BOLIVIA'S DRUG CRISIS WORSENING

While the Bush White House publicly brags about reduced coca production in
South America's Andean region, there is dismay behind the scenes in the
U.S. intelligence community. A recent classified National Intelligence
summary reported there is not any scenario under current conditions that
will continue aggressive eradication in Bolivia of the crop used to produce
cocaine. That threatens the unraveling of the U.S. anti-drug program based
in Colombia.

The problem with the program, begun by the Clinton administration, is
focusing South America entirely on counter-drug objectives rather than
counter-insurgency concerns. The result in Bolivia has been deepening
political turmoil after pro-coca forces helped oust a pro-American president.

U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East and Central Asia ignores what is
happening next door amid rising influence of a new clique of leftist,
anti-American leaders. Evo Morales, Bolivia's rising radical, and Fidel
Castro, Cuba's dictator, both were in Caracas Dec. 21 and 22 to meet with
Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez. That was preceded by Jimmy
Carter's visit to Bolivia, where the former president, praising Morales as
an ''impressive'' leader with a great future, undermined U.S. counter-drug
policies.

These ominous developments have not been mentioned publicly by official
Washington. ''White House hails drops in coca cultivation in Bolivia,
Peru,'' trumpeted the State Department propaganda apparatus on Nov. 25. A
close reading of the handout reveals that coca production in Bolivia, not
linked with Peru, actually increased in 2003.

Beyond numbers, the official U.S. line has little to do with reality. The
backlash to U.S.-sponsored coca eradication in Bolivia was behind the
violent ouster Oct. 17 of Washington's friend in La Paz, President Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozada. U.S. officials who have been there believe the momentum
is rising.

On Dec. 11, suspected ELN-B terrorists, who are coca growers in the Chapare
region and members of Morales' Socialist Movement, were arrested. They were
released four days later after Morales talked to President Carlos Mesa. On
Dec. 12, explosives were thrown at a U.S.-funded rural electrical project,
substantiating complaints by U.S. aid personnel that they are unprotected.
On Dec. 17, three ELN-B operatives were arrested for transporting a large
cache of 81mm shells to Chapare, a center of coca eradication.

To combat these developments, the United States in the last year provided
only $500,000 for Bolivia's military and police compared with $90 million
for coca eradication. Bolivian security forces are well equipped for
anti-coca operations in the jungle but have been given neither equipment
nor training to maintain public order even for a single day.

Here is a latter-day domino effect. Dissenting officials in the U.S.
government believe Bolivia is becoming what the Pentagon calls an
''ungoverned area.'' They fear that Colombia's narcoterrorists will switch
their growing and processing operations to Bolivia, making irrelevant U.S.
counter-drug policy in Colombia. That prospect is privately viewed by
Colombian officials as fully realistic and as a catastrophe, returning the
situation in the Andes to where it was in the bad old days of the 1980s.

As this crisis built in La Paz, Carter arrived there on Dec. 17. Morales,
seen by U.S. officials as behind the ouster of President Sanchez de Lozada,
had just threatened to bring down Mesa's government if eight ELN-B
terrorists were not released. Carter sat down with Morales to tell him he
supported a pause in Chapare coca eradication while the United Nations
studies the program. So much for U.S. policy.

Carter also expressed support for land-locked Bolivia's revanchist dreams
of acquiring access to the sea by regaining lost territory from Chile and
Peru. In Caracas, Chavez revealed he ''had dreams of swimming on a Bolivian
beach.'' In Havana, Castro promptly voiced support. These developments were
duly noted by a few, but mostly ignored in Washington.