Pubdate: Tue, 06 Mar 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2001 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Scott Wilson, Washington Post Foreign Service
Note: Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.

BATTLES NOT FOUGHT

EL TIGRE, Colombia -- A six-week aerial spraying campaign has left vast 
stretches of Colombia's coca heartland parched and withering. But the 
military has yet to establish a presence in the back country, suggesting 
the most dangerous work is yet to come for the U.S.-backed soldiers trying 
to rid the area of drug crops within a year.

Much of the damage has been done here in western Putumayo, a southern 
province that accounts for more than half of Colombia's coca production. 
The herbicide spraying has killed more than 40,000 acres of coca crops in 
this area alone, according to Colombian military officials. But much of the 
terrain is still controlled by the country's largest left-wing guerrilla 
insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and by 
right-wing paramilitary forces who battle with the guerrillas for control 
of drug crops and strategic transportation corridors.

In interviews around this village sitting between rebel and paramilitary 
areas eight miles northwest of Puerto Asis, the region's main town, farmers 
said many drug plantations remained untouched, protected from spray planes 
in hard-to-reach valleys by jungle cover and guerrilla troops. Valleys full 
of coca were evident from the main east-west highway. And on almost every 
farm hit by the herbicide since December, small tents protected young coca 
plants for future cultivation.

Rooting out those remote fields will likely force Colombian troops to 
directly confront the FARC, an 18,000-member rebel army that taxes drug 
crops to help finance its war effort. By all accounts, the guerrillas have 
increased their numbers here in preparation for a ground attack and to 
blunt the growth of paramilitary forces, who municipal officials suggest 
are being used by the Colombian army as an effective if illegal advance guard.

Plan Colombia, the anti-drug strategy backed by $1.3 billion in U.S. 
military and social aid, has so far unfolded exactly as southern Colombian 
farmers and European diplomats said it would: a fumigation campaign 
supported by U.S.-trained anti-narcotics battalions.

 From late December to early February, aerial spraying killed more than 
60,000 acres of coca crops across Putumayo province, or almost half the 
country's estimated supply, according to government accounts. Colombia 
accounts for 90 percent of the world's cocaine, which is made from coca 
leaves, and recent U.S. government figures reported that coca cultivation 
in Colombia increased 11 percent last year.

But two key components of Plan Colombia have yet to materialize, despite 
assurances from President Andres Pastrana's government to farmers and 
foreign governments. More than $80 million in U.S. aid to encourage farmers 
to pull up coca in favor of legal crops has yet to reach Putumayo, and the 
amount originally held out to farmers has shrunk by 75 percent since October.

Moreover, the government has yet to honor its pledge to impose order in a 
region where the FARC controls the countryside and paramilitary forces 
reign in urban centers. "The government has abandoned us," said Alfonso 
Martinez, an aide to La Hormiga Mayor Flover Edmundo Meza, who runs the 
municipality of 35,000 residents.

"The army comes and then it quickly leaves," said a member of the FARC's 
15th Front, which was sent in from neighboring Caqueta province, who gave 
his name as Christian.

The army's scant presence also has alarmed leaders of neighboring 
countries, who have seen thousands of refugees pour across Colombia's 
border to escape conflict and aerial spraying.

"The presence of the Colombian army is, to put it mildly, infrequent," 
Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said last week during a visit to 
Washington, where he was seeking U.S. helicopters, speedboats and 
communications equipment to fortify the border roughly 30 miles from this 
village. "It is time to stop the diplomatic language and say clearly what 
is going on."

Traveling west from Puerto Asis to this region required passage through at 
least three zones of control, none held by government forces. Rebel and 
paramilitary troops hid in plain sight: a dozen uniformed FARC soldiers 
drinking fruit juice in the town of Puerto Vega, a column of two dozen 
paramilitary troops marching along the road from their base in El Placer.

But each side appeared to be on a war footing, reluctant to talk or allow 
passage into areas they control. Over four days last week, guerrillas and 
paramilitary forces clashed around La Dorada, a strategic point along the 
only highway from Ecuador.

Meanwhile, the spraying campaign has moved east to neighboring Caqueta 
province, where last month Americans hired by the State Department to make 
spraying flights came under guerrilla fire during a rescue mission.

Colombian military officials said that, for the moment, spraying and rapid 
strikes against drug production labs would remain their primary tactics. 
The strategy, while not changing the security situation on the ground, has 
two purposes: undermining guerrilla finances and biding time until U.S. 
military hardware in the form of more than 50 transport helicopters arrives 
later this year.

The third of three U.S.-trained anti-drug battalions is scheduled to be 
ready for the field by May.

"This is going to be a sustained fumigation effort," said a senior 
Colombian military official managing the anti-narcotics battalions.

Local officials say the military is getting help from the paramilitary 
groups, who have effectively taken over many towns and urban centers in 
Putumayo. Paramilitary troops still camp at Villa Sandra, a fenced compound 
on the road between Puerto Asis and the military base in Santa Ana.

"The advance of paramilitarism here coincides with the advance of Plan 
Colombia," said German Martinez, the local people's ombudsman who completed 
his assignment last week. "When the military says it is striking 
paramilitary crops and labs here, it is a lie."

Gen. Mario Montoya, head of the joint anti-drug task force carrying out 
Plan Colombia's military component, said recently that the price of coca 
has doubled to $1,500 a kilogram since the spraying began chipping away at 
supply. But farmers here said the going rate for a kilogram of coca paste, 
which is later processed into powder form to make cocaine, has risen only 
slightly to about $1,000 a kilogram.

However, the spraying has frightened many farmers, who say they have no 
plans to begin replanting drug crops until they are sure the spraying is 
finished. Colombia's prosecutor general has opened an investigation into 
the spraying campaign, which farmers here say has killed animals and 
sickened children; the probe could open the door to damage claims or 
criminal complaints.

Janeth Sanchez, 22, said she lost five acres of coca in the spraying as 
well as six acres of corn, bananas and sugar cane. She said several hundred 
fish she cultivated in a backyard pond also died from the herbicide.

A sign hangs in front of her cement-block house reading: "For sale: tinga 
seeds," a type of coca particularly susceptible to herbicide. Sanchez has 
2,000 plants sheltered under a tent in her back yard. "Almost no one wants 
them right now," she said.

Arnulfo Ardila, a farmer and friend of Sanchez, is planting a 
wheelbarrow-full of new seeds. He was not touched by the spraying and 
believes the market will soon shift again to make the plants a valued 
commodity. "Here the social development money won't work," he said. "The 
people are promised the money and the government never delivers it. Soon 
people will want these plants again."

Pastrana has expressed fear that, without a rapid infusion of aid, farmers 
here will turn back to coca crops. In a recent interview, he said he would 
seek additional social development aid from the United States, perhaps as 
much as $500 million a year.

But in western Putumayo and in Puerto Asis, where more than 500 families 
have agreed to uproot coca in exchange for a subsidy to help them start new 
crops, no money has arrived. Last year, farmers were told that they would 
have a choice between as much as $4,000 in cash that could be invested in 
new ventures or an equivalent amount of crops, livestock and other 
assistance to help them turn illegal farms into legal ones. That choice has 
been eliminated; farmers now are offered $1,000 worth of products. In 
return, they must pull up coca crops a year after the money arrives.

"This is very complicated and will depend on a lot of factors," said Ruben 
Dario Pinzon, an official with Plante, the government agency supervising 
the crop substitution program. "First, the violence must end."

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D