U.S. ROLE IN COCA WAR DRAWS FIRE

Bolivian Anti-Drug Unit Paid By Washington Accused Of Abuses

CHIMORE, Bolivia -- The wary residents of this sweltering town in Bolivia's
remote Chapare jungle have a nickname for the uniformed newcomers:
"America's mercenaries."

The Expeditionary Task Force, the official name for an armed unit of 1,500
former Bolivian soldiers, is paid, fed, clothed and trained by the U.S.
Embassy in La Paz, the Bolivian capital. Since setting up camp 18 months
ago on three bases around this town of 2,000 inhabitants, the troops and
their assault rifles have become a common sight on the local highway,
putting down protests along the steamy jungle road by peasants combating a
sweeping, U.S.-backed campaign to eradicate the area's biggest cash crop --
coca.

The force, which has tripled in size since its inception, has become one of
the most contentious signs of Washington's involvement in the drug war.

U.S. and Bolivian military officials say the unit has played a vital role
in an aggressive attempt to eradicate coca from the Chapare jungle, a
region larger than Connecticut that provided the basic ingredient for
almost half the world's cocaine during the 1980s and 1990s. Although the
soldiers are directly salaried by the U.S. government, American and
Bolivian officials describe the outfit as "a group of reservists" within a
regular Bolivian army brigade and commanded by regular Bolivian officers.

But a growing number of critics are calling the force an abusive irregular
army whose existence violates Bolivian law. And the unit, described by
Latin American scholars as the first of its kind in the drug war, has been
accused of using excessive force and committing human rights abuses,
including murder and torture.

A Bolivian civil court judge issued a preventive arrest order this past
week for the unit's commander, Col. Aurelio Burgos Blacutt, pending
investigation of charges from witnesses that Burgos shot and killed an
unarmed man during a peasant protest Jan. 29. However, legal sources said
the order has yet to be carried out and the military is bringing pressure
to get it annulled.

Other task force soldiers have been accused in at least four killings and
more than 50 instances of clubbings, beatings and theft over the past eight
months, according to Bolivia's human rights ombudsman's office.

The reports of abuse have been largely dismissed by the U.S. Embassy and
the State Department. "We don't believe them, the human rights
allegations," said a U.S. counternarcotics official in La Paz, 200 miles to
the northwest. "This is not a paramilitary group, and it won't become one."

Nevertheless, the force's track record has sparked fears among Bolivian
defense experts, human rights advocates, U.S. legislators and others. Their
view is that Washington is funding a band of hired guns in an effort that
may lead to the rise in Bolivia of paramilitary groups similar to those in
Colombia, where paramilitary units have committed gross atrocities against
civilians.

"These are soldiers with no clearly defined loyalties, and a foreign power
is funding them to run around our country with guns," said Juan R.
Quintana, director of the Defense Policy Analysis Unit at the Defense
Ministry. "The existence of this force is a violation of the Bolivian
constitution and our military law, which does not permit the creation, by
the government or anyone else, of armed groups such as the expeditionary
force."

Birth of the Task Force The Expeditionary Task Force sprang to life as a
byproduct of Latin America's most ambitious campaign to eradicate coca.

After decades of looking the other way as Bolivia became one of the world's
leading producers of coca leaf and a hotbed of trafficking, the Bolivian
government, armed with millions of dollars in U.S. military aid, launched
the Dignity Plan in 1998. Unlike eradication attempts in other coca-growing
countries, the Dignity Plan gave farmers who cultivate coca no choice. The
military rolled into the Chapare region, with its base in Chimore, and
uprooted coca plants by force.

Statistically, the plan marked one of the greatest victories in the drug
war. Cultivation of illegal coca in Bolivia, once the second-largest
producer of cocaine and its by-products, dropped from 74,360 acres in 1998
to roughly 7,000 acres in 2001, according to U.S. and Bolivian officials.
An additional 24,000 acres of legal coca is grown in Bolivia's Yungas
region for traditional uses, such as chewing it to ease hunger pangs or
putting it in medicinal teas.

But Bolivian officials concede that attempts to provide alternative crop
assistance to farmers -- roughly 40,000 poor and largely indigenous
families -- did not keep pace with coca eradication. Roman Catholic Church
officials in the region say forced eradication left thousands of
poverty-stricken families without a source of income, sparking serious
malnutrition.

The result was a surge in replanting of illicit coca over the past year,
along with a violent uprising among poor farmers in what has been dubbed
Bolivia's "coca wars."

Furious and desperate, farmers began staging roadblocks on the
Cochabamba-Santa Cruz highway, which handles 70 percent of Bolivia's
overland commerce and runs through Chimore. As the clashes grew more
violent, Bolivian and U.S. authorities worked together to form the
Expeditionary Task Force. The idea, officials said, was to ease the burden
on the cash-strapped Bolivian army and military police, minimize clashes
between the regular army and rebellious peasants and, sources say, provide
guarantees that the U.S. funds are well spent.

The U.S. Embassy maintains the right to vet all of the unit's members.
Salaries -- $100 a month, about 40 percent more than a regular enlisted
man's wage -- are distributed by the U.S. Embassy through a private
financial company that hands out the cash in the jungle here once a month.
U.S. officials say the payment structure was designed to maintain better
oversight on spending but does not mean the U.S. Embassy controls what the
unit does.

The U.S. Embassy's Narcotics Affairs Section also pays virtually all other
expenses, including food and uniforms, at a total expense of about $200,000
a month. The money, handed down through the State Department's Bureau for
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, comes from anti-drug
aid allocated to Bolivia by Congress.

The unit is commanded by a few dozen U.S.-trained officers who are paid
directly by the Bolivian military and report to Bolivia's high command in
La Paz. They also consult regularly with the U.S. Embassy's narcotics
section and U.S. military officials. Their mission represents the heavy
lifting in the Dignity Plan, handling the roadside confrontations with coca
farmers.

"It is better for us not to be involved in the worst of the conflicts with
the coca farmers," said Col. Jaime Cruz Vera, head of the Chimore base of
UMOPAR, Bolivia's militarized anti-drug police. "We live with the peasant
farmers. We pass by them in town. They are not our enemies. The creation of
the [task force] has meant a lot less animosity between us and the
peasants, allowing them to have more faith in us."

Swift Retaliation Clashes between coca farmers and the task force, the
regular Bolivian military and police forces have left 10 farmers and four
regular soldiers dead since September. Only one task force member has been
killed, in July.

At Chimore, the unit's main base rises under a jungle canopy, a
fortress-like military compound with a perimeter wall of wooden tripod
fences and barbed wire. At the gated checkpoint, guards wear military
jackets with the task force symbol, an outline of Bolivia colored in the
red, yellow and green of the national flag, with a superimposed profile in
black of a soldier carrying an assault rifle.

A reporter invited to the base passed the contracted men dining at the "NAS
Cafeteria," a reference to the U.S. Narcotics Affairs Section. Several
could be seen sporting black T-shirts emblazoned with a slogan that,
roughly translated from Spanish, says, "I'm an expeditionary member, and
what are you going to do about it?"

Officers refused to be quoted by name, but said they were acting in the
common interest of Bolivia and the United States.

"You have to understand, in the Chapare, we are dealing with something like
the Soviet Union in the 1930s," said one high-ranking task force official.
"These are Marxists and communists, they are dangerous for both [the United
States] and Bolivia. But there's an added problem. They are also
narco-traffickers. And you can't expect all operations to go smoothly. We
are certainly not going out there looking to be tough guys. No, that's not
our way."

On Dec. 6, a typically hot summer's day in the Chapare, one of the most
severe of the alleged excesses involving the task force took place. At the
coca growers union headquarters in Chimore, a group of protesters lined
fruit along the side of the road. In a videotaped account of the event
broadcast nationwide, it appeared to be a peaceful demonstration
highlighting one of the biggest criticisms of alternative development here:
low prices and lack of access to domestic and international markets for
legal crops such as bananas and pineapples.

Soon after the protest started, task force soldiers arrived and began
seizing fruit from demonstrators. Soldiers are seen on the videotape
kicking and punching farmers as they order them back into the marketplace.
The forces can also be seen roughing up the mayor, Epifanio Cruz, as he
tried to calm the situation. Soon, the security forces began launching tear
gas.

After one soldier was apparently hit in the face by a rock, retaliation was
swift. The contract soldiers chased coca farmers into the union compound.
Four shots went off. When the soldiers emerged, the local union leader,
Casimiro Huanca, 55, was fatally wounded. A second victim, farmer Fructuoso
Herbas, 34, had to have his right leg amputated below the knee after he was
shot once in the leg.

"It is clear to us that the [task force] is using excessive force and
committing severe human rights abuses across the Chapare," said Godofredo
Reinicke, Bolivia's human rights ombudsman for the Chapare region.

A State Department account of the event, in a Jan. 29 letter to concerned
U.S. legislators, stated the irregular forces were "attempting to clear the
road while it was being blocked." It said, "The crowd became one large mass
as the [peasants] continued to advance on the [task force]." Herbas, the
farmer whose leg was partially amputated, was described as having been
"wounded slightly above the ankle."

"We investigate these cases as best we can, checking as many sources in and
out of the government as we can, and we try to follow them up and update
the information as we can, so our report at any one point in time may have
some information that may not prove to be accurate," James Dickmeyer, the
U.S. Embassy spokesman in La Paz, said in explaining the difference between
the embassy's account and that conveyed by the video.

"In the case of Bolivia, I think the war on drugs is being used as an
excuse to carry out behavior that we would never otherwise accept," said
Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), who has raised the issue with the State
Department. "Our actions in Bolivia represent a gross complacency that
borders on complicity. There seems to be purposeful obfuscation about the
facts."

Bolivian President Jorge Quiroga said in an interview that he supported the
arrangement and did not consider the unit to violate Bolivian law or come
under undue U.S. influence.

"We have the Spanish funding hearts of palm [alternative development
projects] in the Chapare, and that doesn't mean they belong to Spain," he
said. "We have the Koreans assisting in building a main highway from Santa
Cruz, and that doesn't mean they own the road. This is simply another group
in our fight against drugs. We're dealing with people who are making a lot
of money from drugs. It's impossible to be foolproof in a situation like this."

U.S. officials and task force leaders blame farmers for the violence and
insist most incidents described as human rights abuses were committed in
self-defense. The coca farmers, officials say, are directly linked to
narcotics traffickers and include snipers and experts in booby traps who
have wounded and killed several soldiers.

As an indication of the level of trafficking in the region, officials point
to a recent anti-drug sweep called Operation Cascabel II, in which agents
in the Chapare seized 370 pounds of partially processed cocaine and
uncovered 365 cocaine base laboratories. "The [task force irregulars] have
been in difficult situations," said a U.S. Embassy source who asked not to
be named. "The coca growers are not peace-loving beatniks."