ANTI-DRUG CAMPAIGN MOVING TO NEXT PHASES

Aerial Spraying In Colombia Has Limited Success

El Tigre, Colombia - A six-week aerial spraying campaign has left vast
stretches of Colombia's coca heartland parched and withering. But the
military has yet to establish a presence in the back country, suggesting
the most dangerous work is yet to come for the U.S.-backed soldiers trying
to rid the area of drug crops within a year.

Much of the damage has been done here in western Putumayo, a southern
province that accounts for more than half of Colombia's coca production.
The herbicide spraying has killed more than 40,000 acres of coca crops in
this area alone, according to Colombian military officials. But much of the
terrain is still controlled by the country's largest left-wing guerrilla
insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and by
right-wing paramilitary forces who battle the guerrillas for control of
drug crops and strategic transportation corridors.

In interviews around this village-which sits between rebel and paramilitary
areas 8 miles northwest of Puerto Asis, the region's main town-farmers said
many drug plantations remained untouched, protected from spray planes in
hard-to-reach valleys by jungle cover and guerrilla troops. Valleys full of
coca were evident from the main east-west highway. And on almost every farm
hit by the herbicide since December, small tents protected young coca
plants for future cultivation.

Rooting out those remote fields will likely force Colombian troops to
directly confront the FARC, an 18,000-member rebel army that taxes drug
crops to help finance its war effort. By all accounts, the guerrillas have
increased their numbers in preparation for a ground attack and to blunt the
growth of the paramilitary forces. While the right-wing militias are
illegal, municipal officials suggest the Colombian army is using them as an
effective advance guard.

Plan Colombia, the anti-drug strategy backed by $1.3 billion in U.S.

military and social aid, has so far unfolded in the form of a fumigation
campaign supported by U.S.-trained anti-narcotics battalions. From late
December to early February, aerial spraying killed more than 60,000 acres
of coca crops across Putumayo province, or almost half the country's
estimated supply, according to government accounts.

Colombia accounts for 90 percent of the world's cocaine, which is made from
coca leaves, and recent U.S. government figures reported that coca
cultivation in Colombia increased 11 percent last year.

But two key components of Plan Colombia have yet to materialize, despite
assurances from President Andres Pastrana's government to farmers and
foreign governments. More than $80 million in U.S. aid to encourage farmers
to pull up coca in favor of legal crops has yet to reach Putumayo, and the
amount originally held out to farmers has shrunk by 75 percent since October.

Moreover, the government has yet to honor its pledge to impose order in a
region where the FARC controls the countryside and paramilitary forces
reign in urban centers. "The government has abandoned us," said Alfonso
Martinez, an aide to La Hormiga Mayor Flover Edmundo Meza, who runs the
municipality of 35,000 residents.

"The army comes and then it quickly leaves," said a member of the FARC's
15th Front, which was sent in from neighboring Caqueta province, who gave
his name as Christian.

The army's scant presence also has alarmed leaders of neighboring
countries, who have seen thousands of refugees pour across Colombia's
border to escape conflict and aerial spraying.

Traveling west from Puerto Asis to this region required passage through at
least three zones of control, all held by either FARC or paramilitary
troops, all on a war footing.

Over four days last week, guerrillas and paramilitary forces clashed around
La Dorada, a strategic point along the only highway from Ecuador.

Meanwhile, the spraying campaign has moved east to neighboring Caqueta
province, where last month American helicopter pilots hired by the State
Department to make spraying flights came under guerrilla fire while
rescuing the crew of a Colombian police helicopter that guerrillas had shot
down.

Colombian military officials said that, for the moment, spraying and rapid
strikes against drug production labs would remain their primary tactics.
The strategy, while not changing the security situation on the ground, has
two purposes: undermining guerrilla finances and biding time until U.S.
military hardware in the form of more than 50 transport helicopters arrives
later this year.

The third of three U.S.-trained anti-drug battalions is scheduled to be
ready for the field by May.

"This is going to be a sustained fumigation effort," said a senior
Colombian military official managing the anti-narcotics battalions.

Local officials say the military is getting help from the paramilitary
groups, who have effectively taken over many towns and urban centers in
Putumayo. Paramilitary troops still camp at Villa Sandra, a fenced compound
on the road between Puerto Asis and the military base in Santa Ana.

"The advance of paramilitarism here coincides with the advance of Plan
Colombia," said German Martinez, the local people's ombudsman who completed
his assignment last week. "When the military says it is striking
paramilitary crops and labs here, it is a lie." The spraying has frightened
many farmers, who say they have no plans to begin replanting drug crops
until they are sure the spraying is finished.

Colombia's prosecutor general has opened an investigation into the spraying
campaign, which farmers here say has killed animals and sickened children;
the probe could open the door to damage claims or criminal complaints.

Janeth Sanchez, 22, said she lost 5 acres of coca in the spraying but also
6 acres of corn, bananas and sugar cane. She said several hundred fish she
cultivated in a backyard pond also died from the herbicide.

Pastrana has expressed fear that, without a rapid infusion of aid, farmers
here will turn back to coca crops. In a recent interview, he said he would
seek additional social development aid from the United States, perhaps as
much as $500 million a year.

But in western Putumayo and in Puerto Asis, where more than 500 families
have agreed to uproot coca in exchange for a subsidy to help them start new
crops, no money has arrived. Last year, farmers were told they would have a
choice between as much as $4,000 in cash that could be invested in new
ventures or an equivalent amount of crops, livestock and other assistance
to help them turn illegal farms into legal ones. That choice has been
eliminated; farmers now are offered $1,000 worth of products. In return,
they must pull up coca crops a year after the money arrives.

"This is very complicated and will depend on a lot of factors," said Ruben
Dario Pinzon, an official with Plante, the government agency supervising
the crop substitution program. "First, the violence must end."