Thousands of Colombians have been slain as rebels and paramilitary groups assert their control.

By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER
TIMES STAFF WRITER

PURACE, Colombia -- When the guerrillas came to destroy this little town, Jhimmy Guauna was there to stop them.

The musician and member of an indigenous band left his simple whitewashed home with weapon in hand: his flute. Soon, nearly everyone in town had joined him in
the main square. They chanted. They sang. They waved white flags and told the guerrillas to leave.

The New Year's Eve uprising did not succeed. When the rebels left a few hours later, several buildings were in ruins. Two police officers had been killed. And
Guauna was dead. Medical workers said a single bullet had passed through his throat, silencing the singer, painter and aspiring lawyer. Whether stray round or
deliberate shot, the townspeople got the message: Next time, let the guerrillas win.

"I'm going to stay inside" if the guerrillas return, said Guauna's brother Diego, who lived with Jhimmy in this town that clings like a wasp's nest to a cliff ledge high in
the western Andes. "It'd be tough to confront them."

Jhimmy Guauna was not the first civilian killed in Colombia's guerrilla war, nor the most recent. As Colombia's 38-year-old conflict has intensified in the past few
years, it has become one of the deadliest in the world for noncombatants.

The number of civilians killed each year by one of Colombia's bewildering array of armed groups has skyrocketed, from 1,552 dead in 1998 to an estimated 5,400
in 2001.

For every soldier killed in combat, six civilians die, either from cross-fire, assassinations or massacres carried out by the military, leftist guerrillas or right-wing
paramilitary groups, according to figures kept by the Center for Investigation and Popular Education, a research group based in Bogota, the capital.

Colombia, in fact, is one of the few war zones in the world where all illegal armed groups at times explicitly target civilians, according to human rights activists. In
Colombia's drug-financed conflict, civilians often become targets as armed groups try to exert control over rural areas where coca, the plant used in making cocaine,
is grown. Farmers, housewives, store owners and teachers are shot, blown up or hacked to death. The murders take place day and night, in cities and towns, at
home and in schools and churches.

It's a crisis the Colombian government has so far failed to end. Peace talks begun three years ago have made little progress, nearly collapsing earlier this year.
Hundreds of towns and hamlets are without police or soldiers because of lack of money or fears for the officers' safety, leaving citizens vulnerable to the whims of
local rebel or paramilitary commanders. Even when towns do have protection, it's usually provided by poorly equipped police facing battle-hardened fighters.

In response, an extraordinary grass-roots resistance has flourished in the last several years.

Towns have declared themselves peace islands, where neither the army nor insurgents are welcome. Other communities have mounted ad hoc displays of resistance.
Still others have attempted to directly negotiate with the armed groups.

So far, there have been few successes, although some civilians continue to hold out hope.

"It's a long, slow process and there's no magic bullet," said Robin Kirk, an expert on Colombia with New York-based Human Rights Watch.

What is clear is that none of the armed groups will allow any such movements to threaten their power.

Comandante Vladimir is the nom de guerre for a member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which attacked Purace on Dec. 31. Standing
at a rainy, wind-swept roadblock in Colombia's high plains 12 miles from the village, he explained that the civilian resistance was a "serious" issue that the guerrillas
would soon clear up.

"We are going to make people understand things," said Vladimir, a 17-year-old who has been a rebel for four years. "We are going to call everyone who has been
doing this civil resistance together to explain to them what is happening. The government is putting the people against us.

"The people are confused," he said.

Two leftist rebel groups have fought the government through most of the nearly four decades of conflict. More recently, right-wing paramilitary groups have joined the
battle, sometimes with support from the army.

Unlike other conflicts in which private armies must depend on locals for food, shelter or supplies, none of Colombia's armed groups need the goodwill of civilians.

Instead, all sides finance their activities at least in part from drugs. Colombia accounts for nearly 80% of the world's supply of cocaine and most of the heroin sold on
the East Coast of the United States.

The Colombian military estimates that more than $500 million a year from drugs and kidnappings flows to the country's leftist rebel groups--FARC and the smaller
National Liberation Army, or ELN. The groups tax farmers who grow coca, and the Colombian military says FARC has also begun to process and transport illegal
drugs.

Meanwhile, paramilitary leader Carlos Castano has said that as much as 70% of the income for his right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia comes from
drug sources as well, financing its explosive growth from a few hundred men in the 1980s to more than 10,000 today.

More than any other factor, this growing reliance on drug money has thrust civilians onto Colombia's killing fields as each group grapples for territory. In addition, the
desire to control transit corridors and natural resources fuels the land grab.

The farmers and merchants living in areas controlled by paramilitary forces are seen by guerrilla groups as right-wing sympathizers, supplying labor and money to the
enemy. Civilians in rebel-controlled territory are viewed with suspicion by the rightists.

That is why a sense of dread gripped the town of San Vicente del Caguan last month, when it seemed that peace talks between rebels and the government were on
the verge of collapse.

The town is the capital of a special zone ceded to guerrillas by the government for negotiations. Residents feared that the military would roll into the region to regain
control if the talks ended, to be followed by paramilitary forces.

"If the zone goes, we are cannon fodder," said Victor Ayala, the second in command of the unarmed local police force.

The self-sufficiency provided by drug money has also meant that the paramilitary groups and guerrillas don't have to answer to outside forces. There are no
superpowers that can yank their funding, no external groups to influence their thinking. Both easily ignore repeated pleas from the United Nations and national and
international peace groups to show more respect for human rights.

As a result, Colombia's conflict is more a brutal clash for power than an effort to win the hearts and minds of the populace.

"As the sides fight for territory and economic resources, each year the conflict becomes more degraded," said Ana Teresa Bernal, head of Redepaz, a leading
Colombian peace group. "It's a conflict that more than anything else affects the civilian population. It is tearing apart the fabric of society."

The first, scattered attempts at organized civilian resistance came in the 1980s, when the right-wing paramilitary groups began to flourish. But it wasn't until the late
1990s that local peace groups began a concerted effort to advance the cause of civil resistance, especially in rural areas.

The first "communities of peace" arose in northern Colombia, in a volatile and isolated region near the border with Panama. People from several towns banded
together and pledged to remain strictly neutral in the conflict, following three simple rules: no guns, no participation in the war and no sharing of information with any
side.

The hope was that the paramilitary forces and guerrillas battling for control of the region's transit routes to the Pacific and Atlantic would leave the communities alone.

But the theory was complicated by the realities of life. Families had children who belonged to guerrilla units. Paramilitary fighters would visit girlfriends in the towns.

And so, both sides continued targeting civilians.

By some estimates, more than 100 people have been killed in the peace communities since 1997. Those who have worked to foster the growing number of peace
communities insist that many more people would have been killed if not for the towns' desire to remain neutral. But they acknowledge that results could have been
better.

"The idea was that the armed groups would respect the communities. That never happened," said one researcher, who declined to be named because she is still
involved in the project.

Jhimmy Guauna's rebellion here in Purace was one recent example of a spontaneous grass-roots backlash. Several other towns throughout Colombia have held
similar demonstrations.

Many of them have taken place in indigenous communities, where there is a long history of social organization as groups have fought for recognition by the
government. Still, the protests seem mostly a rush of adrenaline and frustration, quickly quashed by the reality of confronting armed guerrillas.

For instance, in Coconuco, about 10 miles south of Purace, a squad of ELN guerrillas attacked the police station Dec. 17, firing machine guns for less than an hour,
then retreating. No one was injured.

As the guerrillas were leaving town, they ran into a band of carolers celebrating the Christmas holidays. The revelers shouted at the guerrillas and were joined by
other townspeople.

Local media portrayed the event as though the citizens had driven out the guerrillas.

When the ELN and FARC guerrillas came back two weeks later, striking the police stations in Purace and Coconuco in a coordinated attack, there was no effort to
take to the streets.

"The first display was a valiant act, a defense of the country, the people, the land," said Gustavo Valencia, Coconuco's mayor. "But in front of the power of guns, we
are vulnerable. People are terrified now."

The tiny coffee town of Tarso in western Colombia is yet another experiment in civilian resistance. Three years ago, ex-guerrillas got together with local residents and
held meetings that led to the creation of a municipal assembly with 150 representatives.

The idea was that widespread citizen participation would stave off attacks by convincing the leftist rebels that the town was run by the people, not Bogota's central
government.

Last year, the assembly worked with the mayor to develop a plan to provide night classes for poor farmers, free bus transportation for students and a fund to support
small businesses.

Then, cars and motorcycles without license plates--an effort to conceal the vehicles' origin--began to appear. Strangers with side arms were seen idling on street
corners with local police officers.

In October, they struck. A squad of right-wing fighters, angered that ex-guerrillas were involved in the process, approached one of the leaders of the assembly in
front of the white church that dominates the town. They gave the former ELN member and four friends 24 hours to leave town.

The threat put a halt to the experiment in self-reliance. The assembly has not met since October. The town seems a broken place, with fragments of the assembly's
vision scattered around like so much shattered glass.

One assembly member, a coffee rancher, said he would consider it a blessing if the right-wing paramilitary forces told him to leave.

"At least that way, I know they won't kill me," said Gabriel Jaime Gomez, 40, who was once kidnapped by an ELN band. Rebels who later left the same group
worked with him to forge the assembly.

The former guerrillas who fled are more hopeful. They acknowledge that many of Colombia's civil resistance movements have only ended in more deaths.

But Tarso, they hope, will be different.

"The process has collapsed, but it will recuperate," said William Zapata, one of those threatened by the right-wing fighters. "It cannot be stopped."

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