BOLIVIA'S KNOT: NO TO COCAINE, BUT YES TO COCA

VILLA TUNARI, Bolivia -- Just weeks ago, Bolivian Army troops swooped
down on Seberino Marquina's farm and, one by one, ripped his coca
bushes from the ground.

"The commander said, 'Cut this,' and they did," Mr. Marquina, 54,
said, waving his machete on his small piece of the Chapare, a
coca-growing region the size of New Jersey in central Bolivia.

But after President Evo Morales's inauguration on Jan. 22, the army
conscripts assigned to eradicate coca leaves here as part of the
United States-financed war on drugs instead spend their days lolling
at isolated roadside bases, trying to keep cool under the blazing
sun. "We're waiting for orders from the president," said Capt. Cesar
Cautin, the commander of a group of 60 soldiers.

Mr. Marquina is also waiting, and hoping that the new president will
let him add to the flourishing crop of coca plants the soldiers
missed, the ones on the other side of the creek that runs through his
24-acre farm.

Just how likely that is remains surprisingly unclear.

Mr. Morales, 46, an Aymara Indian who grew up in poverty in the
highlands and became a coca grower in this verdant jungle region, has
not yet provided many details on his coca policy, except to say that
his government will "depenalize" coca cultivation and show zero
tolerance toward trafficking: in other words, "yes to coca, no to cocaine."

He has long opposed American eradication efforts and championed the
coca leaf, which without significant processing has no mind-altering
effects and is chewed here to mitigate hunger and increase stamina.
He has pledged to push the foreign governments to open their markets
to the many legal products that can be made from coca, like soap,
shampoo, toothpaste and flour. He also wants to open markets to coca
tea, which is legal and popular in the Andes. All forms of coca,
which has a mild stimulating effect, have been blacklisted by the
United Nations since 1961.

Mr. Morales has also said that 23,000 farmers in the Chapare could
continue to plant coca on a third of an acre of their land, as
permitted under a 2004 agreement with Carlos Mesa, then the
president, that was never endorsed by Washington. He is waiting for
the results of a study financed by the European Union to determine
just how much coca Bolivians need for traditional, legal uses, before
deciding whether coca cultivation could increase.

However, to be able to maintain good international relations and
attract investors, Mr. Morales must also find a way to reassure
foreign governments and investors that Bolivia will control
trafficking -- particularly neighbors like Brazil, which is, after
the United States, the world's second-largest consumer of cocaine,
and the United States, which spends up to $1 billion a year to battle
cocaine in the Andes. As a start, Mr. Morales named Felipe Caceres, a
former mayor in the Chapare and a small-time coca farmer, to the new
post of vice minister of coca, to, in essence, oversee the fight
against trafficking, an appointment that Washington supported.

The American government, which for several administrations has
contended that only aggressive eradication and interdiction will
control trafficking, scoffs at Mr. Morales's "yes to coca, no to
cocaine" stance.

"This idea that he's going to go after traffickers but letting the
coca bloom is tough seeing as workable," says a high-ranking
Congressional aide in Washington who helps shape anti-drug policy,
speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized
to give statements. "It's a naive, pie-in-the-sky approach to let the
flower bloom but interdict the bouquet."

American policy makers fear that the progress made against coca in
Colombia -- where cultivation has been significantly reduced -- could
be offset by a burst of cultivation in Bolivia, and an accompanying
surge in smuggling. There are now an estimated 65,400 acres of coca
being cultivated in Bolivia, nearly half of it grown legally for
traditional uses.

"The $64,000 question with Morales is, 'Will all the problems drift
south to Bolivia and will we have to start all over again?' " the aide said.

And American officials are deeply concerned that a central part of
their expensive Andean campaign -- eradication -- has been suspended
in Bolivia.

The American ambassador, David N. Greenlee, is carrying out an
understated policy of not publicly challenging the government, but he
lamented the situation. "There is no eradication, and at this moment,
that's my concern," he said recently before meeting with the new
foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, who has called coca "a sacred leaf."

Bolivia, which many in Washington see as a symbol of success in the
war on drugs, was a pariah nation just 15 years ago, with 123,000
acres of coca under cultivation. In 1988, the country criminalized
coca, and American-sponsored eradication began. Production fell to a
low of 48,000 acres in 2000. Bolivia went from being the No. 2
producer of coca, shipping much of its cocaine to the United States,
to a distant third after Colombia and Peru, with most of the drug
headed to Brazil.

The eradication of so lucrative a crop, however, had serious social
and political repercussions for a desperately poor country where coca
and cocaine had become a leading industry. With their losses rising
into the hundreds of millions of dollars, coca farmers in the Chapare
- -- often led by Mr. Morales -- generated protests, blocked roads and
battled security forces, sometimes with fatal consequences.

The unrest so weakened the central state that two presidents were
forced to resign in the 20 months ending in June 2005. The Americans
responded to Mr. Morales's increasing popularity by trying to
marginalize him from politics and labeling him an ally of
traffickers, though they offered little evidence. The efforts only
raised his stock among Bolivians, and he won the election with more
than 52 percent of the vote, the biggest victory since Bolivia
emerged from dictatorship in 1982.

Now, in deference to Mr. Morales, a president who has a 74 percent
approval rating, some hardened Bolivian drug warriors are conceding
that he must be given a chance. "In his speeches, Evo Morales handles
some variables that are very interesting," said Gen. Luis Caballero,
who until last month led a 1,500-man special Bolivian police
antinarcotics team. "I think it can work, if there is a coherent strategy."

And some drug policy specialists are calling for foreign governments
and investors to consider Mr. Morales's plan, even if it is an uphill
battle that goes against anti-drug sentiments ingrained in the West.

"If there's one thing the international community should do, if only
out of deference because he won the election, is to take seriously
his arguments that coca products have a place in the international
commodities market," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the
Drug Policy Alliance, an independent policy group that says the war
on drugs has been counterproductive.

At a recent coca fair in La Paz, two dozen small Bolivian and
Peruvian companies displayed coca-based products they said they
hopeed would one day be accepted worldwide. Besides the soap, shampoo
and toothpaste, there were digestive potions pitched as calcium and
iron supplements, or, alternatively, a cure for balding or as a diet
aid. And there was a light green flour, for making bread.

"One of our most important products is granola, fortified with coca,"
said Marco Alarcon, in a dapper vest and tie, said of his
four-year-old company, Caranavi. "Right now, we are selling
everything in Bolivia, but the hope is to sell in China."

A couple of booths over, Angelica Quisberth, 25, sold cookies and
bread made with coca. "What we want to show is that the coca leaf is
not just for cocaine," she said, "but that you can do many things
with it, and generate work."

In contrast to the Chapare, the epicenter of eradication efforts in
Bolivia, coca grows legally in the vast Yungas region, where farmers
plant on centuries-old terraces in the foothills of the Andes and
sell their crop at the government-supervised market in La Paz, just
to the south. On a recent trip through Yungas, where three-quarters
of Bolivia's coca is raised, it was common to see farmers harvesting
in droves, wearing heavy, long-sleeved shirts to protect them from the sun.

Stripping the small, shiny leaves from a branch, Pasquale Quispe, 53,
owner of a 7.4-acre farm, explained that she and other peasants saw
coca in almost spiritual terms. "Coca is our daily bread, what gives
us work, what gives us our livelihood," she said. "In other
countries, they say coca is drugs, but we don't use drugs. It's the
gringos who use drugs."

But with so much coca being produced in Yungas, the authorities say
they believe that much of it winds up as cocaine. On a narrow
mountain pass shadowed by craggy peaks, Lt. Col. Julio Cruz and his
police unit stop vehicles leaving Yungas, checking the 50-pound sacks
of coca leaves and making sure they are headed to the legal market.
On some days, 500 vehicles carrying more than 150,000 pounds of coca
pass through the checkpoint, Colonel Cruz said.

But after this checkpoint, the police say, they have no way to know
how much is diverted for illegal purposes. "The leaf comes out
legally," Colonel Cruz said. "But once out, it goes to labs for
cocaine. We cannot escort every truck to market."

Pacifico Olivares, 49, a regional leader of coca farmers, said
farmers knew that coca was made into cocaine, but he added that they
should not be to held responsible. "What blame do we have when we
don't make cocaine?" he said. "They should chase down the people who
make cocaine."