Tipping the Scales in a War

As in the past, the guerrillas blocked the road just after dawn outside this tiny way station at the foot of snowcapped peaks in northeastern Colombia.

They stopped all traffic, seized five commercial trucks carrying food and supplies and forced the drivers and passengers to head toward the rebels’ redoubt in the mountains.

But this time, a livestock dealer saw the caravan pass by. He stopped, placed a call on a pay phone, and within 30 minutes, the Colombian military was on the scene. There was a brief gun battle, and the guerrillas fled, leaving behind the trucks, the supplies and the captives.

“I just want the violence put behind us,” said the tipster, a 52-year-old man who travels the dusty back roads of this province to buy and sell goats, sheep and cattle. “I am tired of it.”

Ordinary as the tip may sound, it represents a revolution here in Colombia, where the government and citizenry have long been indifferent to each other.

The bust was the latest success in Colombia’s new and controversial program to encourage ordinary citizens to play a bigger role in ending this country’s four-decade-long civil war. President Alvaro Uribe is trying to create a nationwide, million-member network of citizen informers as the centerpiece of his new plan to crack down on the leftist rebels fighting for control of the country and the outlawed, right-wing paramilitaries who are their sworn enemies.

But the network is not only an effort to quell the bloodshed that leaves nearly 4,000 dead each year, the majority of them civilians. It’s also an experiment in governance, a countrywide Civics 101 lesson.

Perhaps Colombia’s most fundamental problem is that there is no government in many parts of the country. About 10% of counties have no police force. Mayors and city council members have fled scores of communities under threat of death. The only law in huge chunks of rural Colombia is either the guerrillas or the paramilitaries.

The network, then, is an attempt to convince Colombians who have become apathetic in the face of government neglect to get involved in their country’s future: You trust us and we’ll respond.

“People have learned to live with pressure from the armed groups, to get along with them,” said Army Lt. Martin Martinez, who participated in the operation this month against the guerrillas a few miles down the road from this tumbledown town of tin-roofed shacks and roadside snack stands. “If we manage to get rid of them, the people’s trust will return.”

Human rights groups and others, however, have denounced the program, saying it risks turning civilians into military targets and opens the door to anonymous accusations by neighbors who want merely to settle scores.

Several groups were horrified this summer when the government began distributing reward money on live television to hooded participants in the program. To many, it raised the specter of a Stalinist state. The practice has since been suspended.

“The army and police have their own intelligence networks. They need to strengthen those structures, rather than rely on ordinary people,” said Mireya Mejia, the peace and conflict resolution advisor to the provincial government. “This network of [civilian] informants inserts the population into the conflict.”

‘Adding Fuel to Fire’

No one has been hurt so far, but such fears may not be unfounded. A local rebel commander claimed that the guerrillas had already infiltrated police ranks and were developing a list of those participating to be targeted for assassination.

The guerrillas, he said, had formed their own “network of informants in the network of informants.”

“The moment that a citizen turns into an informant, they have stopped being a civilian,” said Comandante Domingo, a leader in the National Liberation Army, or ELN, the second-largest Colombian guerrilla group. “They have become helpers of the army.

“Uribe’s plan is only adding fuel to the fire,” he said in a telephone interview arranged through an intermediary.

In concept, Uribe’s plan is no more threatening than a Crime- stopper program in the United States. Citizens call in with a tip and are given rewards of up to $4,000, depending on the value of the information.

But there’s a Colombian twist: Citizens who want to participate must first pass a background check, to make sure they have no guerrilla or criminal history. After passing, each gets a code to use during calls. Each province has a tip line. Callers can dial in and speak with a 911-type operator; the master list of codes and participants’ names is closely guarded.

The day after he took office Aug. 7, Uribe inaugurated the network here in the province of Cesar, where two soaring mountain ranges hover over vast plains filled with cattle. Haunting plantations of African oil palms stretch for miles, the long, regular rows of towering trees creating forests of dark shadows and hidden places.

The province is strategic for two reasons. First, the poorly paved two-lane blacktop running through its middle connects Bogota, Colombia’s capital, to important ports on the Caribbean coast such as Barranquilla.

Second, it’s rich in coal. Alabama-based Drummond Co. -- owners of the Rancho La Quinta planned community near Palm Springs -- has a huge open pit mine in the middle of the province that produces 40% of the country’s annual 55 million tons of exported coal. Colombia is the largest exporter of coal to the United States.

Haven for Rebels

The mountains that surround the province to the north and east have long provided refuge to all the players in the nation’s conflict, making the province one of the more violent in Colombia. In 2001, it ranked second in kidnappings per capita and 13th of 32 provinces in homicides per capita, according to police figures.

The province’s high crime rate and economic importance have brought Uribe back four times in the nearly three months he’s been in office. He has sent 400 more soldiers and police to the area, provided new equipment and pushed for the development of the citizen informer network.

In short, he has demanded results -- and he has gotten them.

A two-day tour through what had been some of the most dangerous roads in the country revealed no guerrilla or paramilitary roadblocks -- common features in Colombia’s countryside.

Traffic along the province’s major roads soared 43% the first month after the informant program began and increased an additional 16% last month, government statistics show. Mass kidnappings have all but ceased. Merchant reports of shakedowns have declined.

Community leaders, local businessmen and ordinary folks in towns along the roads consistently praised the program, saying it had brought a measure of security to once-forgotten byways. People who had feared leaving their small villages said they have begun to travel again.

“It used to be that traveling along our roads was like playing the lottery,” said Genevieve Moreno, a town official in Becerril, which lies along the road that hugs the Perija mountains bordering Venezuela.

“If you left town, you might hit a guerrilla roadblock. Now there’s more security and more vigilance.”

Citizen informers have called in to report a variety of incidents, both common crimes and guerrilla activity. One caller reported four trucks filled with stolen cattle. Police captured 37 cows.

Another caller, who had not even joined the network, phoned when he saw a truck filled with gas cylinders parked along the road. Rebels often use cylinders to make devastating homemade mortars.

Police arrived, seized the truck and found a map inside of a town, with an arrow pointing to the local military base.

Such successes have restored many locals’ confidence in government. Participation in the province’s informer network zoomed from about 90 people to more than 850 in little more than two months.

“If the subversives want to stop this, they’re going to have to kill everyone. People are very much behind this program,” said Col. Orlando Paez, police commander for the province.

Police estimate that most calls come from people seeking reward money. But 10% to 15% are from Colombians just interested in helping out the government.

The livestock dealer, for example, has yet to be paid, but he said he wasn’t worried. He was chased from his ranch by guerrillas years ago and is happy to be striking a blow against them.

“Before, people thought this was the government’s problem,” the man said in an interview arranged by local police. “Now, we understand that the guerrillas are a problem for all of us.”

The two-day tour also revealed that the military’s heightened presence along the province’s highways has played a major role in restoring law and order.

The police and soldiers have been provided better equipment. Shiny high-powered motorcycles patrol constantly. U.S.-built Black Hawk helicopters with high-caliber machine guns fly overhead.

President Criticized

Such militarization has prompted criticism that Uribe is spending too much on the army and not enough on social services for the impoverished province’s 1 million inhabitants.

“Uribe is turning this province into a laboratory for war,” said a human rights worker. “He doesn’t care about health, education or social welfare.”

Human rights groups have also complained that the army has focused more on attacking guerrilla groups than on targeting the paramilitaries, who dominate the northern and central sections of the province and are accused of working with the military to wipe out the guerrillas.

Those worries, however, seemed a distant concern to many of the province’s residents. They were simply happy enough to be traveling the roads again.

A trucker who slowed to stop for a police roadblock greeted the officers with a smile.

“If I have something to report, where do I call?” he asked.