IN WAR ON COCA, COLOMBIA ENLISTS FARMERS

The New Program Aims To Substitute Conventional Crops For Illegal Ones. The
U.S. Will Help Pay For It.

BOGOTA, Colombia - Yanking a coca bush from the ground and planting a
magnolia tree in its place, officials began an ambitious program to
eradicate drug crops in the heart of Colombia's cocaine-producing region.

During the weekend ceremony in southern Colombia's Putumayo province - home
of nearly half the world's cocaine-yielding acreage - about 700 peasant
farmers agreed to destroy their coca plots in return for government aid to
adopt alternative, and legal, livelihoods.

The crop-substitution program is the "soft side" of a U.S.-backed military
push into the region, in which remaining coca fields are to be seized by
government troops and destroyed by aerial fumigation. The pact was signed
Saturday in the village of Santa Ana and will be offered to other farmers
in Putumayo in coming months.

For the coca growers, the deal to wipe out their own crops - and thereby
avoid aerial fumigation - sounds good on paper. But many are skeptical the
promises will become reality. And there is little likelihood the initiative
will sharply reduce the scale of the coming military offensive.

In return for seeds, technical assistance, better roads and electricity -
the government's part of the bargain - communities living off coca pledge
to instead be growing food crops and tending chicken coops within a year.
Later, officials say, they will invite farmers to participate in more
lucrative projects, such as cattle ranches, fish farms and rubber plantations.

The government says the alternative development program is backed by nearly
$250 million in government aid, in addition to tens of millions of dollars
in expected international aid. But the program faces myriad obstacles;
foremost is security.

Colombia's largest leftist guerrilla army, the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), controls much of rural Putumayo, and earns huge profits
by protecting the cocaine-producing plantations and "taxing" the growers.

Battling more than 2,000 FARC fighters for control of Putumayo and profits
from its lucrative cocaine trade are at least 600 members of a right-wing
paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

The FARC says it supports alternative development over forced aerial
eradication, but it remains to be seen whether the guerrillas will go along
with plans aimed at eliminating one of their main sources of income.

A $1.3 billion U.S. aid package includes dozens of combat helicopters and
U.S. special forces training for 3,000 Colombian army troops given the task
of driving the armed groups from the coca fields.

The United States also is pledging more than $100 million for alternative
development programs. But White House drug czar Barry McCaffrey said last
week that such programs could not succeed until Colombia's police and
military "have established security on the ground."

The government has never attempted a large-scale development program in
Putumayo. Previous projects have been small and ineffective, sowing
distrust among peasants who eradicated their coca only to find that
government aid promises were hollow.

Gonzalo de Francisco, the government's coordinator for Putumayo, says this
time things will be different.

"We're going in, and not to do little projects," he said.