Pubdate: Sun, 04 Mar 2001 Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA) Copyright: 2001 Cox Interactive Media. Contact: 72 Marietta Street, NW, Atlanta, Ga. 30303 Website: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/ Forum: http://www.accessatlanta.com/community/forums/ Author: Mike Williams, Cox Washington Bureau COLOMBIA'S POOR CAUGHT IN CROSS HAIRS OF COCA WAR Puerto Asis, Colombia --- The highways into the countryside close at 6 p.m. sharp. Drivers caught out after curfew risk being fined by the military --- or facing a confrontation with guerrillas or right-wing paramilitary squads. At dawn, trucks and taxis line up at the military roadblock at the edge of town, waiting in the half-light while soldiers with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders peer under hoods and pat down drivers and passengers. Colombia is at war, and the evidence is nowhere more striking than in its far southern provinces, where the army, Marxist guerrillas and paramilitary squads are locked in battle over the world's most prolific coca-growing region. At the airport here, the tiny terminal sits beside a fortified redoubt, black sandbags piled head-high, with gun slits and a couple of covered pillboxes. The police station looks the same. On the 40 miles of rutted, bone-jarring highway to nearby La Hormiga, an oil pipeline that snakes alongside the road has been blasted apart by guerrilla bombers too many times to count, leaving black charred circles in the dirt and twisted metal as evidence of their handiwork. Army patrols string out along the highway daily, shoulders criss-crossed with ammunition belts, plodding along as the early morning mist rises over the brilliant green landscape. This is a land of constantly shifting power and control. One force sweeps into a town, demanding loyalty, only to be pushed out a few months later by opponents who single out and murder suspected supporters of the other side. It's a vicious, endless cycle that has waxed and waned for four decades. Caught in the middle are ordinary people trying to raise children, run businesses or just enjoy a normal life. Caught worst of all are the rural peasants. Their children conscripted by the various military forces, they grow coca because there are no other viable crops, and they sell their product under the watchful eye of a guerrilla one season, a paramilitary the next. "The peasants want to leave, but most don't have the money," said Sister Irene Sarai, who works at a Catholic mission here. "They are caught between the paramilitaries and the guerrillas. So many have been killed. It's dangerous for them even to come into town." Both the guerrillas and the paramilitaries force farmers to pay "taxes" on their coca. They also take tribute from the traffickers who process the leaves and smuggle cocaine out of the country. Three years ago, Puerto Asis was dominated by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the oldest and most powerful guerrilla force in the nation's 37-year-old civil war. Then the paramilitary groups moved in, murdering dozens of suspected guerrilla sympathizers. Now the "paras," as they are called, rule like a silent force. Ask quietly about them, and heads will nod toward muscular young men riding motorcycles. The shadowy group is headquartered at a sprawling, prosperous farm compound just outside of town. "We had 150 murders last year," said German Martinez, the town's ombudsman, a sort of government complaint taker. "That's out of 35,000 residents." But the guerrillas aren't far away. Take a boat across the muddy Putumayo River to the town of Puerto Vega, five miles away, and you're back in FARC territory. The story is much the same in La Hormiga, a farm town at the heart of the Guamuez River Valley where the Colombian military, bolstered by millions in U.S. aid, has recently fumigated thousands of acres of coca. "It was a campaign of terror," said Cayo Miranda Montenegro, the municipal ombudsman, referring to the arrival of the paramilitaries. "They cut off heads and slit bellies. They killed a police officer in this building. In January 1999, there was a massacre of 25 people in El Tigre, a nearby town. Now the paras control the towns, while the guerrillas control the countryside." Out in that countryside, poor peasants want mostly to be left alone. Most admit they grow coca --- it's useless to deny it, since it often surrounds their homes. But many say they grow it only because there is no alternative crop that earns anything close to the $1,000 or more they can make each year off the bright green leaves. Most have only a few years of education and profess no political leanings at all. They say they simply wish the war would end. "I want to quit growing coca because it's too dangerous," said Rigoberto Rosero, 36, who watched recently as government planes fumigated his coca crop --- along with his bananas and corn and his house and family of four children. "The danger is from all sides --- the government, the paramilitaries, the guerrillas." The root of the conflict is the rich land that poor farmers like Rosero till. An agricultural paradise, Colombia was ruled by rural land barons throughout the 1800s, with Indians and peasants pushed off their plots. In the 1950s, the country was convulsed by a 10-year war called "la Violencia" --- the Violence --- in which the main political parties split in terrible bloodshed. The conflict was over politics and power but also, once again, control of the land, which had become even more valuable with Colombia's coffee boom. Both the guerrilla and paramilitary forces at work today were born in that conflict, the guerrillas disciples of Marx, the paras essentially private armies run by the land barons. The conflict simmered through the 1970s. Then, in the 1980s, Colombia emerged as the world's coca- and cocaine-producing leader, bringing a new ruthless element into the picture --- drug traffickers. Suddenly, there were billions of dollars at stake. Now both the paramilitaries and the guerrillas skim millions from drug-runners and coca growers, battling for control over swaths of valuable countryside. Both enforce their will through terror and murder. Informers spy for both sides, reporting on neighbors. Blood-curdling warnings are given. Some murders seem random, with unconfirmed stories about drunken partisans killing people in bars for the sheer hell of it. Last year, more than 5,000 people died in the conflict across Colombia --- an average of 14 per day. Over the past four decades, more than 35,000 have been killed. Most people just try to keep their mouths shut, walking the invisible line between the terror on both sides, hoping they won't say or do something that will make them a target. "People never know which side it may come from," said Carlos Palacios, an ex-priest who now works with the local government to help peasants who have lost their coca crops in La Hormiga. "You have to be extremely careful of what you say and do." Here in Puerto Asis, ombudsman Martinez works out of an office off the town square. An outspoken critic of the paramilitaries, he is now accompanied 24 hours a day by three bodyguards toting machine guns. "I've spoken the truth about the paramilitaries, and so they've issued an order that I be killed," he said. "I'm leaving Colombia with my wife and my daughter. This is the price of free expression in Colombia." - --- MAP posted-by: Beth