IN LATIN AMERICA, LEFTIST LEADERS EVICT US DRUG WARRIORS

Mexico City - Bolivia has given US Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) officers three months to leave the country - claiming that
agents were stirring up political strife in the deeply divided nation.

This fall, Ecuadorians voted yes to a new Constitution that calls for
the closure by next year of one of the most important US operations
in its war against drugs.

And for the fourth year in a row, Venezuela was singled out by
President Bush - as was Bolivia for the first time - for having
"failed demonstrably" in antidrug cooperation.

The US has long had a presence in Latin America to stem the northward
drug flow; Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia are the world's largest
cocaine producers. The US still boasts strong partnerships with many
countries, such as Colombia and Mexico. But in others, particularly
those led by leftists who have risen in collective condemnation of
Washington, leaders are increasingly severing ties.

Their push for more self-determination could represent an opportunity
to improve a strategy seen by many as a failure, says Kathryn
Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network in Bolivia.

But Roger Noriega, a former assistant secretary of State for western
hemisphere affairs, takes a dimmer view. Moves like Bolivia's
expulsion of DEA agents could have an impact on US
intelligence-gathering capabilities, he says, but they also appear to
weaken some countries' commitment to fighting drug production. "Drug
cartels and all the illicit behavior - even the damage done to the
environment by drug production - is a transnational challenge that
requires international cooperation," he says.

Early this month, Bolivian President Evo Morales, the nation's first
indigenous leader who rose to power as head of the coca grower's
federation, expelled the DEA, claiming that agents were stoking
divisions in a country already violently divided over a new
Constitution that seeks more state control over energy resources and
more recognition for the indigenous.

"There were DEA agents who worked to conduct political espionage and
to fund criminal groups so they could launch attacks on the lives of
authorities, if not the president," Mr. Morales said last week

The DEA calls the claims baseless. "We go after drug traffickers....
We don't get involved in things outside our lane," says Garrison
Courtney, spokesperson for the DEA. "These are really silly accusations."

The DEA presence in Venezuela has also been dramatically reduced in
the past 18 months, according to State Department officials who
characterize the reduction as evidence of Venezuela's weak support
for international antinarcotics effort.

And Ecuador announced it will not renew the 10-year lease at the
Manta airbase, one of the US's most significant operation zones in
the region since 1999. President Rafael Correa, who promised in his
campaign to close the base, calls it a matter of reciprocity. During
a visit to Italy last year, he joked that if the US wanted its base,
it would have to allow an Ecuadorian base in Miami.

The closure of Manta "will leave a serious gap in our abilities to
monitor antinarcotics operations in the eastern Pacific," says one
administration official who declined to be identified because he was
not authorized to speak on the record.

Today, an average of 150 US military and civilians are stationed in
Manta, and in 2007, some 1,100 counternarcotics missions were
launched, says Jose Ruiz, a spokesperson at US Southern Command
(Southcom) in Miami. The Manta base missions are responsible for 60
percent of interdictions in the eastern Pacific.

Mr. Ruiz says Southcom will continue to operate out of El Salvador
and Aruba and Curacao - and partner with the US Navy and US Coast Guard.

While the closure may be a blow, the US still has a good working
relationship with Ecuador, says Ruiz. US officials say cooperation in
the rest of the region is also strong, and in some cases, such as
Mexico and Central America, stronger than in the past. But relations
with Venezuela and Bolivia have deteriorated to new lows.

During civil strife in Bolivia early this fall, Bolivia expelled US
Ambassador Philip Goldberg, claiming he supported opposition leaders.
Mr. Chavez followed suit by expelling Patrick Duddy, the US
ambassador to Venezuela. Both countries were then singled out by
President Bush for failure to cooperate in international
antinarcotics efforts, and the US announced it would revoke trade
benefits for Bolivia under the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug
Eradication Act (ATPDEA).

"Relations between Bolivia and the US have been severed in more ways
than people understand," says Eduardo Gamarra, a professor at Florida
International University.

Some see an effort in Latin America to reassert national sovereignty.
"[The] region as a whole has greater suspicion of US unilateralism,"
says John Lindsay-Poland, codirector of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean. "It's a
blow to the [old US] approach, and I do think it's an opportunity to
take a different tack."

Whether geopolitically that can hold is another question, he notes.
"The cost for asserting self-determination can be really high," Mr.
Lindsay-Poland says, pointing to the rescinding of Bolivia's ATPDEA
benefits, which could impact thousands of jobs.

Ms. Ledebur agrees there is an opening for fresh thinking. "The way
the war on drugs has been structured in the Andean region hasn't
worked for anyone," she says.

She condemns the conditions placed on US aid, saying it doesn't
address the poverty, for example, that often drives coca production.

Others say the US is too focused on supply, and needs to target
demand in the US.

But Mr. Gamarra is dubious. "Any approach that we've used has not
worked," he says. "You can make the argument that ... if only we had
well-funded addiction-treatment programs in the US ... [but] even
that doesn't work. Recidivism among addicts is very high, treatment
is very expensive. We've gone around and around on this debate."

On Thursday, Morales said that Bolivia can take over antidrug
operations on its own. He recently announced that Bolivia had met its
goal of eradicating 12,300 acres of illegal coca this year - the
amount required under law. A UN report from June shows that coca crop
cultivation in Bolivia increased by 5 percent in 2007 - compared with
27 percent in Colombia, which is among the US's most loyal allies.

The impact of expelling the DEA will be more heavily felt in transit
countries, such as Brazil and Argentina, as well as Europe, where the
majority of cocaine from Bolivia heads. Less than 2 percent makes it
to the US market, according to a State Department official familiar
with counternarcotic programs in the region.

"It takes away our eyes and ears in country itself," says Mr.
Courtney. But he says through partnerships with other law enforcement
agencies in the region, they will find their way around it. "The same
thing happened in Venezuela; we work around it," he noted.