Next week 5,000 peasants recruited from small villages around Colombia will return to 144 villages as full-fledged soldiers where, backed by regular troops, they will attempt to reassert the rule of Bogota over the war-ravaged region, Gen. Carlos Ospina Ovalle, head of the Colombian Army since August, said Tuesday. The program to turn campesinos into soldiers — and presumably provide protection from the leftist guerillas and the narco-traffickers they work with — is one facet of the newly aggressive war on terrorism and drugs, funded in large part by the United States. “These terrorists and drug traffickers have united and are attacking our democratic system,” Ospina told reporters at the Pentagon Tuesday. “They are trying to take over and we are stopping them.” Full Story