Pubdate: Thu, 08 Mar 2001
Source: Guardian Weekly, The (UK)
Copyright: Guardian Publications 2001
Contact:  75 Farringdon Road London U.K EC1M 3HQ
Fax: 44-171-242-0985
Website: http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/GWeekly/front/
Author:  Martin Hodgson in La Concordia

COLOMBIA FOOD CROPS SUFFER IN AIR ASSAULT ON DRUGS

Spraying Herbicides Has Devastated The Local Economy And Caused Resentment

Luckily the village school was closed the day that crop-dusters, 
escorted by combat helicopters, doused the tin-roofed classrooms with 
herbicides. Their target was the swath of illegal coca plantations on 
the low hills around the village, but clouds of defoliant engulfed 
the school, the church, and the fields of plantain, cassava and maize.

Miriam Rodriguez, a teacher at the school, said: "The effects have 
been catastrophic. They sprayed the coca, but they also killed all 
our food crops." The schoolchildren complained of rashes, headaches 
and vomiting after the weedkiller fell. Nearby are half-dead fruit 
trees, withered maize plants and row upon row of skeletal coca plants.

George Bush met the Colombian president, Andres Pastrana, in 
Washington last week as the biggest offensive against drugs unleashed 
on Colombia rolled across the southern jungles and farmland.

The blitz on the coca fields is at the heart of Plan Colombia, a 
$1.3bn strategy to cut drug production by 50% and weaken the leftwing 
guerrillas and rightwing paramilitaries who use its profits to 
finance their operations. Official United States figures put 
Colombian cocaine production at 520 tonnes a year, but analysts say 
the figure is likely to be much higher.

Guided by spy planes and satellites, crop-dusters criss-crossed the 
skies of Caqueta state in the south and the Middle Magdalena region 
in the north. Flying as low as 15 metres (50ft) they were protected 
by helicopter gunships. Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces 
of Colombia (Farc) often shoot at the slow-moving crop-dusters. The 
pilots, some of them US contract workers, fly up to five missions a 
day, spraying on average 3.8 litres of glyphosate herbicide on every 
hectare.

Senior Colombian officials say the operation is a resounding success: 
in the first phase 29,000 hectares of coca were destroyed in the 
Guamuez valley in Putumayo state, a lawless region on the Ecuadorean 
border where almost half of Colombia's cocaine is produced. But local 
farmers and officials say crop-dusting has destroyed thousands of 
hectares of food crops and pasture, devastated the local economy, and 
sown deep resentment among the rural poor.

Officials say crops are only sprayed after they have been identified 
as drug plantations, but in high winds the herbicide can drift off 
target. Farmers often intersperse coca and opium poppies with food 
crops, making mistakes even harder to avoid. Several days after 
spraying, every plant in the affected zone starts to wither and die.

Farmers say that poisoned ground can take months to recover. In some 
regions, the government has signed pacts promising emergency food aid 
and long-term assistance for farmers who tear up their own crops.

Officials describe the Guamuez valley as a vast network of industrial 
coca plantations financed and managed by drug dealers. Locals 
disagree.

"It's not one person with a huge plantation, it's a chain of little 
crops," said Alfonso Martinez, a former mayor in the town of La 
Hormiga.

"The government has never had a serious social policy in the Putumayo 
- - and they still don't. Two months after they fumigated, we still 
haven't seen any aid," he said, warning that some peasants, 
despairing of aid, were already replanting their illegal crops with a 
new strain of high-yield Peruvian coca.

"There has been a delay, but that's because we're setting up a social 
programme that is unprecedented in Colombia," said Gonzalo de 
Francisco, who is in charge of Plan Colombia's social development 
programmes.

"We really believe we can solve Putumayo's problems."

Mr Pastrana's request for up to $500m extra a year in financial 
assistance, and trade preferences to help bail out the struggling 
Colombian economy, was rejected by Mr Bush. But with unemployment 
nudging 20%, Mr Pastrana believes that the anti-narcotics campaign 
and peace talks with Farc both depend on social investment. He has 
warned that, without greater investment in drug-producing regions, 
poor Colombians will continue to work in the drugs trade or sign up 
with the armed factions that have perpetuated Colombia's 37-year 
civil war.

Most of the first tranche of US aid went towards helicopters, 
equipment and training for the elite anti-narcotics battalions 
leading the fumigation drive. Troops from the new battalions patrol 
the roads leading into the Guamuez valley, but towns in the region 
are dominated by paramilitary groups.

Late last year the paramilitaries launched a campaign of massacres 
and assassinations to drive out the Farc guerrillas, who had 
dominated the region for decades. Their success helps explain why 
there has been no guerrilla resistance to the fumigation campaign in 
Putumayo. In rebel-dominated Caqueta state, however, sorties have 
come under heavy fire, and last month an armed rescue unit - 
including US civilian contract workers - braved guerrilla bullets to 
save the crew of a downed helicopter. But the brunt of the 
anti-narcotics campaign has been borne by small farmers and Indians, 
said German Martinez, a local ombudsman in the town of Puerto Asis. 
"If this is just about destroying coca crops and burning labs, no 
matter the price, then it's a victory," he said. "But if you don't 
tackle the social causes, the peasants will continue growing illegal 
crops. We shouldn't just be eradicating coca - we should be 
eradicating poverty."
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MAP posted-by: Josh Sutcliffe