COLOMBIA'S COCA CROP THRIVES DESPITE MANY YEARS OF SPRAYING

RIO NEGRO, Colombia -- In nearly a decade of U.S.-sponsored fumigation,
planes have sprayed hundreds of thousands of gallons of herbicide on illicit
drug crops in vast expanses of Colombia's highlands and rainforests.

Yet drug cultivation in the world's No. 1 cocaine-producing nation is at a
record high and climbing. Crop yields are also improving as traffickers
plant more potent strains of coca and opium poppy, the sources of cocaine
and heroin.

The stubbornness of the plants seems matched only by the determination of
U.S. and Colombian officials to continue the chemical counterattack.

As President Andres Pastrana awaits action in the U.S. Congress on a $1.6
billion aid package that would fund an accelerated spraying effort, new
estimates show coca cultivation up by 20% to 30% last year. Since 1995, it
has more than doubled, according to the Colombian and U.S. figures.

Mr. Pastrana, who expressed serious reservations about fumigation's
effectiveness during his first months in office, has toned down the
criticism and now welcomes the U.S. assistance.

Colombian and U.S. officials including White House drug czar Barry
McCaffrey, who arrives Tuesday for a three-day visit, argue that drug crops
would be expanding even more rapidly if there wasn't any attempt to halt
their proliferation.

Coca- and opium-growers who've had their crops destroyed rarely quit. Either
they fell more trees elsewhere to plant or they wait until soil microbes
have decomposed the herbicide -- typically a year -- and reseed the same
plot.

"We've noted about a 40 to 50% replanting rate" of opium poppy fields,
admits Col. Edgar Orlando Barrero, the police eradication program director.

Since the mid-1990s, coca growers have pushed ever deeper into the Amazon
basin to evade the crop-dusters, clearing tens of thousands of acres of
virgin rainforest. Every new acre planted requires that three be cleared.

More than two-fifths of Colombia's coca, or 210 square miles worth is grown
in the rebel-dominated southern state of Putumayo. Mr. Pastrana plans a
major eradication effort there this year spearheaded by a new U.S.-trained
counternarcotics battalion.

The effort is likely to be opposed by the leftist insurgents who guard drug
crops and processing laboratories in Putumayo. Government officials also
expect violent protests by poor coca-growers.

The U.S. aid plan includes $145 million for alternative development --
programs to give peasants legal alternatives to making their living by
growing drug plants. Nonetheless, skeptics expect most of the poor coca
growers to simply continue their cat-and-mouse game with the spray planes.

Field studies by Ricardo Vargas, a sociologist and eradication researcher,
show that when coca areas are detected and sprayed, growers simply migrate
to other regions where drug mafias can offer the chemicals, labs and
clandestine air strips needed to process and transport cocaine.

Government figures bear out this argument. An explosion in coca cultivation
in Putumayo coincided with its near elimination in the eastern state of
Guaviare, where nearly 245 square miles were sprayed with herbicide in
1997-98.

"Coca has a behavior completely independent of eradication," Mr. Vargas
said.

With tens of thousands of Colombian peasants making a living off coca, some
analysts fear stepped-up spraying will only increase their support for the
guerrillas who have been fighting the Colombian government for more than
three decades.

Because of rebel resistance, the eradication business has become
increasingly militarized. Spray aircraft were hit by gunfire on 35 occasions
last year alone and a key counterdrug base was overrun by rebels the week
Pastrana took office in August 1998.

The U.S. has already donated six Black Hawk UH-60 helicopters, equipped with
miniguns that fire 1,200 rounds a minute, to the Colombian police to protect
the eight spray planes now in action. The proposed U.S. aid package calls
for 30 more Black Hawks, for the air force and army, and 15 more spray
planes.

"I don't think we will ever solve this problem without an end to the armed
conflict," says Klaus Nyholm, director for Colombia of the United Nations
Drug Control Program.