Pubdate: Sun, 3 Mar 2002 Source: Houston Chronicle (TX) Webpage: www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/world/1279115 Copyright: 2002 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper Contact: http://www.chron.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198 Author: John Otis Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) NO END IN SIGHT FOR COLOMBIA WAR? Many Doubt Army Can Get Outright Win LOS POZOS, Colombia -- Huge murals of smiling guerrilla leaders greet visitors to the compound that was the nerve center of Colombia's peace process. But there are no rebels or government negotiators in sight. Instead, a lone security guard monitors the deserted white canvas tents and one-story bungalows where representatives of both sides met dozens of times over the last three years. The abandoned peace talks "weren't a waste of time," maintains Eugenio Chamorro as he fiddles with a string of keys. "But in the end, there was not enough will" to end the war. Now, the Colombian army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the nation's largest guerrilla group known as the FARC, are gearing up for what could be the bloodiest year yet in a conflict that has lasted nearly four decades. Polls show wide support for the Feb. 20 decision of President Andres Pastrana to cancel the talks after FARC commandos hijacked an airliner and kidnapped one of the passengers, a Colombian senator. Filled with patriotic fervor, many Colombians are cheering on the troops as they march into battle and attempt to retake rebel-held territory. Yet many analysts insist that government forces will never score an outright military victory. They predict that the fighting will grind on for years and that, eventually, the two sides will end up back where they started: at the negotiating table. "There is a popular notion, especially in the cities, that war is the solution," said Arlene Tickner, an American who teaches international relations at the University of the Andes in Bogota, the Colombian capital. "But what we'll see in the next few months and maybe longer is that war isn't the solution and that negotiations under a different guise are the only way to solve the myriad of problems that Colombia faces." The peace talks began in January 1999. But little headway was made, and the FARC stepped up its military attacks even as its representatives talked peace. The rebels' behavior convinced many Colombians that the 17,000-strong Marxist guerrilla organization remained intent on waging war. The Colombian army will now have to attack the FARC to regain momentum and force the guerrillas to negotiate a peace treaty, some say. "You have to change the balance of power" on the battlefield, said Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. "You have to, perhaps, have more war to move closer to peace." With the help of $1 billion in U.S. equipment and training, the Colombian army has grown in strength since the now-defunct peace process began. The number of professional soldiers has jumped from 23,000 to 55,000. The military has acquired dozens of helicopter gunships, a vital factor in a nation almost twice the size of Texas and divided by three Andean mountain ranges. Troops have already moved in to retake a 16,000-square-mile enclave that was ceded to the rebels in 1998 to promote the peace talks. On Thursday, the government declared the area a war zone and gave the military special powers to control and monitor the civilian population. "We are on the offensive against these bandits," Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora, commander of the Colombian army, told a news conference last week. "We have been advancing slowly but surely." There are already signs, however, that the military strategy may not work. For one thing, many observers believe the army requires far more resources than it currently has to take on a rebel group that maintains a presence in 31 of Colombia's 32 states. "The army is more sophisticated and better prepared than it has been in the past 40 years. But it still lacks the skill, training and equipment for the long-term, sustained kind of warfare that will be necessary to carry this out," said Eduardo Gamarra, director of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University in Miami. The guerrillas appear to have adapted to the new circumstances. Rather than confronting the army head on, they have adopted a strategy of industrial sabotage. Carried out by small units of two or three rebels, the campaign seems nearly impossible to stop. Last week, guerrilla teams knocked out electricity and telephone service to hundreds of communities and isolated southern Caqueta state by setting up roadblocks and destroying bridges. The chaos led the army commander in Caqueta to tender his resignation. "Three or four guerrillas with some sticks of dynamite can leave a whole city without energy," said Daniel Garcia-Pena, a former Colombian peace commissioner. "It's not a matter of military capacity or superiority but has a lot to do with the nature of the conflict. I'm very skeptical that we can change the correlation of forces on the battlefield in a significant way." The operation to reoccupy the former guerrilla haven offers some insight into the difficulties facing the army. So far, troops have reoccupied urban areas. But many towns remain infested with FARC militiamen dressed in civilian clothes, and uniformed guerrillas roam the countryside. Army troops "are not men of steel," said Arbey Ramirez, a midlevel FARC commander manning a rebel checkpoint last week near the town of La Macarena in the former guerrilla haven. "They haven't done anything to us. Why don't they come and fight?" When troops moved into La Macarena last week, the first person to welcome the army's top officer was the head of the FARC's urban militia, said Augusto Ramirez Ocampo, a peace activist and former Colombian foreign minister. Some observers believe the only way to effectively combat the FARC is to dismantle the cocaine and heroin trade, which provides the guerrillas with millions of dollars annually. But many analysts consider the U.S.-backed war on drugs in Colombia a failure. For the Colombian government, the problems extend beyond the drug labs and the battlefield. Many analysts point to a lack of national unity, which they view as essential for Colombia to make any progress toward defeating or debilitating the FARC. A handful of state governors and mayors, for example, have forged local peace pacts with the guerrillas in defiance of the Bogota government, which fears such deals will only strengthen the rebels. Rich Colombians often avoid paying taxes that could bolster the army. Some prefer to hire illegal paramilitary groups, which have been accused of numerous human rights violations, to protect their properties against the FARC and a much smaller leftist guerrilla group called the National Liberation Army, or ELN. The poor, in turn, sometimes view the federal government as a corrupt and alien institution that ignores their needs. The children of poor rural families fill the ranks of both the FARC and the ELN. "There is so much misery in Colombia that it's difficult for the different social classes to forge a sense of solidarity," said Vicente Torrijos, a political science professor at Rosario University in Bogota. For years, the FARC has focused its war effort on expanding its control over the countryside. But Torrijos and others believe the FARC may now try to sow panic in the cities with bombs and selected killings -- a strategy pioneered by the late drug lord Pablo Escobar in the 1980s and '90s. Washington has labeled the FARC a terrorist organization. Yet such a designation, many say, probably won't stop the Colombian government from dealing with the FARC in the future. "There is a strong tradition in Colombia to reach deals and to negotiate," said Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue. "If, at some point, it seems that the best way to end the conflict is through talks, I don't think using the word 'terrorist' will stand in the way." - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl