COLOMBIA'S WAY TO HALT DRUGS AND WAR AT ONCE

Legal jobs would cut incentives to grow drugs - and profits to finance
guerrillas.

Standing in a pasture of browning grass, Victor Manuel Vanegas coos to
a herd of skinny cows before recounting the day in May when the
narcotics police dropped their calling card: a potent herbicide
sprayed on his fields.

``It had to be a mistake, I've never planted coca on my land, never,''
says the graying campesino (peasant) who's been farming in this hotbed
of narcotics production and guerrilla activity in southern Colombia
for three decades.

But the spread of narcotics production to areas like Guaviare is a
symptom of a failure to develop forms of legitimate and sustaining
production for campesinos with no love for coca or heroin poppies -but
with a will to survive.

A failure to address the development needs of marginalized regions
like Guaviare is at the root of both the guerrilla war and rising drug
production, many observers say. And so, until the former is addressed,
both of the latter are likely to continue.

``Now I've got a bad rice field, some sick cows, and dying
pastureland,'' Mr. Vanegas says, crumpling up a handful of grass like
autumn leaves. ``It's a mistake I'm having to live with.''

Experiences like Vanegas's throughout the coca and heroin-poppy-
growing regions of Colombia hint at both the limited successes and
overlying failure of Colombia's drug-crop eradication program.

Some peasants like Vanegas may stay away from coca, the plant whose
leaves make cocaine, for fear of spraying or trouble with the law.
But, overall, the total area of coca production has climbed sharply
every year since 1992, from 91,000 to about 200,000 acres today.

The eradication program began in 1985 and has expanded steadily since
then with heavy backing from the US. But now it is coming under tough
scrutiny as Colombia - spurred by new President Andres Pastrana -moves
toward serious negotiations to end a three-decade-old civil war.

Narcotics production is intimately intertwined with Colombia's long
guerrilla war because it is a principal source of income for the war's
combatants: the guerrillas, paramilitary groups, and - peasants here
insist - some sectors of the Army.

``Drug trafficking is the fuel that keeps this conflict burning,''
says Augusto Ramirez Ocampo, a former Colombian foreign minister and
member of the National Peace Commission.

``Peace negotiations will have to be based on a development plan,''
Mr. Ramirez says, ``and that plan will have to include real
alternatives to narcotics cultivation.''

But not a plan based on crop spraying. ``That hasn't worked,'' he
says, pointing out that, after the spraying of more than a
half-million acres over the last 13 years, total illegal-crop acreage
(including coca, marijuana, and heroin poppies) has risen from 20,000
in 1985 to about 250,000 today.

Some of the increase in Colombia has followed important decreases in
planting in Peru and Bolivia, according to US officials. Yet US policy
on spraying seems to acknowledge the limitations of its effectiveness:
While the US maintains that spraying large plantation-style fields is
effective, the usefulness of spraying small plots intermixed with
other crops is considered questionable.

Along the dirt highways and in the lush, tropical forest that
surrounds San Jose del Guaviare, everyone encountered by a recent
visitor had felt the impact of the region's narcotics activity -either
by direct involvement in the coca-production process, or through some
effect of the government's efforts against illegal crops.

A taxi driver, a paramilitary soldier collecting ``taxes'' from cars
passing his outpost, and a poor campesino returning to his isolated
farm on horseback - these are just three examples. And, even though

what was simply called here the ``bonanza'' of coca production a
decade ago is over, all three agree illegal crops will continue to
grow until other income sources are developed.

Leonardo the deliveryman

The taxi driver is ``Leonardo'' (none of the three wanted his real
name used for fear of reprisal). He moved to San Jose from a more
distant settlement two years ago after his 75-acre farm, part of it
planted with coca, was sprayed with defoliants.

``Before that happened I employed as many as 30 campesinos at a
time,'' he says. ``After the spraying, the young workers either joined
the guerrillas or the paramilitaries as a way to make money. But I
sold the farm and moved here. I consider myself a war refugee.''

But the move did not extricate Leonardo from the drug business. ``I
couldn't support a family just on taxi fares,'' he says, ``so I went
into the delivery business.''

What he delivers are all the products that coca producers need to turn
their lush green leaves into coca paste - cement, gasoline, ammonia,
and other chemicals. He replaced his taxi's conventional 20-gallon
tank with a 40-gallon tank that passes both military and paramilitary
checkpoints undetected. Leonardo sees his activity as simple
necessity. But he worries that the spraying campaign, while it has
recently reduced total drug-crop acreage in Gauviare, ends up making
guerrillas of the young campesinos put out of work.

That's not exactly what happened with ``Ruben.'' Manning a
paramilitary roadblock just two miles up a dirt highway from a similar
Army checkpoint, the young former farmer says he joined Guaviare's
``self-defense forces'' after the farm he cut out of the jungle was
sprayed two years ago:

``I had 3.5 hectares [about 8.5 acres] of coca, but it was right with
the yucca and plantains and corn, so everything was hit.''

Now Ruben makes about $350 a month - an enviable wage for San Jose -as
a paramilitary soldier and tax collector. The driver of a jeep loaded
with cement bags and fertilizers slows to a stop and pays him 20,000
pesos ($12) without batting an eye.

Ruben the paramilitary

``We do go out on night missions to fight the guerrillas,'' Ruben says
casually, ``but I'd put down my weapons tomorrow if the guerrillas did
the same - and if I had some other work to do.''

Having other work to do is all it would take to get most campesinos to
give up planting illegal crops, they say.

``I can't get anything I grow to market, no roads come near my farm,''
says ``Salvador,'' taking a rest during his long horseback ride back
to his land. ``But with the coca I grow, there's always someone to
come to me to buy it.''

Salvador the coca planter

Salvador has only three of his 170 acres in coca, but he says that's
the only part of his farm that brings him income.

``I'm not tied to that plot of coca,'' he says, ``but you've got to
have some money coming in to live on.''

Still, the attractiveness of growing coca is reduced by rising costs,
he says. The $500 in profit his coca field brought him three years ago
is now only about $250.

Surprisingly, but like many other campesinos here, Salvador thinks the
US involvement in Colombia is necessary - both to stop the very
narcotics production he's involved in, and to help bring peace. ``But
it should be an assistance that really does some good, like help
developing new crops that we can sell or building roads so we can get
our produce to market,'' he says. ``This cursed spraying isn't going
to do it.''

Copyright 1998 Christian Science Monitor.

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady