[1] Colombians Tell of Massacre, as Army Stood By
The New York Times July 14, 2000 Section A; Page 1; Column 2; Foreign Desk, By LARRY ROHTER. EL SALADO, Colombia

The armed men, more than 300 of them, marched into this tiny village early on a Friday. They went straight to the basketball court that doubles as the main square, residents said, announced themselves as members of Colombia's most feared right-wing paramilitary group, and with a list of names began summoning residents for judgment.

A table and chairs were taken from a house, and after the death squad leader had made himself comfortable, the basketball court was turned into a court of execution, villagers said. The paramilitary troops ordered liquor and music, and then embarked on a calculated rampage of torture, rape and killing. "To them, it was like a big party," said one of a dozen survivors who described the scene in interviews this month. "They drank and danced and cheered as they butchered us like hogs."

By the time they left, late the following Sunday afternoon, they had killed at least 36 people whom they accused of collaborating with the enemy, left-wing guerrillas who have long been a presence in the area. The victims, for the most part, were men, but others ranged from a 6-year-old girl to an elderly woman. As music blared, some of the victims were shot after being tortured; others were stabbed or beaten to death, and several more were strangled.

Yet during the three days of killing last February, military and police units just a few miles away made no effort to stop the slaughter, witnesses said. At one point, they said, the paramilitaries had a helicopter flown in to rescue a fighter who had been injured trying to drag some victims from their home.

Instead of fighting back, the armed forces set up a roadblock on the way to the village shortly after the rampage began, and prevented human rights and relief groups from entering and rescuing residents.

While the Colombian military has opened three investigations into what happened here and has made some arrests of paramilitaries, top military officials insist that fighting was under way in the village between guerrillas and paramilitary forces -- not a series of executions. They also insist that the colonel in charge of the region has been persecuted by government prosecutors and human rights groups. Last month he was promoted to general, even though examinations of the incidents are pending.

What happened in El Salado last February -- at the same time that President Clinton was pushing an aid package to step up antidrug efforts here -- goes to the heart of the debate over the growing American backing of the Colombian military. For years the United States government and human rights groups have had reservations about the Colombian military leadership, its human rights record and its collaboration with paramilitary units.

The Colombian Armed Forces and police are the principal beneficiaries of a new $1.3 billion aid package from Washington. The Colombian government says it has been working hard to sever the remnants of ties between the armed forces and the paramilitaries and has been training its soldiers to observe international human rights conventions even during combat.

"The paramilitaries are some of the worst of the terrorists who profit from drugs in Colombia, and in no way can anyone justify their human rights violations," said Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, the White House drug policy director. But he said "the Colombian military is making dramatic improvements in its human rights record," and noted that the aid package includes "significant money, $46 million, for human rights training and implementation."

But human rights groups, pointing to incidents like the massacre here, say these links still exist and that mechanisms to monitor and punish commanders and units have had limited success at best.

"El Salado was the worst recorded massacre yet this year," said Andrew Miller, a Latin American specialist for Amnesty International USA, who spent the past year as an observer near here. "The Colombian Armed Forces, specifically the marines, were at best criminally negligent by not responding sooner to the attack. At worst, they were knowledgeable and complicit."

The paramilitary attack on El Salado killed more people and lasted longer than any other in Colombia this year. But in most other respects it was an operation so typical of the 5,500-member right-wing death squad that goes by the name of the Peasant Self-Defense of Colombia that the Colombian press treated it as just another atrocity.

The paramilitary groups were founded in the early 1980's, mostly funded by agricultural interests to protect them from extortion and kidnapping by the left-wing guerrillas. The paramilitary groups were declared illegal over a decade ago, but have continued to operate, often with clandestine military support and intelligence, and in recent years have become increasingly involved in drug trafficking.

Over the past 18 months, more than 2,500 people, most of them unarmed peasants in rural areas like this village in northern Colombia, have died in more than 500 attacks by what the Colombian government calls "illegal armed groups" involved in the country's 35-year-old civil conflict. And according to the government, right-wing paramilitary groups are responsible for most of those killings.

Since the El Salado massacre, nearly 3,000 residents of the area have fled to nearby towns, including El Carmen de Bolivar and Ovejas, as well as the provincial capital, Cartagena. Early this month, more than a dozen of the survivors were interviewed in the towns where they have taken refuge under the protection of human rights groups or the Roman Catholic Church.

Despite efforts to protect them, however, some have recently been killed in individual attacks or have disappeared, actions for which the same paramilitary group that attacked their village has been blamed. As a result, all of the survivors interviewed for this story spoke on condition that their names not be used.

Their accounts, however, coincide with investigations conducted by the Colombian government prosecutor's office and by the Colombia office of the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.

Members of a paramilitary unit had attacked this village in 1997, killing five people and warning that they would eventually come back. Many residents fled then, but returned after a few months believing that they were safe until the death squad suddenly reappeared on the morning of Feb. 18.

"I looked up at the hills, and could see armed men everywhere, blocking every possible exit," a farmer recalled. "They had surrounded the town, and almost as soon as they came down, they began firing their guns and shouting, 'Death to the guerrillas.' "

The death squad troops, almost all dressed in military-style uniforms with a blue patch, made their way to the basketball court at the center of the village. They took tables and chairs from a nearby building, pulled out a list of names and began the search for victims.

"Some people were shot, but a lot of them were beaten with clubs and then stabbed with knives or sliced up with machetes," one witness said. "A few people were beheaded, or strangled with metal wires, while others had their throats cut."

The list of those to be executed was supplied by two men, one of whom was wearing a ski mask. Paramilitary leaders, who have acknowledged the attack on El Salado but describe it as combat with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, later said that the two men were FARC deserters who had dealt with local people and knew who had been guerrilla sympathizers.

"It was all done very methodically," one witness said. "Some people were brought to the basketball court, but were saved because someone would say, 'Not that one,' and they would be allowed to leave. But I saw a woman neighbor of mine, who I know had nothing at all to do with the guerrillas, knocked down with clubs and then stabbed to death."

While some paramilitaries searched for people to kill, others were breaking into shops and stealing beer, rum and whiskey. Before long, a macabre party atmosphere prevailed, with the paramilitaries setting up radios with dance music and ordering a local guitarist and accordionist to play.

In addition, a young waitress from a cantina adjoining the basketball court was ordered to keep a steady supply of liquor flowing. As the armed men grew drunk and rowdy, they repeatedly raped her, along with several other women, according to residents and human rights groups.

As night fell, some residents fled to the wooded hills above town. Others, however, stayed in their homes, afraid of being caught if they tried to escape, unable to move because they had small children, or convinced that they would not be harmed.

Saturday was more of the same. "All day long we could hear occasional bursts of gunfire, along with the screams and cries of those who were being tortured and killed," said a woman who had taken refuge in the hills with her small children.

Of the 36 people killed in town, 16 were executed at the basketball court. An additional 18 people were killed in the countryside, residents and human rights workers said, and 17 more are still missing, making for a death toll that could be as high as 71.

By Friday afternoon, however, news of the slaughter had spread to El Carmen de Bolivar, about 15 miles away. Relatives of El Salado residents rushed to local police and military posts, but were rebuffed.

"We made a scandal and nearly caused a riot, we were so insistent," said a 40-year-old-man who had left El Salado early on Friday because he had business in town. "But they did nothing to help us."

Besides not coming to the aid of villagers here, the armed forces and the police set up roadblocks that prevented others from entering the town to help. Anyone seeking to enter the area was told the road was unsafe because it had been mined and that combat was going on between guerrilla and paramilitary units.

In a telephone interview, three Colombian Navy admirals said that residents of El Salado were accusing the military of complicity in the massacre because they had been coerced by guerrillas." The roadblock was set up, they said, to prevent more deaths or injuries to civilians.

"At no point was there collaboration on our part, nor would we have permitted their passage" through the area, Adm. William Porras, the second in command of the Colombian Navy, said of the death squad unit. "We never at any point were covering up for them or helping them, as all the subsequent investigations have shown."

But local residents, Colombian prosecutors investigating the massacre and human rights groups say there was no combat. Villagers say that the armed forces had not been in the center of El Salado recently, and that they had left the outlying areas a day before. Residents also say they had passed over the dirt road that Friday morning and there were no mines.

"The army was on patrol for two or three days before the massacre took place, and then suddenly they disappeared," recalled a 43-year-old tobacco farmer. "It can't be explained, and it seems very curious to me."

What has been established is that the villagers were simple peasants, and not the guerrillas the paramilitary leader says his troops were fighting. "It is quite clear that these were defenseless people and that what they were subjected to was not combat, but abuse and torture," said a foreign diplomat who has been investigating.

Residents said the paramilitaries felt so certain that government security forces would stay away that late on Friday they had a helicopter flown in. It landed in front of a church and picked up a death squad fighter who was injured when a family he was trying to drag out of their house to be taken to the basketball court resisted.

In a report published last February, Human Rights Watch found "detailed, abundant and compelling evidence of continuing close ties between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups responsible for gross human rights violations." All told, "half of Colombia's 18 brigade-level units have documented links to paramilitary activity," the report concluded.

"Far from moving decisively to sever ties to paramilitaries, Human Rights Watch's evidence strongly suggests that Colombia's military high command has yet to take the necessary steps to accomplish this goal," the report stated.

At the time of the El Salado massacre, the senior military officer in this region was Col. Rodrigo Quinones Cardenas, commander of the First Navy Brigade, who has since been promoted to general. As director of Naval Intelligence in the early 1990's, he was identified by Colombian prosecutors as the organizer of a paramilitary network responsible for the killings of 57 trade unionists, human rights workers and members of a left-wing political party.

In 1994, Colonel Quinones and seven other soldiers were charged with "conspiring to form or collaborate with armed groups." But after the main witness against him was killed in a maximum security prison and the case was moved from a civilian court to a military tribunal, the colonel was acquitted.

According to the same investigation by Colombian prosecutors, one of Colonel Quinones's closest associates in that paramilitary network was Harold Mantilla, a colonel in the Colombian Marines.

Today, Colonel Mantilla is commander of the Fifth Marine Battalion, which operates in the area around El Salado and is one of the units said by residents and human rights workers to have failed to respond to appeals for help.

After the paramilitary unit left El Salado, the police captured 11 paramilitaries northeast of here on the ranch of a drug trafficker who is in prison in Bogota. Along with four others who were arrested separately, they are facing murder charges, but their leaders and most of the others who carried out the killings remain free.

More than four months after the massacre, El Salado is virtually deserted. Only one of the town's 1,330 original residents was present when a reporter and human rights workers visited early this month, and he said the village remains as it was the day the death squad left, except for the two mass graves on a rise near the basketball court where the bodies were buried and later exhumed for investigators.

The tables and chairs used by the paramilitary "judges," smashed or overturned as they left, are still strewn across the basketball court.

"I don't know if the people are ever going to want to come back again," the resident said. "What happened here was just too terrible to bear, and we didn't deserve it."

[2] Neighbors Fear Fallout of Aid To Colombians
The New York Times August 25, 2000 Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk By CLIFFORD KRAUSS BOGOTA, Colombia

As President Clinton prepares to visit Colombia next week and open the spigot of military aid, the country's neighbors are expressing concerns that a step-up in the fighting here could push coca growing, drug trafficking, refugees and even fighting across their borders.

The Colombian conflict has already led to guerrilla incursions into Panama and Venezuela for safe haven. United States military officials warn that one Colombian rebel group already exerts influence over Indian dissidents in Ecuador, and new Colombian plantings of coca and poppies have been reported in Peru. But leaders around the region say that the nature of the war is about to change with the release of $1.3 billion in new American aid over the next two years to train and equip an anti narcotics army brigade and that the impact on their nations is likely to increase.

The brigade will be outfitted with 60 helicopters that will support police efforts to eradicate the coca fields and shut down trafficking operations in two southern Colombian provinces largely controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the biggest rebel faction.

Whether or not the rebels stand and fight to support the coca growers and traffickers, whose protection money finances their war effort, tens of thousands of coca growers are likely to move far and wide, taking their seedlings and guerrilla protection with them.

That was the message Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright heard from nervous Ecuadorian and Brazilian leaders on her trip through South America last week. It was repeated when Ecuador's president, Gustavo Noboa, came to Bogota on Wednesday to ask President Andres Pastrana that his government be kept informed of all military operations in southern Colombia so the Ecuadorian Army could prepare for any incursions of coca growers, refugees or guerrillas across its frontier.

"Our worry is that the removal of this cancerous tumor will cause it to metastasize into Ecuador," Ecuador's foreign minister, Heinz Moeller, told Colombian reporters on Wednesday. He noted that successful efforts by Peru and Bolivia to eradicate coca plantings in recent years encouraged more cultivation in Colombia, worsening this country's drug problem while having little impact on world cocaine supplies.

United States officials call it the "balloon effect," when they succeed in attacking drug activity in one country or region, only to see it pop up again in some other place. They note that when the Central Intelligence Agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration succeeded in helping the police in Colombia arrest the leaders of the Cali drug cartel several years ago, other organizations emerged elsewhere in the country to take the cartel's place and the flood of drug exports continued. These new organizations, weaker than their predecessor, sought protection from the Colombian guerrillas and have pumped up their powers with large financial support.

Even Peru's president, Alberto K. Fujimori, who took a hard line against guerrillas in his country in the early 1990's, told reporters this week that he was concerned that an escalation of the fighting in Colombia "could generate a wider conflict, one in which the FARC retreats into Peruvian territory."

United States and Colombian officials are trying to assuage Latin American leaders, arguing that the new military effort in southern Colombia -- which is part of a broader national military and humanitarian effort called Plan Colombia -- is an attempt to force the FARC to negotiate seriously in peace talks, which have stalled in recent months.

"This is a peace plan, not a war plan," is how Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernandez de Soto of Colombia characterizes his government's new initiative to his regional colleagues.

Gen. Fernando Tapias, the chief of the Colombian armed forces, argued last week that eradicating the coca fields in the Putumayo and Caqueta Provinces of Colombia would deprive the FARC of a source of hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and hence its ability to make war.

"There will be peace, but first there will be war," he said in an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo. "With or without Plan Colombia, things are going to get worse."

On her trip last week, Dr. Albright offered Ecuador $15 million to help Colombian refugees. Ecuadorian leaders publicly backed Plan Colombia, despite their concerns, but Brazilian leaders told her they would not contribute to the program.

"Brazil does not have the same level of commitment as the United States in the program to fight drug trafficking in Colombia," said Brazil's foreign minister, Luiz Felipe Lampreia.

Panama, which has not had an army since the United States invasion that overthrew Gen. Manuel Noriega in 1989, has begun moving hundreds of police officers to the Colombian border and has requested $30 million from Washington to bolster efforts to defend itself from a growing number of border incursions by Colombian guerrillas, drug traffickers and coca growers.

Brazil has also begun to reinforce its long, porous border with Colombia, and is buying four French Cougar AS-532 helicopters to increase the mobility of its border patrols. Peru has moved a fleet of MI-17 helicopters from its border with Ecuador to its Colombian frontier in recent months. And Venezuela, which has long complained of Colombian guerrilla incursions, has also beefed up its border guard, which now stands at an estimated 25,000 troops.

Despite such preparations, there have been persistent reports that the Colombian guerrillas have established cordial relations with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, a populist who is critical of the United States role in Latin American affairs. This week, one of the leading commanders of the National Liberation Army, the second largest guerrilla group here, announced that his force had reached a formal agreement with Venezuela that included a cease-fire along the border.

Venezuela's foreign minister, Jose Vicente Rangel, denied that there was any agreement with the guerrilla group, "whether tacit or explicit," though he acknowledged that there had been contacts. But Mr. Rangel went on to say that his government's concerns about an escalation of the four-decade-old civil conflict in Colombia would be vigorously voiced at a meeting of Latin American presidents in Brasilia on Aug. 31, the day after President Clinton's eight-hour trip to Colombia to kick off Plan Colombia.

"There are inevitable and basic fears Venezuela shares with other neighboring countries that when this plan is put into operation there will be a flood of Colombian refugees moving toward the frontier zones," Mr. Rangel told reporters this week.

The new American-supplied and trained antinarcotics brigade will not be fully ready for combat until well into 2001. But there is already growing evidence that the guerrillas are using the remote, permeable borders of Colombia's neighbors to wage their war.

President Fujimori announced this week that Peruvian intelligence had uncovered an international arms ring that had trafficked 10,000 Russian assault rifles from Jordan through Peru and across the Colombian border to FARC units. Mr. Fujimori charged that high Jordanian military officials were involved in the operation, and among those arrested were two Peruvian military officers.

"We're concerned," Mr. Fujimori said, "that these FARC arms shipments are meant to counteract the military support the United States is now giving Colombia."

[3] Colombia Says Key to Drug Fight Is for U.S. to Tame Demand Here

The New York Times August 30, 2000 Section A; Page 1; Column 1; Foreign Desk By CLIFFORD KRAUSS CARTAGENA, Colombia

President Andres Pastrana said today that Colombia cannot put a dent in international drug trafficking until the United States and other countries do much more to control their citizens' appetite for drugs.

"Colombia can put a stop to drugs here at some point, but if the demand continues, somebody else somewhere else in the world is going to produce them," Mr. Pastrana said in an interview at a restored monastery overlooking the cannon-studded colonial walls that once protected this port from English and French pirates. "We are already getting intelligence reports of possible plantings in Africa." "What we are talking about is the most lucrative business in the world," he added, "unless the recent spike in oil prices has made it the second-most-lucrative business in the world."

To be sure, reducing the South American drug trade has proven a difficult and complex matter, and drug-producing nations have long made the same contentions. But Mr. Pastrana's wary words seemed to strike a dissonant note, coming on the eve of President Clinton's arrival here Wednesday, when the leaders are to open a $7.5 billion plan to address the spreading trafficking problem in Colombia.

The joint plan aims to cut coca plantings here by 50 percent in five years through a combination of military pressure, plant eradication and social reforms.

Mr. Clinton's visit will be the first by a United States president in 11 years, and it had been seen here as a triumph for Mr. Pastrana's presidency, now at the midpoint of his four-year term.

The plan includes $1.3 billion in aid to train and outfit a Colombian anti-drug brigade to support police efforts in eradicating coca and in halting processing and shipment of coca and cocaine in two southern provinces that are largely controlled by Colombia's largest guerrilla group.

Regional leaders have expressed fears that the plan will widen the guerrilla war and spill refugees and coca plants across the Brazilian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian borders. Mr. Clinton and Mr. Pastrana will attempt to counter those concerns with clear public commitments for more alternative agricultural development and with relief for coca growers who lose their illegal livelihoods.

Mr. Clinton tried today to ease local concerns about American intervention in a videotaped message to Colombians. "Please do not misunderstand our purpose," he said. "We have no military objective. Let me be clear about the role of the United States. First, it is not for us to propose a plan. We are supporting the Colombian plan."

As a former television journalist and the son of a former president, Mr. Pastrana has a casual charisma. But rising unemployment and stalled peace talks with Marxist rebel groups that control large areas where the drug industry is spreading have made him an unpopular president. It is not easy to be optimistic in a country where the government has lost control of half of its territory, two million people have been displaced and parents of means buy bullet-proof vests for their children.

He said he was confident that the guerrillas could be persuaded to negotiate a peace and even to encourage volunteer eradication of coca crops by peasant farmers.

He also said the United States should play a more active role in the peace efforts, to encourage the guerrillas to join the fight against drugs. State Department officials met with leaders of the country's largest guerrilla group two years ago in Costa Rica, but all contacts were broken after rebels killed three Americans last year and refused to turn over any suspects.

Mr. Pastrana said the United States could go a long way toward helping him revive a lagging economy by granting Colombia trade preferences. He suggested that Colombia could join the United States, Mexico and Canada in the North American Free Trade Agreement or that his country and the United States could enter into the special trade relationship. American officials have said that the possibility of such steps will be up to the next president and Congress.

Mr. Pastrana was also sanguine that his armed forces are working to sever their relations with marauding right-wing paramilitary bands, which have frequently massacred peasants, adding, "I am not only committed to human rights because President Clinton is committed to human rights."

Mr. Pastrana was dressed casually in a short-sleeve shirt and khaki pants, as if he were just another tourist trying to keep cool under the sweltering Caribbean sun. But in an interview that was otherwise characterized by hearty laughs and easy conversation, it was on the subject of the international drug trade that Mr. Pastrana expressed the most caution.

"There are short-term, medium-term and long-term things we can do, but I think we need more of a commitment from the world community," he said. "Maybe if we had more money, we could make more progress."

The 50 percent reduction in coca cultivation that Mr. Pastrana hopes to achieve would return Colombia to the levels of 1997. Coca production has exploded here, despite a large increase in American aid, as Peruvian and Bolivian eradication efforts made great strides. When Colombian traffickers could no longer rely on Peruvian and Bolivian sources, they began large plantings here, and the crop strains have become more potent.

The increase in Colombian plantings, in turn, has added hundreds of millions of dollars of protection money to guerrilla coffers, American and Colombian officials say, expanding rebel ranks and refueling the 40-year-old guerrilla war.

In recent months guerrillas have attacked small police detachments around the country, forcing the police to abandon scores of towns and villages.

Mr. Pastrana said the United States had come a long way from viewing the drug traffic as merely "a police problem" and to understanding it as a social disease that requires a multipronged effort to resolve. He saved his toughest words for Europe (without naming any countries).

"The perception I have of Europe," he said, "is that the Europeans like to think this problem doesn't touch them. But every day the new trafficking routes are targeting Europe. A big market is developing there."

 

[4] Ambitious Antidrug Plan For Colombia Is Faltering
The New York Times October 15, 2000 Section 1; Page 6; Column 3; Foreign Desk By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS, WASHINGTON

Three months since the United States approved a huge aid package for Colombia, the overarching $7.5 billion plan to stabilize that nation and thwart its guerrilla movements and drug traffickers is already showing signs of disarray, officials and experts say.

European nations have balked at providing donations to help Colombia address its social problems, Latin American leaders are voicing concerns about creeping United States militarism and the government of President Andres Pastrana has been reluctant to promote the plan at home or to dedicate funds to it, American officials concede. In a report to Congress this week, the General Accounting Office said "the Colombian government has not demonstrated it has the detailed plans, management structure and funding necessary" to meet the plan's goals, and international financial support from beyond the United States "has yet to materialize."

Mr. Pastrana announced the so-called Plan Colombia as an initiative of his government a year ago. But the skepticism it has met reflects a concern abroad that the plan was drafted by the United States as a way to ease its own drug crisis and not as a coherent strategy to lift Colombia from a quagmire involving two guerrilla insurgencies, right-wing death squads, a faltering economy and a crisis of confidence in government.

"They see it as something that was cooked up in Washington," said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a forum for leaders from the hemisphere. "If other countries saw this was moving in the direction of being more responsive to Colombian concerns, they would support it."

Mr. Pastrana set a goal of reducing the coca cultivation and distribution of Colombian narcotics by 50 percent over six years. Pledging $4 billion in Colombian funds to the effort, he asked for an additional $3.5 billion from the United States, Europe and multilateral lenders in order to advance Colombia's peace efforts, promote economic development and judicial reform and fight drug traffickers.

The Clinton administration in July approved $1.3 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia -- including more than a dozen Black Hawk helicopters -- to help the Colombian Army strike into southern territories under the control of drug traffickers and guerrillas.

American officials acknowledge the plan cannot succeed without international support for the "softer" programs to raise Colombians' living standards and provide alternatives to drug trafficking and war.

But European nations so far have failed to pledge funds at hoped-for levels. At a donor's conference in Madrid in July, Spain promised to contribute $100 million, and Norway pledged $20 million. The United Nations promised $131 million, and Japan and international lending institutions offered $70 million and $300 million in loans, respectively.

Europe, which is the second-largest consumer of Colombian narcotics, after the United States, is still considering its role and may announce additional funds at a follow-up to the Madrid conference on Oct. 24., diplomats said.

But one European envoy said the European Union has no intention of supporting Plan Colombia.

"The E.U. and member states are supporting the peace process in Colombia and not specifically the Plan Colombia, which is an American project," the envoy said.

Although the Clinton administration has portrayed Plan Colombia as Mr. Pastrana's work, much of it was drafted by American officials, according to people familiar with its preparation.

The plan emerged last year after Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the White House anti-narcotics coordinator -- under pressure from Congressional Republicans -- declared that Colombia was a foreign policy "emergency." He noted its steady increases in drug cultivation, the widening influence of rebels and its general potential to destabilize the region, given Colombia's position between the Panama Canal and Venezuela, the largest foreign supplier of oil to the United States.

"We've been totally naive in this process, in thinking that's going to shake loose some matching funds from the donor community," said a senior administration official. "From their perspective, this is our problem."

Mr. Pastrana, who took office on a pledge to bring peace to his country, has himself proven a lackluster champion of the plan, American officials say, and has only allocated $15 million to the project.

Analysts say Mr. Pastrana is torn between hopes that the American attention and largess could provide Colombia with a rare opportunity for foreign investment, on the one hand, and concerns, on the other, that deepening ties to the Pentagon could unleash greater violence in Colombia and possibly draw in its neighbors.

Members of Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, were suspected this week of kidnapping five American oil workers and five of their colleagues in neighboring Ecuador. The rebel group denied responsibility for the unusual cross-border operation, but Ecuadorian authorities said the guerrillas had carried it out in retaliation for Plan Colombia.

Colombia's most influential neighbors -- Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela -- last month voiced support for peace negotiations in Colombia, but pointedly refused to back the military aspect of the plan. Mr. Pastrana is now touring the region trying to broaden their endorsement.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has "reservations with respect to the military component of the Plan Colombia," said Toro Hardy, his ambassador in Washington. "It risks projecting Colombia's internal conflict into the neighboring countries."

Clinton administration officials counter that the risk of doing nothing is far greater.

"Colombia's historic neglect of the nation's outlying areas has allowed the problem to fester, and it has been exacerbated by an economic downturn of a magnitude Colombia has not seen for 70 years," said Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs.

Republican lawmakers who have vigorously pressed the administration to expand its military aid to Colombia say there are sufficient legal constraints on the American presence in that country -- including on the size and nature of training programs -- that there is little danger that American troops will get drawn into a decades-old civil war.

"Colombia does not want -- and has never asked for -- American blood to be shed on its battlefields," Representative Benjamin Gilman of New York, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said in a hearing on Colombia this week. "Let's not be fooled by that old 'it's another Vietnam' canard."

But some critics voiced concerns that the United States is allying itself with an army that has a notorious human rights record.

Amnesty International warned that increased support for Colombian security forces would result in a "humanitarian catastrophe" in the country's conflict zones.

 

[5] Rebels Linked To Drug Trade By Arrests In Colombia
The New York Times March 4, 2001 Section 1; Page 4; Column 1; Foreign Desk By LARRY ROHTER Rio de Janeiro

The capture in Colombia of the chief lieutenant and a common-law wife of Brazil's most notorious drug trafficker has exposed what authorities are describing as a flourishing guns-for-cocaine network run with Colombia's rebels.

The two, Ney Machado and Jacqueline Alcantara de Morais, were apprehended with four other Brazilians in a counternarcotics operation that the Colombian military began on Feb. 11 in the province of Guainia, which borders Brazil and is a stronghold of the rebel group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Both are wanted in Brazil on drug-trafficking charges, and the Brazilian government has asked for their extradition. Notebooks were captured with Ms. de Morais that, Colombian and Brazilian authorities say, document a recent transaction in which the rebels received more than 500 rifles and machine guns and 2,250 pistols and revolvers as well as ammunition and explosives in exchange for a shipment of cocaine.

She was also carrying a signed photograph of Luiz Fernando da Costa, boss of the Brazilian drug ring, that authorities say she was using as a passport in the rebel zone.

The arrests and the seizures of the documents, which also referred to money laundering activities, are significant because both the rebel group and its supporters in the United States and Western Europe say the rebels are not directly or actively involved in drug trafficking. The group's spokesmen have repeatedly maintained that the group merely "taxes" coca growers and that it welcomes official efforts to shift peasants away from coca cultivation.

The arrest of the Brazilians, however, bolsters the longstanding contention of Colombian military and American counternarcotics officials that the Marxist guerrillas are involved in every phase of the cocaine trade, from cultivation to distribution.

"This operation clearly demonstrates the ties between drug traffickers and the FARC," Col. Alejandro Navas of the Colombian armed forces told reporters last week.

President Andres Pastrana of Colombia has been reluctant to make such accusations, however, fearing that they could damage the peace negotiations with the rebels that his government began in November 1998. As a gesture of good faith, he granted the guerrillas control of a Switzerland-sized area, which American and Colombian military officials say is now used to process cocaine and hold kidnapping victims hostage and as a depository for weapons and chemicals.

Since January of last year, the Colombian Air Force has destroyed at least half a dozen planes with Brazilian registration after they landed in guerrilla-controlled territory outside the formal demilitarized zone with what authorities say were shipments of arms.

But Brazilian vessels are also known to sail up the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon that extends into Colombia, with arms and chemicals and to return with cocaine.

A recent Brazilian congressional investigation designated Mr. da Costa, better known here by the nickname Fernandinho Beira-Mar, or Little Freddie Seashore, in honor of the oceanside slum neighborhood where he was raised, as the country's most dangerous drug trafficker. Mr. da Costa was twice convicted and jailed in 1996, but escaped to Paraguay nine months later and is said by Brazilian authorities to have flown to the rebel-controlled territory last April.

The Brazilian police say that Mr. da Costa, operating through associates, remains the leading supplier of cocaine here. His trafficking organization is heavily armed, and, according to the police, has easy access to large stocks of weapons of all sorts that have either been smuggled from Paraguay or bought in the United States or on the local market.

Colombian and Brazilian authorities say Mr. da Costa is now under the protection of Tomas Molina Caracas, commander of the rebel group's 16th Front, which operates in two provinces bordering Brazil. Mr. Molina is said by American and Colombian officials to be one of the group's chief fund-raisers, and was cited by Peruvian authorities last year as the recipient of 10,000 machine guns that disappeared en route from Jordan to the Peruvian Army.

The operation in which the Brazilians were arrested has focused on the area around Barrancominas, a village less than 120 miles from Brazil that Mr. Molina has used as a base of operations in the past.

In commando-style raids there, Colombian troops have found airstrips, military encampments, processing laboratories and some 25,000 acres of coca fields, which they say were capable of producing two tons of cocaine a week.

 

[6] In Twist, Rebels Help Drug Effort In Colombia
The New York Times May 2, 2001 Section A; Page 5; Column 1; Foreign Desk By JUAN FORERO GAITANIA, Colombia

The warnings were dire as President Andres Pastrana's government, flush with American money, began an ambitious plan late last year that called on farmers to eradicate fields of coca and heroin poppies in exchange for economic aid.

Many officials in Bogota and Washington said the rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia might resort to threats and even violence to stop farmers from cooperating. Rebel taxes on illegal crops are a major revenue source that helps finance rebel operations. But late in April, here in the cloud-shrouded mountains where the rebel force, known as FARC, was born in 1964, farmers agreed in principle to replace poppy fields with legal crops in exchange for subsidies and technical assistance. Rebel leaders from this region of southern Tolima Province watched closely as a letter of intent, the first step toward an agreement, was signed with officials.

"They said we would not let the farmers cultivate their own crops," said a rebel leader who is in the political wing and was involved in discussions.

"But we don't reject help just because it is from the state," said the leader, whose nom de guerre is Marta. "We just want to be able to see the state support the farmers."

Although the revolutionary armed forces have not used violence to halt voluntary eradication, the rebels are apparently deeply involved in talks between the government and farmers, said local officials and farmers.

"They seem to be getting more involved, to see if something works, if it does not," said Ruben Dario Gomez, who heads a farmers' cooperative. "They say that if something is happening in an area they control, they want to be involved. Everyone knows it."

Local officials said that in meetings rebels give opinions, offer suggestions and, in some cases, shape programs. Agreements, including the one here, are forwarded to top rebel commanders for approval.

"The FARC has its positions, its own criteria, in regard to discussions about these farmers' fields," said Gerardo Montoya, a provincial official involved in the negotiations. "In the points they made, they said that the people had been cheated before and that the state has never had a presence here."

Much of the rebels' concern, said those who attended meetings, was directed at Plante, the agency that uses money from a $42 million American grant for what are called alternative development programs. The programs are intended to give farmers a year to stop their illicit crops in exchange for $900 in seeds, pesticides and technical aid to help switch crops. The government has also promised to market products and build public works.

The rebels, however, see Plante as a tool of an American policy that counts on extensive fumigation to eradicate most of the illegal crops here. In interviews here and in the coca-growing heartland of Putumayo Province, farmers also said the agency had reneged on past agreements.

The quality control coordinator for Plante, Joaquin Gomez, disagreed, saying the agency had forged bonds with farmers. He also said the rebel force had not been an impediment. "We've been able to come in," said Mr. Gomez, who was at the meetings here. "We have had access to all the zones."

Still, among some negotiators here the sense remained that the rebels could have halted the letter of intent. That is worrisome to people like Hoover Mora, a town councilman who said the rebels' forceful comments left open the possibility that they would take punitive steps.

"They say they will not stop the program," Mr. Mora said. "But they are getting involved in the oversight, and I think that is a big contradiction."

Some experts on the rebels said they were in a difficult position because they had to choose between allowing eradication and losing financing or stopping eradication programs popular with farmers and risking alienating their base of support.

 

[7] U.S. Pilots Fight Coca in Colombia
The New York Times August 17, 2001 Section A; Page 8; Column 1; Foreign Desk By JUAN FORERO BOGOTA, Colombia

He was flying just above the tree line, moments after spraying herbicide on a patch of coca, when the machine-gun fire hit. Eight bullets, probably fired by leftist rebels or drug traffickers, struck the fuselage and tail, knocking out the radio as the cockpit filled with smoke.

But the pilot, an American under contract in an anti-drug plan that has brought dozens of private citizens into Colombia's drug war, said he knew such attacks went with the job. "Suddenly, you start managing the airplane like you have in the past and have trained for," said the pilot, a 44-year-old Southerner named Mark. "The armor really kept the bullets away from me. There were armor plates under my seat that were damaged. That's where wire bundles were cut that caused the electronics to fail."

In the first interviews among Americans working under a State Department contract in Colombia, a group of pilots spoke today of their experiences spraying fields of coca and heroin poppies that are often guarded by leftist rebels. The Americans, three pilots and a supervisor, agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their full names not be published, for fear of retaliation by traffickers or rebels.

The pilots, who have spent years flying commercial crop-dusters in the United States, played down the risks here. They view the danger as minimal, they said, because their missions here are well-planned operations using high-tech aircraft, advanced electronics systems and armed escorts, in case their planes are shot down or malfunction.

"There's always the possibility that something can go wrong at any minute," said Thomas, 50, a Texan who flies search-and-rescue helicopters that aid pilots who encounter trouble. "The guys out there, they're trained professionals, and that's what they get paid to do -- to be there should something go wrong."

The comments, made during a casual roundtable with two American reporters in Bogota, the capital, came after harsh criticism among some lawmakers on Capitol Hill who feel the United States-financed antidrug program is too heavily reliant on private contractors, particularly pilots who fly spray planes and the helicopters serving as escorts. The four Americans work for Dyncorp, a Reston, Va., military contractor that is operating here under a five-year, $170 million contract. Dyncorp employs 335 civilians here, about half of them Americans.

Under the $1.3 billion anti-drug aid package that the United States approved last year to cut into Colombia's huge drug crop, no more than 300 American contractors can work here. As of late July, 194 American civilians were working in Colombia, as pilots, mechanics, radar operators, trainers and logistics experts.

The limit is likely to be reached by December, as helicopters and spray aircraft continue arriving, Ambassador Anne Patterson told reporters in July. The Americans will be needed to fly the planes and to serve as instructors for Colombian helicopter pilots, and as mechanics.

Some on Capitol Hill are considering whether to allow the number of contractors to increase beyond 300, as the Bush administration has requested. The House has so far placed strict limits on what the White House can do.

"The administration obviously wants to have maximum flexibility to implement their policy, and Congress clearly wants the administration policy in check," said Michael Shifter, a Colombia expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

The prospect that the number of private contractors could rise has alarmed some American officials. Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, has proposed banning the practice of contracting private citizens for dangerous jobs in Colombia, saying secrecy makes it difficult to hold people accountable.

"You look at some of the individuals who are involved, you find that they have been involved in covert activities for years," said Ms. Schakowsky. "I'm not comfortable with the lack of transparency, whether it is with the company or with the individuals with those companies."

Criticism of the contractors prompted American officials to permit the four Americans to talk about their backgrounds, their reason for flying in Colombia and the dangers they face.

The Americans said the chance at year-round work with benefits -- as opposed to seasonal flying in the United States -- prompted them to look into help-wanted advertisements in trade journals that sought pilots for Colombia.

Indeed, Bob, 47, a Texan who is married and has three children, said the chance to come to Colombia has given him career stability. In the United States, aerial application, as the pilots call their job, often means weeks of constant travel in search of work, he explained.

Working in Colombia, he said, is "guaranteed employment for as long as you're here, and it's not commission work." Bob, who has been here six years, said the pilots are paid "flat salaries and benefits, so there is that element of security that we don't typically have as contractors in the U.S."

The Dyncorp pilots are also well paid, earning at least $75,000 a year; some make over $90,000, and are able to rotate out of Colombia for weeks at a time to be with their families. In the United States, in contrast, spray pilots earn as little as $40,000 (though some earn much more).

The Americans said they were angered by a report in Semana, a respected weekly here, that quoted an unnamed Colombian police official as saying "the majority of them are high consumers of drugs" and "inject themselves before flying." The report painted them as mercenaries and called them "godless Rambos."

"We associate mercenaries with something out of the Congo in the early 1960's," said Keith, 44, the supervisor. "We find the mercenary comment quite out of context."

He explained that the pilots are subject to random drug tests and must pass stringent physical and psychological tests to work in the program. For them, working here under contract is not much different than working under contract to spray insecticides in American national parks or laying seeds over Texas fields.

The pilots went to great pains to play down the danger inherent in a job that requires long flights into sparsely populated regions controlled by rebels.

Bob noted that he had been shot at once while flying in the United States, by an irate farmer who was awakened by the sound of the plane. Mark said his wife understood because "she knew I enjoyed flying." The pilots also noted that they do not have search-and-rescue teams accompanying them in the United States.

Of course, in the United States there is no need for search-and-rescue teams because rebels with AK-47 assault rifles are not shooting at them. Indeed two pilots have been shot down here in recent years, both Colombians; one died. And three Americans have been killed when they crashed, once in 1997 and two the following year.

For the pilots, the deaths are sobering. But they say they try not to think of the danger.

"For me the adventure has long wore off," said Mark, who is married and has a child. "It is a back-and-forth business, as we call it. It really just becomes like it is at home: you're out there applying a chemical to a crop. You're concentrating on doing the work that you know how to do."