Pubdate: Thu, 27 Jul 2006
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2006 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Martin Arostegui
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

BOLIVIAN COCAINE RISES WITH MORALES

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- Counternarcotics officials say the number of 
cocaine laboratories in Bolivia has almost doubled in the seven 
months since Evo Morales, a former coca grower and organizer of 
coca-farming syndicates, was elected president. Mr. Morales, whose 
country faces sharp economic penalties if the United States does not 
recertify it as a fully cooperating partner in the war on drugs next 
year, insists Bolivia is committed to battling the international 
traffic in narcotics. Critics say new programs allowing farmers to 
cultivate small plots of coca are contributing to the rise in cocaine 
production. Coca production is a traditional way of life for 
Bolivia's Indian peasantry, who chew the raw leaves as a mild 
stimulant. Legal analysts say the government has violated 
international agreements with decrees that allow the free sale of 
coca and the auction of confiscated leaf shipments. "Evo has 
democratized narco-traffic," said Omar Barrientos, a Bolivian lawyer 
and consultant to the U.S. State Department on drug policy. "He has 
taken it from the big mafias and placed it with small producers, 
which makes it more difficult to control." The CIA's counternarcotics 
center estimates that Bolivian coca plantations have grown 8 percent 
in the past year. More disturbing are reports from Bolivia's 
U.S.-sponsored counternarcotics force that cocaine laboratory 
activity has almost doubled since Mr. Morales took office. The 
Special Force to Fight Crime and Narcotraffic (FELCN) said more than 
2,000 cocaine laboratories making paste or refined powder were 
uncovered during the first half of this year. A total of 2,575 
laboratories were discovered during all of last year. Bolivian 
authorities downplay the figures.

More than 100,000 Bolivians could lose their jobs if Washington 
decertifies Bolivia as a partner in the war on drugs, meaning its 
textile industry no longer would be able to export to the United 
States. Certification is renewed on March 1 every year. Vice 
President Alvaro Garcia Linera visited Washington last week to tell 
legislators and administration officials that his government hopes to 
reduce the acreage under cocaine cultivation by about 15 percent in 
the coming months. The government also argues that the FELCN figures 
reflect stepped-up interdiction efforts.

But agency officers point to a spread of makeshift labs, which 
generally are set up near coca plantations, into areas of the country 
where drug production had largely disappeared. "Cocaine production is 
moving to six new areas between the central Chapare Valley and 
eastern lowlands in Santa Cruz and Beni, where it had been largely 
eliminated during the 1990s," said a counternarcotics analyst who 
spoke on the condition he not be identified. Sources also point to a 
rise of cocaine production in the Andean high plain around La Paz, 
where coca leaves flow in from Peru. Mr. Morales presided in March 
over a congress of coca-farming syndicates in Cochabamba, which 
called for the expulsion of U.S. counternarcotics agencies.

Although units remain in Bolivia, the U.S. Drug Enforcement 
Administration is "taking a lower profile," said law-enforcement 
officials, who also describe a "scaling back" of U.S.-sponsored 
military and police operations. Upon leaving for Washington last 
week, Mr. Garcia said he hoped to open a "new era in the relations 
between Bolivia and the U.S.," but his trip got off to a bad start.

American Airlines would not let him on the flight because he appeared 
on an FBI watch list, U.S. diplomatic officials said. The U.S. 
ambassador to Bolivia, David N. Greenlee, personally intervened in 
order to allow Mr. Garcia to travel and apologized for a "problem in 
the system." The problem is thought to involve Mr. Garcia's role in 
the Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army, which carried out a series of 
terrorist actions during the 1990s.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman