COLOMBIA'S FOE IN DRUG WAR: ITSELF

With Peasant Farmers Caught In The Middle, The Government Is Coming Off At
Home As The Bad Guy In U.S.-assisted Efforts To Eradicate The Coca Crop.

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia -- From the air, the bright green, neatly planted
lines of coca are clearly visible. Along the banks of a muddy brown river,
coca fields stretch as far as the eye can see.

Cocaine "kitchens" work with impunity here, protected and taxed by the
rebels and paramilitary groups that are the de facto government on the
ground in this region.

For the past nine years, 50-year-old farmer Nectario Gomez has made a
modest living in these fields, but he sees the storm clouds.

"They tell us the gringos are coming to do away with our crops," Gomez
says. "They say we have to grow something else."

Barely a month after the U.S. Congress approved a $1.3-billion aid program
for Colombia, President Clinton is due to make an official visit. For
safety reasons, his trip will take him to the city of Cartagena, a popular
tourist resort on the northern coast, but Clinton's focus will be to the south.

Nowhere more so than Gomez's home state of Putumayo, a remote,
Maryland-sized swath of Amazon rain forest on Colombia's southern border
with Ecuador and Peru. Colombia's third-largest but least populated state,
Putumayo produces about 50 percent of Colombia's coca leaf harvest. It also
has become an increasingly lawless territory where left-wing guerrillas and
right-wing paramilitaries battle for control of the cocaine trade.

Col. Emilio Hernandez, operations chief at the Colombian army's 24th
Brigade base in Putumayo, pointed from the helicopter window to the coca
fields below.

"This is all under the influence of the guerrillas of the FARC
(Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)," he shouted over the engine noise.

"It's all coca. The peasants live from that because there's nothing else.
But they are controlled by the FARC who tax them for every gram they produce."

Asked how feasible it will be from a military point of view to eradicate
the crops, he shakes his head. "Very difficult," he says.

It is in Putumayo that much of the U.S. aid package for Colombia will be
spent eradicating the coca fields. Operation "Plan Colombia," they call it.
But before it has even gotten under way, local farmers, development
activists and drug policy experts are seriously questioning the strategy.

While Colombian and U.S. officials say as much as $300-million will be
invested in alternative development and crop substitution, critics say too
much emphasis is being placed on a military push into the coca fields.
About 80 percent of the funds will go to Colombia's military and police, to
purchase crop-dusting planes, military helicopters and U.S.-trained
infantry battalions.

"When the helicopters come, and the planes and the infantry, it's going to
be peasants who are going to die, not the real traffickers," says Edmundo
Maya, director of CorpoAmazonia, the state's regional environmental
authority, who opposes Plan Colombia. "It will be war."

About 70 percent of Putumayo's 340,000 residents depend directly or
indirectly on the coca harvest. Cultivation has shot up in the past two
years and is estimated to cover more than 140,000 acres. While some is
grown in large agro-industrial plantations owned by drug lords, most is
harvested by small farmers.

Maya and others fear the aerial spraying will force thousands of peasant
families off their land, creating chaos in the countryside. They warn that
spray planes will destroy legitimate crops as well as coca.

With no land or jobs, many young men and women could become easy recruits
for the guerrillas.

"That, I'm afraid, is the Achilles' heel of Plan Colombia," says Bruce
Bagley, one of the foremost U.S. experts on Colombia, who teaches at the
University of Miami. "Although the intent of this policy is clearly to
weaken the FARC by reducing its income from coca cultivation, the
unintended outcome may well be to strengthen the guerrilla movement by
driving thousands of embittered and poverty-stricken peasants into its ranks."

Furthermore, experts warn that experience with crop dusting in other
regions has shown that drug traffickers will simply stimulate the planting
of coca elsewhere.

"Spraying is a big lie," says Ricardo Vargas, Colombian director of Andean
Action, which studies drug policy regionwide.

He illustrates his point with a graph of aerial coca eradication in
Colombia since 1994. "The global problem of production (of coca) remains
the same despite the spraying."

According to official figures, Vargas says Colombia sprayed 346,000 acres
from 1994 to 1998. Despite that, coca production more than doubled,
increasing from 111,000 acres to 296,500 acres.

Colombian officials defend the plan. Solutions are being worked on to
provide alternatives for the coca farmers, officials say. Much of that
effort is being coordinated with the U.S. Agency for International Development.

While there may be some human displacement, U.S. and Colombian officials
think it can be contained. Most of those affected will be migrant coca leaf
cutters, who will be relocated to agricultural jobs in other areas.

"This is not going to be a razed-earth policy," says Gonzalo de Francisco,
a senior Colombian government adviser who is heading efforts to design
development plans for Putumayo.

Officials stress that the first phase of Plan Colombia will focus on major
coca plantations of 250 acres or more, in largely uninhabited areas. By the
time they start to tackle the smaller peasant-owned coca fields, officials
say, crop substitution projects will be in place to provide the basis for a
new alternative economy.

But, on the ground in Putumayo, local farmers and civic leaders remain
deeply skeptical.

"They (government officials) come here talking about a new Putumayo and
their social plan," says the Rev. Luis Gomez, a Roman Catholic priest in
Puerto Asis, a town of 40,000 residents on the Putumayo River, a major
cocaine highway.

"But it's all a camouflage. The Colombian state hasn't got the money. The
only part that is assured is the U.S. military aid."

The mayor of Puerto Asis, Manuel Alzate, sees little reason to believe
Bogota's new promises of aid. He notes that the entire state still lacks
paved roads. It's main towns were only connected to the national
electricity grid two years ago.

For years the absence of law and order allowed drug violence and local
corruption to go unchecked. Of the town's last five mayors, four were
killed by either the guerrillas or rightist paramilitaries. The other is in
jail on corruption charges.

"We all want a Putumayo without coca," says Alzate, as he drove through
town. "Look," he adds, pointing to a series of wooden shacks by the side of
the road. "This is a coca town, and what has coca done for us?"

Alzate fears the new military offensive will bring only more strife.

Civic leaders say the FARC is already recruiting heavily in peasant hamlets
in preparation for the coming onslaught. Colombian military officials in
Putumayo say the arrival of FARC reinforcements in the area has almost
doubled their strength to more than 1,500 rebels. Combat with FARC units
has risen fivefold in recent months, they say.

The mayor and other civic leaders say FARC rebels have forced peasants in
the surrounding countryside to participate in military training in recent
months. In many cases, the rebels recruit men and young boys over the age
of 14 to join their ranks full time.

"The guerrillas are not going to let the peasants leave the area," Alzate
says. "Their drug business is too important to the FARC. They are preparing
for war."

To make matters worse, Puerto Asis has lately become one of the main
centers of paramilitary activity in Putumayo. After several years of FARC
domination in the region, the paramilitaries began their own mini-offensive
in early 1998.

Residents recall the arrival of a caravan of 13 buses in Puerto Asis on
Jan. 31, 1998. The killing began the very next day. Carrying lists of
suspected guerrilla sympathizers, the paramilitaries took the law into
their own hands. Local justice officials and the military turned a blind eye.

In a matter of weeks more than 50 people were gunned down in cold blood.

Although the killing has since slowed, it has not stopped. "It's a massacre
drop by drop," says Alzate, who is guarded by two police bodyguards.

So far this year, 52 people have been murdered, most by paramilitaries.
"They kill people and nothing happens," Alzate says.

One Catholic priest in Puerto Asis had to resign his post because he
developed an ulcer from the pressure. Two other priests who spoke out about
human rights abuses left town after paramilitary death threats.

The guerrillas also have continued to terrorize peasant communities.
Another Catholic priest was murdered in a nearby village while saying Mass.
It is believed he was targeted by the FARC for promoting coca eradication.
Two women street vendors died when FARC guerrillas allegedly placed a bomb
outside a hotel frequented by paramilitaries in the center of Puerto Asis.

Since the arrival of the paramilitaries, Alzate says, the town has been
forced into a reluctant coexistence with them. In the absence of jobs, the
paramilitaries have also been successful in their own recruiting.

"They pay well," he says, with salaries of $400 a month, twice the normal wage.

Caught between drug traffickers, guerrillas and paramilitaries, Alzate and
other civic leaders are urging the government to abandon any military solution.

Instead, they say they would like to see a greater emphasis in Plan
Colombia on economic aid. They reel off a long list of requirements to wean
peasants away from coca: education programs, technical assistance for
alternative development, credits for agricultural loans, as well as money
to build roads.

Above all, they want crop spraying delayed until other local solutions can
be given a chance to work.

With that in mind, 489 local farmers in the village of Santa Ana, a few
miles from Puerto Asis, signed an agreement last week to eradicate their
coca fields by hand.

One of them was Nectario Gomez, the nine-year veteran coca grower. "We are
ready to eradicate but only when the government assistance arrives," he
says. "If they give us reasonable credits, I'll willingly grow something else."

Unlike the millionaire drug traffickers who buy their product, coca farmers
say they eke out only a meager income from their illicit plants.

Most of the farmers in Santa Ana own small 5-acre plots of coca. In a good
year, the plants can yield four harvests. After the leaves are picked, they
are converted into a paste, coca base, at makeshift processing centers
known as "kitchens."

The leaves are spread out on the floor and soaked in gasoline before being
mashed into a pulp. A mix of concrete powder, sulfuric acid and bicarbonate
of soda is added before the product is put out to dry in the sun.

In a year, a 5-acre plot can produce about 8 kilos of coca paste, worth
about $4,700. After subtracting the cost of chemicals, a small coca farmer
can hope to earn about $2,700 a year, considerably more than can be made
growing other crops. But nothing compared to the $100,000 a kilo can fetch
on U.S. streets.

Farmers explained they had tried to grow other crops, but because of their
rural isolation they have no means of getting their products to market. A
local rice and corn mill closed because of lack of business.

On the other hand, buyers were never lacking for the coca harvest.

Despite the sacrifice it entails for local farmers, the idea of manual
eradication appears to be catching on in Putumayo and elsewhere. Colombian
officials are also taking note, saying they are willing to give it a chance.

Last week, in a symbolic gesture, Gomez tore one of his 9-year-old coca
plants out of the ground. It came away with ease.

Uprooting the rest of Colombia's cocaine industry will be a harder task.

Why now?

According to the Clinton administration, recent changes in the nature of
the drug trade in Colombia mean a greater regional threat than ever before.

For years much of the cocaine consumed in the United States was produced in
Peru and Bolivia. But successful eradication efforts there have pushed coca
production into Colombia, which now accounts for 90 percent of the cocaine
entering the United States.

New strains of the coca plant and greater efficiency in the chemical
cocaine conversion process have enabled cocaine production to jump
threefold in the past two years to more than 400 metric tons.

Opium poppy production for use in the manufacture of heroin has also grown
in Colombia.

U.S. officials are especially troubled by another recent phenomenon.
Colombia's coca growing regions have come increasingly under the domination
of left-wing guerrillas and rival paramilitaries. This has further hampered
Colombia's overextended military in dealing with the problem.

"The rapid expansion of drug production in Colombia, almost entirely in
zones dominated by illegal armed groups, constitutes an emergency," the
White House drug czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, told Congress earlier this year.

"These new circumstances require a change in strategy, policy and resources
if we intend to protect our nation from becoming the target of dramatically
increased amounts of cocaine and heroin."

Cutting ties between illegal armed groups and the drug trade, so the
argument goes, would reduce the flow of drugs and force the rebels to take
a more conciliatory position in peace talks with the government.

However, Colombia's neighbors fear militarizing the issue could destabilize
the region, forcing thousands of peasants to seek refuge across Colombia's
borders in Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Venezuela. The guerrillas already use
those countries as smuggling routes for cocaine and weapons.

Military pressure in Colombia might also prompt drug lords to try to
reactivate coca cultivation in neighboring countries.