NARCO-TRAFFICKING AND WAR IN THE ANDES

In September 1999 the Clinton administration and Colombia's President
Pastrana agreed to implement Plan Colombia aiming to eradicate cocaine
production. Drafted in English under the watchful eye of the US State
Department without consulting Congress, the plan shows what awaits the
continent: military offensives against guerrillas (though not against the
paramilitaries who also profit from narco-trafficking), peasants condemned
to poverty, arable land destroyed.

At 6.30 am on 8 July last year the planes appeared in the sky, emerging
from the mist into the sunlight.

Then came their Colombian police escort: four helicopters flying low. They
circled Mount Lerma and let off blasts of machine gun fire. Their target?

Who knows? There is nothing on the mountain.

Were they firing at guerrillas? Thankfully the armed conflict has not got
that far. No, they just fired off a few rounds to scare the population.
Then, sweeping down like birds of prey, soaring and diving again, the
planes spewed their poison.

A chemical cloud engulfed the coffee, the bananas and the yucca.
"Cocaine?", ask the locals, "what cocaine? Where is the cocaine round here?
Tell us that!"

Perched in the heart of the Macizo Colombiano, the source of Colombia's
three mountain ranges and three major rivers, the hamlet of Santa Ines has
a population of 200. But the people here do not have much of a life. No
vehicle can get up the slopes from the village of Sucre, way down the
mountainside. The only way up is the goat track and then the so-called
royal path (camino real), which horses can only climb at a mule's pace and
the mules can barely shamble along.

No doctor has reached the village in eight months. At 4,000 pesos for a
consultation, plus the cost of drugs, there is no point anyway (1). Money
and electricity are both in short supply.

In the days that followed, the planes continued to spray.

Allegedly they were spraying illegal crops.

But everyone could swear by the Holy Virgin that there was no more coca.
Absolutely none. Well, not much. Definitely less than there used to be.
After the army uprooted the coca plantations the first time round, everyone
began to grow coffee.

But this unnatural rain cloud caused the coffee plantations to shrivel.

So did the yucca, the bananas, the maize and the beans.

And, of course, the coca leaf. Estate farmers have found monkeys dead of
poisoning.

Higher up, where the mountain air is cold, there is a water source. A
rickety system of pipes brings water to the neighbouring hamlets - a fact
ignored by people out to pillage whatever steel they can get. But, like it
or not, it's the only drinking water.

Blanca Olivares' husband drank it. "He's got a temperature, stomach pains
and a very bad headache.

He's been vomiting," she said. Her children are ill, too, and 26 hens have
died. There are 52 sick people in the village, some of them unable to get
up. They are suffering from encephalitis, abdominal pains, diarrhoea,
vertigo and nausea. "The virus people are suffering from came from the
spraying," said one peasant. "The air itself is poisoned."

That explanation may be subjective. But it reflects the view of Luis
Eduardo Ceron, the doctor from Sucre who finally reached Santa Ines on 18
July. "I examined the patients," he said. "They all had the same symptoms.

They were suffering from organophosphate poisoning. None of them need to be
hospitalised, but the prognosis depends on the kind of poison.

There's no way of telling.

I don't know what the poison is." Nearby Marlene was close to tears.

She was there when they sprayed.

Seven months pregnant, she drank the water and now she has lost her baby.
"I'm 18," she said; "it was my first child, and I so wanted my baby." Then
she broke down, biting her lip: "They killed my child."

Colombia produces 80% of the world's cocaine.

It takes 500 kg of coca leaf to produce one kilo of pure cocaine.

The government is carrying out spraying operations to destroy the
plantations. It has used a whole range of products like Paraquat and
Triclopyr. It has also illegally used others that are far more dangerous:
Imazapyr, Hexaxinona and Tebuthiron. Since 1986 Glifosato has been working
wonders. Otherwise known as Monsanto's famous Roundup, it is described by
its manufacturer as the most environmentally-friendly herbicide. But New
York State's attorney general does not agree.

He ordered the company to remove the words "biodegradable" and
"environmentally friendly" from its advertising material.

Not far from Santa Ines as the crow flies, Rio Blanco emerges out of the
mist. Around it there is the unmistakable sight of poppy fields. The big
red flowers are growing up the slopes or trying unsuccessfully to hide amid
the maize.

But now all the crops are turning yellow and sickly.

Here too, the planes discharged their poison over the plantations, the
water, the animals and the people. This time, the locals said, they sprayed
from a great height: "They don't come in low. They're afraid the guerrillas
will fire at them" (2). The technical specifications for Glifosato say that
the maximum safe height from which to spray is 10 metres.

The 13.5 litres applied per hectare is also way over the recommended
maximum of 2.5 litres(3).

There was a time when the Yanacona Indians of Rio Blanco grew wheat and
lived off the crop. But as the cost of seed increased and competition from
United States imports grew, the mills of Popayan (Cauca) shut down. And of
course the market itself disappeared. At this same time, the early 1990s,
there was a change in US habits with the emergence of heroin alongside cocaine.

Strangers appeared in the Colombian mountains.

They offered seed, the advice of an agronomist and provided loans to cover
initial outlay.

This was the poppy era. Inevitably it resulted in a great deal of public
disorder, to put it mildly. "People weren't prepared," we were told. "They
didn't know how to manage so much money.

It got easy to buy a gun. In the end the hospital in Popayan refused to
admit the wounded - there were just too many of them." But that manna from
heaven helped the Indians improve their - previously subhuman - living
conditions and buy basic consumer goods.

Nonetheless so much trouble led the leaders of the resguardo (4) to
reconsider the whole issue.

In 1998 a community assembly decided to put an end to the problematic crop
and signed an agreement with the government gradually to reduce the area
under cultivation in return for a development plan. On 31 December the
Indians kept their word: no more poppies.

But on their side, the authorities had a convenient memory lapse.

In the resguardo land was in short supply: 2,000 over-cultivated hectares
for 5,000 people.

But not in the surrounding area. That land was in the hands of the cattle
breeders or the multinational Carton de Colombia which uses the forests to
produce wood pulp for paper manufacture. For 15 years the resguardo had
been calling for agricultural reform.

Successive governments had turned a deaf ear. "So," we were told, "there
was no other option: we replanted the poppies." Not by the hectare, but in
small plots. The response came from the skies, devastating subsistence
crops. The target: "narco-trafficking".

That idea is hard to swallow, whether the peasants are growing coca leaf or
poppies.

Even the austere Presbyterian from Sucre doesn't have the heart to condemn
his fellow citizens: "I am against the illegal crops.

We're all God's children, and they harm people in other countries.

But if no-one should sin, no-one should die of hunger either.

We are between a rock and a hard place.

Those other countries are prepared to kill us off rather than look for ways
of helping the peasants solve their problems."

Plan Colombia

Even here they had heard about Plan Colombia. On 23 August last year
President Bill Clinton gave the Colombian government $1,600m - $954m of it
as an emergency supplement for 2000-2001 - to put a stop to drugs
trafficking (and the armed opposition, known as the "narco-guerrillas").
The local peasants were furious: "Instead of investing those millions of
dollars in arms, for the war, why not use them to buy land for the Indians
and the peasants?

The government is always going on about peace but what kind of peace can
you have in this poverty?" Since the planes resumed their dance of death,
no-one wants to buy their products in the marketplace, convinced they are
poisoned.

But, they said, "We aren't going to die. One of these days, the sparks will
fly." Although they are evasive when questioned on the subject, the
peasants are not all implacably opposed to the rebels.

In the last six years 110,000 hectares have been sprayed (at a cost $300m
per annum). As a result coca farming expanded from 50,000 hectares in 1995
to 120,000 hectares by the end of 1999. And the area under poppy
cultivation has increased from zero to 6,000 hectares. Washington and
Bogota are unmoved.

The US has made its support for President Andres Pastrana's "peace
initiative" dependent on continued spraying.

And on conducting an armed offensive. After all, didn't that produce
excellent results in Peru and Bolivia?

Bolivia, Chapare region, July 2000. Albert groans, gazing into space,
thinking about the past. He used to own four hectares of coca leaf:
"Everyone ate and danced.

Their pockets were full of money." On 9 May 1990 President Jaime Paz Zamora
had signed an agreement with the US on the total prevention of illicit drug
use. Dependent on subsidies from Washington, and therefore ready to do its
bidding, successive Bolivian governments set about destroying the crops.

The aid the peasants were promised for development programmes did not
materialise (5). They rebelled.

By 1994 there was a virtual state of war in the Chapare "red zone". The
federations of coca leaf producers threatened armed rebellion.

To avert civil war, the authorities made concessions.

On 7 August 1997 former dictator Hugo Banzer was democratically appointed
president.

He had much to be forgiven, and that made him even more careful to keep on
the right side of Washington. A Dignity Plan (the precursor of Plan
Colombia) gradually ended the previous system of compensation in return for
plant destruction ($2,500 per hectare voluntarily destroyed). According to
Jose Decker, vice-minister of alternative development from 1997: "between
1978 and 1997 we spent more than $100m in compensation. For a poor country
like ours, that's a lot of money that could have been spent on roads and
schools."

A joint military action force set up camp at the heart of the Indian
communities. The violence increased.

Between April and November 1998, 14 peasants and two policemen were killed.

But of the 38,000 hectares of coca leaf recorded in 1994, only 5,500
hectares (officially) remained by last May. An out-and-out success.

But not for elderly Alberto (and his fellow peasants). The 300 oranges from
an orange orchard bring him 18 bolivianos (less than $3). The pineapples
sell at five for one boliviano (about 15 cents). But pineapples are one of
the miracle crops - together with bananas, passion fruit, heart of palm,
papaya, peppers and citrus fruits - in the development plan that is
supposed to accompany the eradication programme.

The region is brimful of projects and their promoters - the latest models
of car, computers and air-conditioning. But the only tangible results are
some road improvements and the construction of bridges.

Jolting along a bumpy, pot-holed and stony track that is doing her car no
good at all, Pauline Metaal, director of the Coca-drug-development
programme at Bolivia's documentation and information centre (Cedib),
questions the criteria being brought into play. "The road may have been
improved.

It was certainly worse before.

But is it a good road?" All the rest are the usual bunch of white elephants
that come with development.

Take the Milka dairy, the first major project involving the United Nations
International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP). There was no in-depth study
before it was set up in Ibigarzama. The dairy has a capacity of 50,000
litres a day, but initial production was 1,500 litres. It was unprofitable,
had technical problems, the staff lacked training and there were
difficulties with the herd. In 1998 it shut down without paying its workers.

The people of Ivirza decided to grow passion fruit and asked for technical
support.

At the time of the first harvest, they sent an urgent request to those
responsible for administering the alternative development programme.

Absolutely no response.

They looked for markets themselves, but drew a blank.

In the end they shrugged their shoulders and gave the fruit away.

Elsewhere great efforts were put into growing hearts of palm, portrayed as
a little marvel five years back. But prices collapsed by 50%. Another
community tried to sell its products in Santa Cruz, the country's economic
centre.

Since there was no peasant market, the local authority claimed that the
sites used were not adequate. The police came in and beat people up. The
former coca farmers had to pack their bags. "The producers of mandarins and
oranges in Santa Cruz did not want to compete with the Chapare", said one
of the injured. "They fund the election campaigns, so the mayor does what
they want."

In the midst of this disaster, with tuberculosis rampant, there is only one
success story.

Banana production increased from 3,083 hectares in 1986 to 8,300 hectares
in 1999. Coincidentally, it would appear, in the hands of the private sector.

For the rest, the statistics tell their own tale: in 1998 the Chapare
exported 5.7 tonnes of produce worth $5.5m. In 1999 the level of sales rose
to 11.6 tonnes but brought in only $4.6m (6). Despite the cheers of success
reverberating from La Paz to Washington, only coca eradication rates can be
measured and proved.

Can that be coincidence?

15,000 Families To 'Relocate'

Close to Shinahota, the path is indescribable and the heat unbearable.
There is a forest track and a group of soldiers, machetes at the ready to
slash the undergrowth. They pulled up the coca plants back in June, firing
in the air and terrorising the community. They are not keen to venture
further into the forest. The atmosphere is tense: two soldiers were killed
there not long ago. But they have to "make up the numbers" (three hectares
a day), and boost the statistics to "keep Banzer and Clinton happy". It
would sound ridiculous except that at the same time, "to keep themselves
occupied", they laid waste all the neighbouring plantations - pineapples,
bananas, oranges and yucca - the peasants' last hope of survival.

"I have to recognise that we are effective in some areas", admits Decker,
avoiding the word repression. "In others, less so. The resources have not
been allocated simply because of inefficiency. Last year [1999], we had
intended to spend 50m bolivianos on the communities. We haven't even
managed to spend 9m." Disgusted though he is, he continues to be reticent
on why he resigned his post of vice-minister of alternative development
last March. If the intention was to hound the peasants from the regions,
you would not go about it any differently.

The Dignity Plan specifically mentions the need to "relocate" 15,000
families from the Chapare. Demographic pressures, the complex ecosystem and
the fragile biodiversity are all cited.

But environmental concerns fade when the wealth of hydrocarbons in the area
is under discussion. The national company YPFB - in the process of
privatisation - and the multinational oil companies are investing heavily
in the region. "Peasants are not part of the economic model", according to
an angry Evo Morales, member of parliament for Cochambamba. The historic
leader of the federation of coca leaf producers is regularly accused by the
authorities of being a "narco-trade-unionist" (just as the term
"narco-guerrilla" is used in Colombia) and of "calling for armed
resistance". Morales explains his point: "What are the peasants going to
sell? And what are they going to buy? Practically nothing.

Peasants aren't useful. There's all the more reason to suppress them
because they resist, demonstrate and block the roads in time of crisis.

And the big investors don't like that."

Three barracks, designed by Bolivian military engineers and American
technicians from the US Southern Command are to be built in the Chapare at
Villa Tunari, Ichoa and Chimore. Once they are in place, it will be
possible to reactivate the 9th division of the Bolivian army, which will be
responsible for concluding the eradication process.

According to Morales, the whole of the Andes region is being held hostage
to the economic mega-projects and oil strategy of the US.

General Jorge Enrique Mora, commander-in-chief of the Colombian army,
believes that attacking the illegal crops will inflict a severe blow on the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) who get most of their money
from a tax levied on coca. However, the area to which Plan Colombia will be
bringing the war - Caqueta and Putumayo - is of interest for another reason.

Oil extraction projects already exist there, and it borders Ecuador,
another oil producer. Known to be significantly involved in
narco-trafficking (7) - a fact on which Plan Colombia is strangely silent -
Carlos Castano's paramilitaries are advancing into regions with hydrocarbon
deposits and major waterway and road infrastructure projects. The peasants,
whose interests should have been taken into account, are fleeing in their
tens of thousands.

And nobody mentions, openly at least, the Southern cartel - a "narco"
organisation led by Colombian soldiers.

The war on drug-trafficking is directed only against the peasants and their
natural allies, the guerrillas.

An EU Smokescreen?

Admittedly, Plan Colombia does contain a "social" element and the Pastrana
government is asking the European Union for $1.3bn in funding. After
scratching its head because of the militaristic nature of the plan, the EU
decided on 24 October last year to accord $300m "to support President
Pastrana's peace efforts." This, despite the fact that, in Colombia, the
paramilitaries are engaged in violent offensives and continue their policy
of general massacres, while the authorities turn a blind eye. Except for
the armed conflict, that is more or less exactly what happened when the EU
implemented the programme to support the alternative development strategy
in the Chapare (Praedac).

The programme has disbursed less than 10% of a $18m budget over a two-year
period.

A disaffected European official, who wishes to remain anonymous, accepts
that it is a total failure: "We made the people promises, but we haven't
been able to keep them". The problem is not corruption, or that money has
been diverted or badly spent; it simply has not been spent. "When we launch
a project, the Americans object, saying: 'Have you made the aid
conditional?'" What they mean is: have all illegal crops been eradicated
from the land in question?

Isn't there a corner or two of coca hidden away somewhere? "Our reply is
that we're not there to set conditions, we're there to meet a social need.
The minister of the interior, who is overseeing the whole project and will
never say no to his real bosses, has the final word: 'I forbid this
project, coca has yet to be completely eradicated in this community.'" But
the fact is - and all the experts agree - that only gradual eradication,
accompanied by effective alternative solutions will encourage the peasants
to "play the game". If the experiment is successful they will continue to
eradicate the coca themselves, but they are not going to risk putting all
their eggs in one basket.

The EU is bound to run up against the same problems in Colombia. How is it
going to set in place any development programme when negotiations with the
guerrillas have been torpedoed and the word from Washington is pointing one
way: to militarisation and eradication? Even if it has just a limited
"social presence" the EU will be providing a useful smoke screen.

In Bolivia, statistics were manipulated and tensions resulted in 11 deaths
last October. Hounded out of the Chapare, coca farming is moving into other
regions - Beni, Pando, Tarija and Yungas - while in the Chapare itself coca
farmers are setting up self-defence groups, perhaps providing the next
generation of guerrillas. In Colombia, the anticipated relocation has
already begun.

Repression has caused coca and those who farm it to edge towards Amazonia,
compounding the environmental disaster, or to Ecuador, a country at risk of
destabilisation. The alternative is to join the guerrillas - and a thousand
did so in 1996 during the mass protests against the spraying.

In Peru, the dramatic reduction in illegal crops triggered a social
disaster because there was no real policy to provide alternatives. The
Upper Huallaga valley is in the grip of famine as the peasants migrate in
dreadful conditions. Temporarily, in all probability. "The announcement of
the spraying and of Plan Colombia has boosted Peruvian production again",
said an unsmiling Ricardo Vargas of Accion Andina (Andean Action) in
Bogota. "The price of coca has risen and within three or four years Peru
will probably be a major regional producer again."

What, after all, are those peasants going to live on, if not this product
of bad development? Competition from basic foodstuffs, produced on an
industrial scale in the North and often subsidised for export, has led to a
collapse in the peasants' food production. Since the frontiers were opened,
Colombia has lost 700,000 hectares of agricultural land. In the early 1990s
it was self-sufficient in rice but now imports 420,000 tonnes a year. In
Peru, rice from Vietnam and maize from Brazil costs between 20% and 30%
less in the urban marketplace that those same products produced in the
Huallaga valley.

There is a striking absence of US studies on the structure of the drugs
market within the US itself.

Waging this holy war outside the country clearly spares its authorities the
painful task of examining economic and social conditions in America's own
cities and ghettos.

(1) $1 = approx. 2,245 pesos.

(2) The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the National
Liberation Army (Eln) have a strong presence in the region.

(3) Cultivos ilicitos y proceso de paz en Colombia, Accion Andina-Trans
National Institute, Bogota, 2000.

(4) Indian reservation dating back to the colonial period.

(5) From 1986 onwards more than $200m have been spent annually on the war
on drugs.

The alternative development programme gets only $20m a year.

(6) Statistics from the ministry of agriculture in La Prensa, Cochabamba,
24 May 2000.

(7) See Rapport 1998, Observatoire geopolitique des drogues, Paris; Cambio,
Bogota, 1 May 2000; "Carlos Castana y los narcos tienen relaciones
peligrosas", Miami Herald, 24 September 2000, which seems to be based on
leaks orchestrated by the Drug Enforcement Agency.