Holidays in Columbia.

[Matthew X]

A top figure in a terrorist group has told his armed fighters to target 
American interests and to extort, kidnap and murder American citizens.

"The United States has declared war," he said in a radio message to armed 
followers. "Your obligation is to fight them."

Instructions from a bin Laden deputy holed up in a cave somewhere? Maybe a 
radical Islamic band in Pakistan? Or extremists in the land of our "ally" 
Saudi Arabia?

None of the above. Wrong region.

The threat comes from our very own hemisphere, and was issued by Jorge 
Briceno, military chief of the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia, known as the FARC. The communication was intercepted by Colombian 
police and reported by a television station in Bogota.
So far, indications are that the FARC plans to attack American citizens in 
Colombia itself. So far, no one is saying FARC plans to bring terrorism to 
American soil.
And the best way to assure that that horror does not happen is for the 
United States to fully support the efforts of Colombia's new president, 
Alvaro Uribe, to defeat the terrorists who have brought his nation 38 years 
of war in which more than 100,000 people have died.
There might be doubts about the real motives of Middle Eastern governments 
that are supposedly part of the struggle against terrorism, but there can 
be no doubt about Uribe. Aside from his very personal motivation - Uribe's 
father was killed by terrorists two decades ago - the new president of this 
Andean nation was elected by a landslide after promising voters a hard line 
against terrorism.
His predecessor, Andres Pastrana, had made the mistake of believing FARC 
would be open to a reasonable dialogue and would negotiate in good faith. 
Pastrana turned over to the rebels a Switzerland-sized chunk of Colombia, 
which FARC used as a base to conduct terrorist attacks in the rest of the 
nation. Pastrana came to his senses when he called off talks this past 
February. Violence has intensified since.
In fact, earlier this month FARC attacked the Colombian Congress while 
Uribe's inauguration ceremony was being held, killing 21 people in a shower 
of mortars. It was FARC's way of showing off, of telling the nation that 
even an event as supposedly secure as the swearing-in of a president was 
within reach of their violence.
Although the attack sowed fear among the long-suffering people of Colombia, 
it also showed FARC's own fears. Its leaders know that Uribe is no 
Pastrana, not someone about to be hoodwinked into thinking Colombia's 
terror groups will settle for anything short of the imposition of a Marxist 
dictatorship.
That Uribe means business is clear from the measures he has taken barely a 
month in office. He wants to double the size of the professional army to 
100,000 and add $1 billion to annual defense spending of $3.1 billion. He 
has imposed a special war tax on people and businesses with assets of more 
than $60,000 and has promised to train a network of 100,000 civilians to 
act as police auxiliaries.
http://www.colombiatimes.com/
PUERTO ASIS, Colombia (AP) -- Black spirals of buzzards mark the fresh 
corpses that turn up in this frontier town and in the nearby coca fields, 
jungle and pastures, where paramilitary death squads roam freely, killing 
suspected rebel collaborators or anyone else who gets in their way.
Despite patrols by Colombian soldiers and police, the carnage is mounting, 
and terrified residents don't know where to turn for help.
"We are in Puerto Asis, where there is no justice, no law," snapped a 
medical worker, who asked not to be named for fear he might be killed for 
speaking out. "Someone could come into this office right now and shoot me, 
and nothing would ever come of it."
The paramilitaries have waged a war of terror across Colombia in their zeal 
to combat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and a 
smaller rebel group.
Their bloody battle is among the greatest obstacles to President Alvaro 
Uribe's promises of finally bringing peace to this country after years of 
bloodshed. The FARC is fighting its own war against the government, a 
conflict that has stretched 38 years.
In the meantime, Colombian civilians -- like the residents of Puerto Asis 
-- are caught in the middle.
In only a few months, dozens of civilians, including two mayoral 
candidates, have been shot dead in this town in the steamy southern 
lowlands of Colombia's cocaine heartland. Many wind up buried in body bags 
in the trash-strewn "nameless" section of the town cemetery.
Police and soldiers set up checkpoints and patrol streets filled with 
snarling motorcycles, smog-belching buses and horse-drawn carts. But they 
seem unable to stop the bloodshed.
Even the presence in town of an U.S.-trained army counternarcotics 
battalion has had no effect. Planes and U.S.-donated Black Hawk helicopters 
regularly fly along the horizon on their way to fumigate the coca fields.
Authorities say the killers get away scot-free because few witnesses want 
to point fingers at paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of 
Colombia.
"They are afraid to report the killings, because they think there will be 
reprisals against them," said Puerto Asis Mayor Manuel Alzate, who survived 
an assassination attempt last year.
Residents admit they're terrified of being targeted, but also suspect the 
police and army turn a blind eye to the killings.
A paramilitary leader, contacted on the phone in Puerto Asis, refused an 
interview request. Members of the outlawed group openly prowl through town, 
wearing baseball caps over close-cropped hair, pistols stuck into jeans 
beneath loose-fitting shirts.
"To arrest someone, we need an arrest warrant," insisted a police officer 
at the police station, protected by sandbags and rifle-toting officers. "We 
can't arrest someone just because he looks suspicious."
The paramilitaries moved into Puerto Asis about three years ago, while FARC 
guerrillas occupy rural areas outside the town. The guerrillas are known to 
commit their own killings in areas they control. The area is becoming among 
the world's deadliest places, with 128 reported homicides this year, 
hospital records say. Many more are thought to have gone unreported.
That's a ratio of 450 homicides per 100,000 people. In the United States, 
the ratio last year was 5.5 per 100,000.
On the evening of July 28, Leonidas Yague, a municipal official until he 
resigned in May to run for mayor, left his mother at home and headed to a 
nearby store, only to be slain on the street.
"He said, 'Mom, I'll be back in a little while,"' his mother, Rosa 
Benavides, recalled as tears sprang to her eyes. "Twenty minutes later he 
was dead."
According to the police report, an unidentified gunman shot Yague five times.
"He said he would never leave me," said Benavides, a stocky 73-year-old 
widow with swept-back short hair. "I'm left all alone here."
Other victims included Serafin Merino, another candidate for mayor, who was 
shot in the head more than a dozen times on August 22 outside a hospital. 
Days earlier, a woman was executed after she allegedly slapped a 
paramilitary gunman in a bar.
One of the few who takes the carnage in stride is funeral director Maria Cruz.
"Business is great, thank God," she told a reporter without a hint of 
irony, sitting amid empty coffins trimmed with purple velvet. "Sometimes 
there are bodies everywhere."
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/americas/08/30/colombia.deadly.town.ap/index.html