FARMERS GROW FEARFUL AS SHOWDOWN NEARS

SANTA ANA, Columbia - Growers Must Defy Rebels And Risk Death Or Risk
Having Their Soil Ruined Under A Controversial Coca- Eradication Plan

The young coca fanner never wants his toddler to get high, yet he
knows the cocaine he produces might end up fueling the habits of young
addicts worldwide.

He has no desire to take a snort himself. Just the smell of a
simmering cocaine cocktail once gave him a wicked headache.

Still, he knows the deadly allure that the milky-white coca paste has
for millions of junkies.

He is a God-fearing Catholic who tries to live right. But it is not
his conscience nudging him out of the drug-growing business in the
most productive region for cocaine on Earth. It is the anticipation of
war.

Jairo Rodriguez, 20, fears this verdant land of coca plants will turn
into a battlefield where U.S.-made choppers will lead aerial assaults
on the drug farms and heavily armed guerrillas will fire back to
protect their lucrative cash crop.

So Rodriguez has become a reluctant ally in Colombia's war on
drugs.

And in the coming months, he will join hundreds of neighbors in
voluntarily yanking his green coca stalks in hopes that the Colombian
government will make good on its promised offer of alternative crops.

"You have no choice but to join the plan," Rodriguez said as he stood
on a slope dotted with coca that he has grown since high school. "So
let's see what the government does."

THIS SPRAWLING MAZE of Andean foothills, jungle, swampland and fertile
fields is ground zero in the U.S.-led campaign to loosen cocaine's
stranglehold on Colombia. Here in the Putumayo region, an area roughly
the size of Maryland, much of the $1.3 billion in U.S. aid will be
spent m a dual effort of eradication and assault against the
protectors of the drug trade.

It is a controversial game plan that has critics from the United
States to Latin America wondering if Uncle Sam's money will fuel an
already explosive civil war and lead to an expansion of the drug trade
in neighboring Andean nations.

"We believe our strategy will work," said Jaime Ruiz, the presidential
aide who helped devise the international-aid package known as "Plan
Colombia."

TOP COLOMBIAN OFFICIALS such as Ruiz swear they can cut cocaine
production in half within the next six years. Today, Colombia produces
upward of 80 percent of the world's cocaine. "We're not going to let
this expand any longer," Ruiz vows.

But how will the understaffed and poorly trained Colombian army wage
this war? How well will its soldiers repel insurgent forces that are
reportedly training peasants in the jungles and forcing young recruits
into their folds?

Will farmers who depend on cocaine for their existence easily switch
to less lucrative crops? Will they be targeted by rebels if they go
along with eradication? How much environmental damage will be done by
herbicides sprayed on plantations where growers refuse to cooperate?
And who will care for the thousands of expected refugees fleeing
fighting, fumigation and uncertainty?

"Rather than reducing coca cultivation and calming Colombia, this is
going to unleash Armageddon," Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami
professor of international studies, has said.

FOR AS FAR as the eye can see, there are coca plants in Putumayo. You
can stop on the side of almost any road and pick a few leaves. You can
take a short hike and walk into a valley of coca plants as tall as a
professional basketball player. You can float down a river and pass
rail-thin canoes loaded with burlap bags of refined coca.

Nearly 300 tons of coca are produced annually here, enough for an
astounding 1.3 billion hits of pure cocaine, Colombian officials say.
Most of the coca is grown on farms of only a few acres, but some are
on large Old South-style plantations of 250 acres or more in the
jungles and lowlands.

An estimated 140,000 acres yield more than half of Colombia's total
annual cocaine harvest of about 600 tons.

MANY FARMS HAVE on-site "kitchens" - crude labs where coca leaves are
crushed, cooked in gasoline, washed and mashed to make the coca paste
shipped to clandestine markets.

For an average fanner with 5 acres of coca plants, an annual yield
produces roughly 8 kilos of paste and nets roughly $4,700. But by the
time just one of those kilos reaches the streets of Europe or the
United States, it may be worth more than $100,000.

"There are a lot of people who think because you grow coca you are
rich," said Rodriguez, who, like most peasants, cultivates cocaine
because it is the region's staple crop. "But it is the middlemen who
are making all the profits."

And in Putumayo, feuding factions will do anything to get a slice of
the cocaine windfall.

Villages south of the Putumayo River, which slices through the region,
are under the control of the leftist guerrillas, known by their
Spanish acronym FARC. North of the river is government territory,
where right-wing groups with close ties to the Colombian military are
active.

BOTH SIDES FORCIBLY recruit teens. They levy unofficial taxes on
farmers and merchants. They rule by intimidation, threats and ruthless
nighttime executions and massacres.

(KRT Photo caption: Children paddle a boat upriver to the dock in
Puerto Asis, Colombia. A package in the boat is very likely processed
coca paste.)

In Puerto Asis, the province's second-largest city, four of the last
five mayors were assassinated by the forces jockeying for control of
the drug trade. The sole surviving ex-mayor is in prison for
corruption. For many years, Puerto Asis was controlled by the
guerrillas. Then, in 1998, the paramilitaries arrived. Dozens of
suspected guerrilla sympathizers were killed, say townsfolk and
government agencies.

Today, while Colombian soldiers patrol the town's outskirts, Puerto
Asis is ruled from behind the scenes by paramilitaries who occupy a
fortified encampment outside of town.

"The paramilitaries go around town without anybody bothering them,"
says Manuel Alzate, Puerto Asis' current mayor, who keeps armed
bodyguards near him. "And the army and the police do nothing."

Colombian officials swear their soldiers are not linked to
paramilitaries. But residents fear a wave of reprisals as farmers flee
violence in rural areas controlled by rebels.

Paramilitaries likely will finger some refugees as rebel sympathizers.
"You don't know who to trust around here," said Lilia De Gaitan, whose
family has lived in Puerto Asis for more than a decade.

The Colombian government has made no secret of its two-pronged
strategy to be unleashed in the coming months.

ON THE MILITARY side, a combined Colombian force of about 15,000
soldiers, police, sailors and air corps will attack drug-producing
labs and attempt to drive the rebels from the region.

With 60 U.S.-Made helicopters, a 3,000-strong anti-narcotics battalion
trained by U.S. Green Berets will fan out across the Putumayo and
Caqueta states in support of police units as they fumigate huge swaths
of coca fields and force the big producers out of business.

In the social and economic arenas, the government will offer more than
$300 million in incentives to farmers to replace cocaine with yucca,
African palms and assorted food crops. But that's a lofty goal,
because there are few roads and bridges on which to move the goods to
market With cocaine, the buyers go directly to the farmers.

The aim, Colombian officials insist is not to fuel the civil war that
has ravaged Colombia for more than 40 years. Rather, it is to stem the
cocaine trade and return rebels to the bargaining table, where
negotiations have sputtered in recent months.

"The most important part is the peace process with the rebels," said
Ruiz, the governments point man for the plan.

But people who depend on cocaine for their livelihoods say the
government plan is fraught with huge pitfalls. The rebels are a potent
force, more than 20,000 strong. They are well-armed and have a war
chest packed with millions of dollars from protecting the cocaine
trade and imposing illegal taxes on growers.

Coca growers have reported being threatened by rebels. The message:
Either continue growing coca or face death. Those independent farmers
who have mounted a campaign to join the government's cause have seen
at least a half-dozen leaders assassinated in recent months.

"Right now we are being eliminated one by one," said Benedicto
Caicedo, a former coca grower who is leading an effort to persuade
farmers to stop growing coca.

Coca growers find themselves in a bind: Either go against the rebels
and risk death or go against the government and risk having their
crops destroyed and their soil spoiled by herbicides. More than
500,000 acres have been sprayed with herbicides in the past six years.

THE CASTRO FAMILY, who operated a coca-growing farm in rebel-run
territory, knows the fall-out from fumigation. A few years back, the
Castros tried switching to other crops, including squash. They also
tried raising cattle. But the profits were not nearly as hefty as from
cocaine production.

Then about six months ago, the Castro coca crops were fumigated.
Today, the coca leaves are still falling. The coca-paste lab sits idle
with the burnt leaves from the last production, an eerie testimony to
its demise. The farmland no longer will grow coca - or anything else,
the Castros say.

"We are finished," said Bolivar Castro, the family
patriarch.

Colombian officials acknowledge that in the short run, the people of
Putumayo will bear a heavy burden. The United Nations already is
making plans to deal with as many as 10,000 refugees.

The Colombian government plans to -send 35 people into the region to
explain the plans for crop alternatives.

The intention is to fumigate mostly large tracts, government officials
say, and not destroy the lands of the small farmers. The government
also brushed aside criticism from environmentalists.

"This is not going to be a razed-earth policy," said Gonzalo de
Francisco, the Colombian official in charge of the social programs
planned for Putumayo.

Last month, 489 farmers in Santa Ana signed up for a government
program to eradicate 1,400 acres of coca plants by hand.

Rodriguez, the young coca grower, plans to hire a crew to destroy his
crop. He is skeptical though, of the government's will to help farmers.

"But we have to pull the coca so the government doesn't come and
destroy our land," he said. Colombian officials vow they will be
vindicated. Putumayo will be purged of coca, and a new generation will
grow up without dependence on cocaine production, they claim.