TROOPS LAUNCH BLITZ ON COLOMBIAN COCA

Food Crops Killed, Some Farmers Say

LA HORMIGA, Colombia -- Launching the U.S.-backed counter-narcotics
offensive known as Plan Colombia, army troops and police have begun a land
and air assault on a valley that holds one-third of Colombia's coca fields.

The joint operations are the central element of the ``Push into the South,''
a two-year plan to eradicate Putumayo's coca and the first phase of Plan
Colombia, designed to destroy half the nation's cocaine industry and
strengthen its war-beleaguered government in five years.

Reports suggest the blitz is destroying thousands of acres of coca bushes,
driving up coca prices and throwing itinerant coca leaf pickers out of work
around the valley in the southern state of Putumayo.

But poor farmers are complaining that the herbicide sprayed by police
airplanes to kill the coca is also killing their food crops and could
unleash waves of hunger and refugees across the region.

Aid Package

As scripted in a $1.3 billion aid package approved last summer by
Washington, about 1,800 U.S.-trained troops and 15 U.S.-supplied ``Huey''
helicopters began raiding coca fields and protecting the crop-dusters in
Putumayo on Dec. 13.

The government's reinforced military presence in the region has allowed the
low-flying spray planes to stage their first-ever massive raids in the
region, lessening the danger of gunfire from leftist guerrillas paid by
traffickers to protect their operations.

Their first target: The Guamuez Valley, 1,500 square miles of rolling hills
that hold 110,000 acres of coca, planted right up to the roads, and 1,500
rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Military officials in Bogot, 440 miles to the north, have been tight-lipped
about the Guamuez operation, apparently fearing that publicity would fuel
resistance among valley residents.

La Hormiga, with 18,000 people, does about $500,000 a week in coca business,
and even an 18-year-old hotel clerk can give visitors the latest prices for
what everyone calls simply ``the merchandise.''

Resistance has not been overwhelming, but complaints are loud.

``All my corn, yucca and bananas died. What am I going to feed my family?''
said Jos Melo, 34, as he surveyed his three acres of sprayed and withering
coca bushes one mile north of La Hormiga, the valley's main town.

Army officials dismiss the complaints as phony because the farmers have long
lived off the coca trade and now find themselves targeted by an offensive
that seems to be disrupting their operations.

``We're doing good business,'' said Army Col. Luis Trujillo, commander of
the two 900-man counter-narcotics battalions trained by U.S. Special Forces
to spearhead the operations in the Guamuez.

Nine crop-dusters flying up to five missions a day have sprayed 15,000
acres, starting with the La Hormiga area, and reporting less ground fire
than expected, Colombian armed forces officials said.

The stepped-up fumigation is being financed by $115 million from the U.S.
aid package.

Prices for semi-processed coca paste jumped from $750 to $1,000 since the
spraying started in the area Dec. 22, said Carlos Alberto Palacios, a La
Hormiga sociologist writing his master's thesis on the coca trade.

Many farmers are producing only a low-grade form of paste, known as glue,
made from leaves picked too early because of fear of the spraying or damage
by the herbicides, selling for $500 per kilo, Palacios added.

Dirt Road

Standing by his coca nursery off a dirt road, Fulgencio Molina said he had
dropped the price of his 22,000 seedlings from 25 U.S. cents to 15 after the
spraying began but had found no buyers willing to plant new bushes.

Troops have torched about 20 small ``kitchens'' where coca leaf is turned
into coca paste, but raided only one refinery that turns paste into cocaine,
apparently abandoned long before, a regional prosecutor reported.

Many leaf pickers appear to have left the countryside -- enrollment at a
school in the hamlet of El Maizal dropped from 120 children last year to 30
this year -- and towns usually filled on weekends with pickers now seem as
idle on Saturday nights as on weeknights.

The spraying comes atop an outbreak of a plague that Palacios said has cut
coca production in the La Hormiga area by as much as two-thirds -- a
leaf-eating worm jokingly known here as ``the Clinton.''

``The entire coca trade is stopped,'' said Enrique, code name for the
commander of 600 right-wing, anti-guerrilla gunmen known as Self-Defense
Forces or AUC, who dominate most of the towns and roads in the valley.

Arriving last September in the valley, controlled for decades by the FARC,
the AUC fighters drove out the rebels after a series of pitched battles and
a string of assassinations of alleged FARC sympathizers.

U.S. officials said the spraying was begun in AUC-controlled areas of the
Guamuez because it was unlikely that their gunmen would open fire on the
government crop-dusters, making their runs safer.

Under Orders

Enrique confirmed that his men are under orders not to shoot at the planes,
saying in an interview that while he ``taxes'' area coca dealers to finance
AUC operations, ``we are 100 percent in favor of eradication.''

He said he had just completed an operation in which his men helped farmers
take their machetes to about 80 acres of coca bushes, in hopes of avoiding
the spraying and destruction of their food crops.

Colombian officials also hoped that starting the spraying close to La
Hormiga would push area farmers to join a voluntary eradication program the
government has been promoting in other parts of Putumayo since August.

The program offers $2,500 in crop substitution support for each farmer, plus
roads and clinics.