COLOMBIAN GUERRILLAS ARE UNLIKELY ALLIES IN WAR ON DRUGS

U.S. doubts offer to help replace coca and opium with legal crops

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, Colombia -- In what seems an improbable twist in
the drug war, Colombia's largest Marxist guerrilla group says it wants to
take part in government programs to replace vast plantations of coca and
opium poppies with legal crops.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, earns millions of
dollars annually from the drug trade. U.S. officials have expressed doubt
that the rebels, who have waged war against the Colombian government for 35
years, intend to abandon one of their primary sources of income.

Alternative development workers say, however, that the guerrillas are so
dominant in rural areas that any successful crop-substitution program will
require the rebels' cooperation.

"We have to, in any case, take the FARC into account," said Klaus Nyholm,
who heads the U.N. Drug Control Program in Bogota, which is underwriting
several crop-substitution projects in areas where the guerrillas hold sway.

Colombia is groping for an effective anti-narcotics strategy. The country
remains the source of 80 percent of the cocaine and more than half of the
heroin sold on U.S. streets despite a program to fumigate coca and opium
poppies, the raw materials for the drugs.

Now, the country is embarking on a large-scale crop-substitution program.

Similar efforts died in the past, partly because of intimidation from drug
traffickers and rebels -- and because farmers nearly always earned more
from drug crops.

The initiative is part of what President Andres Pastrana calls the
"Colombia Plan," which is designed to reduce the rebels' influence in
remote, rural areas by providing up to $3 billion in development aid over
the next several years.

The government and the FARC are now holding peace talks, which began last
month in this town in southern Colombia. At a Jan. 25 meeting, FARC
negotiators signed a document agreeing to support crop substitution.

"We do not need even one farmer to be growing coca," Camilo Lopez, a FARC
spokesman, said in an interview here. "We have told the government that if
there are economic resources, we will develop these regions."

When asked how long it would take to replace coca with legitimate crops,
Lopez said: "If the government has the will to go forward, it is a question
of four years, because the Colombian countryside is very productive."

Drug profits have helped the FARC grow into the largest and most powerful
rebel army in Latin America. Since the 1980s, the FARC has partially
financed its insurgency by providing protection for drug farmers and
smugglers, and by taxing cocaine and heroin shipments.

At the same time, the narcotics trade has stained the FARC's reputation at
home and abroad.

"They realize that drugs are immoral and damaging," said Enrique Florez, a
former guerrilla who now works at a Bogota think tank.

Fabio Castillo, a Colombian journalist who has written extensively about
the narcotics trade, said the FARC's mere discussion of drugs with the
government is a sign of the rebels' growing concern about their image as
profit-hungry "narco-guerrillas."

U.S. officials, however, voice little faith in the FARC's pronouncements.

Though the idea of guerrilla collaboration in the drug war "is not
dismissed out of hand," the FARC needs to demonstrate its good intentions,
said one State Department official.

Another U.S. official agreed, saying the FARC will have to prove that it is
willing to break its ties to the drug trade.

"Obviously, we're very skeptical," the official said. "At this point, we
see no evidence that they are willing to do so."

The United States is now conducting its annual review of the cooperation of
about 30 countries, including Colombia, in the drug war. Last year,
Colombia did not receive full certification, but economic sanctions were
waived by the Clinton administration. The announcement of this year's
certifications are expected at the end of the month.

To show the world that projects providing alternatives to drug crops can
work, the FARC has suggested launching the Colombian program in a "model
municipality."

In an interview last month with the Colombian magazine Semana, FARC leader
Manuel "Sure Shot" Marulanda said that if international organizations
"trust us and deposit some money, we will promise that the cultivation of
coca will end, for example, in one municipality."

Nyholm said the United Nations will contribute $5 million to a
crop-substitution program in San Vicente Del Caguan. Under a presidential
decree, U.N. workers must consult with FARC representatives here about
plans to replace coca with bananas, rubber trees and fish farms, Nyholm said.

The U.N. official isn't sure how much input the rebels can provide, since
they seem to know little about alternative development.

"They speak like a handout from the Soviet Embassy in the 1970s," Nyholm
said. "They don't have any definite ideas about what they would do. Their
main idea is that the government and the international community should
come in with massive assistance."

The U.S. government is making its first substantial commitment to
alternative development in Colombia by providing about $15 million over the
next three years.

Washington has pumped millions of dollars into similar programs in Peru and
Bolivia. In Colombia, however, U.S. officials wanted to avoid showering
money on areas dominated by the guerrillas.

"We haven't done it in the past, because it wouldn't work," U.S. Ambassador
Curtis Kamman said in an interview. "The reason that 1999 shows some
promise is because there is a peace process."

Critics complain that U.S. aid for alternative development is minuscule
compared to the $289 million earmarked this year for aerial fumigation and
other assistance in Colombia's war against drugs.

Critics say the program to spray coca and opium poppies has had little
effect in the drug war. Many peasant farmers simply have pushed deeper into
the Colombian jungle, out of the reach of police crop-dusters. As a result,
the amount of land under coca production in Colombia increased 28 percent
in 1998, according to Barry McCaffrey, head of the White House Office of
National Drug Control Policy.

Kamman said U.S. aid for alternative development in Colombia will be
strictly targeted.

"I think we would want to avoid a situation where U.S. money would go into
areas where the FARC could claim credit for those benefits," he said.

Still, the guerrillas remain the most respected authority in many of
southern Colombia's coca-growing regions. If the FARC blesses the idea of
alternative crops, coca farmers may listen.

"What the FARC says is respected much more than what the local mayor says,"
Nyholm said.

John Otis is a free-lance journalist based in Bogota.