Pubdate: Thu, 23 Oct 2003
Source: Ledger, The (FL)
Copyright: 2003 The Ledger
Contact:  http://www.theledger.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/795
Author: Larry Rohter, New York Times

BOLIVIAN LEADER'S OUSTER SEEN AS WARNING ON U.S. DRUG POLICY

LA PAZ, Bolivia -- On a visit to the White House last year, President 
Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada told President Bush that he would push ahead with 
a plan to eradicate coca but that he needed more money to ease the impact 
on farmers.

Otherwise, the Bolivian president's advisers recalled him as saying, "I may 
be back here in a year, this time seeking political asylum."

Mr. Bush was amused, Bolivian officials recounted, told his visitor that 
all heads of state had tough problems and wished him good luck.

Now Mr. Sanchez de Lozada, Washington's most stalwart ally in South 
America, is living in exile in the United States after being toppled last 
week by a popular uprising, a potentially crippling blow to Washington's 
anti-drug policy in the Andean region.

United States officials interviewed here minimized the importance of the 
drug issue in Mr. Sanchez de Lozada's downfall, blaming a "pent-up 
frustration" over issues ranging from natural gas exports to corruption. 
But to many Bolivians and analysts, the coca problem is intimately tied to 
the broader issues of impoverishment and disenfranchisement that have 
stoked explosive resentments here and fueled a month of often violent protests.

"The U.S. insistence on coca eradication was at the core of Sanchez de 
Lozada's problem," said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian scholar who is director 
of the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International 
University in Miami.

Dr. Gamarra and others point to events in Bolivia as a warning that United 
States drug policy may sow still wider instability in the region, where 
anti-American sentiment is building with the failure of economic reforms 
that Washington has helped encourage here.

In Bolivia the backlash has strengthened the hand of the political figure 
regarded by Washington as its main enemy: Evo Morales, head of the coca 
growers' federation, who finished second in presidential election last year.

American officials have considered Bolivia such a success in the anti-drug 
campaign that they were looking to replicate their strategy in Peru. But 
there, too, signs of discontent are appearing, beginning with the 
re-emergence of the Shining Path, the guerrilla group that terrorized the 
country throughout the 1980's. "Right now Shining Path is strongest in coca 
growing areas," said Michael Shifter, who follows the Andean region for the 
Washington-based policy group Inter-American Dialogue. "To the extent that 
the U.S. pushes on eradication targets without any kind of flexibility, it 
makes people there much more amenable to turning to violent protest or 
insurgent groups like Shining Path."

In Colombia the eradication push has succeeded in substantially reducing 
coca acreage and is helping the government in its fight against leftist 
rebels. But such successes have often pushed cultivation farther south to 
Bolivia and Peru.

The eradication campaign is supposed to be coupled with an "alternative 
development" program to encourage farmers to grow crops like pineapples, 
bananas, coffee, black pepper, oregano and passion fruit on land once 
devoted to coca.

Though the United States has earmarked $211 million for such projects here 
in the last decade and helped raise the incomes of a growing number of 
peasant families, critics say the money is not nearly enough to compensate 
all of those whose livelihoods have been destroyed by eradication campaigns.

During his Washington visit last year, Mr. Sanchez de Lozada asked for $150 
million in added emergency aid, meant among other things to help reduce a 
yawning government budget deficit that had severely limited spending on 
social programs. He got $10 million, and that only after he was nearly 
toppled in a round of protests in February.

"These are derisory sums that are incommensurate with what is needed," said 
Jeffrey Sachs, an economist who is director of the Earth Institute at 
Columbia University and a long-time adviser to Bolivian governments. "The 
United States has constantly made demands on an impoverished country 
without any sense of reality or an economic framework and strategy to help 
them in development."

David N. Greenlee, the American ambassador here, in an interview on Monday, 
disagreed with the notion that added assistance from Washington would make 
much difference.

"It's too early to say whether we can provide additional resources," he 
said. "I think we currently provide substantial resources, and it is 
possible this new government can be more efficient."

He added, "A few million more from the U.S. isn't going to solve the 
problems of Bolivia."

At a news conference on Saturday night, less than 24 hours after he was 
sworn in, Bolivia's new president, Carlos Mesa, said coca eradication had 
created "a complicated scenario" and hinted that some changes might be in 
the works.

For Mr. Mesa, who heads a weak interim government, some moderation of the 
effort may be inevitable if he is to avoid his predecessor's fate and hold 
off the challenges of opposition figures like Mr. Morales, the leader of 
the coca growers.

Mr. Morales's position has been enhanced by recent events, despite the 
United States Embassy's efforts to isolate and discredit him.

In recent years American officials pushed to have Mr. Morales expelled from 
Congress and indicted for the murder of four policemen in the Chapare 
region, his political base and a center of coca cultivation. During last 
year's presidential campaign, the embassy suggested that Mr. Morales's 
election would be viewed by the United States as a hostile act and would 
provoke an end to aid to Bolivia.

"That has merely inflated Evo Morales even more and catapulted him into the 
position he is in now," Dr. Gamarra said, that of a power broker with the 
capacity to bring down the government. "He has used the coca issue to 
construct a national movement, with the coca growers as his praetorian guard."

The new government, political analysts and diplomats here said, is in a 
bind. It may be difficult to keep Mr. Morales at bay if Mr. Mesa does not 
declare a pause in the eradication effort, but such a move could jeopardize 
Bolivia's international assistance.

In an interview here on Monday, Dionisio Nunez, a coca grower, member of 
Congressional and key ally of Mr. Morales, said that their party, the 
Movement Toward Socialism, intended to demand that the new government 
modify the laws against coca cultivation, whether the United States likes 
it or not.

For starters, he said, the opposition wants a recalculation of the areas in 
which growing coca is legal, as well as an expansion of the places where it 
is legal to sell coca leaves.

"A new president can't return to a policy of repression and militarization" 
to combat drugs, Mr. Nunez warned. "There has to be a change, to a policy 
that is truly Bolivian, not one that is imposed by foreigners with the 
pretext that eradication will put an end to narcotics trafficking."

Despite Mr. Sanchez de Lozada's fall, the Bush administration seems 
committed to continuing the policy, with a modest budget in Bolivia.

"We think on balance that our policies and our emphasis on alternative 
development, together with Bolivian participation and their own policies 
regarding drugs, have been positive things for Bolivia," Ambassador 
Greenlee said. "We don't think it is a problem."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman