Behind the Story : The Drug Lord’s Dilemma : Pablo Escobar formed an alliance with rightist groups in Colombia, but now that relationship is shattered and he’s on the run. His only option may be to surrender to the government.

Drugdom’s most wanted man, Pablo Escobar, is said to be finally planning to surrender after hiding for seven years, masterminding a deadly terrorist campaign and kidnaping some of Colombia’s leading citizens.

Anyone searching for an explanation for the sudden change of heart by the leader of Colombia’s notorious Medellin cocaine cartel may find it among the extreme rightist groups that were formerly his allies here in the sun-scorched central Magdalena Valley.

The rightists who rule Puerto Boyaca like a fiefdom have cooperated with cocaine traffickers in the past to rid the region of leftist guerrillas and their suspected sympathizers. But now their paramilitary squads have taken their so-called “dirty war” to their one-time allies.

“We are going on the offensive against Escobar,” one squad commander said the other day. “We are going to hunt him down, and if given the chance, we are going to kill him. We have the military capability.”

Escobar may be heeding those menacing words. Last week he ordered the release of the last two of 10 hostages kidnaped by the cartel in 1990. And a Catholic priest, Father Rafael Garcia Herreros, who met with Escobar while negotiating the hostages’ freedom, said that the drug boss is preparing to turn himself in to authorities under a government promise of lenient treatment for traffickers who surrender.

Three leading Medellin traffickers, the Ochoa brothers, who helped Escobar found the cartel, have already surrendered under the leniency plan, which guarantees reduced prison sentences in Colombia rather than extradition to the United States. Many here thought Escobar, fearing an attempt on his life in jail, would never follow the brothers’ lead.

Proof that Escobar is worried about the rightist paramilitary squads came during one of the trafficker’s meetings with Father Garcia. Discussing the terms of his possible surrender, Escobar demanded that he be jailed in a facility with no prisoners belonging to the death squads.

The request would not surprise the families of hundreds of Colombian leftists killed by the rightist groups in recent years.

Leaders of the groups say they are civil defense organizations formed to defend the land from subversion. Human rights activists and government officials say the central Magdalena’s armed units are really right-wing death squads accused of perpetrating some of the worst political violence in Colombia’s recent history.

The country’s intelligence police, known as the DAS, linked the commander in chief of the right-wing groups, Henry Perez, to the 1988 massacre of 20 peasants in the Uruba region of northern Colombia. Also accused of participation in the killings are Perez’s father, Gonzalo, and Luis Rubio, then mayor of Puerto Boyaca.

A judge issued arrest warrants for the men, as well as for several military officials and two Medellin cartel leaders implicated in the massacre. One of those cartel bosses, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, was killed in a 1989 shootout with police. The other one, Escobar, has now turned against his former allies, who are also still at large.

Perez said recently in an interview with Bogota’s Semana magazine that Escobar decided to attack the “civil defense groups” because they refused to support his plans to try to destabilize the country through a campaign of assassinations and bombings. Terrorism blamed on the cocaine boss killed about 500 people in 1989 and 1990.

The straw that broke the camel’s back, Perez said, was Escobar’s decision to finance his terrorism partly by extorting money from former supporters in the central Magdalena. “He began to kidnap our friends, cattle ranchers in the region,” Perez told Semana. “That’s when we decided we had to confront the war.”

The drug chief demonstrated almost immediately that he, too, was ready to do battle. A recent statement by the Extraditables, a collective nom de guerre chosen by Escobar and other cartel bosses, accepted responsibility for the March assassinations of two paramilitary squad leaders in the region around Puerto Boyaca.

Authorities also suspect that Escobar was behind the April 20 killing of Alejandro Echandia Sanchez, who served as the town’s mayor in 1987 when the paramilitary groups were at the height of their power.

A cartel terrorist who recently defected to the paramilitary squads says she helped carry out one of three recent dynamite attacks near Puerto Boyaca, about 100 miles northeast of Bogota. The March bombing of the Fantasia disco in the nearby town of La Dorada left one person dead and several wounded.

“Pablo Escobar said we must attack the people in the central Magdalena because they were bad,” said the young woman, identifying herself only as Carla. She added that she and several other terrorists earned about $17,000 for the job in La Dorada.

Carla changed sides after her newfound boyfriend, connected with Escobar’s opponents, convinced her that paramilitary units would protect her. “My boyfriend took me to see Mr. Henry (Perez), who told me that Pablo Escobar was crazy. I believe now that Pablo Escobar wants only to hurt the people while Mr. Henry wants only what is best for everyone.”

Another perspective on the changed relationship between Escobar and his former allies comes from Ivan Duque, a deputy senator from Puerto Boyaca. He says: “When Escobar started his war against the government, he asked us to help him kidnap ranchers and kill police and army troops. That’s exactly the kind of activity the (leftist) guerrillas are involved in. It’s what we have been fighting all these years.”

Duque is the president of Acdegam, a self-described association of cattle ranchers, which authorities say is really a front for the region’s paramilitary squads.

He and other Puerto Boyaca leaders say they would never accept a proposal to attack their “papa,” the army. Like other paramilitary groups, the central Magdalena squads grew out of armed peasant self-defense organizations that were legally permitted by the government and openly supported by the military until 1989.

In that year, the DAS, the intelligence police, denounced the squads’ links with drug traffickers and foreign mercenaries. Then-President Virgilio Barco Vargas declared the “civil defense” organizations illegal.

While the DAS head, Gen. Miguel Maza Marquez, denies that the police are again working with the paramilitaries, the groups themselves say they are cooperating with the security forces to track down the government’s Public Enemy No. 1.

“We pass them all our information about Escobar’s movements,” said one of Perez’s lieutenants. He added that squad leaders even guided police during last year’s “Apocalypse” operation, a giant manhunt for the drug boss in central Magdalena.

And the evidence in and around Puerto Boyaca suggests that at the very least, authorities are tolerating Escobar’s new enemies.

Once again paramilitary patrols are openly roaming the countryside, just one year after offering to lay down their arms in exchange for a government amnesty for previous crimes. The government refused the offer and said it would continue to oppose the paramilitary units and their atrocious methods.

Flying in a private helicopter over the parboiled valley, one squad commander assures his fellow passenger that authorities are eager to use any means, even joint operations with the paramilitary units, to get Escobar.

When the helicopter lands on the soccer field of one of the small towns dotting the valley, several paramilitary members aboard step out onto the grass to greet members of a police patrol that has just marched up. The men talk for several minutes before the chopper lifts off once again.

Later, patrolling in a black Chevrolet Trooper, four squad members and a reporter pass by one of the region’s military bases. Half a mile farther, the vehicle pulls over to a roadside shed, where a waiting boy disappears behind a wooden wall and emerges again with several weapons in his hands. The small boy stands on tiptoe to shove Uzi submachine guns, automatic rifles and pistols through an open car window and into the beefy hands of the paramilitary warriors.

“Mr. Henry” Perez seems always just over the hill when one is cruising with his men. At one of the luxurious ranch houses where squad members hang out in designer tennis shoes and jeans, the reporter asks for an interview with the paramilitary chief.

A quiet voice answers that Mr. Henry is aware of the reporter’s presence but has no time to talk today. Several other men listening to the exchange smile vaguely then saunter back to their afternoon pastimes--playing chess, cleaning guns and staring suspiciously at an unidentified propeller plane flying overhead.

Escobar is obviously never too far from their thoughts.

WANTED: PABLO EMILIO ESCOBAR GAVIRIA

There is a $250,000 reward offered by Colombian government for information leading to his capture.

Residence: Somewhere in the Magdelana Valley, Colombia

Date of Birth: January 20,1949

Place of Birth: Rionegro, Antioguia, Columbia

Nationality: Colombian

Height: 5’ 6”

Weight: 175 lbs.

Occupation: Reputed “Godfather” of the Medellin based cocaine cartel, believed to be the worlds largest supplier of cocaine and exporter of addiction, violence and corruption.

CRIMES

* Considered by law enforcement officers in many countries to be “the most wanted man in the world.” Included in this group is the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency where he heads the United States’ “Dirty Dozen” list of Colombians wanted on cocaine trafficking charges and for the murder of DEA informant Barry Seal.

* As many 240 murders have been attributed to the Escobar organization, including the 1989 assassination of Liberal Party presidential candidate Luis Galan and the 1989 bombing of a Colombian jeliner which killed 107 passengers.

MISCELLANEOUS * The son of a small farmer and a school teacher, Escobar began his career at the bottom of the petty crime hierarchy, stealing tombstones to polish, re-engrave and sell to the poor of Medellin.

* He moved up to become a small-time gunman, kidnaper and car-thief by the early 1970s.

* By the late 1970s, Escobar’s name became synonymous with the burgeoning cocaine trade and associated violence.

* Dubbed by the weekly magazine Semana as the “Robin Hood from Medellin” for his efforts in helping the poor through cocaine financed charitable organizations, such as “Medellin without Slums.” One such effort resulted in a housing project that bears his name, “Barrio Pablo Escobar.”