U.S.: 'WE CAN SPRAY FASTER THAN THEY CAN PLANT'

Coca Eradication In Colombia At Last Meets With Success

SAN ANDRES, Colombia -- After years of failure, a controversial U.S.-funded
anti-narcotics program is finally making a dent in Colombia's coca crop,
which accounts for 90 percent of the cocaine reaching the United States.

Nearly four months of intensive aerial spraying has destroyed tens of
thousands of acres of coca in a key growing region and left the once-lush
countryside devastated.

Hillsides have been denuded by the herbicide. Coca farmers have fled,
leaving roadsides lined with abandoned houses.

"We are left with almost nothing," said Mirian Chavez, 38, whose 7 acres of
coca outside the village of San Andres were sprayed twice this year. "They
fumigated it all."

Some coca growers are switching to pineapples, yucca, corn and other legal
crops. Others are waiting to see whether the eradication effort will
continue before possibly replanting coca.

The exhaustive spraying in this remote southern province is part of a $7.5
billion program funded by the United States, Colombia and European
governments that is designed to cut coca production in half by 2005. The
U.S. contribution to the program, known as Plan Colombia, now totals about
$2 billion.

Until recently, Plan Colombia showed little success, primarily because
fumigation was sporadic and efforts to provide farmers with legal
alternatives to coca were ill-conceived or mismanaged, according to experts
and a U.S. congressional report in February.

With the August election of President Alvaro Uribe, who has aggressively
backed fumigation as part of his overall campaign against the powerful
Colombian insurgents, the eradication program has made progress.

Uribe and other top officials argue that the quickest way to defeat leftist
rebels and a right-wing paramilitary force is to take away their primary
source of funding: the lucrative coca trade. The surest way to achieve that
goal is through massive and sustained fumigation, officials say.

"When you have a crop that is financing a war, a democracy has no
alternative but to take that out," Colombian Vice President Francisco
Santos said recently. "There are some costs to pay, but we can't tolerate
the illegal crops in Colombia. We are pushing the U.S. Embassy and
government to give us more help to spray."

The United States has 16 planes spraying in southern Colombia and expects
to have 22 by the middle of next year.

U.S. officials say they will spray about 320,000 acres of coca by year's
end, a third more than in 2001. Estimates vary on the total acreage of coca
grown in Colombia, from 350,000 to 420,000 acres.

"We can spray faster than they can plant," one U.S. official said. "A
farmer can replant once, maybe twice, but they can't sustain it three times."

But fumigation faces stiff opposition in Putumayo state, Colombia's main
coca-growing region, where politicians and others say the spraying has
decimated the local economy and killed food crops along with the coca.

Argument For Alternatives

Local officials say the only way to permanently wipe out the coca economy
is to spend tens of millions of dollars for factories, roads and other
projects to provide coca farmers with a legal alternative. Without such an
effort, farmers will either replant coca in Putumayo or move elsewhere in
Colombia to grow the crop.

"I'm completely behind the battle against illegal drugs, but fumigation
doesn't work," said Putumayo Gov. Ivan Guerrero. "The peasant farmer isn't
a narco-trafficker. They grow coca because there is no alternative for them."

The Colombian and U.S. governments say they are funding development
projects in the region but acknowledge that the programs are moving slowly.

There also is the issue of safety. U.S. officials say the main ingredient
in the herbicide used in Colombia, glyphosate, is widely used in the United
States in products such as Roundup and causes no health problems.

But Colombia's top human-rights official said in October that fumigation
should be suspended because it is endangering the health of peasants and
damaging the environment. Peasants in Putumayo blame the spraying for
health problems ranging from severe skin rashes to respiratory aliments.

Two decades ago, Colombia grew little if any coca, and Putumayo was largely
virgin jungle. Most of the coca that fueled the drug trade in the 1980s and
early 1990s was grown in Bolivia and Peru, though it was Colombians such as
Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel that controlled distribution and sales.

That changed in the mid-1990s as U.S.-sponsored drug interdiction and
eradication efforts cut production in Bolivia and Peru. Coca growing
shifted north to Putumayo and southern Colombia. Since then, tens of
thousands of poor farmers have relocated to grow coca, clearing huge swaths
of jungle in the region for planting.

Chavez, the San Andres coca farmer, lives like many others in a
wooden-plank home that has no running water or electricity. She built a
makeshift laboratory to process the raw coca leaf into coca base, the first
step toward making cocaine.

Her family earns about $750 annually from the drug trade. Other small
farmers say they earn twice that much.

"It's only enough to live," said Chavez, who has been growing coca for six
years.

Profits Go To Insurgencies

Colombia's two largest insurgencies are raking in huge profits from the
drug trade. Chavez and other farmers are forced to sell their product to
the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC, or
the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, the AUC. They are
killed if they refuse.

In recent years, the AUC has taken control of the major towns and roads in
Putumayo, carrying out a bloody campaign that has left dozens of rebels and
their supporters dead. However, the FARC still controls much of the
coca-growing area in the surrounding countryside.

In La Hormiga, AUC militiamen walk freely among Colombian troops. Armed
paramilitaries guard a bridge along the major highway and even set up a
toll station for passing cars.

Besides cocaine, the AUC rakes in cash in La Hormiga by extorting a monthly
fee of $15 to $30 from every business. Merchants say economic activity has
fallen at least 75 percent since the spraying started.

"Before the fumigation there was a bonanza here," said Alfonso Martinez,
who owns a pharmacy in La Hormiga. "Now, that's all ended."

Living under the threat of the insurgents and now fumigation, Chavez and
many coca farmers say they are ready to give up the trade if provided with
an alternative.

Chavez was among thousands of farmers in Putumayo who signed up last year
for a government-run program to pull up coca plants in exchange for
livestock, food and other assistance.

But the program foundered after many families took the assistance, then
failed to destroy their crops. Chavez said the aid provided by the
government--which included two calves and a regular supply of lentils--is
not enough to live on with her husband and son. Other farmers said no aid
arrived at all.

The U.S. government is continuing some development projects but is
concentrating its efforts on fumigation.

"I don't want to grow coca anymore," Chavez said as she gazed at her
surviving coca plants. "If the government helps me, I won't."