DRUG TRADE FUELS COLOMBIAN WAR

CAQUETA, Colombia -- The coca farmer looked on with concern as the drug
buyer tested the purity of the coca base. The guerrillas sitting at a table
nearby did not look concerned or even interested. They were going to get
paid either way.

With the fall of the drug cartels of Medellin and Cali, once the most
powerful crime syndicates in the world, the drug trade went underground,
and, according to the Colombian military and U.S. intelligence services,
several organizations stepped in to fill the vacuum, most particularly the
revolutionary movement FARC, an easy step for them as they control 40 per
cent of Colombia and much of the areas where coca, the raw material for
cocaine, is grown.

These accusations from the Colombian military, that the FARC is a drug
cartel, were given further weight when Brazil's most powerful drug lord was
captured in April. Luis Fernando Da Costa, alias "Freddy Seashore," after
the coastal shantytown in Rio de Janeiro where he murdered his way to the
top of the drug world, was arrested a long way from home: in the Colombian
jungles of Vichada near the Brazilian border, with two bodyguards from
FARC, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

In his subsequent interrogation, he said he had been taking more than 20
tons of cocaine every month from the FARC and paying it $10 million per
month, although sometimes the payments were made in arms. And the military
said they had seized documentary evidence of drugs for arms deals between
the FARC and the Brazilian.

The Colombian and U.S. media jumped on the revelations as incontrovertible
proof the FARC are the world's biggest drug cartel.

But it was not as simple as that - nothing is in Colombia.

"We have always been open as far as our relationship to drug trafficking is
concerned," said Raul Reyes, the FARC's top spokesman and negotiator with
the government in the peace process, now in its third year. "We tax all
businesses that operate in our areas.

Drug trafficking is one of those businesses, so we charge it taxes, nothing
more."

The army also admits the FARC charges taxes and has drawn up a list of
charges that the guerrillas have on different stages of the drug trade. The
FARC, which numbers about 18,000 fighters, is divided over 60 fronts, at
least 39 of which have links with drugs.

The only way to really find out how involved the FARC is in drug
trafficking was to wander through their territory and explore the three
stages of cocaine production: the drug fields, the coca-base markets and
the laboratories.

Jorge, 32, has 11 hectares of the hardy green coca bushes on his farm,
hacked out of the jungle in the southern Caqueta province.

He can produce 12 kilos of coca base every 60 days. He has nothing to do
with the FARC, although he lives about 2 kilometres from a camp and
guerrillas pass by almost daily.

He pays them taxes for the drugs he produces, about $38 for every kilo of
base, which goes into funding the local school, the village's medical
clinic and the road-building program.

"I don't have much to do with the guerrillas. They have been here since
before I was born," he said shrugging his shoulders. "The one good thing
about them is that they set the price of coca at the market and the narcos
(drug traffickers) have to pay the price or go elsewhere."

The market is every Saturday at the nearby village.

The buyers come by boat from different parts of the country.

They have to be registered with the guerrillas or else they cannot get into
the area. The current price of coca base is 1.8 million pesos ($800). The
dealers then pay the FARC a tax of 500,000 pesos ( $220) to take the base
away. They are issued with a receipt. If they are stopped by a FARC patrol
and are found with drugs and no receipt, the consequences are dire. Few
dare risk it.

Kilo Worth $76,000 in Canada

There are also laboratories in FARC areas, but the ones visited were run by
drug traffickers who paid the FARC a tax for operating in their area. They
chose the guerrilla areas, even though it costs because security forces
seldom dare to venture in and they can go about their work unmolested.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency definition of a drug trafficker is someone
who exports drugs.

A kilo of cocaine can be bought in Colombia from between $4,500 and $7,600,
depending on where it is purchased. That same kilo of cocaine is worth over
$76,000 in Canada and almost $137,000 in Moscow. So it is the drug
traffickers, those who actually ship the stuff, that make the real cash.

The FARC deny exporting cocaine.

Even the DEA says it has no evidence the FARC is responsible for smuggling
shipments out of the country. The DEA is building cases against individual
FARC members for drug trafficking, but does not believe they are acting
with the blessing of the FARC command.

The Colombian army failed to provide proof the FARC was exporting. A FARC
commander in the guerrilla safe haven explained why the FARC does not
export drugs: "There is our ideological belief that drug trafficking is
wrong. We believe drugs should be legalized," he said, sipping a strong
Colombian coffee or "tinto." "What do we have to gain by exporting? We have
already made our money before the drugs leave the country. If a shipment is
seized, we lose nothing.

There is no point getting involved any farther up the chain."

Now if the FARC were exporting cocaine, why would Freddy Seashore have been
caught in Colombia? Why would he have his own laboratories and drug fields
in Colombia, as the Colombian army have admitted?

Surely he would just buy the finished product straight off the FARC,
preferably from the safety of Rio?

There is no doubt the FARC's growth and continuing expansion is financed by
drugs, and without drugs it might well have gone the way of Latin America's
other great insurgent movements like Peru's Shining Path or Nicaragua's
Sandinistas; disappeared or moved into mainstream political life.

Paramilitaries Profit, Too

There is no doubt drugs are the fuel that feeds the country's 37-year civil
conflict.

Both the FARC and its right-wing paramilitary enemies earn hundreds of
millions from the drug trade every year, which they use to buy weapons,
entice more recruits and expand their territorial control. But there is no
evidence the FARC is a drug cartel, for not only does it not export drugs,
but seems not to even have its own drug fields and labs. If a drug field is
fumigated by the Colombian security forces, or a laboratory destroyed by
the anti-narcotics police, the FARC has lost nothing, just the prospect of
less taxes.

Then again the drug fields are always replanted and the laboratories
rebuilt in a different place.

For as long as drug traffickers can make more than $76,000 pure profit from
every kilo of cocaine, the trade is going to continue, and flourish.

And that means the FARC will probably continue to flourish as well.