Money, men needed to defeat guerrillas

                      BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

                      Colombia's military has grown much stronger in recent years and is now better
                      prepared than ever to battle leftist FARC guerrillas, but it is still too acutely short of
                      too many things to win the war, analysts say.

                      The swift success of the armed forces in the intensified fighting last week did little to
                      refute analysts' assessments that they will need far more men, weapons and money if
                      they are to have any hope of conquering one of the largest guerrilla groups in Latin
                      American history -- 17,500 fighters richly financed from drug smuggling, kidnapping
                      and extortion. Most likely, the aid will have to come from the United States,
                      Colombia's main foreign supporter.

                      The military's war-fighting abilities will be challenged as never before since President Andrés Pastrana broke off
                      three years of futile peace talks with the FARC on Wednesday and ordered his troops to recapture the
                      Switzerland-sized territory he had ceded the rebels in 1998 as an inducement to negotiate.

                      ''They are quite capable of doing what they have to do, but on the other hand they are short of an awful lot,'' said
                      Tom Marks, author of a study of the Colombian military published last month by the U.S. Army War College.

                      Troops immediately occupied the main towns in the territory in southern Colombia as war aircraft pounded
                      suspected positions of the FARC, the Spanish acronym for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Pastrana
                      visited the zone Saturday and spoke to thousands in San Vicente de Caguan's plaza, as the army's invasion and
                      the air force's bombing continued in the surrounding area.

                      ''The people are ready for peace,'' Pastrana said at the close of his visit.

                      The 150,000-member armed forces and 110,000-strong National Police have come a long way since 1996, when
                      seven devastating FARC attacks left them demoralized and at times even on the verge of defeat. Between April
                      1996 and August 1998, FARC rebels killed at least 220 soldiers and police and captured another 221. A Gallup poll
                      in late 1998 showed 59 percent of Colombians felt the military could not defeat the rebels.

                      But even as Pastrana was launching peace talks with the FARC, his bright, young defense minister, Luis Fernando
                      Ramírez, was restructuring the military to cut the fat, add muscle and modernize.

                      BETTER PAY, GEAR

                      Although the $1.3 billion in U.S. aid approved in 2000 was largely tagged for counter-drug operations, it allowed
                      Ramírez to use more of his own funds to fight the FARC and the 3,500-strong National Liberation Army (ELN).

                      Draft call-ups dropped and career soldiers -- with increased training and experience -- rose from 22,000 in 1998
                      to 53,000 last summer as the military hiked salaries and benefits, according to Defense Ministry reports.

                      Combat and transport helicopters rose from 144 to 253 -- critical for an insurgency war in a mountainous and
                      jungled country 10 times the size of Florida -- and the government bought 60,000 new Israeli Galil assault rifles to
                      arm even traffic policemen.

                      STRIKE FORCE

                      The army detached some of its 60 counter-guerrilla battalions to form a 4,000-strong Rapid Reaction Force,
                      established three U.S.-trained battalions to fight the cocaine and heroin industries and equipped five ''ghost
                      planes,'' ancient turboprops retrofitted with heavy machine guns and infrared radar for night operations.

                      Most of the military's current top leaders served in the counter-insurgency units, said Marks, so ``you've got the
                      actual war fighters in charge, and therefore the entire body is quite capable of fighting.''

                      With U.S. funds, the armed forces and police also established a joint intelligence center in the capital, Bogotá, that
                      served to ease inter-service rivalries and increase air-land-sea coordination in operations.

                      Last year, the government approved $234 million for the purchase of new aircraft, from U.S.-made Black Hawk
                      helicopters to ground-attack and intelligence gathering planes.

                      Ramírez also brought to the Defense Ministry two dozen young civilian accountants and technicians, known as ''the
                      yuppies,'' who modernized the bureaucracy and freed pencil-pushers to join combat units.

                      By late 1999, the military was on the mend. When the FARC sent 320 recruits into the northern Santander region,
                      the soldiers were ready: They killed 71 and captured 136 in what ranks as their most successful operation in
                      years.

                      Despite the new muscle, however, analysts say the Colombian military remains far too small, not mobile enough
                      and so short of money that the air force sometimes runs out of jet fuel.

                      ''They've made progress, but so has the FARC. The balance is still not as favorable as it should be,'' said Michael
                      Shifter, an expert on Colombia and senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank.

                      While most insurgency war experts believe that a military needs a numerical advantage of 10 to 20-to-one over
                      guerrillas, Colombia has less than an 8-to-1 advantage over the FARC and the ELN.

                      The military has only .14 soldiers per square kilometer, compared to El Salvador's 2.37 at the end of that nation's
                      civil war. El Salvador also had 60 helicopters at that point while Colombia, 50 times larger than the Central
                      American nation, has only four times as many.

                      ''Although they are certainly better positioned than they were a couple of years ago, I don't think there's
                      confidence that they can do what has to be done because they have to deal with a formidable force,'' Shifter said.

                      The FARC grew from an estimated 10,000 fighters in 1995 to 17,500 today, plus some 5,000 urban militias, now
                      operating in about half the nation's 1,100 municipalities.

                      It is now one of the richest guerrilla forces ever seen in Latin America, earning an estimated $200 million a year
                      by protecting every step of the drug trade plus even higher amounts from ransomed kidnappings and
                      shake-downs.

                      A single purchase in 1999 is known to have brought them at least 4,500 AK-47 assault rifles, and unlike many
                      other guerrillas the FARC can afford to buy or make olive green uniforms for all its fighters.

                      Their safe zone in southern Colombia allowed them to recruit and train almost at will, sometimes with outside help
                      such as the three Irish Republican Army militants captured by police last summer.

                      Marks said the overall balance of the Colombian war -- a strong military, but poor in cash and equipment, fighting
                      a large and rich but relatively unpopular guerrilla force -- lends itself to the kind of fix that Washington can
                      provide.

                      ''Their greatest weakness lies in the equipment area, which should be easy for the United States to resolve, along
                      with some very specific inputs in fields such as intelligence and training,'' he said.

                      ''But they have a long way to go before they see daylight,'' he added.