Pubdate: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 Source: Minneapolis Star-Tribune (MN) Copyright: 2001 Star Tribune Contact: 425 Portland Ave., Minneapolis MN 55488 Fax: 612-673-4359 Feedback: http://www.startribune.com/stonline/html/userguide/letform.html Website: http://www.startribune.com/ Forum: http://talk.startribune.com/cgi-bin/WebX.cgi Author: Larry Rohter, New York Times ECUADOR BRACES FOR MORE VIOLENCE FROM COLOMBIA LAGO AGRIO, ECUADOR -- Every country bordering Colombia fears that as the conflict there worsens and U.S. involvement grows, violence and coca cultivation will spill across the frontier into their territory. But in the dingy Amazon border town of Lago Agrio, that dreaded scenario has already become a reality. Hardly a day goes by now without right-wing paramilitary fighters and leftist guerrillas, ostensibly in the town on leave, killing each other on the streets or in bars. Refugees fleeing the intensifying combat in southern Colombia are also showing up and, as if in anticipation of the Washington-backed anti-drug offensive the Colombian government is to begin soon, affluent Colombians with no ties to the area are suddenly buying up land and stocking up on chemicals used to process cocaine. Of all of Colombia's neighbors, Ecuador is perhaps the most vulnerable, least prepared and worst equipped to deal with such developments. Five presidents in five years are the best indication of the political instability in the Andean nation of 12.5 million, whose situation is further complicated by dire poverty, the highest inflation in the Western Hemisphere and a military better known for meddling in politics than valor in combat. "If Colombia is going to be another Vietnam, as everyone keeps saying, then Ecuador is going to become the Cambodia of this war," Maximo Abad Jaramillo, the mayor of Lago Agrio, warned. "We are not ready for this war, we don't want to be a part of it, but we are being dragged into the conflict against our will." In December alone, the local police say, 20 people were killed in Lago Agrio -- 15 of them in clashes among Colombians and five who died when a bomb exploded in an attack on an oil pipeline that runs from Lago Agrio to the Pacific and is the main source of Ecuador's export earnings. In the most spectacular of the slayings, a Colombian paramilitary trooper was shot dead in front of police headquarters by two men on a motorcycle. Almost since its founding, Lago Agrio has been a service center for the oil industry, whose employees have flocked to the bars, discotheques, pool halls, karaoke parlors, cabarets and brothels that have proliferated there. But those are now filled not with roustabouts but with wary young men whose Colombian accents, lean bodies, close-cropped hair and expensive military-style boots suggest that they are fighters on furlough. Lago Agrio, whose name means sour lake in Spanish, also boasts an unusual number of medical clinics and doctors' and dentists' offices for a town with only 25,000 residents. Combatants from both sides are often brought there from Colombia for treatment, along with coca plantation workers who have been made ill by the noxious chemicals used to process their crop into cocaine. In an effort to minimize conflicts between guerrillas from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and paramilitary fighters, some of the brothels and various other establishments catering to guerrillas are marked with the image of Che Guevara superimposed on a red star. But residents say conditions have deteriorated sharply as a result of Plan Colombia, the anti-drug campaign devised by Colombia and the United States. "With all the violence, threats and even kidnappings, our situation has become really grave in the past four or five months," said Amparo de Cordova, president of Fuerzas Vivas, a coalition of neighborhood and professional groups. "The Colombians have always brought their quarrels over here with them, but now their violence is political and subversive, and our authorities seem powerless to stop it." Buying up land Taking advantage of the growing tensions, Colombians from outside the border zone are buying up ranches and farms in the area from Ecuadoreans who fear the worst and are anxious to leave. In some instances, the outsiders offer to pay above the market value for properties, but in other cases, recently displaced landowners say, they have not hesitated to threaten violence to gain control of especially desirable pieces of property. "I just hope to God that they aren't planning on growing coca on those farms as a substitute for the plantations that are going to be fumigated over on the other side," said Fernando Lucas, president of the local chamber of commerce. "Because the moment that happens, we are going to have a real disaster on our hands here." The United States authorized $1.3 billion in emergency aid last year to strengthen Colombia's ability to fight drug trafficking. Anticipating some spillover from Colombia to Ecuador, the United States has designated $40 million for expenditure there in the next two years, mostly for "social infrastructure" projects, according to the U.S. Embassy in Quito. Ecuador's foreign minister, Heinz Moeller, recently visited Washington to plead for an aid package that could total $300 million. Unlike Venezuela and Brazil, the Ecuadorean government has closely aligned itself with the anti-drug offensive through such measures as setting up a U.S. surveillance base in the coastal city of Manta, which FARC leaders have said they consider "a declaration of war." But Ecuador's own security forces appear eager to avoid conflict and largely unable to defend themselves. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart