Rebels Blur the Lines in Drug War

From this island of bars and brothels gripped by dark green jungle, you can see the nightmare rising in Colombia.

Here, in a remote corner of the rain forest, the army has broken up what was once a cocaine paradise. There were no cops, no military, no government. The drug labs ran day and night. Coke was currency, with a gram buying a cold beer flown in from faraway Bogota.

It was a world where everything was controlled by one organization--the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The nation’s largest guerrilla force, these leftist insurgents have become nearly indistinguishable from the narco-traffickers that the U.S. pledged $1.3 billion last year to help defeat.

The rebels “had total control over this area,” Gen. Fernando Tapias, the head of Colombia’s armed forces, said in an interview after the military moved in. “And they were totally dedicated to one thing: cocaine.”

The FARC’s involvement in the trade spells trouble for the bright line the U.S. has tried to draw in Colombia, fighting drugs while avoiding entanglement in the country’s increasingly messy civil conflict.

In an indication of just how deeply involved Washington has become in the battle against the insurgents, The Times has learned that U.S. intelligence was crucial to the Colombian army’s operation in Barrancominas to shatter the FARC’s drug ties.

U.S. intelligence officials provided information not only on the location of cocaine laboratories and processing facilities but also on rebel encampments, according to two high-ranking Colombian army officials. The CIA also allegedly intercepted radio communications between the local FARC commander and the rebel leadership concerning drug trades.

In fact, as a result of the evidence turned up here and elsewhere in Colombia in recent months, a consensus has emerged in Washington and Colombia that FARC rebels are involved in virtually every facet of drug production, from seed to sale.

With the March arrest in Mexico of an alleged Tijuana cartel associate trying to establish contact with the FARC, there are even suggestions that the rebels have taken the final step toward becoming international traffickers.

And in April, after a two-month manhunt, Colombia arrested Brazil’s top drug dealer as he tried to flee the vicinity of Barrancominas. FARC leaders had ordered guerrillas to protect Luiz Fernando da Costa, who, according to military officials, supplied the rebels with guns in exchange for purified cocaine.

“If you can make the equation ‘guerrillas equal narco-traffickers,’ then you can use military might to fight the guerrillas,” said Myles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia who believes that the FARC is still short of being a drug cartel.

“We should be very clear about the role of guerrillas in narcotics trafficking. You can’t make good policy based on incorrect assumptions,” he said. “If you reach the conclusion that they’re a cartel like any other, then you back yourself into supporting all-out war with the guerrillas.”

In Washington and Colombia alike, debate continues about whether the group’s leadership has fully embraced the drug trade, whether the FARC qualifies as a cartel and how many rebel fronts are actively involved in the production and sale of cocaine. FARC officials maintain that they merely tax the production of cocaine in areas under their control.

The official State Department position is that U.S. money is designated strictly to fight narcotics. U.S. military officials train Colombian soldiers, but only to create specially equipped counter-narcotics units. The U.S. has bought Black Hawk transport helicopters for Colombia, but only to move Colombian troops to drug zones.

Nevertheless, as the FARC has become more deeply involved in the drug trade, so has the U.S. become more involved in Colombia’s guerrilla war.

This is most clear in the area of intelligence. U.S. officials once hesitated to share satellite or radio transmission interceptions that were unrelated to narcotics activity.

U.S. Is Supplying More Intelligence

But in a little-noticed move two years ago, the U.S. began to supply top Colombian military officers with intelligence on guerrilla troop movements in drug zones--with little control over how that information is used.

During an interview, a Colombian army general displayed what appeared to be satellite photographs of cocaine labs and rebel camps, alongside photographs taken on the ground of the same areas after their capture by Colombian troops.

“I’m fighting the guerrillas,” the general said. “Politically, it’s better to say we’re fighting narco-traffickers. But really, we’re fighting our war. The best is to say what people want to hear.”

Operation Gato Negro--Black Cat--was launched the night of Feb. 11, when about 3,500 soldiers helicoptered into the southeastern corner of Colombia, where the vast eastern plains give way to the Amazon jungle.

The target was Barrancominas, a small town in the depths of the rain forest dwarfed by a massive grass airstrip to one side.

Surrounded by jungle, the town has only one other means of access to the outside world--the Guaviare River, which leads directly to a Switzerland-size zone the government ceded to the FARC two years ago as a location for peace talks.

The rebels have spent nearly 40 years battling the Colombian government over issues such as land reform and wealth distribution. But they never have been more powerful than they are today, thanks to the millions of dollars they receive annually from drug activity and kidnappings.

Because of the region’s geography and isolation, Colombian officials had suspected that the area around Barrancominas was a center of criminal activity. But after occupying it, the military was astonished to find more than 60 cocaine labs, 22 airstrips and 16 rebel encampments scattered across the jungle like craters on the moon.

The soldiers also discovered about 50,000 acres of previously unknown coca plantations. Based on the size of the plants and their root structures, military officials believe that the plantations had been operating for at least five years.

Nearly three months into the military offensive, U.S. and Colombian authorities believe that they have wiped out the single biggest source of income for the FARC--perhaps as much as $100 million of the estimated $300 million to $500 million the group makes annually.

Authorities also think they have broken up the FARC’s major source of arms trading, because officials believe that many of the transactions conducted here involved bartering purified cocaine for weapons.

“There were no police there, no army, no state authority of any kind,” said Brig. Gen. Arcesio Barrero, commander of the 4th Division, who oversaw the assault.

Residents interviewed by The Times described a benevolent dictatorship led by the local commander of the FARC, Tomas Medina, better known as Negro Acacio. He remains at large.

The FARC gave long weekends to workers on the cocaine plantations, locals said. Barrancominas, a town of no more than 600 people, had more than 20 bars, billiard halls and whorehouses. There was even a carpeted cockfighting ring, surrounded by seven levels of wooden bleachers.

The rebels allegedly kept close track of their accounts. Among the documents seized during the military operation were receipt books for the barter and sale of cocaine, complete with a stamp for the local FARC unit.

The FARC’s primary trading partner in the region was Brazil’s top drug dealer, Da Costa, better known by his nickname, Fernandinho Beira Mar, or Freddy Seashore.

Da Costa was captured April 21 after the Colombian air force brought down the plane in which he was trying to flee. During a news conference, he denied any connection to the FARC and called himself a farmer.

Radio Evidence Links Group to Drug Lord

One of the strongest pieces of evidence connecting the FARC leadership to drug dealing is a radio transmission in which Jorge Briceno--a member of the FARC’s leadership committee, better known by his nom de guerre, Mono Jojoy--appears to instruct his followers to offer protection to the Brazilian drug lord, Colombian military officials say.

Gen. Carlos Alberto Fracica was the field commander in the Barrancominas operation. He now bivouacs in an outdoor wet bar covered by palm fronds that was once owned by a drug dealer. Over a tray of meat and fried plantains, he explained his conviction that the FARC leadership is involved in every way with drugs.

“Mono Jojoy is the one in charge,” Fracica said, waving one of the red, yellow and blue FARC stickers that he said was attached to every packet of cocaine sent out of the region. “No one moves in this region without talking to him.”

The Colombian army has been celebrating its victory. But in recent days, as the focus shifts to other battles, many in Colombia’s military and political structure have begun to worry about this region’s future.

“There is no food out there, there is no money there,” said Gen. Tapias, the head of the armed forces. “It is totally a cocaine economy.”

Guerrillas Stepped In After Cartels Fell

The U.S. must share some of the blame for the rebels’ involvement in drugs--ironically, because of previous successes in the narcotics war.

The destruction of Colombia’s Cali and Medellin cartels in the 1990s shattered the drug trade, creating hundreds of mini-cartels without the benefit of the massive private armies run by cartel leaders such as the late Pablo Escobar of the Medellin group.

Into the resulting vacuum stepped the country’s guerrillas, who had long been involved in the taxation of cocaine.

“In many ways, we’re victims of our own success,” one senior Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence official said.

Indeed, as far back as 1992, the CIA predicted the rise of FARC involvement in the drug trade, according to recently declassified documents obtained from the National Security Archives at Georgetown University.

The rebels, whose leadership approved the taxation of cocaine in 1982, moved slowly from extorting drug dealers in their areas to protecting landing strips used for smuggling to processing coca leaf into coca paste, one of the steps in the refining of cocaine.

Moreover, evidence has emerged in recent months to support suspicions that the FARC has sought to move into trafficking--right to the U.S. border.

In November, Mexican authorities accused Carlos Ariel Charry Guzman, a Colombian, of setting up a cocaine-for-arms deal with the notorious Tijuana cartel. Charry Guzman had been arrested in Mexico City in August. Mariano Herran Salvatti, then Mexico’s top drug prosecutor, said at the time that Charry Guzman was working for senior FARC leader Briceno and was “the link, the coordinator of shipments of drugs and receiver of payment in money or arms” between the FARC and the cartel led by the Arellano Felix brothers in Tijuana.

Then, in March, Mexican officials arrested Rigoberto Yannez, alias El Primo, allegedly a senior lieutenant in the Tijuana cartel who served as a go-between in the FARC deal. Earlier, Mexican police had arrested another purported capo in the Arellano Felix cartel, Ismael Higuera, or El Mayel, who was allegedly the first Mexican link for the FARC.

CIA Predicted Nations Would Seek More Aid

The 1992 CIA report warned that Colombia and other Andean governments would try to capitalize on whatever ties were discovered between the FARC and the drug trade to obtain more military assistance from the United States.

In that way, the report said, Washington could be drawn into a proxy war that would provide little benefit in attempts to slow the export of drugs to the U.S.

“Andean governments are likely to continue to stress the links between local insurgencies and the drug trade in hopes of convincing the U.S. that funding counterinsurgency operations with counter-narcotics aid would lead to major gains against traffickers,” the report said.

Top officials in the State, Defense and Justice departments acknowledged in recent interviews that individual FARC units are connected to the drug trade. But they hedged on the role of the group’s leadership and whether the FARC could be called a cartel.

“Clearly, members of the FARC are involved in the drug trade. They are not the crucial glue that holds it together, however,” one DEA official said.

And while Colombian military and police authorities are strongly convinced of the links, President Andres Pastrana maintains that the FARC is a political body distinct from drug traffickers. To say otherwise would doom the peace talks now underway.

Within his office, many see a split in the FARC’s ruling committee, with some of its members believing that narcotics are the best way to finance their struggle against the state and others concerned about the drugs’ corrupting influence.

As a result, it is unclear just what effect the FARC’s deepening involvement in drugs will have on U.S. policy.

A $900-million aid package being discussed in Washington, for instance, is more regional and less martial than the $1.3-billion package passed last year. The money would be distributed to several countries in the Andes, and a greater percentage of the aid would go to social development programs.

There seems little appetite in either the Bush administration or Congress for further military involvement in Colombia.

But the more that links develop between the FARC and drug trafficking, the greater the possibility that the U.S. will find itself battling Colombia’s insurgents.

“It could mean the U.S. does away with the gray line between counter-narcotics and insurgency and starts treating the FARC like the Medellin and Cali cartels,” said Adam Isacson, a senior associate at the Center for International Policy in Washington. “We could start helping the fight against the FARC.”

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Times staff writer James F. Smith in Mexico City contributed to this report.