The FARC's Fifth Column.(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia moves into Peru)

Beneath the jungle canopy deep inside the Peruvian rain forest, rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) relaxed in a makeshift camp. Equipped with AKM assault rifles, land mines and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, the guerrillas had trekked 450 kilometers south of their country's border with Peru. Their mission: to recruit sympathizers and encourage indigenous farmers to plant opium poppies. One of the FARC's newly enlisted collaborators told NEWSWEEK they had another aim as well: to scout for a rear-guard refuge should the Colombian Army gain the upper hand back home. Said Ana, 18, the daughter of coca farmers, "They can come here if things get difficult in Colombia."

Things may be about to get difficult. Last week Colombian President Andres Pastrana, frustrated by a three-month stalemate in on-again, off-again peace talks with the FARC, gave the 17,000-strong guerrilla army 48 hours to resume negotiations. If they didn't, Pastrana said, Colombian armed forces would retake the Switzerland-sized swath of territory Pastrana let the rebels occupy in 1999 as a good-will gesture. By the weekend Army units were massing on the fringes of the guerrilla-controlled enclave, awaiting final orders.

Pastrana's resort to brinkmanship surprised many Colombians and placed the country on the knife's edge of a drastic escalation of its 38-year civil war. It also raised the regional stakes. A crackdown would almost certainly scatter the FARC into neighboring countries, like Peru. Fragile economically and politically, they would prove fertile ground for not just illicit crops, but rebel implantation as well, further destabilizing the Andean region of Latin America.

The discovery of FARC movements well inside Peru suggests that rebel commanders have been anticipating a complete breakdown of the peace process for months. Elements of Colombia's largest guerrilla army have long hopscotched across porous borders with Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Venezuela to elude counterinsurgency units. But never before have FARC units penetrated so deeply into a neighbor's hinterland. The guerrillas' agenda in Peru is not only to create a fallback position; NEWSWEEK has learned that the rebels hope to help revive both of Peru's dormant guerrilla movements as well.

Traveling by foot and riverboat, FARC columns have crisscrossed the former stomping grounds of the Shining Path in Peru's coca-rich Upper Huallaga Valley. According to one retired Shining Path fighter, remnants of the once fierce rebel force met with a FARC contingent near the town of Tingo Maria last year. That coincides with a noticeable rise in Shining Path activity. In recent months rebels have skirmished with Peruvian Army and police units and carried out acts of sabotage rarely seen since former president Alberto Fujimori unleashed a successful crackdown on the Maoist group 10 years ago. About 20 former commanders of Peru's smaller, urban-based Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement were seen leaving the country in early November with a FARC column, apparently for consultations with guerrilla chieftains in Colombia.

Senior Peruvian and U.S. government officials claim to have no knowledge of a FARC thrust into the Peruvian interior. Lima's ambassador to Colombia assured a radio interviewer last Friday that any incursion by guerrilla forces into his country was limited to border areas. But Peruvian intelligence sources and eyewitnesses confirm the sightings of dozens of Colombian guerrilla fighters in isolated towns and villages scattered throughout the sparsely populated countryside east of the Andean mountain range.

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