Pubdate: Sat, 29 Jun 2002
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2002 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: T. Christian Miller, Times Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

REBELS PUSH COLOMBIA TOWARD ANARCHY

Guerrillas Have Killed Officials And Ravaged Property To Try To Force The 
Government Back To The Negotiating Table.

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia -- News of his impending execution came to 
Mayor Nestor Leon Ramirez on a white sheet of paper.

A guerrilla commander handed the note to a farmer, who delivered it to 
Ramirez. It read: "For the good of your health, you must leave the city. If 
you do not, you will become a military target."

But Ramirez, leader of this bustling town, decided to ignore the message, 
which arrived this month.

Now, death shadows him like a dark halo. He sits at his desk and wonders: 
When will they come. And how.

"Today, I am able to work," Ramirez said. "I can't say what will happen 
tomorrow."

Since the collapse of peace talks in February, democracy itself has become 
the primary target in Colombia's 38-year-old guerrilla war. Attacks on the 
symbols of state are part of a new guerrilla strategy designed to plunge 
vast swaths of the country into anarchy.

Every mayor in the country--more than 1,000--has been ordered to resign by 
the rebels or face death. Scores have quit. Some have fled to govern from 
fortified army bases. One of Ramirez's colleagues was killed in a nearby 
town this month.

The guerrillas have also destroyed roads and bridges, crippling public 
transport. They have attacked power, telephone and television towers, 
halting media and communication transmissions.

The rebel attacks have served to showcase one of the most fundamental 
problems in this nation's increasingly barbaric war. More than 180 years 
after Colombia's founding, the government has yet to impose control over 
its sprawling territory.

It is Colombia's lawlessness that has allowed the guerrilla war to fester 
for four decades. It also fostered the explosion of the drug crops here 
that now provide most of the cocaine and much of the heroin available on 
U.S. streets.

Before the collapse of peace talks, the rebels had maintained an uneasy 
coexistence with local officials in areas they dominated. Now, they have 
decided to wage a campaign to prove the state's impotence, embarrassing the 
government in a bid to force a return to negotiations.

Colombia's guerrilla war pits the army and growing right-wing paramilitary 
forces against the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, 
and a second, smaller rebel army.

"We're in the beginning of a new phase," FARC organizer Juan Pablo said as 
he relaxed at a restaurant in a riverside town a few miles from San Vicente 
del Caguan, in the heart of the former rebel zone. "We're going to 
demonstrate that we're in the position to control certain areas and that we 
can push that control to an extreme."

The problem is especially serious in Colombia's southern plains, where the 
guerrillas have long held sway. A weeklong tour found a region abandoned 
and chaotic. City councils have resigned en masse. Dozens of towns now lack 
judges, prosecutors or local police officials. Commerce has been strangled.

National government officials resist the idea that the guerrillas are 
successfully ridding the area of civilian control. But interviews 
throughout the region--which never had a strong government 
presence--indicated that it has descended into chaos.

What little order exists is imposed by the heavy military and police 
presences in urban centers. Beyond is a no man's land where leftist rebels 
run tollbooths, patrol destroyed roads and impose their own brand of law.

The problem has become so serious that U.S. aid officials are considering 
suspending development programs in the region designed to wean locals from 
drug crop profits by building new infrastructure like roads, wells and dams.

Such a suspension, in turn, would imperil U.S. efforts to halve the amount 
of cocaine produced here by 2005--one of the chief goals of the 
$1.3-billion Plan Colombia, launched two years ago.

The cinder-block Town Hall in Puerto Rico is mostly empty these days.

The mayor is gone. He quit this month, reading his resignation aloud in the 
town square after receiving a death threat. The City Council fled too. 
There are no judges or prosecutors.

The bridges around town have been blown up. The power substation lies in 
rubble. The phone exchange is damaged. The roads are under the control of 
guerrillas. There has been no electricity, water or phone service for 
months. There isn't even a town ambulance.

In short, there is little to indicate that this woeful town in the heart of 
southern Colombia has any connection to the rest of the country.

"We are completely alone," said the police inspector, one of the few town 
officials left.

Towns such as Puerto Rico in these sparsely populated plains have long been 
under the influence of the FARC, a guerrilla army of 17,000 mostly poor 
rural peasants who are nominally Marxist.

The guerrillas' de facto domination of the region was recognized in 1998 
when the Colombian government ceded a big chunk of the country to the 
rebels for peace talks. The demilitarized zone was to be the catalyst for a 
new and brighter future.

All that changed when the talks collapsed and President Andres Pastrana 
ordered the army to retake the zone, about four times the size of Los 
Angeles County. The guerrillas went on a rampage of destruction.

The suffering grew worse after elections in May, when Colombians selected 
Alvaro Uribe as their next president. Uribe, who is scheduled to take 
office in August, won largely as a result of promises to get tough with the 
guerrillas.

To the guerrillas' chagrin, most of the towns in the region voted for 
Uribe--a very public reminder of their lack of popular support. Polls have 
shown that only 1% to 2% of Colombians back the rebels.

The guerrillas responded by demanding the removal of mayors in three 
departments in Colombia's south--Caqueta, Putumayo and Huila. The demands 
later spread to Arauca, Norte de Santander and Santander in the nation's 
northeast, as well as elsewhere.

The common thread: The departments are located in areas rich in the coca 
and poppy crops that produce cocaine and heroin, respectively. Roughly half 
the FARC's $300-million to $500-million annual income is believed to come 
from drug profits.

These are also areas where the FARC has a strategic advantage. Sparsely 
populated southern Colombia is militarily costly to control and has little 
legitimate economic value to the nation. The opposite is true for the 
rebels, who can exercise their power with scattered attacks and benefit 
from the illicit resources.

The guerrillas' devotion to clearing the region by violence was underscored 
by one rebel squad leader. Standing alongside a barbed-wire fence on a road 
leading out of San Vicente, he patted the black-metal barrel of his AK-47.

"Everything we have," he said, "we got through this."

The result of the stepped-up attacks has been misery for hundreds of 
thousands of Colombians.

In most towns, electricity comes only from portable generators droning 
outside stores and restaurants. Phone service is nonexistent. In San 
Vicente del Caguan, tens of thousands of residents try to make calls 
through 27 existing satellite phone connections.

Repeater towers needed to broadcast television and radio signals also have 
been destroyed. The only sources of media are local radio stations and 
places lucky enough to have satellite television service.

More serious problems involve attacks against health and public transport. 
The rebels have seized two ambulances from local communities in the last 
few months. In the case of Puerto Rico, a prematurely born baby died after 
his mother was forced to get out of the ambulance and hitch a ride to the 
nearest hospital.

"They are trying to destroy the institutions of the country and widen their 
zone of control," said Omar Varon, mayor of Doncello, a community near San 
Vicente. "It's an attack against the state ... [and] civil society is 
paying for it."

Guerrillas dismissed the claim. Juan Pablo, who organizes clandestine 
guerrilla fronts that operate in cities, called the misery "suffering 
light." He noted that the rebels could easily cut food and fuel supplies 
but have not, instead only making such deliveries more difficult.

"The idea is to break the normal rhythm of the economy," Juan Pablo said.

The guerrillas have also become increasingly brutal during military 
confrontations. Last month, nine soldiers on leave were stopped at a rebel 
roadblock outside San Vicente del Caguan. Their mutilated bodies were found 
days later.

Army Col. Cesar Delacruz said some of the men's genitals were cut off. 
Others among those killed were found without fingernails. The account could 
not be independently confirmed.

"They have lost all respect for life," said Delacruz, commander of the 
local battalion in San Vicente del Caguan, where the men were stationed.

Military officials have responded to the rebel offensive by successfully 
taking control of most local cities and towns.

Streets and cafes throughout the former rebel zone are now filled with 
soldiers and police. A gunfight outside a hotel one recent night was 
quickly quelled by a squad of soldiers firing their rifles.

Outside the urban centers, however, control is nearly nonexistent. A squad 
of guerrillas eating lunch under a tree near the town of La Sombra smiled 
when asked about recent battles with the army.

"How can we fight anyone when the army doesn't ever come by." the squad 
leader asked.

Colombian army officials acknowledged that small squads of guerrillas still 
roam the zone. But they portrayed the rebels as the last remnants of a 
mostly vanquished force.

There are skirmishes on an almost daily basis, the officials said. U.S. 
trained counter-narcotic brigades have played a significant role, because 
many of the guerrilla fronts in southern Colombia are linked to the drug trade.

In addition, the U.S. has given "technical intelligence" support to the 
effort to retake the zone, Delacruz said. He did not explain further, but 
after peace talks collapsed, the U.S. lifted restrictions that limited 
intelligence sharing to narcotics operations. It began providing rebel 
target coordinates to the Colombian military.

There are signs that the army's offensive has had an effect: The guerrillas 
seem hard up for cash. They held an auction last month to sell off stolen 
cars. And they have begun rustling cattle, according to a local rancher.

Also, the army has managed to block any large-scale invasion by right-wing 
paramilitary forces. Many had predicted that the zone would become a bloody 
battleground between rebels and paramilitary groups after three years of 
guerrilla domination.

The national government has responded to the threats against civilian 
authority by refusing to recognize the mayors' resignations. Instead, 
Interior Minister Armando Estrada Villa offered to step up protection, with 
bodyguards and bulletproof cars.

That has done little to appease local officials, however. In Doncello, one 
City Council member rejected the government offers and said he had already 
prepared his resignation slip.

On Tuesday, one of the councilman's colleagues was killed.

"This life," he said, "is a living death."
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart