LOOSENING COCAINE'S GRIP ON COLOMBIA: $1.3 BILLION CAMPAIGN USES FARMER'S
FEAR AS WEAPON

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 become 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.

In the months ahead, he will join hundreds of neighbors in voluntarily
yanking his green coca stalks in hopes that the Colombian government will
make good on its promise of help with alternative crops.

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

This sprawling maze of 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 U.S. aid package approved by Congress this summer will be spent
in a dual effort of eradication and assault against the drug trade's
protectors.

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

"We believe our strategy will work," said Jaime Ruiz, the
Colombianpresidential aide who helped devise the international aid package
known as Plan Colombia. "We're not going to let this expand any longer."

Top Colombian officials like Ruiz swear they can cut cocaine production in
half in the next six years. Today, Colombia produces 80 percent of the
world's cocaine.

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

Will farmers who depend on the income from cocaine willingly 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 that refuse to stop growing coca? And who will care for the
thousands of expected refugees fleeing the 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 and critic of the Colombia aid package, said recently.

The battleground

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.

Almost 300 tons of coca are grown annually here, enough to produce an
astounding 1.3 billion grams of pure cocaine and get roughly 13 billion
people high, Colombian officials say.

Most coca is grown on small farms of a few acres, but some areon large
plantations of 250 acres or more that are in the jungles and mountains. In
all, more than 100,000 residents work an estimated 150,000 acres that yield
more than half of Colombia's total annual cocaine harvest of about 600 tons.

Many farms have on-site "kitchens" -- the crude labs where coca leaves are
crushed, cooked in gasoline, washed and mashed to produce the coca paste
that is shipped to clandestine markets.

For an average farmer who has five acres of coca plants, an annual yield
produces roughly eight 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 middle men who are making all the
profits."

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

Villages south of the Putumayo River are under control of the leftist
guerrillas, known by their Spanish acronym FARC.

North of the river is government territory, where right-wing paramilitaries
with close ties to the Colombian military are active.

Both sides forcibly recruit teens for their forces. They levy unofficial
taxes on farmers and merchants. They rule by intimidation and threats.

In Puerto Asis, the regional capital, 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
murdered by paramilitaries, townspeople and government agencies say.

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 with
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 escalating violence
in rural areas controlled by the rebels.

Paramilitaries will likely 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 battle plan

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 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 support police units as they fumigate huge
swaths of coca fields and force the big producers out of business.

In the social and economic arena, the government will offer more than $300
million in incentives to farmers to replace cocaine with yucca, African
palms and assorted food crops.

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 bring rebels back 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 Colombian government's point man for the plan.

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

Coca growers have reported being threatened by rebels. The message: 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 of
their 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.

Rebels reportedly are making plans to move their coca-growing trade to
neighboring fields of Ecuador, Bolivia and Brazil. Alarmed leaders of the
nearby nations are planning to send troops to the borders. That could lead
to an expansion of the fighting outside of Colombia, critics say.

And coca growers within Colombia 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 fallout from fumigation. A few yearsback, they 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 will no longer grow coca -- or anything else, the Castros say.

"The ground is damaged," said Elver Andres Castro, 15, who worked the land
for his father. "It is useless."

The family still owes the bank money for loans it received to try new crops.

"We are finished," said Bolivar Castro, the family patriarch. "I know we
have to finish with this coca thing. But what do we do next? We will
suffer."

Colombian officials acknowledge that in the short run, the people of
Putumayo will bear a heavy burden. The United Nations is already 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. But farmers are fleeing the
countryside, saying fumigation has ruined their crops and also poses health
risks.

Hospitals frequently report cases of skin rashes and breathing problems
after people drink from polluted streams.

The U.S. State Department, which oversees the spraying program, contends
that pesticides are supposed to break down and peasants are poisoning their
surroundings by spraying their own toxic fertilizers and pesticides.

The government brushes aside criticisms from environmentalist who say the
spraying will pollute rivers, destroy jungles and wildlife, damage rain
forests and make people sick.

"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 the
Putumayo.

Last month, 489 farmers in Santa Ana signed up for a government pilot
program to eradicate about 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.

"People in Putumayo think there is an invasion coming," said de Francisco,
whose formal title is "presidential adviser for togetherness and citizen
security."

"People feel abandoned and that something dark and obscure is heading toward
them," he said. "We have to work hard to show them this is not the case."