PATCHY SUCCESS FOR 'PLAN COLOMBIA'

Backcountry Still Controlled By Rebels

El Tigre, Colombia -- A six-week aerial spraying campaign has left vast
stretches of Colombia's coca heartland parched and withering. But the
military has yet to establish a presence in the backcountry, suggesting the
most dangerous work is yet to come for the U.S.-backed soldiers trying to
rid the area of drug crops within a year.

Much of the damage has been done in western Putumayo, a southern province
that accounts for more than half of Colombia's coca production. The
herbicide spraying has killed more than 40,000 acres of coca crops in this
area alone, according to Colombian military officials.

But much of the terrain is still controlled by the country's largest
left-wing guerrilla insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
or FARC,

and by right-wing paramilitary forces who battle with the guerrillas for
control of drug crops and strategic transportation corridors.

In interviews around this village sitting between rebel and paramilitary
areas eight miles northwest of Puerto Asis, the region's main town, farmers
said many drug plantations remained untouched, protected from spray planes
in hard-to-reach valleys by jungle cover and guerrilla troops.

Valleys full of coca were evident from the main east-west highway. And on
almost every farm hit by the herbicide since December, small tents
protected young coca plants for future cultivation.

Rooting out those remote fields will probably force Colombian troops to
directly confront the FARC, an 18,000-member rebel army that taxes drug
crops to help finance its war effort.

By all accounts, the guerrillas have increased their numbers in Putumayo in
preparation for a ground attack and to blunt the growth of paramilitary forces,

which municipal officials suggest are being used by the Colombian army as
an effective if illegal advance guard.

Plan Colombia, the anti-drug strategy backed by $1.3 billion in U.S.
military and social aid, has so far unfolded exactly as southern Colombian
farmers and European diplomats said it would: a fumigation campaign
supported by U.S.-trained anti-narcotics battalions.

From late December to early February, aerial spraying killed more than 60,
000 acres of coca crops across Putumayo province, or almost half the
country's estimated supply, according to government accounts. Colombia
accounts for 90 percent of the world's cocaine, which is made from coca
leaves, and recent U.S.

government figures reported that coca cultivation in Colombia increased 11
percent last year.

But two key components of Plan Colombia have yet to materialize, despite
assurances from President Andres Pastrana's government to farmers and
foreign governments.

More than $80 million in U.S. aid to encourage farmers to pull up coca in
favor of legal crops has yet to reach Putumayo, and the amount originally
held out to farmers has shrunk by 75 percent since October.

Moreover, the government has yet to honor its pledge to impose order in a
region where the FARC controls the countryside and paramilitary forces
reign in urban centers.

"The government has abandoned us," said Alfonso Martinez, an aide to La
Hormiga Mayor Flover Edmundo Meza, who runs the municipality of 35,000
residents.

"The army comes and then it quickly leaves," said a member of the FARC's
15th Front, which was sent in from neighboring Caqueta province, who gave
his name as Christian.

The army's scant presence also has alarmed leaders of neighboring countries,

who have seen thousands of refugees pour across Colombia's border to escape
conflict and aerial spraying.

"The presence of the Colombian army is, to put it mildly, infrequent,"
Ecuadoran Foreign Minister Heinz Moeller said last week during a visit to
Washington, where he was seeking U.S. helicopters, speedboats and
communications equipment to fortify the border roughly 30 miles from this
village. "It is time to stop the diplomatic language and say clearly what
is going on."

Traveling west from Puerto Asis to Putumayo required passage through at
least three zones of control, none held by government forces. Rebel and
paramilitary troops were in plain sight: A dozen uniformed FARC soldiers
drank fruit juice in the town of Puerto Vega, and a column of two dozen
paramilitary troops marched along the road from their base in El Placer.

Meanwhile, the spraying campaign has moved east to Caqueta, where last
month, Americans hired by the State Department to make spraying flights
came under guerrilla fire during a rescue mission.

Colombian military officials said that, for the moment, spraying and rapid
strikes against drug production labs would remain their primary tactics.
The strategy, while not changing the security situation on the ground, has
two purposes: undermining guerrilla finances and biding time until U.S.
military hardware in the form of more than 50 transport helicopters arrives
later this year.

The third of three U.S.-trained anti-drug battalions is scheduled to be
ready for the field by May.

Local officials say the military is getting help from the paramilitary
groups, which have effectively taken over many towns and urban centers in
Putumayo.

"The advance of paramilitarism here coincides with the advance of Plan
Colombia," said German Martinez, the local people's ombudsman who completed
his assignment last week. "When the military says it is striking
paramilitary crops and labs here, it is a lie."

The spraying has frightened many farmers, who say they have no plans to
begin replanting drug crops until they are sure the spraying is finished.
Colombia's prosecutor general has opened an investigation into the spraying
campaign, which farmers here say has killed animals and sickened children;
the probe could open the door to damage claims or criminal complaints.

Janeth Sanchez, 22, said she lost five acres of coca in the spraying as
well as six acres of corn, bananas and sugar cane. She said several hundred
fish she cultivated in a backyard pond also died from the herbicide.

A sign hangs in front of her cement-block house reading: "For sale: tinga
seeds," a type of coca particularly susceptible to herbicide. Sanchez has
2, 000 plants sheltered under a tent in her backyard. "Almost no one wants
them right now," she said.

Arnulfo Ardila, a farmer and friend of Sanchez, is planting a
wheelbarrow-full of new seeds. He was not touched by the spraying and
believes the market will soon shift again to make the plants a valued
commodity.

"Here the social development money won't work," he said. "The people are
promised the money and the government never delivers it. Soon, people will
want these plants again."

Pastrana has expressed fear that, without a rapid infusion of aid, farmers
here will turn back to coca crops. In a recent interview, he said he would
seek additional social development aid from the United States, perhaps as
much as $500 million a year.