JUNGLE OUTPOST

Colombia Base A Weapon In War On Drugs By

TRES ESQUINAS MILITARY BASE, Colombia - Protruding above the jungle like a
giant white golf ball on a tee, Washington's latest investment in the war
on drugs scans the horizon for small planes ferrying cocaine over the Amazon.

The $13 million radar station was just inaugurated by President Andres
Pastrana and the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, and even given a blessing by
a Roman Catholic priest. While skepticism about the drug war grows among
some critics, so does this jungle outpost where the campaign is anchored.

Tres Esquinas sprawls alongside a roiling brown river in southern Colombia
within striking distance of drug labs and plantations that are guarded and
taxed by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries.

Built in the 1930s, the base was long a sleepy outpost to defend Colombia
from attack by Peru. Now, its runways are paved and expanded, long enough
to handle jet fighters and Hercules transport planes.

A large dock is being completed for U.S.-donated patrol boats that prowl
the rivers that are the highways for rebels and drug smugglers in this
roadless region. Banks of computers watched by U.S. and Colombian
intelligence officers in a hangar-like building compile data from
satellites and reconnaissance planes.

AP photos

Navy patrol boats provided by the United States navigate on the Orteguaza
river during a military exercise at the Tres Esquinas military base.

During Thursday's inauguration ceremonies, U.S. and Colombian officials
gave an upbeat assessment of the war on drugs. They were also treated to a
loud demonstration of the kind of firepower Washington is providing under a
$1.3 billion aid package approved last year.

Patrol boats bristling with machine guns and grenade launchers zipped in
formations along the muddy Orteguaza River, blasting away at the jungle on
the opposite bank. Helicopters and warplanes shredded the jungle with
bombs, rockets and machine guns while soldiers lobbed mortar rounds from
gun pits.

The added firepower and U.S. Green Beret training of Colombian troops is
providing security for raids on drug labs and aerial fumigation runs over
illegal plots of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

But Washington's growing involvement is also prompting concerns.

Human rights activists fear the U.S. support will embolden the military to
abuse people's rights, or lead to direct U.S. troop involvement in this
South American country's 37-year-old civil war.

Environmentalists say the herbicides being used to wipe out coca fields may
harm humans and upset fragile and diverse Amazonian ecosystems.

Still other critics say the world's drug supply won't ever be reduced until
demand for narcotics is curtailed in consumer nations like the United States.

With American lawmakers echoing those concerns, the U.S. Congress appears
ready to slash about $100 million from the Bush administration's $731
million follow-up request to last year's aid plan.

At Tres Esquinas, Brig. Gen. Mario Montoya, the commander of Colombia's
southern forces, brushes aside the criticism.

"We are winning this war," he said over a lunch of catfish at an officer's
club overlooking the Orteguaza.

Montoya rattled off statistics he said showed progress, including the
destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of coca and the combat deaths
at the hands of the U.S.-trained troops of 166 "drug traffickers" from the
rebels and their paramilitary foes.

"We show up at a laboratory, and who do you think is there protecting it?
The guerrillas are," he said.

AP photos

Soldiers guard a U.S.-built radar to detect illegal drug flights at the
Tres Esquinas military base in southern Colombia.

Montoya said his men have also destroyed more than 600 cocaine labs and
intercepted thousands of gallons of drug-processing chemicals, helping push
up the price of semi-processed cocaine here by 30 percent. U.S. officials,
however, have not reported changes in the price or availability of cocaine
in the United States.

U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson insisted progress is "accelerating," and she
said the U.S.-trained troops "have not had a single human rights complaint
against them."

She predicted spraying will double next year with the scheduled arrival
soon of dozens more helicopters and crop dusters from the United States.

Even if the offensive meets its own stated goals, that would mean only a 50
percent reduction in cocaine production in Colombia over five years' time.

A carved wooden sign beside a barracks at Tres Esquinas reminds the
soldiers that this war will be long. "God grants victory to perseverance,"
it says.