EAR FLORENCIA, Colombia - As the first rays of dawn cut through the jungle canopy, a rebel stripped down his Kalashnikov while one of his comrades plopped ammunition into the drum of a grenade launcher. After three years of relative calm here, the guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are back on a combat footing, and government troops are pouring back into the region, after peace negotiations collapsed last month. While the military says that the rebels have fled, FARC units appear to have split up into units of 60 members at most, and dispersed into the jungle and savannah of the former demilitarized zone, a Switzerland-sized enclave where talks had been held. [continues 923 words]
Rebels Keep Eye Out For U.S. As Colombian Conflict Flares FARC camp, Caqueta province, Colombia -- The first rays of dawn cut through the jungle canopy as a Marxist rebel stripped down his Kalashnikov assault rifle and one of his comrades plopped ammunition into the drum of a multiple grenade launcher. After three years of relative calm in the southern corner of this conflict-torn nation, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are back on a combat footing -- and they say they are ready to take on the United States as well as the Colombian government. [continues 1314 words]
Rare Visit To Jungle Lab Probes Rebels' Drug Connection Caguan River, Colombia -- This story is one in a series on Latin American issues and culture that appears every Thursday in The Chronicle World section. The jungle laboratory was stacked high with steel drums of processing chemicals. Wooden walkways weaved through the trees at waist height, connecting sheds and shacks. A chemical cloud hung over the area as coca paste, a breadcrumb-like powder made from coca leaves, was refined into snow-white cocaine at the rate of more than a ton a week. [continues 1287 words]
Bogota -- Three American civilian airmen providing airborne security for a U.S. oil company coordinated an anti-guerrilla raid in Colombia in 1998, marking targets and directing helicopter gunships that mistakenly killed 18 civilians, Colombian military pilots have alleged in a official inquiry. The air attack on the village of Santo Domingo in oil-rich northeast Arauca province took place on Dec. 13 of that year amid efforts to hunt down a 200- strong column of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Survivors said the aircraft attacked them as they ran out of their homes to a nearby road with their hands in the air to show they were noncombatants. [continues 1033 words]
CAGUAN RIVER, Colombia - Deep in the jungle, laborers scurried along wooden walkways through a sprawling cocaine factory. The acrid stench of chemicals hung in the air as coca paste, a breadcrumb-like powder made from coca leaves, was refined into snow-white cocaine at the rate of more than a ton a week. A heavy-set man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat barked out orders as he placed a kilogram brick of cocaine to dry in a microwave oven before it was hermetically sealed in plastic - ready for the long and profitable journey to the United States or Europe. [continues 1069 words]
AGUAN RIVER, Colombia - Deep in the jungle, laborers scurried along wooden walkways through a sprawling cocaine factory. The acrid stench of chemicals hung in the air as coca paste, a breadcrumb-like powder made from coca leaves, was refined into snow-white cocaine at the rate of more than a ton a week. A heavy-set man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat barked out orders as he placed a kilogram brick of cocaine to dry in a microwave oven before it was hermetically sealed in plastic - ready for the long and profitable journey to the United States or Europe. [continues 595 words]
Right-Wing Gunmen Say U.S. -Backed Government Troops Helping Them Drive Rebels From Colombian Coca Fields VALLE DEL GUAMUEZ, Colombia - The U.S.-backed campaign to eradicate drug production in this nation's cocaine heartland is being carried out with the covert cooperation of paramilitary warlords, according to paramilitary leaders. Gunmen of the ultra rightwing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) boast that they are closely coordinating their "dirty war" against leftist guerrillas in southern Putumayo province to pave the way for a huge anti-drug offensive by U.S.trained Colombian troops. They say they are being protected by army and police units in their war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and their civilian sympathizers. [continues 1177 words]
Colombia's Violent Vigilantes Pave The Way For U.S.-Backed Antidrug Forces GUAMUEZ VALLEY, COLOMBIA-Here amid the cocaine-producing drug plantations of southern Colombia, five recruits with shaved heads and armed with wooden stakes march down the main street in a dusty village. A truck packed with 40 right-wing paramilitary fighters, brandishing assault rifles and rocket launchers, heads off on a search-and-destroy mission against communist guerrillas. More camouflage-clad combatants of the outlaw paramilitary force are dug into foxholes in this farming hamlet and throughout Putumayo province. [continues 808 words]
UAMUEZ VALLEY, Colombia - While Colombia insists it is cracking down on outlawed paramilitary groups, commanders of the right-wing units boast that they are actually spearheading the government's US-funded offensive to wipe out the booming cocaine industry in guerrilla-held jungles in the south. President Andres Pastrana and the military's top brass have repeatedly vowed to crackdown on the burgeoning paramilitary forces and on officers and soldiers found collaborating with them. But there is credible evidence to back the paramilitary commanders' assertions that they are actually functioning as the vanguard of ''Plan Colombia'' - the campaign to eradicate illicit drug crops that Washington is financing with $1.3 billion in mostly military aid. [continues 822 words]
IBERIA, Colombia - Three-year-old Mauricio Lopez spends most of his day playing with a plastic model airplane. He says it's like the real planes - US-donated crop dusters - that dump little drops of powerful defoliant on the drug fields around this one-street hamlet in southern Putumayo Province. The youngster can just about pronounce his own name and count to five. But the only full sentence he has mastered so far is this: ''The helicopters killed my daddy.'' Mauricio has muddled the facts a bit. But he does know that the last five months of his short life have been marred by violence and destruction from Plan Colombia - a Colombian government offensive to wipe out the booming cocaine trade in Communist guerrilla power using $1.3 billion in mostly US military aid. [continues 565 words]
BOGOTA -- A joke making the rounds has Colombian President Andres Pastrana going into a bank to cash a check without ID and being asked to do something to prove who he is. He just shrugs and says: "I can't think of anything." The cashier pays him instantly. The gibe reflects the belief of many ordinary Colombians that Pastrana, who took office in August 1998 after a record voter turnout, has essentially run out of ideas on how to deliver on his centerpiece pledge to negotiate a peaceful end to the country's 36-year-old, drug-fueled guerrilla war. His popularity has slumped to just 21 percent, and roughly three quarters of Colombians have lost faith in slowmoving peace talks with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, according to a recent Gallup Poll. [continues 361 words]
Pastrana's Weakness Jeopardizes 'Plan Colombia' BOGOTA - A joke making the rounds has Colombian President Andres Pastrana going into a bank to cash a check without ID and being asked to do something to prove who he is. He just shrugs and says: "I can't think of anything." The cashier pays him instantly. The gibe reflects the belief of many ordinary Colombians that Pastrana, who took office in August 1998 after a record voter turnout, has essentially run out of ideas on how to deliver on his centerpiece pledge to negotiate a peaceful end to the country's 36-year-old, drug-fueled guerrilla war. His popularity has slumped to just 21 percent, and roughly three quarters of Colombians have lost faith in slowmoving peace talks with Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas, according to a recent Gallup Poll. [continues 366 words]
New Efforts Try To Keep Colombians From Leaving BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - Black graffiti spray-painted on a grimy wall in downtown Bogota asks, "Why Haven't You Gone to Miami?" Some days, a group of student artists from the prestigious Los Andes University drag a battered suitcase emblazoned with the same message through the capital's streets. They hand out fliers challenging fellow citizens to phone in or E-mail their answers. "I'm not going to Miami because I don't want to have to wash any more dishes than I do at home," said one reply recorded on the students' answering machine. [continues 343 words]
Thousands Die Each Year On The Mean Streets Of Medellin Medellin, Colombia -- A young assassin splashes holy water on his trigger finger and mumbles an inaudible prayer to an effigy of the Virgin Mary. Alex, 21, who goes by the nickname "Satan," comes every Tuesday to this whitewashed church on the southern edge of Medellin, the city that was once the stronghold of the late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and epicenter of the world cocaine trade. Like many of the young guns locked in bloody gang wars in this northwest industrial hub, Alex is a devout believer in the protective powers of Mary Auxiliatrix -- known locally as the Virgin of the Sicarios, the name given to the armies of hired assassins that surrounded Escobar in his heyday in the late 1980s and early '90s. [continues 1050 words]
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Just days ahead of President Clinton's visit to Colombia, Marxist ``petro-guerrillas'' have vowed to continue their biggest-ever offensive against one of the Andean nation's top oil fields and main pipelines in protest at ``U.S. intervention''. In an undated communique, obtained by Reuters on Monday, the rebels appeared to link the sabotage to Clinton's Aug. 30 visit but also pledged to continue attacks after that trip. ``The National Liberation Army rejects outright Plan Colombia and will maintain its offensive before and after Aug. 30 against the Cano Limon pipeline in protest at U.S. intervention,'' the communique said, referring to U.S. aid to a $7.5 billion plan to combat drug trafficking and leftist guerrillas in Colombia. [continues 583 words]
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's most-feared death squad leader has alleged that U.S. anti-narcotics agents sought to enlist his outlaw paramilitary gang to combat drug traffickers, raising fresh fears of U.S. covert operations in this war-torn Andean nation. In a television interview late Wednesday, Carlos Castano, leader of the 5,000-member, ultra-right United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), said the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) asked him to force Colombian drug traffickers to surrender to U.S. justice. [continues 480 words]
BOGOTA - A record aid package for Colombia under construction in the U.S. Congress is still open to changes in crucial areas that will dictate the shape of the war against drugs and Marxist rebels, military and independent analysts said Friday. President Andres Pastrana Thursday welcomed passage of the aid bill, which would ratchet up aid to a record $1 billion, at least two-thirds of which is military aid. But key details about the type and number of U.S.-supplied helicopters to be used for an airborne offensive into southern Colombia were still to be completed. And conditions to ensure the aid did not aggravate human rights abuses by the Colombian military were also undecided. [continues 577 words]
VILLA NORA, Colombia (Reuters) - Waving automatic assault rifles and banners daubed with revolutionary slogans, thousands of Colombian Marxist guerrillas and peasants launched a clandestine political movement on Saturday that authorities fear will become a ``party for war.'' The inauguration ceremony in southeast Colombia marked the biggest-ever public display of firepower by the Soviet-inspired Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) -- some 5,000 rebels equipped with machine guns and grenade launchers. And for the first time in the rebel group's 36-year history, six of the FARC's seven-man ruling council, including supreme commander Manuel ``Sureshot'' Marulanda, appeared together under a banner that read ``FARC -- Army of the People.'' [continues 647 words]
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Anti-drug police smashed Colombia's ''most powerful'' heroin mob on Wednesday, seizing the alleged ringleader, a cousin of former drug capo Pablo Escobar, and 45 others accused of smuggling more than $9 million of heroin to the United States and Europe each month. The gang purportedly shipped up to 110 pounds (50 kg) of heroin a month, hidden inside rubber penis-shaped sex aids, women's bras and false-bottomed suitcases, police said. Officials had initially estimated the quantity of drugs smuggled at 220 pounds (100 kg) but later revised that figure. [continues 539 words]
BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian authorities on Thursday extradited a suspected Venezuelan drug trafficker who could be the key to Washington's attempt to try Colombia's undisputed cocaine kings, the Rodriguez Orejuela brothers, in a U.S. court. Fernando Jose Flores, 38, nicknamed the Fat Man, is the second alleged drug smuggler extradited this week. He is accused of shipping more than 3-1/2 tons of cocaine to Florida, packed in concrete fence posts. He was reputedly a crony of the Rodriguez Orejuelas, who have been serving time in a Bogota prison since their capture in mid-1995. [continues 558 words]
