STEPPED-UP COCA BATTLE IGNITES DEBATE

U.S. - Colombia Fight On Cocaine Draws Farmers' Ire

LARANDIA, COLOMBIA - From the air, a Colombian police raid to spray
herbicide on coca fields is a graceful aerial ballet of swirling
crop-dusters and menacing helicopter gunships that drape a stream of
household weedkiller on the coca bushes below.

But the view is different from the ground. Coca farmers describe it as an
indiscriminate rain of poison that kills their food crops as well as the
coca, makes children and animals sick and devastates the ecology of
Colombia's Amazon River Basin.

Three months into a U.S.-financed assault on Colombia's cocaine industry,
the stepped-up use of aerial spraying has become the most controversial
facet of the $1.3 billion U.S. counter-narcotics aid package.

The State Department, which is pumping $115 million into the spraying
program this year, announced recently that it will again study the human
health effects of the herbicide used, glyphosate, commonly sold as Roundup.
But that is hardly likely to satisfy critics.

National Ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes has demanded a halt to all spraying,
saying that ``indiscriminate'' raids were hitting farmers who already had
agreed to uproot their coca in return for government ``no-spray'' promises.

U.S. and Colombian officials insist that extensive aerial spraying is the
only effective way of curbing the explosive growth of illegal coca farming
- -- which often happens under the protective gaze of leftist or rightist gunmen.

The crop area grew from 301,000 acres in 1999 to 336,000 last year, an 11.6
percent increase, and double the 1997 estimate.

Bleak History:

But the history of the aerial spraying campaign is not a hopeful one.

Police statistics show that even as aircraft sprayed nearly 650,000 acres
from 1994 to the end of 2000, Colombia's total coca acreage grew more than
threefold -- from 97,265 acres in 1994 to 336,000 last year.

Even so, officials insist it's the only way.

``Coca is like cancer. You may need surgery, maybe a special diet. But you
also need chemotherapy,'' said Gonzalo de Francisco, President Andres
Pastrana's point man on the eradication campaign.

Trying to dispel the criticisms, Colombian and U.S. officials recently gave
The Herald an unusually detailed look at Colombia's main operational center
within the Larandia army base, 235 miles southwest of Bogota.

Complex Mission:

It is an extraordinarily complex operation, run by the National Police with
heavy help from the U.S. State Department's International Narcotics and Law
Enforcement Bureau -- the INL -- and DynCorp, a Virginia security services
firm contracted by the State Department.

The State Department's Air Wing owns the T-65 and OV-10 spray aircraft and
Huey helicopter gunships -- it prefers to call them ``escorts'' -- while
the INL pays for DynCorp's services, the glyphosate and other related costs.

DynCorp hires mostly Latin American spray pilots because they need Spanish
to coordinate with the police. But Americans predominate among the
helicopter pilots, mechanics and rescue teams. A helicopter had to drop
into a firefight three weeks ago to recover the crew of a chopper shot down
by guerrillas.

Colombian police officers usually copilot the gunships and man the
multibarreled machine guns they jokingly call ``the girls.''

Most mornings, a twin-engine civilian airplane under contract to DynCorp
flies over a known coca field nearby to calibrate its multispectrum camera,
then heads off to photograph long strips of farmlands and jungle.

The camera locks in on the infrared signature of the chlorophyll in coca
leaves -- the source of cocaine -- while U.S. military satellites allow it
to pinpoint their location within a foot.

Finding Targets:

DynCorp's American computer analysts later run the data through a computer
program that highlights the coca fields.

Then they select a couple of potential target areas -- usually five miles
long and four miles wide -- for approval by police counter-narcotics officials.

Next, the analysts and the chief police pilot plot the mission on their
computers. Each mission normally consists of three to five crop dusters
flying nearly abreast for five-mile ``spray paths'' precisely set by the
satellites.

Each pilot's assigned paths are loaded on a computer memory card that is
then plugged into his aircraft, guiding him to his targets and recording
every step of his flight, including exactly where he dropped the glyphosate.

Far slower than the 110 mph crop dusters, two gunships station themselves
at the start and halfway point of each path and protect half the run. A
fifth helicopter, carrying the mission commander and a rescue team, remains
high above the ``package.''

Flying as low as 50 feet, each airplane lays down a 170-foot wide stream of
glyphosate, with the pilot using the computers to approach his targets but
manually pulling the spray trigger when he's over coca fields.

To avert complaints, pilots are under orders to stop spraying when winds
reach seven mph to prevent the herbicide from drifting outside their target
zones, and when they fly over villages or rivers.

``From my point of view, this is the most accurate possible system,'' said
the chief pilot at Larandia, a Colombian. ``We don't want to be in the
newspapers, and if we make a mistake they hang us.''

Still, the chief pilot acknowledged, mistakes happen. Spray nozzles
sometimes stick open, and officials in the government's alternative crop
programs have occasionally provided police with the wrong map coordinates
for ``no spray'' coca fields.

Gunfire and mechanical malfunctions can also force pilots to pull the red
``DUMP'' switches in their cabins, releasing their glyphosate because they
cannot land with a full tank -- 300 to 350 gallons, weighing up to 2,800
pounds.

``At the end of the day, it's the pilot who pulls the trigger, flying fast
at tree-top level and worrying all the time about gunfire,'' the chief
pilot said. ``It's not the same as spraying rice, you know?''

Admission of Errors:

De Francisco, the president's point man on eradication, has admitted that
11 ``no-spray'' areas were treated during the Dec. 19 to Feb. 2 campaign
that sprayed some 50,000 acres in the southern state of Putumayo, home to
nearly half of Colombia's coca acreage.

But government officials and coca farmers in Putumayo complain that the
mistakes were far worse, killing nearly 5,800 acres of legitimate crops
such as plantains, yuca and corn, as well as poisoning several fish ponds.