COLOMBIA BORROWS PERU'S PLAYBOOK TO FIGHT REBELS

On Tuesday, An Official Suggested That The State Of Emergency Become Permanent.

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - On Aug. 12, just five days into the presidency of Alvaro
Uribe Velez, Colombia found itself in a situation not unfamiliar to many
Latin Americans: living under a state of emergency.

Mortar shells rained down on the city's poorest neighborhood, El Cartucho,
during Mr. Uribe's inauguration on Aug. 7, killing 21 people. Less than a
week later, living up to his campaign promise to govern with a "firm hand,"
Uribe declared a state of "conmocion interior" - a limited state of
emergency - to help the government combat the country's rebel groups, the
strongest of which, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
allegedly committed the inauguration-day crime.

While Colombian public opinion tends to split along socioeconomic lines -
the rich and better-educated welcome the declaration, while the poor say it
will only exacerbate the killing here - experts say that if history is any
indication, this state of emergency is likely to continue here until the
end of the now four-decade-old civil war.

"States of emergency aren't that unusual in Latin America," says Eduardo
Gamarra, the head of the Latin America and Caribbean Center at Florida's
International University. "The problem in Colombia ... is it's a state of
emergency that is not going to be temporary but long term."

Peru lived under a constant state of emergency when Alberto Fujimori was
president from 1990 to 2000. Bolivia has declared a state of emergency for
economic reasons during every democratic government since 1985. And within
the past year, temporary states of emergency have been declared in
Argentina, Peru, and Paraguay.

In Colombia, besides imposing a 1.2 percent tax on the wealthy to raise
$800 million to augment the armed forces, the de facto state of emergency,
which will initially last for 90 days but can be extended twice, allows the
government to restrict the movement of citizens, tap cellphone calls, and
raid homes of suspected criminals, in some cases without a judicial warrant.

Last week, Minister of Defense Martha Lucia Ramirez said that the
government would arm 15,000 farmers under the new decree in order to form a
rural defense force. And on Tuesday, Interior and Justice Minister Fernando
Londono suggested in a speech to Congress that some of the emergency powers
may need to become permanent, including combating the smuggling of gas, a
primary weapon of the FARC, and ending a law that returns goods to
narcotraffickers.

States of emergency in Latin America have not necessarily ended well for
their leaders. Argentina's brief state of emergency late last year failed
to quell unrest following then-President Fernando de la Rua's economic
austerity program, and he was ultimately forced to resign.

And though Mr. Fujimori is credited with eliminating the rebel groups
Shining Path and Tupac Amaru in Peru, in 2000 he fled to Japan to escape
trial for his alleged connection to 25 death-squad slayings of terrorist
leaders during the early 1990s. Fujimori denies any connection with the
killings, and Japan has thus far refused to extradite him.

In April 1992, Fujimori abolished Congress and the country's Constitution.
Though neither of these has yet happened in Colombia, Gamarra says that
Uribe is modeling his fight against the FARC on Peru's example.

"One might ... argue that Uribe is borrowing many, many pages from
Fujimori's battle against the Shining Path," Gamarra says. Based on the
American strategy of arming peasants in Vietnam, Fujimori used "rondas
campesinas" similar to the rural defense forces Ramirez announced last
week, he explains.

"It worked for Fujimori, but there was a cost," Gamarra says, pointing to
weakened democratic institutions and violations of human rights, a concern
of many observers here. "In Colombia, you really are talking about arming a
society that is already armed and that has many risks. And the most
important risk is once you arm a population like this it's hard to take
those arms away."

Since the establishment of Colombia's new Constitution in 1991, there have
been five emergency decrees, which don't require approval from Congress
(except to extend them for a third time), but do require ratification by
the nation's Constitutional Court. Three of those decrees were supported by
the court, and the current one is also expected to receive judicial approval.

"I think we are going to see more measures," says Carlos Gaviria, a senator
and former constitutional court judge. "In all respects, the government
has, without doubt, an authoritarian orientation" that could grow.

In a list sent to the court to justify the decree, Uribe pointed to the
worsening security situation, including death threats by the FARC that have
caused 200 regional officials to resign, as well as the economic effects of
the civil war.

In El Cartucho, residents don't know much about the state of emergency, and
mistrust of the new government, particularly the local police, runs high.

"They didn't protect anything," says Cesar (who doesn't give his last
name), a community leader who blames Uribe, not the FARC, for the Aug. 7
attacks and the gruesome death of his friends. "If he wasn't president,
this wouldn't have happened."

But in the upper middle-class neighborhood of Pontevedra, Guillermo Galvis,
an accountant who lives two blocks from where another round of mortars was
fired, blamed the FARC for the inauguration day attacks and wholly supports
the state of emergency.

"The guerrillas have this country kidnapped," says Mr. Galvis, who voted
for Uribe. "We have to violate human rights in order to protect the people."

Galvis says he would not only invite the police into his home, he would
open his arms to American armed forces. "Right now, the United States is
helping us with technology and intelligence ... but if they want to send
people and soldiers, they are welcome."

The civil war's original Marxist social causes are largely driven by
lucrative cocaine, kidnapping, and arms trade which pits more than 25,000
guerrillas against government forces and 12,000 paramilitaries.