THE DRUG WAR

The Struggle To Exterminate A Much-Loved Andean Shrub

Efforts to wipe out the coca crop and stop the flow of cocaine are
attracting more money and more allies than ever before.

Will They Work?

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.