THE STRUGGLE TO EXTERMINATE A MUCH-LOVED ANDEAN SHRUB

In the next few days, American officials are due to decide whether to
restart surveillance flights over Peru and Colombia aimed at denying the
freedom of the skies to light aircraft used by drug traffickers. These
flights were suspended last month, after Veronica Bowers, an American
missionary, and her baby were killed when their aircraft was strafed by
a Peruvian air-force jet. Despite unease in the United States Congress,
the likelihood is that President George Bush's government will recommend
that the flights should resume.

That is because they are an integral part of an ever more elaborate
effort, started over two decades ago, to cut the flow of cocaine from
producer countries in the Andes to consumers in the United States.

John Walters, Mr Bush's choice for the post of "drug tsar", is a strong
supporter of such "supply-side" anti-drug programmes. In the Andes,
these have three parts: eradication of coca, the shrub from whose leaves
cocaine is extracted; the closing down of processing laboratories and
trafficking rings; and alternative development, or helping coca farmers
to earn a living in other ways. The death of Mrs Bowers and her daughter
brought home to ordinary Americans just how much their country's "war on
drugs" in the Andes has come to resemble a real war, complete with
civilian casualties and some less-than-attractive allies, such as
Vladimiro Montesinos, Peru's fugitive former intelligence chief who
first put the shoot-down policy into practice.

The missionary's aircraft had been picked out by a spy plane operated by
an American crew under contract to the CIA. Investigators are likely to
report that the spy plane's crew tried to warn the air-force jet not to
attack.

Even so, private contractors may be subjected to tighter rules and
regulation in future.

American officials say that the shoot-down policy is less important than
it was when it began in 1994. That is partly because Peruvian
traffickers have found other routes, but mainly because most coca
production has moved to Colombia (see map). That, and the presence of
guerrilla armies in Colombia's main drug-producing areas, led the United
States last year to grant $1.3 billion under what it called Plan
Colombia, to be spent on a new anti-drug army brigade and helicopters,
and on development and human-rights projects.

But the drug fighters are likely to want to resort to aerial enforcement
once again.

Last week American officials unveiled a request to Congress for $882m
for anti-drug programmes in and around the Andean region in 2001-02.
This continues Plan Colombia, but in modified form. Adios, Plan Colombia

One change is lexical.

Plan Colombia has been criticised for being likely to plunge the United
States into a "new Vietnam". It is now being rebaptised as the Andean
Regional Initiative. A second change is designed, say American
officials, to meet the criticism that Plan Colombia is too militaristic,
and risks pushing drugs and violence into neighbouring countries. So now
the money is to be split roughly equally between law enforcement and
development, and with the neighbours getting slightly more than
Colombia. The new plan is intended to sustain the assault on Colombia's
coca industry while preventing its revival in Peru, Bolivia and
elsewhere. So it involves extra dollops of aid for Peru, Bolivia and
Ecuador, for development as well as enforcement, and smaller sums for
Brazil, Panama and Venezuela.

Will it work? American officials say that, for the first time, their
effort to cut drug supply in the Andes is being backed with serious
money. A report last week by the United Nations Drug Control Programme
(UNDCP) suggested that the tide may be about to turn in Colombia: using
different methodology from that of the United States, it reckoned the
country had 163,000 hectares (402,000 acres) of coca last year, an
increase of only 2%
over 1999. Since then, police, backed by the American-trained brigade,
have sprayed about 35,000 hectares with herbicide.

Nowadays, Latin American governments are less hostile than in the past
to the United States' drug war. That is partly because of the increased
aid. Peru could get around $200m this year, dwarfing its own anti-drug
budget. And Latin Americans are aware that for their countries the
overall costs of the drug trade--in violence, corruption and rising drug
consumption--outweigh any economic benefit.

Peru's government is anxious to resume surveillance flights.

But even more striking has been the change in Mexico: Vicente Fox's
government has shown itself to be far more willing than its predecessors
to co-operate with American efforts to crack down on drugs.

But there are limits to co-operation. "What the United States calls a
regional approach means us dealing with each country separately," says
Michael Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington
think-tank. "There's still a lack of the Latin Americans working among
themselves and the United States being part of that."

Forcible coca eradication is particularly unpopular.

In Bolivia, where eradication and alternative development have gone
furthest, unemployed former coca farmers have swelled protests against
the government of Hugo Banzer. Peru's government is continuing with its
predecessor's policy of forced eradication of coca in national parks;
this month coca farmers in Aguaytia staged roadblocks in protest.

In Colombia, the government in February halted aerial spraying in the
southern province of Putumayo, where almost half of the country's coca
crop is grown.

Since then, officials have stressed voluntary eradication and
alternative development.

Economics, too, conspires against the anti-drug warriors.

All the Andean countries have recently suffered recessions, or sharp
slowdowns in growth. Worse, the price of coffee, which is grown in
similar places to coca, has slumped because of world overproduction,
which may induce farmers to switch to coca. In Peru, coca production has
been rising again since 1999, according to the UNDCP. The Apurimac
valley, where there have been many efforts at alternative development
since the mid-1990s, is once again "a sea of coca", according to Hugo
Cabieses, an adviser to coca farmers.

Despite the drug war, total coca production is more than enough to meet
demand, and the flow of cocaine is unstaunched. The anti-drug warriors
may be richer, but they still face a Sisyphean task on the Andean
hillsides.