COCA ERADICATION PLAN MAY NOT TAKE ROOT

Security Fears, Growers' Resistance Threaten Program

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Yanking a coca bush from the ground and planting a
magnolia tree in its place, officials have kicked off an ambitious program
to eradicate drug crops in the heart of Colombia's cocaine-producing region.

During the ceremony in southern Colombia's Putumayo province -- home of
nearly half the world's cocaine-yielding acreage -- about 700 peasant
farmers agreed to destroy their coca plots in return for government aid to
adopt alternative, legal livelihoods.

The crop-substitution program is the "soft side" of a U.S.-backed military
push into the region, in which remaining coca fields will be seized by
government troops and destroyed by aerial fumigation. The pact was signed
over the weekend in the village of Santa Ana and will be offered to other
farmers in Putumayo in the coming months.

For the coca growers, the deal to wipe out their own crops -- and thereby
avoid aerial fumigation -- sounds good on paper. But many are skeptical the
promises will become reality. And there is little likelihood the initiative
will sharply reduce the scale of the upcoming military offensive.

In return for seeds, technical assistance, better roads and electricity --
the government's part of the bargain -- communities living off coca pledge
instead to grow food crops and tend chicken coops within a year. Later,
officials say, they will invite farmers into more lucrative long-term
projects such as cattle-raising, fish farms and rubber plantations.

The government says the alternative development program is backed by nearly
$250 million in government aid, in addition to tens of millions of dollars
in expected international funding.

But these so-called programs face myriad obstacles. Foremost is security.
Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia, or FARC, controls much of rural Putumayo, and earns huge
profits by protecting the cocaine-producing plantations and "taxing" the
growers.

Battling more than 2,000 FARC fighters for control of Putumayo and profits
from its lucrative cocaine trade are at least 600 members of a right-wing
paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.

The FARC says it supports alternative development over forced aerial
eradication, but it remains to be seen whether the guerrillas will go along
with plans aimed at eliminating a main source of income.

A $1.3 billion U.S. aid package includes dozens of combat helicopters and
U.S. special forces training for 3,000 Colombian army troops given the task
of driving the armed groups from the coca fields.

The United States also is pledging more than $100 million for alternative
development programs, but White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey said last
week that such programs cannot succeed until Colombia's police and military
"have established security on the ground."