DRUG WAR IS SLIPPING AWAY FROM U.S.

Coca's Profitability Brings Farmers Back

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Despite spending billions of dollars to train
police forces, whip soldiers into shape, spray crops with defoliants and
teach farmers how to grow anything but coca plants, the United States is
losing ground in the South American drug war.

In Peru, coca eradication efforts stopped July 2. In Bolivia, where by last
year authorities had nearly ended the growing of coca leaves that are
refined to make cocaine, farmers are back at it. In Colombia, the
president-elect's pledge to eliminate the nation's burgeoning coca crop has
shrunk to a pledge to attack only industrial-size plots. The three Andean
countries produce virtually all the world's cocaine.

At a time when market prices for coffee and other substitute crops are at
record lows, the political will to continue the unpopular pressuring of coca
farmers in the three countries is questionable. To make matters worse,
government opponents and rebels in the three countries are siding with the
cocaine industry.

"I think what it shows is that we cannot put our guard down, that this war
against traffickers and narco-terrorists is never over," said Otto Reich,
the U.S. State Department's undersecretary for Latin America and the
Caribbean. "We have to support these governments."

White House drug czar John Walters said he is "concerned about the recent
developments in Bolivia and Peru." But Walters said Colombian President
Alvaro Uribe Velez has a historic opportunity to curb production in the
cocaine capital of the world.

If Uribe doesn't act, Americans could soon be coping with a flood of cheap,
high-purity cocaine. Here's why: While Bolivia and Peru cut their coca leaf
crops sharply beginning in the mid-90s, Colombia's farmers picked up the
slack, according to figures reported in a United Nations survey, "Global
Illicit Drug Trends 2002."

Were Peru and Bolivia to abandon their restraints, Andean cocaine production
could easily skyrocket.

Walters prefers the opposite scenario: If Uribe moves effectively against
Colombian drug cartels and the U.S. government can persuade Bolivia and Peru
to keep production down, the United States could come out ahead.

Drug Enforcement Administrator Asa Hutchinson, the top U.S. official in the
antidrug war, did not respond to requests for comment.

The main incentive spurring coca production is the sorry state of prices for
coffee, the most popular substitute crop. In Peru's Apurimac Valley, a
25-pound sack of coca leaves brings a farmer $45 these days, almost four
times what coffee pays. What's more, coca plants produce four crops a year
to coffee's one. They need no fertilizer and are easier to grow and harvest.

Unpopular President Alejandro Toledo halted Peru's eradication and
substitution programs -- temporarily, he said -- amidst mounting civil
unrest and the resurgence of a Maoist rural guerrilla movement that protects
coca shipments.

Toledo's action angered the U.S. government, which had budgeted $65 million
in alternative-development efforts in Peru this year.

"President Toledo has stated publicly that Peru must eliminate at least
54,000 acres of coca to bring an end to Peru's role in the global drug
trade. We welcome President Toledo's stated commitment to that goal and hope
the current obstacles to achieving it can be overcome soon," said a U.S.
official in Peru, speaking on condition that he not be identified.

Bolivia, once the world's coca leaf king, eradicated more than 90,000 acres
- -- more than 140 square miles -- of coca between 1998 and this year, nearly
putting itself out of the drug business. Now, fast-growing coca bushes are
sprouting again in the New Jersey-size Chapare region. For peasants in South
America's poorest country, money is the motive.

In Bolivia's presidential elections in June, Evo Morales, an obscure Indian
agitator who campaigned in favor of growing coca and said he would shut down
DEA operations, placed second and almost won the popular vote. He will
control about one-third of Bolivia's congress and promises to overturn laws
that allow for coca eradication.

Even if he fails, his stature makes it unlikely that Bolivia will pass a
decree desired by the United States to punish farmers for growing or
transporting coca.

"He shows his fangs when he says, 'What I can't get here, I will get outside
the law by blocking the streets and causing social convulsions,' " said
Oswaldo Antesana, Bolivia's drug czar, who said he expects new problems in
the drug war.

Today, Colombia leads the world in coca growing and cocaine production. But
Uribe was elected on a pledge to go to war in the coca zones controlled by
Marxist rebels and right-wing paramilitaries, who collect so-called war
taxes from drug traffickers.