COLOMBIA FOOD CROPS SUFFER IN AIR ASSAULT ON DRUGS

Spraying Herbicides Has Devastated The Local Economy And Caused Resentment

Luckily the village school was closed the day that crop-dusters,
escorted by combat helicopters, doused the tin-roofed classrooms with
herbicides. Their target was the swath of illegal coca plantations on
the low hills around the village, but clouds of defoliant engulfed
the school, the church, and the fields of plantain, cassava and maize.

Miriam Rodriguez, a teacher at the school, said: "The effects have
been catastrophic. They sprayed the coca, but they also killed all
our food crops." The schoolchildren complained of rashes, headaches
and vomiting after the weedkiller fell. Nearby are half-dead fruit
trees, withered maize plants and row upon row of skeletal coca plants.

George Bush met the Colombian president, Andres Pastrana, in
Washington last week as the biggest offensive against drugs unleashed
on Colombia rolled across the southern jungles and farmland.

The blitz on the coca fields is at the heart of Plan Colombia, a
$1.3bn strategy to cut drug production by 50% and weaken the leftwing
guerrillas and rightwing paramilitaries who use its profits to
finance their operations. Official United States figures put
Colombian cocaine production at 520 tonnes a year, but analysts say
the figure is likely to be much higher.

Guided by spy planes and satellites, crop-dusters criss-crossed the
skies of Caqueta state in the south and the Middle Magdalena region
in the north. Flying as low as 15 metres (50ft) they were protected
by helicopter gunships. Guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (Farc) often shoot at the slow-moving crop-dusters. The
pilots, some of them US contract workers, fly up to five missions a
day, spraying on average 3.8 litres of glyphosate herbicide on every
hectare.

Senior Colombian officials say the operation is a resounding success:
in the first phase 29,000 hectares of coca were destroyed in the
Guamuez valley in Putumayo state, a lawless region on the Ecuadorean
border where almost half of Colombia's cocaine is produced. But local
farmers and officials say crop-dusting has destroyed thousands of
hectares of food crops and pasture, devastated the local economy, and
sown deep resentment among the rural poor.

Officials say crops are only sprayed after they have been identified
as drug plantations, but in high winds the herbicide can drift off
target. Farmers often intersperse coca and opium poppies with food
crops, making mistakes even harder to avoid. Several days after
spraying, every plant in the affected zone starts to wither and die.

Farmers say that poisoned ground can take months to recover. In some
regions, the government has signed pacts promising emergency food aid
and long-term assistance for farmers who tear up their own crops.

Officials describe the Guamuez valley as a vast network of industrial
coca plantations financed and managed by drug dealers. Locals
disagree.

"It's not one person with a huge plantation, it's a chain of little
crops," said Alfonso Martinez, a former mayor in the town of La
Hormiga.

"The government has never had a serious social policy in the Putumayo
- - and they still don't. Two months after they fumigated, we still
haven't seen any aid," he said, warning that some peasants,
despairing of aid, were already replanting their illegal crops with a
new strain of high-yield Peruvian coca.

"There has been a delay, but that's because we're setting up a social
programme that is unprecedented in Colombia," said Gonzalo de
Francisco, who is in charge of Plan Colombia's social development
programmes.

"We really believe we can solve Putumayo's problems."

Mr Pastrana's request for up to $500m extra a year in financial
assistance, and trade preferences to help bail out the struggling
Colombian economy, was rejected by Mr Bush. But with unemployment
nudging 20%, Mr Pastrana believes that the anti-narcotics campaign
and peace talks with Farc both depend on social investment. He has
warned that, without greater investment in drug-producing regions,
poor Colombians will continue to work in the drugs trade or sign up
with the armed factions that have perpetuated Colombia's 37-year
civil war.

Most of the first tranche of US aid went towards helicopters,
equipment and training for the elite anti-narcotics battalions
leading the fumigation drive. Troops from the new battalions patrol
the roads leading into the Guamuez valley, but towns in the region
are dominated by paramilitary groups.

Late last year the paramilitaries launched a campaign of massacres
and assassinations to drive out the Farc guerrillas, who had
dominated the region for decades. Their success helps explain why
there has been no guerrilla resistance to the fumigation campaign in
Putumayo. In rebel-dominated Caqueta state, however, sorties have
come under heavy fire, and last month an armed rescue unit -
including US civilian contract workers - braved guerrilla bullets to
save the crew of a downed helicopter. But the brunt of the
anti-narcotics campaign has been borne by small farmers and Indians,
said German Martinez, a local ombudsman in the town of Puerto Asis.
"If this is just about destroying coca crops and burning labs, no
matter the price, then it's a victory," he said. "But if you don't
tackle the social causes, the peasants will continue growing illegal
crops. We shouldn't just be eradicating coca - we should be
eradicating poverty."