BATTLES NOT FOUGHT

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 with the guerrillas for control
of drug crops and strategic transportation corridors.

In interviews around this village sitting between rebel and paramilitary
areas eight 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 here in preparation for a ground attack and to
blunt the growth of paramilitary forces, who municipal officials suggest
are being used by the Colombian army as an effective if illegal advance guard.

Plan Colombia, the anti-drug strategy backed by $1.3 billion in U.S.
military and social aid, has so far unfolded exactly as southern Colombian
farmers and European diplomats said it would: 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.

"The presence of the Colombian army is, to put it mildly, infrequent,"
Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said last week during a visit to
Washington, where he was seeking U.S. helicopters, speedboats and
communications equipment to fortify the border roughly 30 miles from this
village. "It is time to stop the diplomatic language and say clearly what
is going on."

Traveling west from Puerto Asis to this region required passage through at
least three zones of control, none held by government forces. Rebel and
paramilitary troops hid in plain sight: a dozen uniformed FARC soldiers
drinking fruit juice in the town of Puerto Vega, a column of two dozen
paramilitary troops marching along the road from their base in El Placer.

But each side appeared to be on a war footing, reluctant to talk or allow
passage into areas they control. 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 Americans hired by the State Department to make
spraying flights came under guerrilla fire during a rescue mission.

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."

Gen. Mario Montoya, head of the joint anti-drug task force carrying out
Plan Colombia's military component, said recently that the price of coca
has doubled to $1,500 a kilogram since the spraying began chipping away at
supply. But farmers here said the going rate for a kilogram of coca paste,
which is later processed into powder form to make cocaine, has risen only
slightly to about $1,000 a kilogram.

However, 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 five acres of coca in the spraying as
well as six acres of corn, bananas and sugar cane. She said several hundred
fish she cultivated in a backyard pond also died from the herbicide.

A sign hangs in front of her cement-block house reading: "For sale: tinga
seeds," a type of coca particularly susceptible to herbicide. Sanchez has
2,000 plants sheltered under a tent in her back yard. "Almost no one wants
them right now," she said.

Arnulfo Ardila, a farmer and friend of Sanchez, is planting a
wheelbarrow-full of new seeds. He was not touched by the spraying and
believes the market will soon shift again to make the plants a valued
commodity. "Here the social development money won't work," he said. "The
people are promised the money and the government never delivers it. Soon
people will want these plants again."

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 that 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."

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in Washington contributed to this report.