PLAN COLOMBIA RATCHETS UP THE DRUG WAR

But-So Far-The Country's Rebels Don't
Seem To Be The Ones Who Are Suffering

First, Jose Argati heard the low rumble of the engines. Soon five
light aircraft appeared low in the skies above his farm. Accompanied
by Army helicopters, the crop dusters doused Argati's cornfields with
herbicide. After four runs over his property in Colombia's southern
Putumayo province, 17 acres of corn withered into a wasteland. But
like most farmers at the epicenter of Colombia's booming cocaine
economy, Argati was in no position to play the innocent victim: he had
been growing five acres of bright green coca bushes alongside his
banana and plantain trees. Still, the grizzled 56-year-old peasant
cursed Colombian authorities. "We didn't get to taste a single
kernel," he said, plucking a shriveled ear of corn. "The worst enemy
of the small farmer is the government, and in particular President
[Andres] Pastrana. He wants to finish us off."

Argati and his fellow coca farmers are on the front line of a war that
is likely to grow a lot more deadly. Last year the Clinton
administration approved a $1.3 billion aid package to bolster the
Pastrana government's Plan Colombia, aimed at halving Colombia's drug
production in the next four years. Some of that money is paying for up
to 200 U.S. Special Forces troops training the Colombian Army's new
anti-drug battalions, and the biggest chunk will be spent on supplying
those troops with Blackhawk and UH-1N (Bell) helicopters. The Bush
administration shows no signs of heeding critics of the aid, who
charge that Washington will inevitably be dragged into Bogota's
37-year-old war with leftist guerrillas. The largest rebel force, the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), is heavily involved in
the drug trade, raking in an estimated $1 million a day. And as Army
troops wade into FARC-controlled areas, hundreds of civilians will get
caught in the cross-fire.

Using the first tranche of American cash and training, Colombian police and
soldiers are in the first stages of an all-out assault on the coca fields of
Putumayo. The offensive began with the aerial spraying of coca bushes in the
Guamuez River valley in mid-December, and Army officials promise to attack all
drug labs and farms in areas that are controlled by the guerrillas or their
archenemies, a right-wing paramilitary group called the Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia. Code-named Operation Emperor, the security forces' joint air and land
offensive targets "industrial scale" coca plantations of at least five acres.
Says Col. Roberto Trujillo, the commander of the U.S.-trained battalions
operating in Putumayo: "It doesn't matter to me whether they are FARC,
paramilitary forces or drug traffickers."

But the people suffering the brunt of the government's campaign so far
have been the peasants of Putumayo. The remote province is home to an
estimated 170,000 acres of coca, making it the world's largest source
of the plant that yields cocaine. Doctors in the cocaine-trafficking
town of La Hormiga have treated six rural patients who complained of
vomiting, headaches and dizziness after they were exposed to airborne
doses of the herbicide glyphosate, used by the government's crop
dusters. Some peasant families claim to be running low on food stocks
after losing their banana and yucca crops to the ravaging effects of
the herbicide. Eight provincial governors have called for an immediate
halt to spraying. "The indiscriminate fumigation has plunged us into a
crisis," says La Hormiga Mayor Edmundo Meza. "Even the cattle are
going hungry because the herbicide dries out the pasture."

Senior police officials vehemently deny that their planes are
recklessly spraying food crops. "We [fumigate] with precision,
responsibility and respect for the farmers," says Brig. Gen. Gustavo
Socha, the head of the national police's anti-narcotics division.
Nonetheless, opposition to Plan Colombia is spreading fast among
locals--and not just among the farmers.

Coca is the lifeblood of Putumayo. Everyone makes a buck off the drug
trade, from the itinerant workers who come from other parts of the
country to harvest coca to the merchants who sell the precursor
chemicals used to produce powder cocaine. The 600 right-wing
militiamen who moved into Putumayo two years ago to do battle with
FARC also benefit. In El Placer, one of the hardscrabble towns where
the paramilitary fighters have ousted the guerrillas in recent months,
a senior commander named Gavilan told NEWSWEEK that the monthly income
from drug-related taxes amounts to about $150,000.

Police officials in charge of the fumigation program chose the Guamuez
River valley as their first theater of operations partly because the
right-wing militias who control the area have informally agreed to
hold their fire when the low-flying crop dusters appear overhead.
About 45,000 acres of coca bushes have been sprayed since December,
and the drug trade is beginning to feel the impact. Thousands of
itinerant farmworkers who come from other parts of Colombia to harvest
coca leaves in Putumayo are heading home. The going rate for coca
paste--the leaf extract that is later processed into cocaine
hydrochloride--has risen in recent weeks from $750 to $1,050 a kilo.
The crop devastation caused by the fumigation campaign has already
spurred 3,000 peasant farmers to enroll in a government-sponsored
manual eradication program that rewards each participating family with
$1,000 worth of livestock and food.

Complicating the war on the narco-guerrillas is Pastrana's
two-year-old effort to secure a negotiated settlement with the rebels.
FARC commanders unilaterally suspended peace talks with the government
in November. Last week Pastrana imposed a deadline for the rebels to
resume negotiations or risk the Army's fighting to retake the
41,500-square-kilometer demilitarized zone he ceded to the guerrillas
in 1998. With support for the Pastrana-sponsored peace process at an
all-time low among voters, FARC leader Manuel Marulanda finally agreed
to meet the president later this week. (Seemingly bolstered, Pastrana
flew Saturday to FARC areas to "to talk to residents.")

Absent a surprising breakthrough, the real test of Pastrana's
anti-coca campaign will come this spring when the fumigation program
moves into areas currently under FARC control. The 1,800 soldiers who
make up the two battalions under Colonel Trujillo's command are
responsible for securing an area before the crop dusters move in, but
vast portions of the province's steamy hinterlands are no-go areas
controlled by an estimated 2,300 FARC rebels.

Army troops have encountered fierce resistance from guerrillas in the
past. An Army incursion in the FARC-held town of Puerto Vega sparked a
seven-hour skirmish last October before government forces withdrew.
Now the local guerrilla leader predicts a major escalation in fighting
in the months to come. "The situation could get worse," warns Oliver,
a beefy rebel in his late 20s and the deputy commander of the FARC's
Southern Bloc. "The government and the gringos covet the riches of
this area and want to crush us," he says. "But we will fight back."

It's not hard to see why. The guerrillas' so-called red zone extends
from Puerto Vega to the Ecuadoran border. Signs of the flourishing
drug trade are everywhere. Coca fields extend right up to the edge of
the rutted dirt road from Puerto Vega. In the riverside hamlet of
Teteye, stevedores load drums of gasoline and other precursor
chemicals onto waiting pickup trucks under the watchful gaze of FARC
guerrillas. The chemicals are shipped in with impunity from the
Ecuadoran side of the San Miguel River that marks the international
border. The U.S.-financed war in western Putumayo seems like a very
distant threat. But some coca farmers believe it is only a matter of
time before glyphosate rains down on their fields. "We depend on coca
for our survival," says Janera Garza, a coca grower and mother of
three who lives in the town of Porvenir. "The planes and the
helicopters fly over this area every day, and we're afraid."

The fear is spilling across Colombia's borders. Officials in
neighboring Ecuador and Peru worry that the concerted push against
Putumayo's coca farmers will force rebels and refugees into their
territory, exporting Colombia's long-running insurgency. That is
already happening in northern Ecuador, where more than 2,000
Colombians have arrived in the past five months. Between 15 and 20
Colombians enter Ecuador each day through the border town of Puerto
Nuevo along the San Miguel River, and many locals expect the onslaught
of newcomers to swell as Pastrana's counternarcotics campaign heats
up. "They say Plan Colombia is supposed to stop drug trafficking,"
says Puerto Nuevo Mayor Marco Arias. "But it's really aimed at the
guerrillas, and the only things it has brought us are crime,
immigration and a growing sense of desperation." And the most
ferocious battles of the war on drugs lie ahead.