War on Cocaine Turns Into a Bloody Standoff : Colombia: Terrorist bombings may force submission or spark citizen outrage.

Before dawn on Nov. 22, a U.S.-trained force of Colombian police in American-supplied Blackhawk helicopters swooped in on a remote ranch used by drug lord Pablo Escobar as a hide-out.

Escobar and one of his notorious sidekicks, Jorge Luis Ochoa, must have heard the helicopters coming. Without taking time to fully dress, they rushed from the ranch house and narrowly escaped into rugged hill country to the west.

The raid was set up by Gen. Miguel Maza Marquez, head of the Administrative Department of Security, Colombia’s FBI. Last Wednesday morning, two weeks after the raid, a bus packed with half a ton of dynamite exploded in front of Maza’s headquarters in Bogota, killing more than 60 people.

Maza narrowly escaped injury in the devastating blast. But the general said he had no doubt that the bus-bomb was meant to kill him and that it was sent by “los senores narcotraficantes” --namely, Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha.

It is the consensus among anti-drug officials here that those two men are the masterminds of a “narcoterrorist” campaign that has driven this nation of 32 million people into a state of widespread anguish and fear. The officials also agree that Gen. Maza is the most effective and determined enemy of los senores narcotraficantes.

And so, at least on an emblematic level, the Colombian cocaine war has become a bloody and disconcerting standoff between a fiercely dedicated police crusader and two dangerous desperados turned bombers.

Last Wednesday’s explosion was by far the most powerful in more than 200 bombings attributed to the narcoterrorists since late August. The death toll was also the greatest, except for the 111 killed in the crash of an airliner felled Nov. 27 by a plastic bomb that officials say also may have been set off by narcoterrorists.

One question raised by the increase in indiscriminate killing is whether it will tend to cow Colombians into submission, or will outrage them and strengthen their resolve to resist the drug lords.

Colombians now are asking “where the country is heading and what is the reality of this horrible war,” wrote Alfredo Vazquez Carrizosa, a newspaper columnist and former foreign minister. “Eight more months of this tragedy, and the country will enter a stage of desperation.”

President Virgilio Barco Vargas, who declared war on the traffickers in August, has eight more months in office. And he is beginning to look like a lame duck as support for his policy wanes, even within his Liberal Party.

On Dec. 5, the day before the bus-bomb attack, the Colombian House of Representatives defied Barco and voted 119 to 4 in favor of a legislative package that would let voters decide in a January plebiscite whether to allow extradition of accused traffickers to the United States.

Because assassinations, threats and bribes have undermined the resolve of the Colombian judicial system, the Barco administration sees extradition as an essential weapon against traffickers. It warns that if the issue is submitted to a plebiscite, violence by traffickers will pressure voters to reject extradition.

Barco signed emergency decrees in August that permit extradition of accused traffickers and confiscation of their properties. The decrees came with a massive government crackdown, and the drug lords responded with their own declaration of war.

The traffickers have used communiques and spokesmen to promote a “dialogue” between them and the government with the goal of making peace. Many war-weary Colombians have come to favor the dialogue idea, which is stridently opposed by the government.

“Treatment for common criminals is implacable,” Justice Minister Roberto Salazar Manrique said in an interview, referring to drug traffickers.

Francisco Santos, an editor on the newspaper El Tiempo, said the government is losing support because it has been unable to catch Escobar and Rodriguez Gacha or stop their violence and their trafficking.

“So far, the war has demonstrated the impotence of the Colombian government,” Santos said. “The government is seen as impotent if only because of the fact that it has come to a standoff.”

Although the government rejects concessions to the drug lords or a dialogue with them, a European diplomat said officials would like to find some face-saving way of de-escalating the violence and “getting back to acceptable levels of war.”

“It sounds like a dance, doesn’t it?” the diplomat said. “The music got too fast for the government, and they want to get back to that slower step.”

Justice Minister Salazar denied any official intention of reaching even a tacit accommodation with the traffickers. “That is not the tonic of the government,” he said.

The European diplomat also expressed concern over what he depicted as a blurring of official goals in the war on traffickers. He said senior officials now see the war mainly as the pursuit of Escobar and Rodriguez Gacha.

“I think there is a danger that if they capture them, they’ll say the war is over,” he said.

But a U.S. official familiar with narcotics matters defended the focus on Escobar and Rodriguez Gacha.

“There’s a good reason,” the official said. “These are the people targeted to reduce the immediate problem of violence.”

Meanwhile, he said, the government has kept up a steady campaign of hits on drug laboratories and smuggling routes. In September and October, he said, the official drive reduced production and shipping of cocaine to a trickle.

Though the traffickers have regrouped since then, he said cocaine production and shipping still are estimated at 50% to 70% of levels in early August.

“I think the program overall is a success,” the U.S. official said, but added: “I’m disappointed that none of the major traffickers has been arrested yet.”

Another American in Bogota, who asked to be identified only as a senior U.S. official, said it is too early to assess the government’s war on traffickers in terms of ultimate success or failure.

“It is working,” he said. “But this isn’t a battle of a few days and weeks, but rather of months or years.”

The senior official said the most vicious recent bombings could discourage the public--or convince it “that these guys are out to truly destroy the state and the society unless it bends to their will.”

Like all wars, the Colombian cocaine war is also a war of words. Gen. Maza, who is becoming something of a public hero here, used the spotlight on last Wednesday’s mayhem to make a pitch for public support of his crusade against the warring drug lords.

“This is a war against the Colombian people,” he told reporters. “Let us unite against that minuscule handful of gangsters with money who want to destroy, as they have shown today, everything that has to do with our inheritance and with Colombian nationality itself.”

Other officials have cited a communique issued by the traffickers after the bombing as an example of their corruption and cynicism.

The communique claimed responsibility for the assassinations this year of a police colonel and several judges. And it hinted that the traffickers also killed newspaper publisher Guillermo Cano in 1986 and Atty. Gen. Carlos Mauro Hoyos in 1988.

“We will continue the war in reply to the persecution, infamies and outrages committed against us and our families,” the communique said. It defended the legalization of cocaine, then concluded: “We should not be treated as criminals, since there are millions and millions of people who cultivate, manufacture, transport, sell, buy and consume it.

“We want peace. We have always asked for peace, but we will never let ourselves be trampled.”

On Nov. 22, when police raided Pablo Escobar’s ranch, several of his employees were arrested there. Some of them told police a story of how Escobar dealt with another employee accused of betraying the kingpin:

The man was tied up and suspended by a rope over a river. Then he was doused with gasoline, and the gasoline was ignited. Finally, the man was lowered into the river to put out the flames. The torture was repeated several times.

“And afterwards they blew his brains out. We don’t know whether he was still alive,” said an American official who heard the story from Colombian police.

“That is the type of individual the narcotics trafficker is, and it’s asinine to consider dealing with these kinds of people,” the American official said. “These are the same animals that put that bomb out there and killed I don’t know how many people.”