Colombian Government Agrees Conflict Has Other Causes

                  By Karen DeYoung
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
 

                  VILLA NUEVA COLOMBIA—For nearly 40 years, Colombians rarely
                  saw the faces of the men who run the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
                  Colombia, the country's most powerful guerrilla group. Today, they are
                  hard to avoid.

                  Manuel Marulanda, the rumpled, 69-year-old founder of the FARC, as it
                  is known by its initials in Spanish, appears regularly in the Colombian
                  media, meeting with government officials and business leaders here in the
                  Switzerland-size demilitarized zone the government has turned over to the
                  rebels as a venue for peace talks.

                  Bearded, bespectacled Raul Reyes, another member of the seven-man
                  FARC leadership, began a recent interview by inviting e-mail messages to
                  his Hotmail account. Commander Joaquin Gomez promised to introduce
                  foreign visitors to local peasants growing coca, the raw material of cocaine.
                  Reyes, Gomez and other rebel leaders calmly discussed the finer points of
                  peace and their objections to a proposed $1.6 billion emergency U.S. aid
                  package that could bring Washington deeper into Colombia's civil war.

                  But there is a through-the-looking-glass quality to life inside the
                  demilitarized zone. Outside, in the rest of Colombia, the guerrillas have
                  stepped up a campaign of killing, kidnapping and extortion. According to
                  the government, they "assassinated" 42 police officers and 39 soldiers in
                  the first three months of this year. The FARC continues to reject a
                  cease-fire. And it is making more money than ever from cocaine smuggled
                  to the United States.

                  It is concern over the drug connection that the Clinton administration says
                  motivates its aid proposal, approved largely intact last month by the House
                  of Representatives but now having a rough ride in the Senate. Most of the
                  aid, which represents a major escalation of U.S. involvement in Colombia,
                  is intended to train and equip special military and police forces to move
                  into remote, coca-growing areas in the southern part of the country,
                  fumigate the drug crops and establish a permanent government presence.

                  Although the United States has no declared quarrel with the guerrillas, as
                  long as they don't interfere with the anti-drug campaign, most of the areas
                  targeted for U.S. aid are under FARC control. And officials such as White
                  House drug policy director Barry R. McCaffrey, the administration's chief
                  salesman for the Colombia aid package, routinely describe the rebels as
                  indistinguishable from drug traffickers. McCaffrey calls the FARC "the
                  narco-insurgents, narco-guerrillas, narco-terrorists."

                  "There's no question about what's happening down there," McCaffrey said
                  at a congressional hearing last month. The war in Colombia is simply
                  "struggling over money out of drug production."

                  The administration's allies in Colombia wince at such language. While
                  lobbying desperately for the U.S. aid, they say the violence tearing apart
                  the country has deeper roots than the drug trade that fuels it. The drug war
                  and the civil war in Colombia may have common fronts, Colombians say,
                  but they have different long-term solutions, especially as related to the
                  guerrillas.

                  In peace talks started last year, President Andres Pastrana has attempted
                  to make the FARC part of the solution, offering it a voice in formulating
                  wide-ranging reforms and an opportunity to participate in the political
                  process--a strategy for which there is historical precedent. At least once a
                  week, senior Colombian officials fly from Bogota to the town of San
                  Vicente del Caguan, and drive into the hills to this government-built village
                  they have christened New Colombia. If all goes as scheduled, the reform
                  plan will be completed and put to a vote nationwide 18 months from now.

                  The negotiations imply that the government has decided to take the FARC
                  at its word when it promises to help eliminate coca production as long as
                  the peasants it claims to represent are protected, given money and trained
                  to develop an alternative crop. But the Colombian government says it
                  recognizes that its approach reflects a broader agenda than that of its
                  American backers, and envisions a role for the FARC that few in
                  Washington seem prepared to acknowledge.

                  "In American terms," said Jaime Ruiz, in charge of overall implementation
                  of Plan Colombia, the government reform program that includes U.S.
                  military aid, "they want to see the problems of Colombia through the prism
                  of El Salvador, or human rights, or guerrillas, or left versus right. Or
                  through the prism of drugs--that the guerrillas are narco-traffickers and the
                  problem is drugs."

                  European Tour

                  Earlier this year, several FARC commanders embarked on an
                  unprecedented tour of European capitals accompanied by their negotiating
                  counterparts in the government. After years of isolation, members of the
                  FARC delegation resembled Rip Van Winkle when they described their
                  encounter with modern social democracy.

                  "The most important thing that we saw . . . is that there is a really good
                  relationship among the state, the private sector and the workers," Raul
                  Reyes recalled. "Because there is tolerance. There is income distribution.
                  There is money to spend on the unemployed, on the illiterate, the homeless.
                  There is medical attention, and enough hospitals. There are subsidies for
                  those who work the land. In Colombia, it's just the opposite."

                  Like most of its contemporaries among 20th century Latin American
                  guerrilla groups, the FARC was born in the convergence of domestic
                  politics and the Cold War. According to revolutionary lore, Marulanda
                  took to the hills of southern Colombia with 48 fellow peasants in 1964,
                  after their demands for local autonomy and development aid were met with
                  repression. The repression was funded in part under a U.S. program.

                  Unlike its contemporaries, the FARC neither sought nor received much
                  ideological or financial input from the Soviet Union or Cuba. Instead, it
                  owed its survival to the fact that Colombian governments, and their military
                  forces, were largely bound to the cities and the more wealthy agricultural
                  areas and rarely came after them. For sustenance, the rebels extorted
                  money from the wealthy and threatened isolated large landowners.

                  In exchange for fealty and recruits, they offered peasants the promise of
                  eventual political power and, more immediately, protection from the
                  government and from the growing "self-defense" paramilitary organizations
                  that today are the guerrillas' most brutal and, in some cases, effective
                  adversaries.

                  The FARC's political agenda, a 10-point plan that talks about land
                  distribution, social benefits and political access for the rural poor, has
                  changed little in nearly four decades. "It's very clear in its fundamental
                  principles--the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor--and very
                  ambiguous in its details," said Daniel Garcia-Pena, who served as peace
                  commissioner under the government that preceded Pastrana's.

                  Despite an early alliance with the Colombian Communist Party, the FARC
                  has always been an essentially rural movement that attracted few of the
                  university intellectuals and liberal theologians who flocked to more
                  doctrinaire guerrilla groups.

                  "They still say they're Marxist-Leninist," said Garcia-Pena. "But it's like
                  religion. It's like saying you're a Catholic, but you get an abortion and don't
                  go to church."

                  According to Reyes, "Marxism is a guide, not a dogma," along with the
                  liberation philosophy of Colombia's first president, Simon Bolivar.

                  As the FARC grew in strength over the decades, there were periodic
                  cease-fires and peace negotiations, most of which fell apart due to guerrilla
                  intransigence or, more often, government betrayal. During the 1980s, the
                  FARC attempted to enter the political process as part of a leftist coalition,
                  but thousands of its candidates and adherents were killed. While others
                  point out that the FARC continued armed combat throughout this period,
                  few dispute its basic analysis of what happened.

                  The years of isolation have created a sort of time warp for rebel leaders.
                  During one meeting not too long ago, a Western diplomat said, "they
                  started the discussion talking about United Fruit," the Boston-based
                  company that during the 1950s and 1960s was the symbol of controlling
                  U.S. economic interests in Central America. The company has gone out of
                  business, its influence replaced by cooperative local ownership and
                  international trade agreements.

                  "They have a lack of understanding of the 21st century world, and where
                  Colombia fits in," the diplomat said.

                  "We're looking for a model," Reyes said of the European tour. "Something
                  we can apply here in Colombia. . . . We also want to find out more about
                  Latin America, and we'd like to go to the United States, and to Canada."

                  Although the FARC is on the U.S. government's list of terrorist
                  organizations, a Clinton administration official met with the guerrillas in late
                  1998, at the Pastrana government's request. Reyes and fellow guerrilla
                  Olga Marin, traveled to Costa Rica for sessions with Phillip T. Chicola, the
                  State Department's director of Andean affairs.

                  "They wanted to tell us they are not narco-guerrillas, and that they want
                  peace," said an administration official familiar with the talks. The
                  Americans, the official said, responded that they supported Pastrana's
                  peace process, and that Colombian democracy and an end to terrorism
                  were not negotiable.

                  Reyes told Chicola the FARC wanted to set up back-channel
                  communications with the Americans. Telephone numbers and e-mail
                  addresses were exchanged.

                  The first chance to use them came in March last year, when three
                  American humanitarian workers disappeared in northeastern Colombia.
                  Chicola sent an e-mail message to Marin, who called him at home to say
                  she knew nothing of the disappearances. Several days later, according to
                  the administration official, the FARC acknowledged they had the
                  Americans; a week later, Marin told Chicola the Americans would be
                  released.

                  The next day, the three bodies were found just inside Venezuela.

                  When the FARC official called back, Chicola said that unless those
                  responsible for the deaths were brought to justice, there was nothing more
                  to discuss. Later, the FARC announced it had detained several low-level
                  guerrillas. The FARC has sent further e-mail messages, but administration
                  officials say they have gone unanswered.

                  Army Outmaneuvered

                  What it may lack in political sophistication, the FARC makes up for in its
                  ability to surprise and outmaneuver the conscript-heavy and poorly trained
                  and motivated Colombian Army.

                  Last month's FARC attack on the small town of Vigia del Fuerte, 230
                  miles north of Bogota, was a classic rebel operation--a surprise assault on
                  a lightly defended, isolated garrison with few, if any, guerrilla casualties.
                  The army said 21 police officers and nine civilians died. The civilians,
                  including the mayor and two young children, apparently were victims of the
                  "gas bombs" favored by the guerrillas--homemade mortars that fire a
                  propane tank through a length of pipe stolen from an oil pipeline. Many of
                  the police officers were reportedly killed with a single bullet to the head.

                  Holding the FARC leadership directly responsible for the deaths, army
                  commander Gen. Jorge Enrique Mora lashed out in a press statement that
                  reflected the military's ambivalence about the government's negotiating
                  strategy. "These are the same people that the most important leaders of the
                  country are seen embracing on television," Mora said.

                  The FARC has grown to an estimated 15,000 armed combatants.
                  Although government officials acknowledge their own tactics have driven
                  peasants willingly into the arms of the guerrillas, and the rebels' pay is
                  reportedly attractive, the FARC's ranks also include some who are
                  teenagers, and there are increasingly widespread reports of forced
                  recruitment.

                  Unquestioned political leadership comes directly from the organization's
                  secretariat, and the FARC has long been known for its hierarchical
                  discipline. But with evermore far-flung units--there are now at least 60
                  combat "fronts," each with at least 150 guerrillas, organized under eight
                  regional blocs--outsiders see local commanders as increasingly and
                  alarmingly autonomous.

                  Each front is assessed a regular monetary contribution by the central office,
                  but it is largely up to local commanders to determine where the money
                  comes from. Although some outsiders who deal regularly with the guerrillas
                  say the leadership frowns on indiscriminate kidnapping for ransom, there
                  has been no public criticism from on high.

                  The leadership denies any loss of control over its troops. "We are a
                  revolutionary organization that has control over all its units," said Reyes.
                  Those who imply otherwise, "are trying to justify more U.S. aid."

                  But the FARC acknowledges that the killing of the American civilians last
                  year was "a mistake . . . one of the things that happens in war, like the U.S.
                  bombing of the Chinese Embassy" last year in Belgrade, said Gomez. "One
                  of our commandos killed them. We've acknowledged this to the world,
                  and we've apologized to the American people."

                  Although much of the FARC's weaponry is seized from government
                  forces, the central leadership handles bulk weapons purchases, usually
                  from Central American black markets. To the ongoing puzzlement of U.S.
                  intelligence, which prepares twice-yearly assessments of FARC strength,
                  the guerrillas have remained low-tech.

                  "They tend to be dressed better, trained better, paid better and armed
                  better than the Colombian army," a senior U.S. official closely involved
                  with the proposed aid package said. Guerrilla troops on guard duty around
                  this village on a recent visit were in crisp camouflage uniforms, armed with
                  knives and machetes and a variety of automatic rifles--U.S.-made
                  AR-15s, Israeli Galils, Soviet-designed AK-47s.

                  "If they're making as much money . . . as everyone says they are . . .
                  they're certainly making enough to buy some decent mortars" or
                  surface-to-air missiles, said the U.S. official. But with the limited
                  effectiveness of the Colombian military, he said, the FARC's current
                  arsenal seems to be "good enough for their purposes."

                  Fueled by Drug Money

                  The FARC predated the cocaine industry in Colombia, and most
                  Colombians believe the rebels are capable of surviving its demise. But the
                  money that flowed from the expansion of the drug business was like jet fuel
                  to virtually all parties fighting on the war's multiple fronts.

                  Since the mid-1970s, frequently shifting alliances, and the rise and fall of
                  the major drug cartels, brought the traffickers together with the FARC and
                  other, smaller, guerrilla organizations as well as with the military and the
                  paramilitary groups fighting the insurgents.

                  A bonanza fell into the FARC's lap in the 1990s, when successful anti-drug
                  programs closed down much of the coca cultivation in nearby Peru and
                  Bolivia. Traffickers moved their crops into the remote, government-free
                  areas of southern Colombia that have long been the FARC's home base.

                  For the guerrillas, whose political identity is tied to representing the
                  peasantry, coca was lucrative for all concerned. But the FARC insists it is
                  a limited business relationship.

                  The FARC's overall interests "are basically incompatible with the
                  narco-traffickers," Reyes said. "They work with the army to kill
                  progressive people. We charge them a tax. We don't do them any favors,
                  and they don't do us any.

                  "In Caqueta, Guaviare and Putumayo," three southern Colombia
                  provinces, Reyes said, "the economic base is coca, so that's what we
                  tax--not the traffickers directly, but their intermediaries. In other regions . .
                  . we tax the cattle ranchers, the sugar growers, the businesses."

                  Gomez described what he called the "dialectic" of drug trafficking:

                  "As long as there is someone consuming it, there is going to be someone
                  selling it. And as long as somebody is prepared to sell it, there is going to
                  be someone to grow it," he said. The problem with Americans, he said, is
                  that "they make no distinction between the narco-traffickers, the
                  Colombian peasants who grow coca leaves as their only way of surviving,
                  and the insurgency."

                  "We invite any American to come to the coca-growing sector," Gomez
                  said. "We'll take full responsibility for their security--they can talk to the
                  peasants, ask them why they grow coca, what they make from it, who they
                  sell it to, how it's processed."

                  "When the [fumigation] helicopters come," he said, "we shoot at them. We
                  disagree with the whole idea of fumigation. . . . It's killing not only the coca
                  but everything else." The result, he said, is that a peasant farmer whose five
                  acres of coca are sprayed simply moves on to five more acres, many times
                  destroying virgin jungle.

                  Besides, said Reyes, "they're the same helicopters that come to bomb us."

                  Despite the view of some leading officials in Washington, outsiders who
                  frequent the coca-growing areas say the FARC's role in the cocaine
                  industry, with some exceptions, is largely as its leaders describe it.

                  "The guerrillas are something different than the traffickers," said Klaus
                  Nyholm, who runs the U.N. Drug Control Program in Colombia.
                  Representatives of the U.N. agency, along with Colombia's rural
                  development agency, travel into coca-growing regions and the much
                  smaller highland areas where heroin-producing opium poppies are
                  cultivated to persuade small farmers to switch to other crops and give them
                  the money and tools to do so.

                  In some areas, Nyholm said, FARC units are more intimately involved with
                  cocaine processing and export than the leadership admits. "It's far from
                  general, but we've seen it. . . . The local fronts are quite autonomous. But
                  in some areas, they're not involved at all. And in others, they actively tell
                  the farmers not to grow" coca.

                  "I wouldn't use the term 'narco-guerrillas,' " he said. "I still consider the . . .
                  guerrillas political. They need the money to finance their war."

                  Ready for Talks

                  Asked why the FARC, having done so well on the battlefield, would now
                  want to talk peace, Reyes says only that "we have come to the conclusion
                  that we have to solve [Colombia's] problems through negotiations."

                  Other Colombians have a more cynical view--that after nearly 40 years in
                  the jungle, the guerrillas will only give up when they decide they can't win.
                  The guerrillas' primary goal, said political analyst Alfredo Rangel, remains
                  "taking complete power. Second best is peace negotiations" that would
                  provide political and economic reform, and a share of power. The final
                  decision, Rangel said, "will be made the day before they sign a peace
                  agreement."

                  But even Rangel believes a deal eventually will be struck. "Colombians kill
                  each other at the drop of a hat," he said.

                  "But they also make agreements," he said, referring to the negotiated end
                  of a 1945-65 period of political violence that resulted in 300,000 deaths.

                  "One day, they said, 'Enough. Okay, let's make a deal,' " Rangel said. "The
                  FARC are Colombians, too."

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