Guerrillas Hit Colombia Army Outpost, Kill 19

Guerrillas attacked an army jungle outpost Friday, killing 19 military personnel and escalating a weeklong offensive that appears to be linked to protests against the government’s cocaine eradication program.

Army commander Gen. Harold Bedoya said in a televised statement that 17 soldiers, two officers and an unknown number of guerrillas died in the attack on La Carpa, about three hours up the Guaviare River from this provincial capital in southern Colombia.

Commanders at the army base here refused to talk to journalists or admit them to the base, where the bodies and an unknown number of wounded were arriving Friday afternoon. Soldiers said that operations to recover bodies had been suspended until daylight today, although guerrilla positions were being strafed.

The attack by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was the latest in a week of violence that began Aug. 30 when rebels overran a military base in Putumayo province, killing 27 soldiers and taking 60 captive.

The FARC--Colombia’s largest guerrilla organization, with fronts in various provinces--has announced its intention to return the soldiers. However, no time or other details of a release plan have been mentioned.

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While attacks on police stations and ambushes of small groups of soldiers are fairly common in Colombia, this is the first major guerrilla offensive of this decade. The major actions have occurred in the regions of the Colombian jungle that grow coca, the plant used to make cocaine.

The army has provided logistic support for the government’s expanding program to eradicate coca crops, although civilians actually fly the small planes that dust the crops with defoliant.

San Jose del Guaviare has the oldest such eradication program, and the army has recently reinforced the crop dusting by virtually banning materials used to process coca leaves into paste, which is then turned into cocaine. Those materials include cement and gasoline.

Coca growers have protested. Their massive rallies have often turned violent. Many well-informed Colombians believe that the FARC has helped organize those demonstrations.

The guerrillas are believed to receive $20 million a year or more--roughly half their income--from taxes on the drug trade. They tax large coca growers, laboratories, buyers, and planes that land to buy coca, according to experts.

They have protested the government’s eradication program, which the United States strongly backs, by blocking highways in 15 provinces and burning any vehicles that try to defy their ban on transportation.

Rebels at one makeshift roadblock in Cundinamarca province were reported to have killed four policemen late Friday.