COLOMBIA : Success Bedevils Drug Traffickers : Police pressure, legal problems threaten the flourishing Cali cartel.

A plague of publicity, arrest warrants and internal problems is besetting this city’s cocaine traffickers and threatening the low visibility and managerial approach that helped make their drug cartel the world’s most successful.

A police campaign against the rival Medellin cartel that culiminated in last June’s surrender of its leader, Pablo Escobar, also helped transform the so-called Cali cartel into the largest supplier of the U.S. and European cocaine markets.

But the Cali cartel’s success has brought with it new pressures, reportedly including increased surveillance by Colombian and international law enforcement officials.

“Everyone here is paranoid because of rumors that DEA agents are crawling all over this place,” one admitted Cali trafficker said.

Although anti-drug raids in Cali and the surrounding Cauca Valley have increased, law-enforcement officials say a full crackdown on the area’s traffickers is difficult because many of the local police and military commanders are corrupt.

Unlike the violent Medellin cartel, Cali traffickers have relied more on payoffs than on terrorism to guarantee the cooperation of local officials. Intimidation and murder, when required, are carried out silently, experts say.

“There are a few good cops down there, but they don’t know whom to trust,” said one Bogota law-enforcement official who has traveled frequently in the valley.

More worrisome for Cali’s traffickers than anti-drug raids are a number of highly publicized legal developments threatening their coexistence with authorities. In recent weeks, judges have reopened a case against one reputed cartel leader, Gilberto Rodriguez Orejuela, and linked another, Jose Santacruz Londono, to the 1989 murder of a state governor.

In 1986, Rodriguez was captured in Spain and extradited to Colombia to face drug-trafficking charges. But he was released in 1988 by a judge who refused to consider substantial U.S. evidence against him.

Rodriguez, facing several indictments in New York and Los Angeles, has cited the release as proof that he was not a drug trafficker. The legal threat against him and other Cali cartel members was further reduced this year when a constitutional assembly prohibited extradition of drug suspects.

However, in a move that pleasantly surprised many police officials, the Colombian Supreme Court this month reopened the case against Rodriguez. A new arrest warrant forced the accused trafficker to go into hiding once again.

Rodriguez’s partner, Santacruz, is wanted in connection with that case and one involving the July 4, 1989, assassination of Antonio Roldan, governor of Antioquia state. A Medellin judge issued an arrest warrant for Santacruz on Sept. 14.

“The arrest warrants, more than anything else, have led Calinos (Cali residents) to fear that their city will be the next battleground in the anti-drug war,” a local journalist said.

There is evidence that Cali traffickers are reacting to the pressure by turning increasingly to the violent methods usually associated with their Medellin rivals. Human-rights and law officials say that drug-related killings in the valley are skyrocketing as traffickers try to eliminate perceived enemies and police informants.

The Bogota law-enforcement official cites recent police seizures of two giant arms caches, including antitank mines, in the valley as evidence that the cartel may be preparing to launch large-scale terrorist attacks like those perpetrated by Medellin traffickers in 1989 and 1990.

He added, however, that Rodriguez, Santacruz and other established traffickers still want to avoid all-out confrontation with the state.

The attitude is apparently not shared by a group of young northern valley traffickers. Although they often cooperate with their Cali elders in cocaine deals, the youngsters’ itch to make more money faster has created tension in the organization, said a government source in Bogota. Perhaps the best example of this new breed of trafficker is Ivan Urdinola, one of three brothers said to control much of the northern valley around their hometown of El Dobio.

Human-rights officials say Urdinola is often seen with as many as 20 bodyguards, including an army lieutenant. Although residents say his group is actively involved in killing opponents, there are no outstanding arrest warrants for him in Colombia. “The Urdinolas and people like them have turned the entire region into a time bomb that is going to explode,” said a law-enforcement official.