NO CROPS SPARED IN COLOMBIA'S COCA WAR

SANTA ANA, Colombia, Jan. 29 - With considerable training and
financing from the United States, the Colombian Army has begun an
aggressive land and air assault on the country's coca-growing
heartland, claiming to have killed a quarter of all coca crops there
in the last six weeks.

Low-flying aerial spray planes - protected from groundfire by two
elite battalions that are dropped into coca fields - have blanketed
four regions of Caqueta and Putumayo Provinces, spraying herbicide
over 65,785 acres as of Sunday, according to newly released military
estimates. The two provinces are believed to produce three-quarters
of Colombia's coca, the leaves of which are used to make cocaine.

Although aerial defoliation of coca has been used across Colombia for
10 years, government officials here say this is the first serious
effort in this isolated region. The effort is a centerpiece of
President Andres Pastrana's Plan Colombia, a multibillion-dollar
effort to cut Colombia's coca crop in half by 2005 and, with it, a
crucial revenue source for leftist guerrillas who are active in the
area.

To reduce the supply of drugs, the United States has pledged $1.1
billion toward that plan, mostly in the form of transport helicopters
and training for antinarcotics troops. Their role is to protect spray
planes and destroy coca-processing laboratories in the jungle.

The aerial eradication has not come without a price. Farmers in the
Valley of Guamuez in northwestern Putumayo, a swath containing the
largest concentration of coca, have complained that legal crops like
plantains and yucca were destroyed along with coca. The farmers are
typically poor, and some, caught in a violent world between rebels
and paramilitaries, turned to coca to eke out a better subsistence.

"I have the proof to show that it wasn't just the coca farmers who
have suffered," said Carlos Alberto Palacios, secretary of human
development in the town of La Hormiga.

"We believe people will go hungry," said Mr. Palacios, an expert on
the coca trade. "They've fumigated everything, fields and plantain
rows and yucca and everything that people need to live on." Farmers
have also complained of vomiting, rashes and other side effects.

On a half-hour helicopter flight with Gen. Mario Montoya over what
was once Colombia's most bountiful coca-producing region, fields that
once were bright green with coca and other plants were a pale brown,
wiped free of vegetation for miles around.

The tin roofs of farmers' huts stood out, shining in the sun in a sea
of drab brown. Military figures show that 45,551 acres of coca had
been eradicated in that area - a triangle comprising the towns of La
Hormiga, San Miguel and the western edge of Puerto Asis - as of
Sunday.

"This is the only way," the general said, taking a look through the
window of the copter. "We don't have another way."

General Montoya, who is in charge of the effort, said as much as
250,000 acres in the two provinces was dedicated to coca before
spraying began Dec. 19, a figure far higher than an estimate last
January of 185,000.

United States officials, who provide the Colombian authorities with
satellite maps that help pinpoint coca fields, confirmed General
Montoya's assessments. American officials also said the spraying -
using glyphosate, a powerful chemical found in many pesticides - is
at least 90 percent effective in first-time use, wiping out fields
within a few weeks. General Montoya said that once a field has been
sprayed, it takes three months before farmers can replant.

Mr. Palacios, the coca trade expert, and other town officials said
farmers did cultivate coca, but also a host of legal crops, as well
as cattle and other livestock. The defoliation, Mr. Palacios said,
has prompted many farmers and their families to abandon their homes.

The health department of Putumayo is in the process of collecting
testimony from farmers whose lands were sprayed, said Nancy Sanchez,
who is supervising the effort as coordinator of the department's
human rights section. The affidavits will be presented to doctors
studying the effects of the defoliation, as well as the Colombian
government.

"There's complaints about intoxication, diarrhea, vomiting, skin
rashes, red eyes, headaches," Ms. Sanchez said. "In the children,
above all, there are ill effects on their skin."

American officials dispute such reports, insisting that numerous
tests on glyphosate have demonstrated that the pesticide cannot cause
harm to humans or animals.

Nonetheless, directions on the application of glyphosate products in
the United States warn users not to use "this product in a way that
will contact workers or other persons, either directly or through
drift."

The Colombian government, which is concerned about how aerial
spraying will be viewed overseas by potential financial backers,
points out that the farmers whose fields were sprayed had ample
opportunity to sign pacts that would have prevented aerial
eradication.

Under a program that already has 2,000 signatories across Putumayo,
the farmers in the Valley of Guamuez could have agreed to yank their
coca plants in return for up to $1,000 worth of livestock and food
per family. Although many farmers across Putumayo remain suspicious
about the government's promises, the government has pledged to those
who sign that markets for legal crops are being developed.

"The people from this zone had not shown up," said President
Pastrana's point man on Putumayo, referring to the farmers in the
Valley of Guamuez. The official, Gonzalo de Francisco, added, "These
people can't be angry with the fumigation; they were doing something
outside legal norms."

Mr. de Francisco has also noted that destroying coca farms prevents
the use of millions of gallons of pesticides and precursor chemicals
needed to produce cocaine annually. Eduardo Gamarra, an expert on the
coca trade at Florida International University in Miami, said the
damage from coca farming and the processing of coca leaves has "some
very serious environmental implications."

Mr. de Francisco said that complaints from farmers whose fields were
sprayed have been filed with the government's internal affairs
office, which investigates allegations of official wrongdoing. Those
whose farms were unnecessarily sprayed can receive compensation, Mr.
de Francisco said, noting that the farmers remain free to sign
accords and join the government's self-eradication program.

General Montoya, who commands army brigades throughout the southern
region, where most of Colombia's coca grows, acknowledged that
"errors can present themselves" and that some legal crops were
defoliated.

"We know that we can make mistakes," General Montoya said, "but the
mistakes are minimal compared to the magnitude of the operation that
we're undertaking."

The general explained that defoliating some legal crops is hard to
avoid because coca farmers tend to hide their crops by planting next
to larger, legal crops, like banana trees.

"When we've gone to examine the countryside, we've found that there's
plantain bananas, we've found that there is yucca, but we've also
found there is coca," General Montoya said.

The anti-coca effort has been fast, General Montoya said, but not
easy. Because of the presence of rebels from the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the army must fly in soldiers from two
American-trained battalions before spraying herbicide from OVZ-10 and
T-65 planes. The soldiers later shower to cleanse themselves of any
of the herbicide, the military says.

"The people here are always in the middle," said Ms. Sanchez, the
health department worker. "The guerrillas come and they threaten,
they make them pay taxes. Then the paramilitaries come and they get
assassinated and threatened, and now the government comes in and
fumigates them."