Index for "The Drug Quagmire" series:

Colombia's War On Drugs Getting Hotter
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a05.html

Escobar's Drug Cartel Put Colombian Cocaine On Map
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a06.html

Mules Ferry Drugs Across Borders In Game Of Chance
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n993/a01.html

US Aid Package For Colombia
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n992/a01.html

Colombia Rolling In Cocaine Crop
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a10.html

Despite Risks, US-Backed Crop-Dusters On A Mission
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n996/a09.html

Drug War Options
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1004/a03.html

Officials Urge Farmers To Try Alternative To Coca
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n1023.a10.html

DESPITE RISKS, U.S.-BACKED CROP-DUSTERS ON A MISSION

Colombian Officials Hope The Raids Cut Drug Crops In Half Over Six Years

RIOBLANCO, Colombia -- On a sheer Andean slope in western Colombia, row upon
row of crimson poppies form a ravishing, narcotic flower bed.

To heroin junkies, this is the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

But to the Colombian pilot of a turbo-powered crop-duster, the plants paint
a blood-red bull's-eye.

Strapped into his armor-plated cockpit, the pilot is on a mission to take
out the flowers before heroin traffickers can harvest them. A milky opium
gum that can be turned into 99-percent pure heroin swells the poppies'
bulbs.

The sortie looks like kamikaze practice.

As police-escort helicopters hover nearby, the crop-dusting plane screams
toward earth. At the last minute, it levels off and releases a rain of
noxious herbicide that saturates much of a two-acre poppy field.

As he twists and dives amid steep canyons and cloud-shrouded peaks, the
pilot -- who gives his name only as Tato for security reasons -- must also
dodge occasional gunfire from Marxist rebels who protect drug crops.

Riveted metal patches covering bullet holes pock his plane, a war horse that
looks like something from a scratch-and-dent sale.

"Someone once asked me if I do extreme sports, like bungee-jumping," Tato
says. "But why should I? I have an extreme job."

For U.S. and Colombian officials, bearing down upon the very root of the
drug industry has become almost holy writ.

In the battle against an underworld of shadowy kingpins and crafty
smugglers, drug crops are the most visible link in the narcotics chain and
the easiest to target. Aerial spraying is also designed to discourage
farmers from planting more poppies and coca, the raw material for cocaine.

Colombian officials predict that they will reduce drug crops by 50 percent
over the next six years through the U.S.-sponsored fumigation program.

"We have to put a stop to this," says Defense Minister Luis Fernando
Ramirez, as he stands in the middle of a coca plantation in Norte de
Santander state. "If we don't act now, instead of having 300,000 acres of
coca, there will be 400,000 or 500,000 acres."

But critics say the spray program, which cost U.S. taxpayers $68 million
last year, has only made matters worse.

Since aerial fumigation began in Colombia in 1996, the amount of land
planted with coca has expanded from 167,000 acres to the current
300,000-plus acres, according to CIA estimates.

As for opium, "several years ago, Colombia grew only enough poppies to fill
a flower arrangement," Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said in recent congressional
testimony on a new U.S. aid package for the South American nation. Today,
poppy fields cover 15,000 acres of the country.

Experts pin most of the blame for the sharp rise in coca crops on crackdowns
in Peru and Bolivia, which, they say, pushed cultivation of the plants into
Colombia.

At the same time, these critics say, Colombia's fumigation program has
caused many coca farmers to migrate deeper into the wilderness in an effort
to avoid the spray planes.

"In the end, this is just a cat-and-mouse game," says Adam Isacson of the
Center for International Policy, a Washington research center that tracks
U.S. military assistance programs.

Still, the recently approved $862 million U.S. aid package for Colombia
includes money for nine more crop-dusters.

A close aide to Colombian President Andres Pastrana says that for the
program to work, fumigation must go hand-in-hand with efforts to help
farmers switch to legal crops.

So far, however, budget shortfalls and the lack of security in
drug-producing zones -- many of which are controlled by rebels or right-wing
paramilitary organizations -- have limited efforts to promote crop
substitution.

Tato is part of a special corps of Colombian police pilots and civilian
American fliers contracted by the U.S. State Department. Many are unabashed
daredevils who relish the risks.

"You have to enjoy it," says Tato, who used to fumigate rice and banana
plantations but got bored with the work. "If you're scared, you'll kill
yourself."

In the past four years, dozens of crop-duster pilots and police helicopter
crew members have perished in accidents. The casualties include three
American fliers who worked for Virginia-based DynCorp, a private defense
contractor that maintains about 140 pilots, mechanics and other personnel in
Colombia.

During a recent fumigation run in Norte de Santander state, five Colombian
police planes were hit by rebel gunfire in a single day.

"It's suicide," Gen. Ismael Trujillo, chief of Colombia's anti-narcotics
police, says of the fumigation sorties.

Rebel attacks aren't the only danger. Farmers have tried to ambush pilots by
stringing wires between trees flanking their coca fields.

Most of the pilots fly a souped-up version of a popular aircraft used by
crop-dusters in the United States. Known as the Turbo Thrush, the planes
have been upgraded with armor plating, longer wings and a massive,
turbine-powered engine for mountain flying.

The Turbo Thrush can carry 440 gallons of herbicide. Authorities describe
the aircraft's delivery system as a crop-duster's version of a smart bomb.

Coca and opium fields are first detected by satellite imagery and then
confirmed by U.S. reconnaissance flights. A computer in the crop-duster's
cockpit displays the best approach routes to the coca and poppy fields and
measures how much of the crop is hit.

"We don't go in and fumigate just because someone tells us there is coca in
the area," Gen. Trujillo says. "We use the most advanced technology. And if
you're spraying 50 feet off the ground, you can't confuse coca plants with
bananas."

Still, there has been a cacophony of complaints from farmers charging that
the pilots have destroyed their corn, beans, rice and sorghum crops.

One problem is that swirling mountain winds can displace the herbicide.

But observers point out that the farmers themselves are often to blame,
since many try to disguise coca and opium poppies by planting them next to
legal crops.

In the cockpit of his Turbo Thrush, Tato notes that the pilots themselves
can be held legally responsible if they miss their targets and destroy food
crops.

Still, he's more concerned about the guerrillas. Just the other day, his
plane took a bullet to the left wing.

"It really makes me angry," Tato says of the attack. "But it makes me even
more determined to stop this poison, which is destroying Colombia and half
of the rest of the world."