ATTACKING ROOTS OF COCAINE YIELDS A BITTER BOLIVIA

HAPARE JUNGLE, Bolivia -- When he was Bolivia's military dictator in the
1970s, Gen. Hugo Banzer relied on the army to keep tabs on political enemies
and to prop up his regime.

Today, as Bolivia's democratically elected president, Banzer has a new
mission for the army. He has ordered troops to keep tabs on coca farmers and
destroy every illegal coca plantation in the nation within five years.

Roughly one-third of the world's cocaine is made from coca leaves grown in
the Chapare jungle in central Bolivia. Under pressure from Washington to get
tough on drugs, Banzer adopted a "no tolerance" policy and has sent squads
of machete-wielding soldiers into the jungle.

U.S. officials say that after a decade of failures and false starts, Bolivia
has at last joined the drug war in earnest.

"There's just an incredible amount of commitment by this government," said a
State Department official. "They realize that being No. 2 in the world in
the production of cocaine is nothing to be proud of." Colombia is No. 1.

But such scorched-earth tactics have provoked violent protests in normally
peaceful Bolivia. Since forced eradication began in April, more than a dozen
people have been killed in clashes with police and soldiers, according to
human rights groups.

"It's been proven time and time again that the militarization of such areas
is only going to lead to an increase in human rights abuses and that the
actual amount of land under coca cultivation is not going to decrease," said
Winifred Tate, a research associate at the Washington Office on Latin
America, a private organization that monitors human rights and democratic
change in the region.

Some of the resistance to forced eradication stems from coca's unique place
in Bolivian culture.

Quechua and Aymara Indians have chewed the leaves for centuries to relieve
hunger pangs. Coca tea is a popular drink and recommended as an anecdote for
altitude sickness. About 30,000 acres of coca are legally grown in the
Yungas region of northern Bolivia to supply this local demand.

But coca is also a matter of survival for thousands of impoverished
families. Landlocked Bolivia, which is three times the size of Montana, is
the poorest nation in South America. Annual per capita income in some rural
areas is less than $200, according to U.N. statistics.

Since the mid-1980s, when low prices led to a collapse of Bolivia's tin
production, thousands of out-of-work miners from the Andean highlands
migrated to the Chapare jungle to grow coca. U.S. officials claim that
nearly all of the Chapare coca is sold to traffickers, who export cocaine to
the United States and Europe.

Bolivia at first tried voluntary eradication programs that paid farmers
about $1,000 per acre to switch from coca to alternative crops. But growers
often pocketed the money and planted new coca fields.

"We tried for 10 years to convince the peasants, but you can't," said Lt.
Col. Teovaldo Cardozo, as he watched about 160 soldiers lay waste to a coca
plantation in the Chapare last week. "Voluntarily, the peasant won't change
his coca for anything."

Now many are being forced to give up their coca at gunpoint.

Banzer, who took office last year, unveiled what he called the "Dignity
Plan" to wipe out coca by the end of his term in 2002.

The program is backed by about $50 million in U.S. counter-narcotics aid
this year. U.S. involvement is so obvious that a Bolivian army officer asked
permission from a U.S. adviser before taking reporters along on a helicopter
tour of eradication sites.

Few analysts believe that Banzer's goals can be met. But given his
authoritarian past, they are not surprised by his approach. Banzer first
took power in a 1971 military coup. He ruled Bolivia for seven years and, at
one point, outlawed political parties and trade unions.

"It's the same method that was used during the general's dictatorship," said
Alex Contreras, who covers the drug beat for Los Tiempos, a newspaper in the
central city of Cochabamba. "You use force to solve your problems."

Others say the plan is directly related to U.S. pressure. Each year, the
State Department requires that Bolivia and other countries show progress in
the war on drugs in order to avert economic sanctions.

"The fundamental reason they want to get rid of the coca is because the U.S.
is leaning hard on them," said Jamie Fellner, a Bolivia expert at Human
Rights Watch in New York.

Today, about 1,800 soldiers plus 1,200 police officers have turned parts of
the Chapare jungle into a military zone. Since April, they have razed 17,000
acres of coca.

Bolivian politicians had long resisted the idea of army involvement in the
drug war, fearing that officers would be corrupted.

The most high-profile example was Gen. Luis Garcia Meza, who took power in
1980 in what became known as the "cocaine coup" due to his ties to
narco-traffickers. Garcia Meza is now serving a 30-year sentence in a
Bolivian jail.

"In the early 1980s, the army had an active role (in the war on drugs) and
the corruption was just rampant," said one U.S. official. "Garcia Meza did
quite a bit to sell that image."

Until this year, eradication efforts were delegated to the police. But
Bolivian soldiers are better equipped and more intimidating. After troops
broke up roadblocks manned by coca growers in the Chapare in April, they
were ordered to begin eradication operations.

"The drug fight should not rely on just one sector. You need all of the
country's forces involved," said Gen. Walter Cespedes, commander of the
army's 7th Brigade, which is overseeing the effort.

Banzer's "Dignity Plan" includes carrots as well as sticks.

The government will relocate hundreds of families to farming areas outside
the Chapare and will target more money for crop substitution, packing
plants, roads and other infrastructure.

"Any family that really wants to support itself through alternative crop
production can do it in the Chapare," said an official with the U.S. Agency
for International Development in La Paz, the Bolivian capital. "The farmers
are now coming to us, pleading to get involved. We no longer have to do any
promoting."

Foreign and local companies have invested more than $19 million in the
Chapare this year alone. One investor is building a $5 million country club
with an 18-hole golf course.

Despite such progress, the Chapare's coca crop has remained steady for the
past six years at about 100,000 acres, according to U.S. estimates.

Part of the problem is that the soil in much of the Chapare is too thin to
grow anything else. Coca sprouts like weeds and can be harvested up to three
times a year. As the eradication brigades move forward, coca farmers have
pushed deeper into the jungle and have recently invaded national parks.

"They don't see themselves as part of the narcotics business. They see
themselves as farming a valuable and useful product. They want to sell it,
and they think it's outrageous that it's being eradicated," Fellner said.

Meanwhile, there has been a sharp increase in reports of human rights abuses
by Bolivian troops. Peasants have been tear-gassed and beaten by soldiers.
Several policemen and about a dozen peasants have been killed, according to
Lee Cridland, of the Andean Information Network, an independent group that
monitors U.S. policy toward Bolivia.

"For Bolivia, the violence this year has been incredible," Cridland said.

In response, hundreds of coca growers marched 400 miles from the Chapare to
La Paz last month to demand a military withdrawal and the end of forced
eradication. But the government called it a "narco march" and refused to
meet with the protesters.

Saying that Bolivians are "not a violent people," the State Department
official played down the violence and said that many of the reported deaths
were "unconfirmed."

Another U.S. official claimed that most Bolivians no longer view the coca
growers as victims and that last month's march to La Paz was much smaller
than earlier protests.

"The current government is in a position where they can be a lot tougher
because they have public opinion on their side," he said.

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

Checked-by: Don Beck