POLICY SHIFTS IN ERADICATION OF COCA CROPS

Colombia Announced It Will Favor Manual Eradication of Coca Crops Over
the Current System, Which Focuses Heavily on Aerial Spraying

BOGOTA -- In a major policy shift likely to get both praise and close
examination in Washington, Colombia has announced it will favor manual
eradication of coca crops over the current system that focuses heavily
on aerial fumigation.

The iconic image of Colombia's largely U.S.-funded war on drugs may
well be a single-engine airplane spraying bright green fields of coca
bushes with chemical defoliants -- the country's key strategy since
the 1980s.

But the spray program has been the source of endless legal, social and
diplomatic conflicts because of the controversy over the health and
environmental effects of the chemicals. The latest estimates of coca
acreage -- showing little drop -- have fueled doubts on the
effectiveness of the spray program. And the new Democratic majority in
the U.S. Congress is viewed as less friendly toward spraying.

"Instead of uniting Colombians around the idea of eradicating drugs,
[aerial spraying] causes complaints and provokes reactions against
eradication," President Alvaro Uribe said in a July 20 speech in
which he announced the shift. He said spraying would remain only a
"marginal" part of the counter-drug strategy.

Many longtime critics of the fumigation policy applauded the decision,
including the government in neighboring Ecuador, for whom aerial
spraying along the border had become a major diplomatic issue with
Colombia.

Move Lauded

In an editorial, Colombia's main newspaper El Tiempo also cheered the
change. 'Announcing a reduction in aerial spraying and reinforcing
manual eradication is the first step for Colombia to formulate an
anti-narcotics strategy that answers to more than just
'recommendations' from Washington," the editorial said.

"It's an evolution [of the policy], . . . We are going to give more
importance to the manual eradication than to aerial fumigation,"
Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos confirmed last week to reporters
in Washington, where he was discussing the new plans with U.S.
policymakers and lobbying Congress to allow more flexibility in the
use of U.S. counter-drug aid.

"Manual eradication can be more effective and, at times, cheaper,"
Santos added.

Colombia has received nearly $5 billion over the past seven years,
mostly for the war on drugs, making it the largest recipient of U.S.
assistance in the Western Hemisphere.

Coca growers often replant crops damaged by aerial fumigations, and
plants often grow back stronger after fumigation. They also have
learned to coat leaves with a sugary substance to protect them against
the herbicide glyphosate. Manual eradicators do a more thorough job by
chopping off bigger plants, uprooting smaller ones and destroying
plant nurseries that otherwise quickly would replace plants killed by
the aerial spraying.

Santos told The Miami Herald that his pitch for manual eradication was
well received by the Bush administration and Congress. But in the
past, U.S. officials have been reluctant to support that method in
Colombia -- even though it is used in Peru and Bolivia -- because
Colombia faces powerful guerrilla forces that profit from and protect
the drug trade.

Some U.S. officials also challenge Colombia's claim that physically
pulling plants out of the ground is more effective and less costly
than aerial spraying. Bogota says that to manually eradicate one
hectare of land -- 2.47 acres -- costs about $500, compared with $450
for aerial spraying.

The U.S. critics also argue that manual eradication puts more
civilians and soldiers at risk, especially in guerrilla-controlled
areas. About 90 policemen and eradicators have been killed in the past
two years during manual eradication efforts.

"There's a time and place for both manual and aerial eradication,"
an official at the U.S. embassy in Bogota told The Miami Herald.
"Killing coca in any way possible is a good thing."

Because of the misgivings, the U.S. government has limited its
contributions to previous manual eradication efforts in Colombia,
supplying only logistical support for the programs such as aircraft
fuel.

Major Overhaul

But Colombian, U.S. State Department and U.S. congressional officials
are looking into a major overhaul of Plan Colombia rules that would
allow more U.S. assistance for manual eradication efforts, several
persons familiar with the conversations say.

U.S. Democratic lawmakers are proposing deep cuts in military
assistance to Colombia -- anywhere from $91 million to $160 million,
according to the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based
group that tracks Plan Colombia spending. One House bill would shift
somewhat the emphasis of U.S. counter-drug aid to Colombia, away from
military spending and toward social and economic development.

The Senate version of the Foreign Appropriations bill earmarks $10
million of the military aid specifically for operations to provide
security for manual eradication. More significantly, it stipulates
that funds for aerial fumigation could only be used in specific areas
where the State Department has certified that manual eradication is
not feasible.

Some analysts see the new Colombian stance as a timid declaration of
independence from U.S. drug pro-spraying policies. But others view it
as an attempt to ride the wave of the Democratic majority in the U.S.
Congress, which traditionally has been more critical of U.S. military
aid to Colombia.

"The government is just molding itself to the new environment in
Washington," said Ricardo Vargas, an expert on Andean counter-drug
policy.

"The idea of favoring manual eradication has been kicked around for a
long time," said Victoria Restrepo, head of the government's manual
eradication program. "It's just that now is the right mood [in
Washington] to push for this since they [Democrats] are favoring the
social side because the results from the spraying are not very positive."

U.S. government reports estimate that coca cultivation in Colombia
since 2001 -- when the major spraying under Plan Colombian began --
barely dropped, from 169,000 hectares to 154,000 hectares in 2006.

Critics say the figures prove that the aerial spraying program has not
worked, but U.S. officials argue the number did not drop more
significantly because the area surveyed was much larger in 2006 than
in 2001.

This year, Santos said, the government expects to manually eradicate
173,000 acres, and spray 321,000.

But Restrepo said she cringes every time she hears Santos announce the
target. She told The Miami Herald that with the resources she now has,
she barely will make her agency's original target for the year of
123,500 acres. So far this year, eradicators have cleared just under
60,000 acres.

Any real changes in the intensity of the manual eradication program
won't be seen until next year, she said.

Analysts warn, however, that any eradication efforts not accompanied
by comprehensive efforts to give farmers a legal alternative to coca
growing are doomed to fail.

"The farmers have to be taken into account. Otherwise, they will just
wait for the eradicators to leave, and they will replant," said
Astrid Puente of the environmental group AIDA, which monitors
fumigation in Colombia.

Miami Herald correspondent Pablo Bachelet contributed to this report
from Washington.