.

Long forsaken by the government, hundreds of Colombian towns like San Pablo
have been forced to find their own ways to live with illegal armed groups
fighting a bloody 38-year-old war.

Now, Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, is turning his attention to
the country's ungoverned reaches with a plan to create a secret network of
civilians who would feed tips to security forces on rebels and far-right
paramilitary outlaws.

The idea might sound reasonable on paper, critics say, but fails to take
account of the shadowy alliances that many towns have formed with one or
the other of the illegal forces, alliances that have restored civic life
and brought a degree of security to residents. In the case of San Pablo,
paramilitaries have stepped into the vacuum left by the state.

Human rights groups warn that Uribe's plan, instead of bringing large areas
of Colombia's lawless countryside back into the fold, could end up
consolidating the power of the dominant armed group in a particular area.

They say the informants, described by a senior government official as the
state's "eyes and ears," could become snoops fueling vigilante violence in
a country with a long history of frontier justice and impunity.

Law Of Silence

"The paramilitaries have penetrated people's lives in San Pablo. There is
law of silence and people are afraid of talking against them. The
informants will only give a legal footing to what already exists," said
Jackeline Rojas, an activist for the People's Women's Organization, a local
human rights group.

Uribe, who took power on Aug. 7 as rebels launched a mortar attack on the
presidential palace, has promised to double the number of professional
soldiers and police and strengthen state institutions, including courts and
prosecutors in the regions.

An additional plan to recruit 20,000 peasant soldiers to patrol villages
has also alarmed rights groups.

The war pits Marxist rebel groups against right-wing paramilitaries and the
U.S.-backed military. The conflict is increasingly fueled by money from the
drug trade and last year claimed 3,500 lives, most of them civilians.

San Pablo, a town of 30,000 people 185 miles north of the capital, Bogota,
highlights the dangers of adding informants to the mix in Colombia's
intractable conflict. The town once prospered on fishing, cattle and as a
trading post, but the economy is now dependent on the drug trade.

Its strategic position on the banks of Colombia's main river made it the
epicenter of a brutal territorial battle three years ago between the
Cuban-inspired rebels of the National Liberation Army, known as "ELN", and
paramilitaries.

For decades, the towns along the Magdalena were strongholds of the ELN,
Colombia's second-largest rebel army, until they were driven out by
paramilitaries -- a loose far-right confederation founded by landowners as
anti-rebel vigilantes.

Paramilitaries Control Town

Today, not even San Pablo's mayor disputes the "paras" are in charge.
Although they do not patrol the streets, the paramilitaries keep tight
military and social control, partly through community organizations, human
rights groups say.

In popular Colombian usage, the town has been "pacified." Massacres, such
as the killing of a group of suspected rebel sympathizers in the main
square three years ago, are no longer common, extortion demands on
shopkeepers have disappeared and rebel attacks on the isolated police
station are rare. With the relative peace, businesses have prospered and
jobs returned.

But many neighbors are afraid to speak. In the town square, where the sour
smell of the river mingles with the loud music spilling from bars, eyes fix
on strangers. Rights groups say fishermen have found bodies in the river.

City officials and business leaders, many of whom have been declared
military targets by rebels, readily welcome the idea of informants.
Shopkeepers are installing loudspeakers on corners to denounce the presence
of suspected guerrillas.

Community organizations such as Asocipaz, which led a fierce resistance
against plans by former President Andres Pastrana to hand control of San
Pablo to the ELN to start peace talks, are leading a drive to recruit
informant volunteers.

San Pablo voted overwhelmingly for Uribe, but its leaders do not share his
vision of the informants' role. While Uribe has said informants will tip
off the army about all outlaws, San Pablo's leaders talk only of rooting
out rebel infiltrators and make no mention of informing against the
paramilitaries.

"Security has a price -- the price of collaboration. They protect the town
and the town does not tell against them," said Rafael Ramos, president of
the "No To The Demilitarized Zone" association, a 9 mm pistol stuffed in
his pants.

Asocipaz and No To The Demilitarized Zone officials deny claims by rights
groups they are linked to the paramilitaries.

Uribe, whose father was killed by rebels, has said he wants to generate a
"critical mass" against outlaws, but military analyst Alfredo Rangel said
informants were a cheaper way to strengthen the army than boosting
professional troops.

"We all know who's who here. It's no secret paramilitaries control this
area," San Pablo Mayor Ezequiel Rodriguez told Reuters. "Uribe can talk in
Bogota but here in the provinces things are harder. Even the mayor must
keep his mouth shut."

An hour's drive along a dirt road, the paramilitary presence becomes more
open. In the hamlet of Monterrey, paramilitaries dressed in camouflage
trousers and black T-shirts walk around in broad daylight, machine guns on
their backs.

Visitors are greeted by a billboard reading: "Welcome to Monterrey.
Territory of Peace and Progress." At a roadblock, outlaws play cards and
swat flies in the shade, their rifles propped on banana trees. A painted
skull glares out from the white walls of a building where a warlord lives.

"This territory is at peace because of us. We have shed a lot of blood to
take this area and we are not going to give it back to the guerrillas."
said Julian, a far-right commander. "The state has no business here. That's
what the paramilitaries are here for."