"A Transfer Of Power In Colombia Paramilitary's Rise Unintended Outcome Of U.S. Assistance"

By Scott Wilson

Washington Post Foreign Service

December 27, 2001

PARAISO, Colombia -- It is hard to imagine a place more misnamed than this

village in northern Colombia's San Lucas Range. Paradise has had a difficult

year.

Months ago, President Andres Pastrana sent the army into Paraiso and the

surrounding region to create a safe haven for peace talks with Colombia's

second-largest guerrilla force. It was a politically risky move. Pastrana's

orders to the army were unusual: Leave the guerrillas mostly alone, but

focus on driving the right-wing paramilitary forces out of southern Bolivar

province, where they had massed to block the peace plan.

The army did not carry out Pastrana's orders. Instead, it appeared to work

in tandem with the paramilitary forces to drive the guerrillas deep into

the jungle-covered mountains. Three times since then, paramilitary forces

have burned Paraiso to the ground. On Dec. 9, after crossing the clear

stream west of town and ransacking stores and destroying the health clinic,

they killed four men with machetes and left the warning that anyone caught

trying to rebuild the ruined village would die the same way.

The destruction of Paraiso is another sign of the rising power this year

of rightist paramilitary forces in Colombia, a development that is

altering the strategic balance in the country after four decades of civil

war. Although the paramilitary force is listed by the State Department as a

terrorist organization, Western diplomats following the conflict describe

its growing reach as an unintended byproduct of a U.S. program to strengthen

Colombia's armed forces, which frequently work alongside the paramilitary

groups. The paramilitary forces, once a collection of armed groups sponsored

by wealthy landowners, have become a national movement and the most potent

new dimension in Colombia's civil war.

During Operation Bolivar, diplomats said they petitioned U.S. officials in

Bogota to threaten to withhold U.S. aid from the Colombian armed forces

unless Pastrana's orders were carried out. But that message was clouded by

differences of opinion in Congress and the Bush administration over the

value of creating a safe haven for a Marxist-led guerrilla group and was

never delivered, according to Western diplomats here working to end the war.

"We all should do more to use both moral and material pressure to curb

paramilitary violence, which is the most rapidly growing cause of civilian

suffering," said Jan Egeland, the U.N. secretary general's special envoy

for peace in Colombia who is leaving at the end of the year. "What happened

in Bolivar shows that the killers can go on and on and on killing innocent

civilians and not face any consequences."

The nature of U.S. involvement in Colombia's war has been an unresolved

question since Congress approved a $1.3 billion, mostly military aid

package last year. The helicopters, military training and herbicide

spraying included in the package were to be narrowly focused on Colombia's

drug trade, keeping the U.S. outside the fight against the rebels. But

because the drug trade is so intertwined with the civil war, the United

States has assumed a central role not only in counter-narcotics strategy

but also in the far more complicated issues of war and peace.

So far this year, aerial herbicide spraying has killed more than 180,000

acres of coca, the key ingredient in the production of cocaine. A U.S.

official here said "that is tons and tons of cocaine that has been kept

off our streets." But a development program designed to coax small farmers

to grow legal crops as an alternative to coca has been slow in arriving,

so much of the coca has been replanted in the same locations.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials have hailed the success of three U.S.-trained

anti-drug battalions in the Colombian army that have destroyed hundreds

of processing labs. By summer, the number of spray planes in use will

rise from 10 to 25, and more than a dozen U.S.-donated Black Hawk

helicopters will be deployed, prompting the U.S. official to predict that

"we will then be killing coca faster than they are able to replant."

The money and diplomatic support have been felt most squarely by the

130,000-member military, which has seen its prestige and hardware

upgraded by the stepped-up U.S. involvement. However, the military's

rising fortunes and the increased pressure on the country's oldest

guerrilla movements -- major targets of the anti-narcotics campaign --

have proven to be a boon for the paramilitary groups.

The shifting balance has even allowed the paramilitary forces to take

over some coca areas once dominated by the guerrillas. Drug profits are

helping them pay troop salaries, buy arms and recruit members from the

growing pool of unemployed Colombians.

Rising Popular Support

During the past year, the main paramilitary organization, the United

Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, has deepened its territorial

gains with a right-of-center political agenda. According to its leaders,

AUC ranks have grown from 8,000 to 14,000 combatants. Once backed mostly

by wealthy business and ranching interests and former military leaders,

it now enjoys increasing support among rich and poor Colombians, public

opinion polls show.

The AUC is also the country's leading author of civilian massacres,

according to Colombia's Defense Ministry. More than 1,000 civilians

have been killed this year by the AUC, compared with 18 in 1995,

according to the Defense Ministry, and its strategy of depriving

guerrillas of supplies and intelligence has helped cause the

displacement of 2 million people.

The AUC's principal guerrilla adversary is the Revolutionary Armed

Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which coalesced in 1964 from a group of

rural protection squads, and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, which

is more ideologically Marxist than the FARC but is weaker militarily.

The FARC, which has an estimated 18,000 members, derives significant

financial support from taxing the drug trade in areas it controls. Both

groups, like the AUC, are on the State Department list of terrorist

organizations.

While U.S. officials describe their aid package as "a plan to get dope

off of our streets," Pastrana continues to view Plan Colombia -- a $7.5

billion initiative that primarily invests in social development projects

-- principally as a peace plan designed to deprive the FARC of its

drug-fueled war financing. Since taking office promising to end the war,

Pastrana has chosen a controversial approach to peace negotiations, one

that places tracts of land under guerrilla control to create venues for

those talks.

His decision in late 1998 to give the FARC a Switzerland-size patch of

southern jungle as a step toward peace negotiations has, so far, yielded

little more than a prisoner exchange agreement and mounting friction

between his government and Washington as public support for the process

fades.

Drug Trade and War

The overlapping relationship between the civil war and the campaign

against drugs is starkly evident in the southern province of Putumayo.

In villages such as El Tigre, paramilitary forces have taken control of

territory vacated by retreating guerrillas pressured by the anti-drug

offensive.

One recent evening in El Tigre, 50 paramilitary recruits were working,

in plain sight, through a month-long military training course. At the

beginning of the year here in western Putumayo, where the U.S.-trained

anti-drug brigade has been most active, the FARC controlled these

coca-filled valleys. Today Commander Enrique, the AUC leader in western

Putumayo, sleeps in the same complex of wood-plank houses in which the

FARC village militia lived.

Enrique said that whereas the FARC charged a $200 tax per kilo of coca

base, his men take $50. The FARC has hit herbicide spray planes with

180 rounds of ammunition this year and has shot down one helicopter;

the AUC does not fire on aircraft.

Throughout the year, the AUC has increasingly relied on drug proceeds

to fund its expansion, according to Colombia's national police and U.S.