COLOMBIA'S LOW-TECH COCA ASSAULT

Uprooting Bushes by Hand Preferred Over U.S.-Funded Aerial Spraying

EL MIRADOR, Colombia -- The latest shift in Colombia's war on drugs
is evident on a green hilltop in this town, as weather-beaten men in
gray jumpsuits -- government-paid eradicators -- use hoes and muscle
to rip out bushes of coca. Policemen carrying M-16 assault rifles and
land-mine detectors stand sentry, while a radio operator listens in
on the crackling conversation between two Marxist guerrilla units.

The operation here in the southern state of Caqueta is tedious, hard
and dangerous, since destroying coca is a financial blow to the
guerrillas, who draw much of their funding from the crop that is used
to make cocaine. But Colombian officials say uprooting by hand is the
future -- a strategy at odds with U.S. reliance on aerial fumigation.

Three years ago, almost all coca eradication efforts in Colombia were
carried out through aerial spraying. By last year, however, more than
100,000 acres of the crop were destroyed by hand, accounting for
almost 25 percent of the coca eradicated. The Defense Ministry said
it is designing a plan to uproot 172,000 acres by hand this year.

"We are convinced of the advantages of manual eradication over
spraying, and that's why we want to give more importance to manual
eradication," Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said in an
interview, echoing the views of other officials.

Aerial spraying by crop dusters was sold as a great elixir that would
curtail Colombia's coca crop, delivering a lasting blow to the
cocaine trade. But after seven years and more than $5 billion in
funding from the United States, CIA monitoring of coca shows that
this country has as much of the crop as it did in 2001, the first
full year of aerial spraying under what is known as Plan Colombia.

U.S. officials say new mapping techniques have allowed them to survey
more ground in Colombia than before, making such comparisons unfair.
They say a sharp drop in violence during President Alvaro Uribe's
five-year tenure shows that the program is undercutting funding for
violent groups. And they say that other measurements -- more cocaine
labs have been destroyed, and more than 500 drug traffickers have
been extradited to the United States since 2002 -- prove that the
cocaine trade has been hit hard.

"The cultivation number, as an isolated measure, can be leading some
people to believe it's not working," John P. Walters, the White House
drug policy chief, said by telephone from Washington. "A more
difficult but more important number is how much they are able to
produce. It looks like that's down."

Although U.S. officials have not publicly criticized manual
eradication, they have repeatedly emphasized their commitment to
aerial fumigation. Officials here in Colombia, meanwhile, from Vice
President Francisco Santos to officers in the National Police, which
carries out anti-drug operations, are publicly taking a stand that
contradicts that of the Bush administration.

"We feel that we're on a stationary bicycle," said Santos the defense
minister, referring to the results of the spraying program. "We've
advanced very slowly. So we have to change our tactics."

The reasons for the shift are manifold:

Coca, once found primarily in Colombia's south, is now cultivated
nationwide. Aerial spraying has prompted farmers to abandon large
plots for smaller, more isolated ones in regions where legal crops
are often grown next to coca. Crop dusters invariably hit the
legitimate crops, too, angering farming communities. Fumigation has
also hurt relations with neighboring Ecuador, which says the spray
from planes is wafting into its territory and damaging farms.

In addition, U.S. and U.N. data show that Colombia, Bolivia and Peru
together continue producing more than enough cocaine to meet world
demand. Colombia is the only U.S. ally to fumigate drug crops on a large scale.

"The strategy doesn't work; fumigating doesn't eradicate," El Tiempo,
the country's largest newspaper, said recently in an editorial.
"Instead of clamoring for help on a program that seems more
inappropriate every day, the government should take advantage of this
moment to redirect and rethink its anti-drug collaboration with the
United States. Fumigation should be suspended and only used in
extraordinary cases."

In interviews, government officials say one of the chief benefits of
manual eradication is that it destroys the entire coca bush, root and
all. By contrast, farmers whose crops are sprayed often quickly cut
them back to the root in order to regrow the bush. Farmers also cover
coca leaves with substances that limit the effectiveness of the
herbicide spray, glyphosate.

Santos, the defense minister, said it is possible that in coming
years 75 percent of the coca removed will be eradicated manually.

Officials also said that with Colombia planning to spend more to
build a state presence in lawless regions, it makes sense to
eradicate on the ground, instead of from the air. "When you're in a
plane, it's 140 knots and you're gone," said Col. Jose Angel Mendoza,
who commands police operations here in Caqueta state. "When you're on
land, you're with the people."

Vice President Santos, though, said the idea is to develop a strategy
in which coca farmers are eradicating in exchange for assistance
cultivating legal crops. Without such alternatives, said John Walsh,
senior associate for drug policy at the advocacy group Washington
Office on Latin America, the gains achieved by manual eradication
will be reversed with new plantings.

The involvement of coca farmers in eradication may not yield fast
results, he said, but "it should mean more durable results and, just
as importantly, could foster a positive relationship between
communities and different levels of government."

The development of the new strategy comes as Democrats in the U.S.
Congress, concerned about human rights in Colombia as well as the
effectiveness of aerial fumigation, have cut aid to the country by 10
percent. The spraying program would be hit hard by a House plan to
slash military funding to Colombia by $150 million, though the Senate
may restore some of the funds when it votes this month.

Walters, the U.S. drug policy chief, said cutting aerial spraying
would be shortsighted. He said the strategy has weakened the rebels,
while helping to push thousands of paramilitary fighters into a
government demobilization program. A classified study released by the
White House said that profits from drug-related activities collected
by the largest rebel group here -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC -- fell by a third between 2003 and 2005 and are
now $60 million to $115 million a year.

For now, the Colombians are funding the manual eradication, though
officials said they want the Bush administration to show greater
flexibility with anti-drug funds.

It has not been easy, or cheap, particularly in lives lost. About 40
policemen and eradicators have been killed in the past year -- a fact
that weighed heavily on the team working the coca fields in El Mirador.

"This is a guerrilla zone, so the danger is always there," said
Anselmo Calderon, 39, one of the men who's been uprooting coca in El
Mirador. "It's no secret the guerrillas sustain themselves with this,
so we can become a military target."

The job takes time. Calderon and dozens of other men were assigned to
clean one plot after another over eight consecutive weeks. Their work
is dependent on a police unit, which ensures that muddy trails aren't
mined or that booby traps haven't been planted deep under the coca
bushes that are to be uprooted.

On a recent day, success was measured by the horizon, said one police
officer, Jose Luis Merchan. He pointed out the other hilltops, all of
them scraped clean of coca plants.

"What were coca fields have been turned into cattle pasture," he
said. "But it gets harder all the time. People put the plots higher,
in more mountainous areas, harder for the police."