COCA CULTIVATION ON THE RISE IN COLOMBIA

The White House Said The Anti-Drug Campaign Is Working In Colombia, Despite Recent Results From A Survey That Indicated Otherwise

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is denying that the drug war in the Andes is going badly, despite a U.S. survey showing that far more Colombian acreage is planted with coca than previously reported.

The 2005 coca cultivation survey for Colombia, issued Friday evening by the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), estimated acreage at 356,000, a 26 percent increase over 2004.

But U.S officials said the picture wasn't as bleak as the numbers suggest. To get a better understanding of the extent of coca production, the administration surveyed 81 percent more land in Colombia in 2005 than in previous surveys.

''It wasn't like finding an El Dorado of vast coca production that was totally unsuspected,'' said David Murray, policy director at ONDCP. ``It was more peripheral, perimeter coca that we kind of knew was out there, and we wanted to see just how much is out there.''

Using comparable surfaces for 2004 and 2005, coca cultivation actually declined 8 percent last year, Murray added. The surfaces are mostly surveyed using satellite imagery.

The ONDCP survey is the U.S. government's most authoritative indicator of the progress of counterdrug efforts in a nation that supplies 90 percent of the cocaine sold in the United States. The U.S. government has provided Colombia, Bolivia and Peru with more than $7 billion in counterdrug aid since 2000.

Mixed Results

The results have so far been mixed. The latest numbers also show increased coca cultivation in Bolivia and Peru, where the ONDCP did not increase the amount of land surveyed in 2005.

Murray said the survey of Colombia showed 96,000 acres of newly located coca being grown in remote regions, in smaller and more scattered plots.

This made it more expensive for traffickers to grow and then process the coca into cocaine, he said. But it also made it more difficult for authorities to eradicate.

Skeptics said the latest numbers underscored the futility of spraying coca crops with herbicides, without providing an alternative livelihood for poor farmers. According to data by the Center for International Policy, a group usually critical of Bush administration policies, coca cultivation in the Andes has hovered around 500,000 acres since 1988.

''What we said was going to happen has happened,'' said Adam Isacson, a CIP Colombia analyst.

He said that drop in acreage, when comparing the equal areas from 2004 and 2005, was modest considering authorities sprayed an all-time record of 422,000 acres last year. ''The problem is, Colombia is a rather big country,'' he said, with plenty of room for coca to move to areas not sprayed.

'A Tough Fight'

A State Department official, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject, said pilots involved in the eradication, Colombian military and police and U.S. intelligence suggested that the ONDCP surveys had been missing many coca plots all along.

''It's a tough fight,'' Murray said. ``There's no knock-out punch here.''

Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., who heads the Western Hemisphere subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, said the drug war can be won but that Colombia needed help to replace the 23 aircraft lost in counterdrug operations since 2000.

''With renewed vigilance and appropriate U.S. assistance, we can stem the flow of illicit narcotics from Colombia and win the war on drugs,'' he said in a statement.