Colombia borrows Peru's playbook to fight rebels

In April 1992, Fujimori abolished Congress and the country's Constitution. Though neither of these has yet happened in Colombia, Gamarra says that Uribe is modeling his fight against the FARC on Peru's example.

"One might ... argue that Uribe is borrowing many, many pages from Fujimori's battle against the Shining Path," Gamarra says. Based on the American strategy of arming peasants in Vietnam, Fujimori used "rondas campesinas" similar to the rural defense forces Ramirez announced last week, he explains.

"It worked for Fujimori, but there was a cost," Gamarra says, pointing to weakened democratic institutions and violations of human rights, a concern of many observers here. "In Colombia, you really are talking about arming a society that is already armed and that has many risks. And the most important risk is once you arm a population like this it's hard to take those arms away."

Since the establishment of Colombia's new Constitution in 1991, there have been five emergency decrees, which don't require approval from Congress (except to extend them for a third time), but do require ratification by the nation's Constitutional Court. Three of those decrees were supported by the court, and the current one is also expected to receive judicial approval.

"I think we are going to see more measures," says Carlos Gaviria, a senator and former constitutional court judge. "In all respects, the government has, without doubt, an authoritarian orientation" that could grow.

In a list sent to the court to justify the decree, Uribe pointed to the worsening security situation, including death threats by the FARC that have caused 200 regional officials to resign, as well as the economic effects of the civil war.

In El Cartucho, residents don't know much about the state of emergency, and mistrust of the new government, particularly the local police, runs high.

"They didn't protect anything," says Cesar (who doesn't give his last name), a community leader who blames Uribe, not the FARC, for the Aug. 7 attacks and the gruesome death of his friends. "If he wasn't president, this wouldn't have happened."

But in the upper middle-class neighborhood of Pontevedra, Guillermo Galvis, an accountant who lives two blocks from where another round of mortars was fired, blamed the FARC for the inauguration day attacks and wholly supports the state of emergency.

"The guerrillas have this country kidnapped," says Mr. Galvis, who voted for Uribe. "We have to violate human rights in order to protect the people."

Galvis says he would not only invite the police into his home, he would open his arms to American armed forces. "Right now, the United States is helping us with technology and intelligence ... but if they want to send people and soldiers, they are welcome."

The civil war's original Marxist social causes are largely driven by lucrative cocaine, kidnapping, and arms trade which pits more than 25,000 guerrillas against government forces and 12,000 paramilitaries.

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