CULTIVATING NEW ALLIES IN COCAINE WAR

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia - This remote area in southwest Colombia is the
testing ground for a U.S.-backed plan to persuade small farmers to grow
legitimate crops instead of coca, the raw material for U.S.-bound cocaine,
and to spray the traffickers' large coca plantations with herbicides to cut
off the destructive flow.

No one could be more enthusiastic about the idea of crop substitution than
Eder Sanchez, who heads the most powerful farmers union here in the
province of Putumayo. But at the same time, no one is more aware of the
dangers the government's plan raises.

Sanchez said he could coordinate the province's traditional farmers so they
"voluntarily and manually" eradicate their coca fields and use government
subsidies to raise cattle, grow Amazonian fruits and cultivate rice, yucca
and plantains instead. In three years, Sanchez proclaimed in an interview,
most of Puerto Asis's small-scale coca crops could be gone and the
government would not even need to fumigate areas where farmers live.

But in soft tones in his small three-room house along one of the dirt roads
that run through Puerto Asis, Sanchez also admitted he is afraid that his
project could get him and other small farmers in trouble with those who
benefit from the region's coca production, and that the government would
not be able to protect them. "The minute one of us gets killed, we're all
going to have to leave," he said without changing his expression.

Sanchez embodies the hopes and fears of the government for its
coca-eradication project in Putumayo, a remote Colombian province 300 miles
southwest of the capital, Bogota, near the border with Ecuador. Lying
between Colombia's Pacific coast and the Amazon Basin, Putumayo is about
the size and shape of New Hampshire, with a population of just 330,000
people. But its dense jungles, dry flatlands and vast network of rivers are
also home to almost half of Colombia's 250,000 acres of coca fields and
hundreds of laboratories that are used to process and ship the cocaine abroad.

Much of the cocaine is consumed in the United States. Last week, worried
lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives pushed through an emergency
aid package of $1.6 billion, most of which goes toward training two special
anti-narcotics battalions and providing helicopters and intelligence
equipment for the "Push Into Southern Colombia." If the emergency
appropriations bill passes in the Senate later this month, the money will
become part of President Andres Pastrana's $7.5 billion Plan Colombia - a
three-year project to fight drugs and shore up the country's ailing
economy, starting here.

More than 1,500 left-wing rebels from the country's largest guerrilla
group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and 500
right-wing paramilitaries are fighting for control over the drug trade in
the province. Both groups use a tax on local coca growers and large
traffickers to finance their war, and any disruption in production is met
with harsh reprisals.

"The rebels said they didn't like this process," Sanchez said, referring to
the plan to eradicate coca fields. "What needed to be done, they said, was
to gear up for the coming war."

As outlined in its ambitious proposal, the Colombian government will pursue
a two-pronged strategy in Putumayo, combining military and social programs.
A Joint Southern Task Force that includes 15,000 army troops, police,
sailors and air force personnel will focus on destroying laboratories in
guerrilla-controlled territory and driving the FARC out of the region.
Other units will provide support for police airplanes that will fumigate
the industrial-size coca fields run by traffickers with migrant labor in
different parts of the province.

During the first two years, Putumayo will also get an estimated $70 million
in economic aid. Some of this money will go toward the 10,000 refugees who
the government expects will flee when fumigation begins in the next few
months. Authorities say most of these refugees will be coca pickers from
the big plantations that the government says produce most of the cash crop
in Putumayo.

The rest of the coca is produced by the small farmers Sanchez represents.
They make up almost half of Putumayo's residents and could be a knot of
resistance to the government's plan - or the measure of its success. They
grow other crops like corn, yucca and rice. And they fear the attempts to
fumigate the coca also will kill the rest of their crops, as they did
during a similar effort in the mid-1990s.

The government says it will concentrate on the large fields owned by
traffickers and abstain from fumigating small farmers' plots.

"The most important thing about the plan is that we will not fumigate
without having a social plan that is implemented at the same time or prior
to the fumigation," said Fernando Medellin from his office in Bogota, where
he heads the government's National Solidarity Network that is working with
Sanchez on the Putumayo project.

But the locals remain skeptical. Puerto Asis authorities and residents
alike said the fumigation has already begun in areas just outside the city
and they knew nothing about a "no-fumigation zone" Medellin said he
proposed to Plan Colombia's coordinators in Bogota.

In the background are the rebels and paramilitaries. Both groups have
reportedly begun forcibly recruiting children as young as 13 for the war
they expect to explode in the province once the Joint Southern Task Force
begins its offensive. Father Luis Alfonso Gomez, who works regularly
outside Puerto Asis, said he found some villages empty when he visited
recently because the FARC took everyone to the jungle for a one-week
training session.

"The people come to me and say, 'You remember that kid? Yeah, he's gone,' "
the priest said. "I got two kids here in the parish that came to me and
said, 'Father, can you take us in because they're dragging the others away.' "

While the FARC controls the countryside, the paramilitaries control many
urban centers in Putumayo, including Puerto Asis. The city's district
attorney, German Martinez, said the paramilitaries also are targeting small
farmers they claim collaborate with the guerrillas.