Terrorism Colombia

Wily and nervous as a hunted fox, and maybe more than a little crazed, Pablo Escobar manages to stay a step ahead of Colombian anti-narcotics forces as they dog his trail from hide-out to hide-out. Escobar, 40, is Colombia's leading drug lord and most-wanted man.

"Colombia on the Upswing" (editorial, Aug. 4) paints a rosy picture of trends in Colombia under President Alvaro Uribe. Unfortunately, some trends are not so rosy. The negotiation process between the government and the right-wing paramilitary terrorists has received a lot of attention lately. But it's like the boss negotiating with his employees. The paramilitary groups campaigned for Uribe's election using violence or the threat of violence. In some cities and regions with a heavy military presence, the paramilitaries are the de facto government.

The Colombian government refused Friday to acknowledge publicly what the local news media are calling a fact: Medellin drug traffickers have resumed their terrorist campaign by seizing at least three hostages. A statement sent to newspapers, radio and television stations late Thursday confirmed that traffickers had kidnaped two leading journalists and the sister of Colombia's ambassador to Italy.

Two bombs ripped through a strip of nightclubs and restaurants in a provincial Colombian capital early Sunday, killing at least 12 people and fueling fears of stepped-up terrorist attacks in urban centers. Police said the first bomb exploded at 1:08 a.m. in a parking lot in the most popular entertainment district of Villavicencio, 45 miles southeast of Bogota, the national capital.

The perennial violence of Colombia has taken some deadly new twists this year. Colombian drug-trafficking gangs, long known for their lethal treatment of outside enemies, now appear to be embroiled in a bloody vendetta among themselves. Colombian leftist guerrillas, at war for decades with the government and its security forces, recently turned heavy fire on rural townspeople.

Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha have joined the notorious ranks of Billy the Kid and Al Capone. After years on the rampage, the two Colombian drug lords seem bigger than life and as bad as bandits come. Forbes magazine estimates the pair's wealth in the billions of dollars. In addition to buying the compliance of countless Colombian officials, they are known to finance paramilitary platoons in rural areas and squads of hired killers in the cities.

In a major escalation of the already bloody war between the Colombian government and narcotics traffickers, presumed drug barons attacked one of the nation's most important newspapers, setting off a powerful truck bomb that killed at least one person and wounded at least 83 more. The 6:40 a.m.

The terrorism afflicting Colombia intensified again Monday when a man disguised as a soldier fired an automatic rifle indiscriminately at the crowded airport in Medellin, the center of the country's massive drug-production region. Two people died and at least 12 were wounded.

Last fall, as a wave of narco-terrorism swept Colombia, this historic city of Spanish colonial stonework and sunny Caribbean beaches vanished from the international tourist map. The seasonal tide of American and Canadian travelers never came in, and Cartagena's main business withered in despair. Adalberto Jimenez, an English-speaking tourist guide, said recently that without foreign customers, he is having a hard time feeding his 11 children. "They aren't getting enough to eat.

Copies of a typewritten warning have been circulating in Medellin for nearly a month. To avoid "being surprised by killer bullets," the anonymous message says, people should not gather at night in bars, cafes, streets or parks. "Any group found in these kinds of establishments and places after the designated hour, 9 p.m., will be wiped out no matter who they may be," the message says. It is not an idle warning.

The Colombian army said it has arrested a fourth man suspected of being a member of the Irish Republican Army, less than two weeks after three other alleged members of the Northern Ireland guerrilla group were detained in Bogota. The man, whose identity was unknown, was arrested in southern Huila state, a military source said. On Aug. 11, the army arrested three suspected IRA members believed to have trained Colombian rebels.

A car bomb killed a civilian, and at least 15 suspected members of the rebel group accused in the blast died when explosives they were transporting went off in northern Colombia, officials said. Authorities blamed the leftist National Liberation Army, or ELN, for the car bomb blast that killed a woman and wounded more than 20 people in Marinilla in Antioquia state. Separately, 15 to 20 suspected ELN members died when explosives they were carrying in a truck went off in Santander state, army Gen.

President Andres Pastrana has signed a sweeping new security law that human rights groups fear will open the door to torture, arbitrary detentions and increased military control in Colombia. The measure, passed under intense pressure from hard-line elements within the nation's Congress, gives the military broad powers to combat leftist insurgents. It was signed Monday, but Pastrana's office announced the action Thursday.

In a danger sign for peace talks on two continents, three members of the Irish Republican Army were being held here Monday after allegedly providing explosives training to Colombia's largest leftist rebel group. Military officials said the three men were captured at the airport in Bogota on Saturday after spending five weeks in the demilitarized zone in southern Colombia where the government is negotiating with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Two bombs exploded minutes apart near Colombia's National University on Friday, killing four and plunging the capital into a wave of urban terrorism that has shaken the country's major cities in recent months. Terror has returned to Colombia's urban centers, virtually free from such violence since the early 1990s, when drug kingpin Pablo Escobar planted a succession of car bombs targeting government officials.

Excluded from talks between the Colombian government and Marxist guerrillas, a right-wing paramilitary chief admitted Wednesday that he had ordered the kidnapping of a peace envoy's brother in order to gain a voice in the negotiations. Carlos Castano, head of the feared Self-Defense Forces, confirmed in a radio interview that he was behind Monday's abduction of Guillermo Valencia Cossio, brother of government peace negotiator Fabio Valencia Cossio.

Just over a year ago, this walled bastion of colonial architecture was playing out its historical role as a city under siege. During past centuries, the foes outside Cartagena's fortress walls were English pirates and other foreigners seeking to sack the city's riches. The more recent enemies--drug traffickers and their terrorist allies--attacked from positions within Cartagena's walls.

Unhappy and unstable marriages between drug traffickers and terrorists are washing South American cocaine trails with blood. In Peru, fanatical Maoist guerrillas have built alliances with peasant growers of coca, the source of cocaine, and with the trafficker organizations. In neighboring Colombia, at different times and in different places, both leftist guerrillas and right-wing death squads have established opportunistic and lethal links with drug lords.

The semicircle of computers and control panels facing a movie-size screen looks at first glance like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. But the screen gives it away. Instead of galaxies or exotic space travelers, it shows a complex electrical diagram--a lighted, colored-coded technical map of the electrical grid that supplies energy to about 80% of Colombians. Green lines are working; blue lines aren't.

Foreign investors here have known for years that they run a high risk: Their pipelines and buildings might be blown up and their executives and contractors abducted as pawns in a prolonged civil war. Still, they have been willing to accept the risk because of the high rewards from the country's abundant natural resources and potential markets. But now, as the guerrilla war intensifies and the economy stalls, investors are reconsidering how much they are willing to put on the line in Colombia.