INTO THE BREACH

Plan Colombia Ratchets Up The Drug War. But-so Far-the Country's Rebels
Don't Seem To Be The Ones Who Are Suffering

Feb. 12 issue - 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.

ASSAULT ON PUTUMAYO

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 =46ARC, 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.

EVERYONE MAKES A BUCK

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.")

AWAITING A BREAKTHROUGH

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.