Pubdate: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 Source: Washington Post (DC) Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company Contact: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491 Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service COLOMBIAN RIGHT'S 'CLEANING' CAMPAIGN Takeover In Major City Illustrates Political Side Of Drug War BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia -- The campaign of violence began just before Christmas in the ramshackle eastern neighborhoods of this river city. It uprooted leftist guerrillas who have flourished here for four decades and imposed in their place the stern authority of Colombia's right-wing paramilitary army. The rightist army, known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), declared war on Dec. 22 against the guerrillas and civic organizations seen as their supporters. Going house to house through the Kennedy, Boston and First of May neighborhoods, young men with cell phones and pistols conducted what they called a "cleaning" against suspected members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). More than 180 civilians have been killed since January, and another 4,000 displaced, as the city has become the largest in Colombia to fall to armed rightists. Meanwhile, the Colombian army and national police have largely stood by and watched, according to residents and human rights groups, who say the security forces often treat the paramilitary army as an ally in the fight against leftist guerrillas. The battle for Barrancabermeja, a city of 220,000 people 165 miles north of Bogota, challenges the view advanced by Colombian and U.S. officials that the war is a struggle between two outlaw armies over the spoils of a $6 billion drug trade, with government forces attempting weakly to contain the violence. Based on this premise, the United States is sending Colombia $1.3 billion over the next two years to eliminate the drug crops that finance the conflict. But the close-quarter killing here points to a more complex war, in which drug profits are the means to an end for rival armies with ambitious political strategies. As the AUC drives guerrilla forces from towns and urban centers, the political contest for control of institutions from city halls to neighborhood health clinics is intensifying in a way that is fundamentally eroding Colombia's democracy. The violence in Barrancabermeja has been financed by drug profits traveling up the Magdalena River from AUC-controlled coca fields in neighboring Bolivar province -- fields that belonged to the ELN until a few months ago - -- and by right-wing businessmen. Whatever the source, the funds are being spent for what seem to be clearly political ends, reached by brutal means. Directed by guerrilla turncoats, the paramilitary patrols sometimes produced seven bodies a day at the height of the killing in Barrancabermeja. Shootings from motorcycles felled union leaders and others in broad daylight. Many victims had clusters of bullet wounds in the head that suggested the shooter had military training. In February, the U.S. Embassy in Bogota condemned the violence and declared most of the victims "innocent civilians." After three months, the killing has now largely stopped -- for lack of resistance. It has given way to a hearts-and-minds strategy being carried out by the AUC through a mix of intimidation and cash incentives as part of a national political program. Despite the hundreds of police and soldiers who have been patrolling the eastern neighborhoods for months, the Colombian government exerts little influence in the street. The teens and twentysomethings of the AUC, who exercise real control, have drawn up their own rules: No gatherings of more than three people without permission. No stray dogs in some neighborhoods. A man's hair must not reach his shoulders. "We had to restructure this city, clean it and start over," said the paramilitary group's 29-year-old political commander here, who goes by the name Salomon. "Now we are making rules that must be followed." The new rules are fine with Juan De La Cruz, a 38-year-old father of three who drives a taxi for a living. He said the guerrillas -- and the kidnapping, car burning and extortion they carried out for decades -- are gone. "This place is improving every day," De La Cruz said. "Thank God for what they have done." First, the AUC carried out its violent purge against the guerrillas' urban militias. Now, to win over the people, the AUC has begun spending thousands of dollars in the poorest neighborhoods for development projects and loan programs. The money -- much of it believed to be drug proceeds -- has started produce markets and civic organizations among the same disaffected population that aided the guerrillas. In community meetings, paramilitary leaders have told residents that some of their future funding may include money from Plan Colombia, as the multibillion-dollar U.S.-backed anti-drug strategy is known. "They have been in the process of trying to convert us," said Yolanda Becerra Vega, director of the Popular Women's Organization, a community group that the AUC has declared a military target. "They told us we would not be continuing here. They offered us money, millions of pesos, but we did not accept. These financial overtures are another way to kill us, to copy our programs and take our members." A History of Conflict Built along a broad bend in the Magdalena River, the country's historic highway to the sea, Barrancabermeja has long been a crossroads for Colombian commerce and violence. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, thousands of families settled in the city and its surrounding jungles, displaced from western coffee-growing regions during a period of political conflict known as "the violence." More than 300,000 people arrived with few belongings and little money, changing the political landscape along the entire Middle Magdalena. This displaced population, angered by a limp state response, became a talent pool for guerrilla armies then springing up near Barrancabermeja, particularly the Cuban-oriented ELN. Also shaped by activist oil unions, the city became a pocket of leftist sympathy and resistance to the government. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Colombian navy mounted an intelligence network in and around Barrancabermeja that human rights groups say became a state-sponsored killing machine targeting the left. The Regional Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, or CREDHOS, attributes 130 killings of union activists, leftist politicians and other civilians to assassins connected with Naval Intelligence Network No. 7. Six CREDHOS employees were among the victims. "How do you generate security in a place with such resistance?" said Henry Lozano, a CREDHOS director. "You impose order through the armed forces." Col. Rodrigo Quinones ran the network, using the code name "The Manager." He has since been promoted to general after being exonerated of involvement in the killings, and serves as the second-ranking officer in the Colombian navy. International human rights groups have implored the U.S. government to secure Quinones's dismissal or suspend the $1.3 billion U.S. aid package. In the last decade, with what human rights defenders say is at least the tacit approval of the Colombian armed forces and intelligence, the AUC has taken up where "The Manager" left off in towns and villages around Barrancabermeja. The decision to move into the city in force in December was prompted by President Andres Pastrana's declaration that he intended to withdraw security forces from an area 30 miles to the north as a way to begin peace talks with the ELN. Carlos Castano, commander in chief of the 8,000-member AUC, opposes the idea of giving the ELN a zone of control, saying a similar experiment with the FARC in southern Colombia has failed. In recent days, the AUC has launched a 1,000-man offensive against guerrilla positions north of this city in advance of any decision on the demilitarized zone. The ELN and FARC, rivals ideologically and militarily, have begun joint operations in the region to combat Castano's offensive. Easy Recruiting In a city where one in three working-age residents is without a job, the AUC had no trouble finding recruits. The offer was simple. Young men who signed up received a monthly salary of $250, a cell phone and a pistol -- power and prestige in a region where 80 percent of the population lives in poverty. A 12-person operation a year and a half ago is now a 200-member military and intelligence force. Life in Barrancabermeja, always violent, turned more unruly as the year began. The AUC cut lines of communication within neighborhoods held by the ELN's "FURY" militia and the FARC's Bolivarian urban front. The AUC took control of the Magdalena by severing phone lines in the riverfront neighborhoods of Arenal and Cardales, eliminating the guerrillas' ability to relay river-traffic information to their headquarters in the east. AUC troops then gathered up all civilian cell phones in the city's poorest neighborhoods to paralyze the guerrillas' early warning system. With cash incentives, the AUC lured more than 40 former guerrillas, who guided AUC patrols through the eastern neighborhoods. The AUC even managed to turn the commander of the FARC's urban militia, according to police intelligence. By the end of January, the campaign had reached the home of Carlina Cano's invalid father in the Divine Child neighborhood. At 7 a.m. on a Saturday, she said, an AUC member named Raul Padilla knocked on her father's door to inform him that if he remained in his house by 5 p.m. he would be killed. Her father left at once. Carlina Cano, displaced by the paramilitary army three times in the past 10 years, was about to lose another home. On Jan. 27, the AUC arrived in the Pablo Acuna neighborhood, settled a decade earlier by displaced families. An AUC member named "Pablo" knocked on her door at 8 a.m. with a message: Her oldest son, Fran Jobani Guzman, was needed to serve in the paramilitary army. If he did not report for duty by the end of the day, Pablo continued, the whole family would be declared guerrilla sympathizers. "I immediately sent him to live with my brother in Bucaramanga," Cano said, referring to a larger city two hours by car to the east. "Then my brother called a few days later and said the paramilitaries had arrived to tell him they knew my son was there. If he didn't come with them, they would throw a grenade in the house. My son left and now is in [the central province of] Tolima, I think." Although the AUC now controls these neighborhoods, many residents fear the guerrillas may return to exact their own revenge, a bloody cycle that has repeated itself throughout Colombian history. But most evidence suggests that, like many problems in Colombia spawned by a lack of state presence, this conflict has simply moved. Guerrillas and paramilitary forces have taken the military component of their fight east to Bucaramanga, where rival graffiti have begun to appear on houses leading into the city. Col. Jose Miguel Villar, the police chief who arrived in Barrancabermeja six months ago, said his troops have stopped the violence. Two tanks patrol the eastern neighborhoods each night. Villar said more than 40 AUC members and 20 guerrillas have been arrested, each side squaring off in a bloody jail riot this month. Daily bombings stopped, he said, after his men captured the ELN's Cuban-trained explosives expert in March. In February, the Colombian army sent in its special forces to patrol the streets, although no significant decline in violence accompanied their arrival. Villar said it has been difficult fighting the AUC because most residents are too afraid to file complaints against them. "But our task is to get rid of them, if only the people would help us," Villar said. "This is up to them." According to many residents, sympathetic police and military officials filter any complaint filed against the paramilitary army back to them. "We see them walking together, drinking soda at the stores together, sharing their uniforms," Cano said. "There is no way to denounce them. To tell the police is to be taken out of your home and delivered to the paramilitaries." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D