Pubdate: Tue, 06 Mar 2001
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Section: Page A18
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
Note: Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report

BATTLES DEFERRED

Colombia's Aerial Drug Campaign Showing Its Limits

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."
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MAP posted-by: Beth